Part 3: Gender identity as self-evident truth

As you can probably guess by how long it's taken me to get to this point this answer is not going to be short.

For centuries philosophers have battled with the concept of self awareness. How do I know I exist? How do I know that the world I perceive around me is not just a construct of my own thoughts? How do I know that my thoughts actually exist and are not just a construct of the world around us?

These are important and complex questions. They don’t have simple one sentence answers. In fact one of the most beautiful things about the world to me is the difficult humans have in trying to define it.

Where am I going with this and what does it have to do with gender identity?

Descartes in 1637 proposed that we can prove we are aware of ourselves because we question whether we are aware of ourselves. 'Je pense, donc je suis' or as most people know it 'I think therefore I am' it is that ability to question our self existence that proves we exist and are conscious of ourselves.

The assertion that we know ourselves to be simply because we do was considered one of the most powerful philosophical statements of its time and still is today. Its simple logic of self knowledge is convincing. It is self evident and does not need to be proven.

In relation to gender identity I would assert a variation on this. I perceive myself cognitively as female therefore I am. I know this to be true, it is self evident to me. Just as it is self evident to everyone else.

My problem comes in the same sense as it did for Descartes, I know it to be true for me but I have no way to see or understand that self evident truth for other people. Similarly other people cannot see mine. For the majority of people this isn't an issue because their sexed body is used as evidential proof of their innate identity however for trans people like me our sexed bodies contradict the self-evidence we perceive. This has two ramifications:

Our internal perception versus our external appearance leads to conflict in our brain as it tries to resolve these two incompatible facts. This is what leads to gender incongruence (or in old money gender dysphoria). This presents in distress caused by two equally self-evident truths living in as a paradox that cannot be resolved

As we cannot demonstrate our internal sense of self, we are unable to show others that this conflict exists and as such it is dismissed as unreal or a thought in our head.

Fundamentally this comes down to trust and empathy, we are relational beings who see other people through the relationships we have with them. I know and trust that we hold certain truths to be self evident, namely that you are capable of conscious thought. I can extrapolate this from my own understanding of the world to accept that you also must be able to think consciously about the world.

In the same way, I ask you to trust me that my gender identity is a self-evident truth that is deep seated and innate. Of course, you may not know me in real life and so we cannot create a relationship that demonstrates our truths to each other but I would encourage anyone to seek out people who are trans, get to know them, make friends with them and then see if you still need irrefutable evidence to believe they are who they say they are.

I also ask you to imagine what it must be like to hold in tension two things that are self evident, my externally sexed body and my internal sense of self and how all consuming holding those two opposing truths in opposition for so much of my life must have been. This is why transitioning is important. It reduces that paradox, it allows that tension to be resolved. It's like visiting Paris with a map of New York and someone finally gives you a map of Paris. The relief is overwhelming.