Your Feelings Aren’t Valid

I made the mistake of wandering onto the wrong side of Reddit (is there truly a right side of Reddit?), and I was faced with so many posts from people whose partners turned out to be trans who were “mourning” their partner’s old gender. My instinctive feeling upon seeing all of these posts was revulsion and being incredibly pissed off.

I was incredibly confused by seeing these posts, especially from partners who claimed to be accepting but still were “mourning” their partner’s old gender, so of course, I read some of them and made myself even more confused and even more angry.

For some background, my partner is a trans woman who started HRT early last year and has been feeling out her gender for the past three years or so. I’m nonbinary and consider myself to be trans as my birth gender does not align with my feelings or self-perception. The closest label I have is agender, but more practically, I’m a bit masc leaning while my partner is way more feminine and was even before she transitioned. We are a T4T couple and have been together for over twenty years.

I always suspected my partner was queer in some way. We used to joke that she had Disney queer-coded villain energy, so when she started to feel out her gender more allowed herself to be more feminine, I wasn’t surprised when she came out as a trans woman. I kind of suspected she was. When I came out as nonbinary back in like 2016 or 2018 (can’t remember when), my partner was unfazed and just adapted to the perception changes to make me more comfortable. I don’t think it occurred to either of us that we might “mourn” for some ephemeral aspect of the other person’s identity that was changing.

What got me so heated about reading the “mourning” posts from straight and queer partners alike was that

a) their partner wasn’t dead. The framing of it as “mourning” grated on me because the person isn’t dead and a change of gender is a loss in any way, shape, or form.

b) they were INCREDIBLY self-centered

The vast majority of these posts were about how their lives were changing, how their partner was doing this to them, that they were struggling, how would they be perceived, how their identity was changing. I remember blinking at these posts like, “This isn’t about you??”

Here’s the thing, you are allowed to have feelings. You are allowed to feel things, BUT I think sometimes we have to look at our feelings and say to ourselves, “Does this feeling make sense/is proportional to what’s going on or am I being a little over the top?” As someone with autism, I am keenly aware that sometimes I am having big feelings over something that is not a big deal in the big scheme of things, and I often take a time out, figure out why I am feeling such big feelings, and readjust that feeling into something that’s more reasonable. It’s perfectly fine to have big feelings, but they aren’t always logical. And they definitely do not need to be shared with everyone or get vomited at your partner.

Maybe it’s because I’m nonbinary and have a trans woman as a partner, but I immediately put myself into the partner’s shoes and wonder how it would feel if my partner made a big deal of me wanting to be perceived differently and made it all about them. People don’t transition to spite you. More than likely you aren’t even part of the equation because it’s their identity, not yours. I’m sure some people are upset specifically because they are not part of the equation, and how dare they do it without consulting them. That isn’t valid. That’s shitty.

I have a hypothesis that a lot of people, especially cis het people but also some monosexual queer people, treat their identity as a mirror. Their identity is influenced by what is around them, and they merely reflect it back. An example- a cis heterosexual woman might see her identity as wife of a lawyer, teacher, and mother of a son because those are the roles reflected back on her by those around her. A gay man might do the same thing by surrounding himself with the trappings of US gay society and by being with gay men. In both cases, the people in the example are gaining these important aspects of their identities by those around them rather than within.

When I think of myself, I am very cognizant of who I am and self-aware of my shortcomings. I am someone who is queer because after doing a lot of questioning and poking around, I realized I was attracted to lots of kinds of people and that I am not cis. I am a writer or storyteller because that’s what I like to do and feel compelled to do. More broadly, I am creative, intense, thoughtful, etc. My identity is not dependent upon my job or the people around me; it’s the intrinsic bits that live inside me and have for most of my life. None of the aspects I mentioned are dependent upon who my partner is.

What I suspect is happening with a lot of these “mourning” posts is that people who get their identities by what’s reflected back on them are having crises about who they are. If my partner is now a woman, am I gay? Am I still a lesbian if my partner is now a man? If you were secure in your identity and who you are, that wouldn’t be something you had to ask yourself.

My partner considers herself a lesbian as she is primarily attracted to women, but I’m nonbinary and not particularly feminine. We’ve had this discussion before, and she has stressed that me being nonbinary and masculine-ish doesn’t change that she is attracted mainly to women. These are not mutually exclusive statements. It seems that a lot of people don’t understand how multiple things can be true at once or that your partner might be an exception to your general attraction rule. On one hand, I think it’s good at these people are potentially thinking about their identities more thoroughly. On the other, calling it “mourning” is a bad look, and they should feel bad about it.

There’s a part of me that wants to lead with kindness, but the trans and autistic side of me says that we need to be meaner to nip this shit in the bud.

The problem with “mourning” a change in identity is that you are burying someone who is still alive, someone who still needs you. It is an empty coffin you’re crying over when you could be celebrating the rebirth of the person you love.

I get particularly pissy about this behavior because back in the day on autism groups on FB, I saw so many parents “mourning” their children when they were diagnosed with autism. I would sit there as an autistic adult and be like uhhhh, I’m not dead, your kid didn’t die, and your kid is literally the same as they were yesterday but with a new label. “Mourning” the “death” of an idealized version of the person they had in their mind is not a valid feeling because that person didn’t exist outside your head.

There’s a big difference between change is hard in that it’s taking me a bit of time to adjust to my partner being a different gender and having a new name and “my partner as I knew them is dead.” What often happens with this sort of post is that Terfs will swoop in and try to turn the trans partner into someone selfish and evil who is punishing the other person and how their relationship is doomed. These transphobes use this “mourning” language to spread transphobia. The sky is falling “how will my relationship survive??” posts are generally overblown and stoked by transphobia. More obviously, comparing a change in gender to death is directly linking transitioning to something to inherently negative in our society rather than a neutral act.

I often have to stop myself from going onto these posts and asking, “Do you actually love your partner or do you love their gender/status?” Gender, to me, is like a beard or hair. It’s a piece of their identity, but it can change and that change doesn’t change who I am. All pieces of your identity or your partner’s identity are subject to change. At any moment, you or your partner could become disabled, and that is a major change of identity. Would you go onto Reddit and act like your partner becoming disabled was some plot to stick it to you? Sadly, I know some would.

What was the point of this ramble? I’m not 100% sure, but I want to put this into perspective because I have seen it way too much lately. As someone who is a trans person and someone with a trans partner, I find it offensive, and I hope that as a society, we can become better by actually being introspective about our identities and realize that we aren’t a mirror for others. We are who we are on the inside, for better or worse.