People don’t need to be given more reasons not to believe trans people (Picture: Aiden Wynn)
I’ll admit that it took me a few attempts to read JK Rowling’s recent essay on gender in full. Each time I tried, I would be hit with feelings of frustration, anger, sadness – and a horrible sense of déjà vu.

The arguments in Rowling’s essay are sinister. They paint transgender women as a threat, and depict transgender men as confused, naïve victims of a harmful ideology.

And within all of this calmly delivered misinformation and fear-mongering, there is the central thread that many trans men should be dissuaded from transitioning. Some of the reasons she gives are all too familiar to me.

When I first came out as transgender at age 18, I did not receive the level of support I am lucky enough to enjoy today. In fact, I’ve lost track of the amount of times I was told that I would change my mind and that it was just a phase. I am far from the only trans person to have had that experience.

People tend to speak for you when you come out as trans, to try and explain your experiences in a way that they can understand, without the inconvenient truth that maybe, just maybe, you might actually be transgender.

That’s hard enough when you’re first coming to terms with who you are. To then see that sort of thinking legitimised by someone with as large a platform as Rowling’s is genuinely concerning.

Some of the reasons Rowling gives for thinking that transgender men – or as she frequently refers to us, ‘girls’ – should be deterred from undergoing medical transition has to do with mental ill-health.

She talks about how ‘anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred’ are common issues that trans men face before coming out. But somehow, she manages to use this against us as well.

Most people in my family were confused at my coming out, but I could have given them the answers to a lot of their questions, if only they had asked

Throughout my teenage years, I struggled with depression, anxiety, and a number of related issues, many of which were body-focused. I battled eating disorders; I developed trichotillomania when I started to pull out my long hair; and I went through phases of over-exercising in the secret pursuit of abs and slimmer hips.

Coming to terms with my transness meant finally understanding why I had gone through so much mental and emotional turmoil at such a young age. It was not, as JK Rowling seems to think, an easy escape from the difficulties I had experienced.

But again, while her position is uninformed, it is not unusual. I remember having a particularly raw conversation with my dad about my plans to transition. He told me that I wasn’t transgender, that I wasn’t dysphoric.

Instead, I was struggling with body dysmorphia, and I didn’t need a ‘man’s body’ – I needed help.

People thought that I was trying to distance myself from all things feminine, to redefine who I was as a way of detaching myself from the pain I had been through. They did not want to see that I had been through so much because I really was trans, and that transitioning was the solution.

What people tend to forget is that they can – and should – talk to the person who says they’re trans, and listen to what they have to say.

Most people in my family were confused at my coming out, but I could have given them the answers to a lot of their questions, if only they had asked. It would have been a far less isolating time for me if I had been believed and those around me had sought to understand.

Those arguments did not stop me from transitioning though, because I knew it was the right thing for me. More than five years on, and I am happy, self-assured, and undeniably male. My family can see that now, and I am fortunate enough to say that they are very loving and supportive.

Still, seeing those arguments peddled by JK Rowling to her millions of followers was not easy.

It brought back the feelings of fear and hurt and loneliness that coloured my coming out, and it makes me sad to think of the people going through that process right now who will have seen her words and felt invalidated by them.

People don’t need to be given more reasons not to believe trans people. Coming out is hard enough as it is, living as we do in a society that is downright hostile towards us. JK Rowling’s essay just adds fuel to the fire.