It’s happened to me a few times now: a friend or colleague will make a post online about recovering from a procedure, or take an extended leave of absence from work, and a mutual friend or acquaintance will ask me whether I know if they are having gender-affirming surgery.

In a world where the idea of gender transition has been given a disproportionately large allotment of attention, not all of it positive, I can understand their curiosity. In these situations, I first let the asker know that despite our similarities, there is no secret “sisterhood” (or “fellowship”) that trans people share. There are cultural signals, in-jokes, and commonalities, but if a person we mutually know is having a surgery, I am not privy to any insider knowledge.

Further, I stress, even if I was privileged with such private information, it would be inappropriate of me to expose any of it without the consent of our subject, and that assuming I know anything because of our similarities is a little rude too. To paraphrase an old saying: I don’t have that information, and even if I did, it would be considered confidential. Whether a person is more open with that information is at their discretion.

I’m not always so fiery, but the asker will usually understand, and relent. It isn’t anything ill-intentioned; this world of gender transformation seems so new, maybe even taboo. We aren’t all coming to this conversation from the same place, yet it’s those who transition, or exist in the spaces between male and female, who routinely must demonstrate patience while their identities are scrutinized. Eventually conversation inevitably turns to the question:

“Have you had the surgery?“

At face value, it’s a strange thing to ask; it assumes so much about what they think it is to transition, let alone my hierarchy of needs. Surgeries are expensive, not to mention taking time off work to heal. This is really personal stuff, and to flatten my identity into a singular surgery ignores so many other ways that people exist and explore their gender identity, and the reality that sometimes, surgery is impractical.

To start, there is no one transgender surgery. In my experience, when people ask, they’re generally referring to genital reassignment surgery (GRS), what I refer to as bottom surgery (not to be confused with a colonoscopy.) However, a trans man might have top surgery, facial surgeries have become more common in recent years, I’ve even looked into a surgery for the larynx that affects a person’s voice. I don’t list these to say that there are multiple steps on the way to transition, but to highlight that there are many forms a transition can take.

Simply stating that there are multiple surgeries isn’t my goal, however. It can be easy to fall into thinking that there’s a linear progression to a gender transition, that these are stops we all take on the road to gender affirmation, and I want to dispel that illusion; choosing to have a procedure or not doesn’t make a person any more or less their preferred gender. Queer people exist in a spectrum of genders, and while some transgender people feel they fit into a binary, others, like myself, exist in a space that gets erased when redefining our understanding to still fit within a binary.

A NONBINARY TRANSGENDER WOMAN?
I feel like I’ve thrown a lot of terms at you all at once; did I lose you? Maybe this is too hypothetical.

Currently, I live as a woman; I’ve affected my speech, I wear feminine clothes, and I take a prescription of hormones that have reprogrammed my body to produce less testosterone and more estrogen. I have experienced both a shift in how I experience my emotions, as well as physical changes in my body; there is clear difference in the way that I feel now, compared to what I felt before HRT (hormone replacement therapy). Yet there are those who would say I am not a woman due to my lack of surgical commitment.

Spiritually, this presents a conflict for me. My faith has instilled in me that I shouldn’t mark, or make any incision in my skin. It’s not a hard and fast rule; many Jewish people I know have pierced ears or tattoos, but I don’t, and in a way, this falls into the same category as a cultural marker. Within Judaism, there are other markers and considerations for who counts as what; a minyan, a prerequisite for any Jewish occasion, consists of 10 Jewish men. Under my current lifestyle however, despite living as a woman, I would still contribute to a minyan. Do I contradict myself? I didn’t make the rules, yet I find myself in a position that would have me go against one of my spiritual beliefs to fit a definition. It isn’t something with an obvious answer, even when I wrestle with it for the umpteenth time.

When we find that the terms we’re familiar with are lacking, it can be frustrating. I remember how difficult it was for me to accept that the sun was in fact not a mass of incandescent gas, but actually a miasma of plasma. It didn’t fit into my understanding of the phases of matter, yet somehow the sun continued to burn, despite the incongruity in my mind.

We do this with everything, including gender; If you’re asking me where I fit on the binary, with 0 being female and 1 being male, I think I’d register as a 0.2; I don’t fit cleanly into either category. The logical conclusion to me is that we appraise these things based on arbitrary observations.

For example, in Judaism, we’re told that fish are the only animals that are kosher to eat that live in the water, and that fish are defined as creatures with scales that swim. It eliminates shellfish, mammals, and cephalopods from the list of foods we’re allowed to eat, but even a definition as broad as that doesn’t fit all the forms we know fish can come in: pufferfish have no scales, but we call them fish, and swordfish are born with scales that are shed as they mature. Why are those fish not fish? What about sharks, or eels? There’s a lot of marine life that isn’t included in these definitions that feel like gray areas.

We are all the results of countless experiences coalescing together into a synthesized being. To reduce anyone to only their gender would be ignoring all sorts of obvious facets of their personality. Women can have a Y chromosome, women can have penises; I’m proof of that. We are more than the sum of our parts, or what we appear to be.

“So, the surgery?”

In an instant, I’m snapped back to reality. I might pause for a moment to I remember where I am.
“No,” I’ll say eventually, “I haven’t had the surgery.”