The Cisgender Button Test

There’s a trans litmus test of sorts that’s been kicking around for a few decades that helps folks figure out if they, who are confused about their gender, should do something about changing it. It goes a little something like this: you’re in a Reddit chat room, a support group or a therapist office and you say that you think you might be trans. The professional therapist/fellow reddit-er or trans elder whips out the following thought-experiment:

Let’s say that in front of you is a Button, a big red button.

Press the Red Button and poof! You’re the opposite gender and sex, you always have been and there’s no trace of the change either in your or others’ memory.

But wait! Before you press it, there’s another button, and it’s blue (let’s make the therapist a Matrix-fan). Take the BLUE pill, err…I mean,

Push the Blue Button and: poof! your “desire” to be the opposite gender disappears. No memory of wanting more to life than your gender assigned to you at birth.

In the typical presentation of this test there’s a bunch of other buttons, dials and/or conditions: Would you try it for a day? What if you were on a deserted island and no one would see you? What if some suitcases washed ashore with clothing & make up? How about if a lifetime supply of cross-hormone therapy with instructions washed ashore? By the way, I’m not making this up.

For a while I thought I had, actually, made it up. In my twenties I had confided to a couple girlfriends about yearning for such buttons, but I’m pretty sure none of them went on to be trans theorists and turned it into a trans litmus test. In fact, I sure wish one of the dozen or so therapists I’ve had since childhood had thunk to try the test on me. And I’m very happy [gritting teeth] that many other younger folks were given the language/space [crushes pen] to explore these topics and that it helped them come out earlier. Ok. Now that that’s out of my system…I want to add some new buttons to the test.

The first new button is to address my own shifting non-linear, non-binary journey towards trans-womanhood.

I present: an updated Button. It’s name is just Button and it is colorful with lots of clashing patterns and maybe an undercut if a button could have an undercut.

Press Button: Poof! You acknowledge that your present gender is not fixed and may change. You’re open (but not limited) to your gender changing, morphing or disappearing in the future. You’re open to transitioning, detransitioning and retransitioning. You’re okay with being trans and remembering (or even enjoying?!) that you were once a different gender.

Take a moment now to consider these three buttons…time’s up! <buzzer sound>.

OOOOKay, NOW let’s say none of these buttons appeal to you.

You’re all: “nah, no thanks! I’m pretty comfortable with my gender as-is. I’m pretty comfortable in my skin with the roles I play or don’t play, I’m comfortable with the junk in my trunk, I’m good!”

Great! Cool.

I’ve actually invited you here for a different set of buttons! The table top with all the Trans buttons flips and reverses, revealing a whole new set of buttons that are the real reason I’ve asked you here today. (dun, dun, duunn)

In other words, you gentle reader, you , who has nooooo….interest in being trans at all, not even for a night, nor on an island, nor here or there, not interested in being trans or nonbinary anywhere, YOU… today’s mind experiment was actually written for you: The Cisgendered Person. No slur intended, really. Some of my best friends (and my wife) are cisgendered.

Before I go on to explain the new buttons for the cis-folks, please understand the following:

-My aim is not to make fun of you, to make you feel dumb for saying or thinking the wrong thing, to make you “woke” or to cancel you.

-I do not wish, in the slightest, to make you trans. If you have been reading this thinking: “whoa, I think I might be a little Trans,” please know that you brought that here, before your ears met my words.

-I’m a trans-woman and I genuinely and urgently aim to connect with folks who are decidedly NOT trans. In fact, I write this article as if my life depended on it, because it does.

—------------

With all that in mind, I’ve got two more new buttons for the cis-folks:

The first button on this new table top…hmm…let’s say it’s got a single one stripe flanked by two light pink and two blue stripes above and below.

Press the Trans Ally Button and poof! You are able to see the trans folks around you as the gender that they say that they are. No longer do you misgender them: in your head, from your mouth or with your actions. Not only that, you start magically correcting others when they misgender trans folks. Also…poof! No matter how young or how ‘passing’ the trans person is, you don’t see their dysphoria as a pathology/sickness and their MEDICALLY NECESSARY gender affirming care as something to be instinctively gate kept by you or by the state. You don’t even have any memories of a time that it was hard for you to rewire your brain to believe trans folks!

As you can imagine, the next button is the opposite (and yes I made that button and please fascists don’t steal it!)

Press the Fascist Button and my trans-ness and all the trans-ness in the world is eradicated. As in the OTHER button #2, I’ll have no memory of wanting to be the opposite gender. From here on out, folks are assigned/accept their assigned gender from birth onward. When there are intersex “inconsistencies,” or hormonal variations doctors and parents, as agents of the state, will “simplify.”

Okay! Time to pick! Button Number One or Button Number Two?

And before you start in with “where’s our third button, the one that leaves room for the spectrum of feelings/decisions that come up for me when I’m around trans-people?” In the real world, there is no third button. There’s acceptance or erasure. Life or death. That’s it. All the hand wringing and “just asking questions” and “what about the helpless girls in locker rooms?” has ceded all of our power to the fascists. The trans affirming care for youth bans in states around the country and the endless “debates” (that were never debates) about trans girls in sports has led to last night. Last night, at 1am the GOP house of representatives met to expand medicaid cuts to no longer provide gender affirming care for adults. Trumps spending bill passed the house by one vote. It now goes to the senate for a vote.

Just like that. On page 333, line 3, strike “FOR MINORS”. It has always been about erasing us.

Unfortunately, I’m a person who is directly affected by whether you press this new Button #1 or #2. I’ve designed this part of the test as a binary because there is no more time for asking questions. If you haven’t decided by now whether you believe/support/will fight for trans folks, they will be erased.

I won’t go on and on about how first they came for the people who are trans, tattooed, undocumented and/or speaking up against genocide in a college paper and then they came for me, because it’s true and we all know it. People are buying up fake ICE gear on Amazon and abducting people (and sexually abusing them?). And I won’t go on and on writing about how gender affirming medicine has changed my life and how I’m a real woman now. I was and have always been, a real woman, even before I confided my secret truth to past lovers. I just didn’t believe it. I know it seems oxymoronic to be like, “give us gender affirming care and we don’t need gender affirming care to deserved to be gendered correctly,” but here we are - no amount of Caitlin Jenners are going to stop them from pressing button #2. No DEI, no pronouns on the email signature, no healthcare, no sports, no valid ID, go to jail with your sex assigned at birth.

What can you do, as a cis-person who wants to press this new button #1?

Well, if you’re having reservations - like if you think this is going to be hard for you and you’re going to have a lot of feelings, PLEASE DON’T GO TO YOUR TRANS FRIENDS WITH YOUR COMPLICATED FEELINGS ABOUT WHY YOU WANT TO ACCEPT TRANS PEOPLE BUT YOU STILL HAVE FEELINGS. Pleeeease, go to a PFLAG meeting with other cis-folks who are struggling. During the pandemic I went to an online support group/book club for white folks who wanted to be better allies. I’m still a white person who is racist because I benefit from and perpetuate the system and I still get it wrong. But I realized that it takes a loooot of work to not blame people of color for my feelings of embarrassment for getting it wrong.

If you’ve done some of the work already, great! Make sure you have other cis folks that can support you if you get it wrong and go altogether to a local trans-led action. We need cis folks amplifying and attending our actions - even the ones who are like “is this for me?” Aunties and Friends for Liberty is a good local option in the fight for Trans Kids, right here in NYC. Follow Erin in the Morning to keep up to date on what’s going on nationally, give $$ to GLITS, a Black trans-led advocacy and direct services organization that is dedicated to fighting systemic discrimination against marginalized communities, in New York City and beyond or Black Trans Liberation and their joyful resistance efforts.

I don’t know how to tie up the loose ends of this piece, except to say that I know a thing or two about lost time and about wishing I’d taken action sooner. It took me decades to actually do something about the fact that I yearned for an imaginary button to push, a button that doesn’t really exist. On the other hand, I’m offering you, right here, a very real button that you can push, right now.