Proxies For Doubt

Doubt is simultaneously all-pervasive and strictly taboo in online trans communities. You’re never supposed to question or doubt anyone else’s gender-identity claims (with predictably perverse consequences). Question the validity of gender identity itself is unthinkable. Even questioning your own gender identity or whether transition is right for you is touchy, since any exploration of your own doubts will raise uncomfortable questions and stir up negative feelings in other community members who relate to your experience.

So what we find instead are proxies for doubt. Online, people will say: I feel like an imposter sometimes. Or, I’m struggling with internalized transphobia. ‘Imposter syndrome’ and ‘internalized transphobia’ package doubts in the form of self-accusations, apologies, and requests for assistance and reassurance.

A penitent public confession is the first act. You disown unacceptable attitudes, beliefs, and emotions. (There’s something meta about all this, since trans identity itself so often serves as a way to disown unacceptable parts of the self—but I digress.) Then you ask the community to help you do better.

‘Imposter syndrome’ and ‘internalized transphobia’ let community members voice doubts publicly—but this way of framing doubts shuts down further examination. ‘Imposter syndrome’ and ‘internalized transphobia’ define doubts as something to be overcome.

Let’s look at a couple of examples:

Struggling with imposter syndrome

Hey guys, has anyone else ever dealt with this?

I’m confronting some weird things since I started medically transitioning and people have started actually referring to me as a boy way more than when I was just out socially. I always have this intrusive feeling when someone correctly genders me that like ‘Ah, I see, this person is either humoring me or making fun of me, for I am not a real boy and they know it’ even though I have obviously never ever felt that way about anyone else and I do know that everyone who does this just genuinely sees me as a man. It’s a pretty transphobic thing to keep directing at myself and it kind of feels like an extension of imposter syndrome. Did anyone else struggle with this when you first came out/started transitioning? What did you do to train yourself out of it, if anything? Might just take some getting used to to believe that other people DO see me the way I see me.

See how this works? First, the poster applies the ‘imposter syndrome’ frame. Then the poster contains the doubts, labeling doubts as “intrusive feelings” and portraying doubt as an irrational response to being “correctly gender[ed].” The poster sets up defusing threats to community beliefs and norms by reassuring other community members that the poster has “obviously never felt that way about anyone else” and that “everyone who does this just genuinely sees me as a man.” Then the poster expresses contrition and seeks empathy, writing “It’s a pretty transphobic thing to keep directing at myself,” before finally asking for advice on how to “train yourself out of it.”

The poster gets to share a troubling experience of persistent, severe self-doubt (“this person is either humoring me or making fun of me, for I am not a real boy”) but only in way that includes no actual exploration of whether this doubt has any basis in reality or whether such persistent misgivings should tell the poster anything about the advisability of transition.

Here’s another:

Sexual abuse. Imposter syndrome

I just wanted to get this off my chest and see if anyone here can relate or has a shared experience that may be similar to mine.

From the ages of maybe 5-6 years old, I was sexually abused. No one knows about it, and I think about it almost everyday.

I started piecing together that I was transgender at the age of 11.

Now, my brain literally taunts me everyday, and I hear those transphobic people in the back of my head who say that being trans can stem from extreme trauma (sexual abuse, physical abuse, childhood trauma, etc)

But deep down, I know that I’m just a trans person who just happened to be abused.

Even long before the abuse started, I remember wanting to be a boy.

So I don’t know. I just feel alone in this experience and it fucks with me everyday. I’ve gotten top surgery, been on hormones, and been out for almost 6 years.

But that voice in the back of my head always tells me I’m a fraud who’s just riddled with trauma from a young age.

Again, the poster applies the frame of ‘imposter syndrome’ up front, indicating that the doubts that are about to be expressed are unfounded and that the poster needs help dismissing these doubts. Then the poster reveals that they’re struggling with the fallout from childhood sexual abuse and fears that this history of “extreme trauma” provides an alternative explanation for the feeling of being transgender. As a result, the poster feels like “a fraud who’s just riddled with trauma from a young age.” In fact, the poster confesses that these struggles with doubt have stretched over almost six years (“it fucks with me everyday”) and that steps toward transition—like taking testosterone and getting a double mastectomy—haven’t helped. But no one is meant to question whether childhood sexual abuse has a relationship to trans identification or whether transition is working out.

In other words, you can say:I can’t let go of the fear that I’m faking it and that this is all a huge mistake. But the conclusion is predetermined: your fears are irrational. Your doubts are misplaced. You must say so yourself, and then the community reinforces your refusal to take your questions and doubts as serious challenges to your self-identity and decision to transition.

The idea of ‘internalized transphobia’ is particularly insidious: your questions and doubts about your own identity and whether transition makes sense for you becomes something you have an ethical responsibility to overcome because internalized transphobia doesn’t just hurt you and isn’t just a sign of being trans—it hurts other trans people. Your ‘internalized transphobia’ hurts other trans people even if you keep your thoughts to yourself. When you doubt and ‘invalidate’ yourself, you doubt and invalidate other trans people. You harm other trans people whenever you don’t perceive or think about them in the way they want others to see them.

This effectively abolishes the privacy of the mind as a space where you’re free to explore ideas. Not only must you express yourself publicly in approved ways, you must think only approved thoughts. Operating under these expectations, questions and doubts—which are already threatening to a fragile (false) sense of self—produce added anxiety and fear: that you are causing harm, that your treachery will be discovered, and that you’ll lose the community you rely on for emotional support if you cannot bring your questions and doubts under control.

This is something newthoughtcrime hits on in the resource she developed to encourage free thinking and independent decision-making among trans-identified young people. At one point, she notes:

“… I will be honest: there have been several parts of this essay where I have made a point of making statements which are objectively innocuous, but which I know will induce a sense of discomfort, panic, and fear in my intended readers (that is, trans people who were assigned female at birth). This is because I know that the most salient, most intense, most terrifying fear we experience as members of the trans community is the fear of backlash: the fear that if someone finds out what we’re reading, doing, thinking, or feeling, a punishment will be handed down to us, probably in the form of public exposure followed by complete excommunication…”

She then offers readers affirmations of a different sort, affirmations that reassert the freedom to explore ideas privately:

I’d like to close this introduction with some affirmations. I hope my readers will repeat them, and take them to heart.

First, I know who I am. Other people’s opinions about me does not change who I know myself to be.

Second, I know what I believe. I can read and consider the opinions of others without giving them control over me.

Third, I am entitled to privacy. I can be judged by my words and my actions, but nobody can judge me for my thoughts.

Last, thoughts are not dangerous. I can hurt others with my words and my actions, but nobody can be harmed by my thoughts.