Beyond Visibility: Transgender Makes the World a Better Place

Carl Jung liked transgender before it was cool.

I am currently working through Week One of the Artist’s Way course from Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way” (if that interests you, drop by my Substack Publication, The Dingbat Diaries, and subscribe — all Artist’s Way posts are free). Cameron includes short quotes in the margins to act as food for thought, one of which caught my eye.

The quote is by Carl Jung, whose work resonates deeply with me.

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially their children than the unlived life of the parent.
Carl Jung

The phrase “unlived life” stuck out to me — I encountered it in transgender discussions. Before I transitioned gender, I lived life as another person, somebody with whom I could not identify. It is trivial to predict the level of distress entailed by this life.

Jung’s quote highlights the impact of transgender on society both before and after transition. Before transition, society suffers overall. After transition, society enjoys a better world, a happier world, one in which greater love and understanding exists — regardless of the short-term turmoil caused by coming out and expressing our true selves.

On this International Transgender Day of Visibility, I assert unequivocally that we — my transgender Brothers and Sisters and I — have improved society. You can thank us today by acknowledging us and treating us like the humans we are.

Before transition…

A transgender person — before the opportunity to transition — lives a life of misery caused by gender dysphoria. We analyze our own suffering for hours, but rarely consider whether anybody around us senses that pain. We hide our pain in a misguided attempt to protect others, and even when we become skilled at burying our misery, we affect the people around us.

Our friends, colleagues, and family don’t know what we experience is misery. But our relationships are lackluster. Our engagement with life is going through motions. Nobody knows the pain except us — and often, we will not admit to ourselves what we feel is a soul’s yearning for freedom of expression.

If even we cannot express to ourselves what is wrong, those around us could not have an inkling of how much more vibrant we could be. Those around us miss out on the love we could give if we could love ourselves first.

All of us live less of a life — not only we transgender with unlived lives.

…choosing to transition…

I wonder — reading Jung’s quote above — whether he tapped into the same thought Rollo May did. May’s work indicated when we choose to find who we are, how our lives should be, and attempt to live it and be it, not only do we accept ourselves, we accept others around us as well.

We become better people. We allow others to become better people. The environment around us is more joyful and more caring. The people around us are more relaxed, more capable of connecting. The next generation of our family inherits a better place to grow up and grow into who they are.

The whole world is a better place.

When we transgender decide to transition — upending our existing, somber lives to live the unlived life — the rest of society is better off for having experienced it.

…after transition

Because I transitioned, my son will grow up with a parent to whom he can relate, talk to, and love. His parent is now capable of loving him back more completely — the greatest gift a parent can give her child. That my son will receive love from his family — that he will grow up better than I did — is alone worth the price of transition.

Because I transitioned, my wife can watch her wife flourish instead of founder. She can relax her concern for my mental health because I’ve found a key to lasting contentment. I found who I am inside and let her out.

Because I transitioned, my wife is now in a position that appears more complicated — she must embrace her sudden membership within the LGBTQ community, as I have. I doubt she expected that from life. But in loving me as I transitioned, my wife found more of herself. She found love is not based on genitalia. She found love can transcend physicality altogether. My wife finds me beautiful after transition — her world view has expanded.

Because I transitioned, my father’s widow — from her very conservative, very religious pulpit — has experienced the other side directly. The side she condemned without asking questions has now been exposed in a person she knows. From my story, she sees I am another person.

To be clear, I doubt my father’s widow truly sees me and would support me in my transition. But because I transitioned, she sees I have reasons to do so — reasons better than “rapid onset gender dysphoria” — and she cannot unsee those reasons now.

Because I transitioned, my father’s conservative, religious widow can no longer honestly see transgender the same way she did. Whether she chooses to do so or not is debatable, but I hope our conversation showed at least that people different from us are not necessarily our enemies.

Making transgender normal

I restate: my transgender Brothers and Sisters and I have improved society. We have expanded the knowledge of gender as distinct from sex. We have increased the chances of our children growing up and living true, authentic lives of their own. We have built new relationships and new ways of viewing love. We have opened the eyes of those who would decry us and crucify us.

By our actions — by accepting ourselves, by choosing to live our authentic lives, by rejecting an unlived life — all of society will live better, more informed, and more loving lives.

I chose a tagline to describe my own transition. I put my tagline on my business card, my website, and every social media outlet I could. My tagline is simple:

Making Transgender Normal Since 2022.

I do not believe any of us is a freak — none of us could be because nobody owns “normal.” If nobody can define “normal,” we all must be normal or give up the word as meaningless.

Instead, what we can do is make ourselves, our lives, and the people around us better. We can choose to understand who we are and express it.

On this International Transgender Day of Visibility, I give you a gift: I ask you to show me who you are, what your authentic life is, and I will celebrate you for finding the person within you.

All I ask is that you give me this same gift today.