Can someone really pretend to be trans?

And is self-identification of gender a risk to women's safety?

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We all know at least one movie or story or TV show where someone dresses up and pretends to be another gender. In almost every language and genre, such examples are far too common. Until a few years ago, the experiences of many transgender people, especially those who could not go through a 'complete' physical transition, were seen by most cisgender people as similar to this common trope – it was often assumed or stated both as a 'joke' and also in serious conversations that one's reality was their anatomy, and that any outward appearance or expression which didn't align with that anatomy was just a 'pretense'.

While the most extreme transphobic opinions were and still are dismissive of all transgender people, there are many people who would have considered themselves allies but still considered a gender transition as 'real' or 'complete' only when it was backed by medical/surgical evidence. The curiosity and questions about exactly what steps a trans person has taken as part of their transition, and specifically what surgeries they have had, is based on such assumptions.

Growing awareness of trans rights...

In the last few years, growing awareness of the wide variety of identities and life stories that exist across the gender spectrum and the growing number of people openly identifying as trans, has turned some of these old tropes on their head. Many allies now understand that trans people aren't pretending to be our self-identified gender – instead, we pretended for many years while trying to present ourselves as the gender assigned at birth, and we are just being our real selves once we 'come out'. Moreover, one's gender identity isn't based on what physical or medical steps they are able to take, but simply on how they identify themselves. And that it is wrong to ask a trans person any invasive questions about their anatomy that one would not ask to a cis person.

Taking this further, many countries now allow people to self-identify their gender without requiring any 'evidence' or medical interventions whatsoever. India had allowed it too, at least on paper, after the NALSA judgment by the Supreme Court of India in 2014, until the passage of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act in 2019. We shall get into the details of all these laws in some other edition, but today our question is a different one – can the right to self-identify one's gender be misused? If everyone is given the right to self-identify their gender however they want, then can some people simply 'pretend' to be another gender and use it to endanger the safety of others?

(In the previous editions, I chose photos based on wanting the focus to remain on facts and not on appearances. In this edition, I am deliberately including photos showing appearances of different kinds - starting with famous actors in drag in some movies, and moving on to examples where trans women have been portrayed on screen by a cis man, a cis woman and by a trans woman.)

... But the continuing fear of pretenders

To be more specific, if gender identity and gender expression are two separate concepts, and the right to self-identify your gender is based neither on any physical or medical evidence, nor on any evidence of how you are living your daily life and how you present yourself to others, nor on any norms of gender expression, then does it not mean that any cis man can simply claim to be a trans woman without making any changes to his life or appearance whatsoever, and misuse this right to endanger others?

While the most transphobic views tend to paint all trans people as sexual predators, many who consider themselves allies also end up wondering how to differentiate between someone who is really trans and who is just 'pretending', with the assumption being that the 'real' ones should be supported and accepted, while the 'pretenders' are predators who should be opposed and called out. One outcome of this view can be seen in the UK and other places where trans people already have the right to legally change the gender marker on their IDs, but this process is lengthy and based on providing various documents as 'evidence' and not simply on self-identification. Attempts to make this process simpler and allow self-identification have been strongly opposed due to this same fear of misuse by pretenders and sexual predators.

So... do ‘pretenders’ really exist?

The short answer is... yes. It is true that some people do pretend, or at least have questionable motives. Besides all the fears that are stoked in the cis-normative world, trans people know another fear very well – and that is felt when any new person reaches out to them, claims to be trans but deeply closeted, but then something in their story doesn’t quite add up.

As a woman, I often apply the same filters that any other woman – cis or trans – applies to weed out creepy behaviour. On any social media or online platform, it means a baseline skepticism of any unknown person, especially what may seem like a ‘fake profile’. However, what if the person behind this ‘fake profile’ says to you that they are trans but deep in the closet, and just need your guidance on what to do? What if this person is deeply dysphoric, and possibly on the verge of self-harm or suicide? Then what does one do?

Or to take another, very different example... if I am walking towards a women’s restroom in a public space, and I see someone who appears to be a cis man walking behind me while looking at their phone, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are headed towards the wrong restroom, do I stop them and remind them where they are headed, or do I pause and think on ‘very woke’ lines that maybe this person ‘identifies as a woman’ so I should just let them be?

Or yet another example... in a gendered space like a domestic violence shelter or a prison which one enters only after some degree of checks and paperwork, could self-identification of gender mean that a predator can enter these spaces without any checks? And how can everyone’s safety and rights be ensured?

What does self-identification of gender really mean?

Before we answer the questions raised in the previous paragraphs, let’s look at what trans rights activists are really asking for when we ask for the right to self-identify our gender. Without this right, trans people are either stuck in places which don’t allow them to change their IDs at all, or those who ask for some documents or ‘evidence’ before allowing this change.

Usually, this ‘evidence’ is in the form of a letter from a surgeon who has performed gender affirmation surgery (GAS) on the individual, or a psychiatrist who has ‘diagnosed’ the individual with gender dysphoria, or any other doctor involved in the individual’s medical care. Many places also ask for consent letters from a spouse (if one exists) or even from parents (yes, even if the individual is an adult). Even after providing such ‘evidence’, trans individuals may be subjected to invasive medical examinations and insensitive questioning, or further ‘evidence’ of having lived for one or two years as their self-identified gender.

The standards for what counts as living as a certain gender can also be absurd, with very narrowly defined expectations of how one should dress and appear and interact with others, even who one should date – yes, a requirement of this ‘real life experience’ can also be that one dates someone from the opposite gender, i.e. a trans woman should date men, and a trans man should date women, thus denying the existence of trans lesbians and gay trans men.

Many of these requirements still exist in many parts of the world, including the most ‘progressive’ countries. One can see how these requirements can be really difficult to fulfil for many trans people. It is not just about what one wants to do, but more about what one can do or is able to do while trying to figure out how to survive on a daily basis.

In other words, given any such requirements like the ones mentioned above, there will always be some trans people who have the resources and ability to jump through all the hoops. But depending on how stringent these requirements are, they leave out many others who simply cannot afford them even if they want to.

Are the same standards applied to cisgender people?

The requirements mentioned above for updating one’s gender marker on IDs may not seem like something cisgender people have to worry about. So to take the closest example – how does a cisgender person get their legal name changed on IDs? In India, the process currently is to prepare an affidavit, publish ads in at least two newspapers, and then apply for a notification in the official gazette at the Central or State level. It is not very simple or quick, but at least it does not involve any invasive questioning or medical ‘evidence’ or a ‘diagnosis’ from anyone.

Why can’t the same standards be applied to allow trans people to change their name and gender marker on IDs? Even if one removes all the other, more problematic requirements, many argue that at least a psychiatric ‘diagnosis’ or validation by a community member should still be the bare minimum requirement. But how can one ensure that every trans person has access to a supportive psychiatrist or a community member?

The right to self-identification of gender did exist in India, at least on paper, from 2014 to 2019, but even then, getting these updates done depended on being able to find a supportive lawyer or some other support system, and often also meant being able to ‘pass’ as one’s self-identified gender in front of strangers. After all, these rights do not exist in a vacuum, but are implemented in a particular environment, and the environment in most places around the world still continues to be largely transphobic.

So what should we do about dangers in public spaces?

After reflecting on the hurdles posed by the other, more stringent requirements, allowing self-identification of gender might seem like the right thing to do, but what does it mean for those few scenarios where we know that pretenders and predators can exist?

Let’s take them one by one. In online interactions, where you don’t know what the person looks like or sounds like, trust is either based on mutual connections or having some way to validate someone’s online presence, e.g. a link to their ‘real’ social media profiles. We don’t usually go around asking people for their IDs – Facebook sometimes does, and that also ends up disproportionately affecting trans people.

Moreover, pretenders and predators can be of any gender, as I have learnt unfortunately from firsthand experience. To answer the question I asked a few paragraphs ago, when torn between doubting a stranger online and worrying whether they might be prone to self-harm, I do not care what gender they are, but simply try to provide information and treat them in a way that every person in trouble should be treated irrespective of gender. And if their subsequent actions make me believe that they are not really in trouble and that there is reason to doubt them, I treat them in a way that I would treat any doubtful case irrespective of gender.

In the case of restrooms and most similar public spaces too, we don’t go around asking everyone for their IDs. Should we have a policy that everyone entering a public restroom should produce an ID first? Will cisgender people agree to it? And if it will not be applied to everyone, but ‘randomly’ based on one’s appearance, then as a feminine trans woman with ‘passing privilege’, I know that the burden of such ‘random checks’ will fall not on people like me but disproportionately on visibly non-conforming people who may not even identify as trans.

To answer the next question that I asked a few paragraphs ago, if I am walking towards a women’s restroom in a public space, and I see someone who appears to be a cis man walking behind me while looking at their phone, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are headed towards the wrong restroom, I do stop them and remind them where they are headed. But on the other hand, if it is someone who might look non-conforming and even a little scared but neither oblivious nor dangerous, I let them be and also try to look out to see that others shouldn’t bother them either. And I remind myself every time that danger in a public space – not just for me but even more so for my child – can come in the form of anyone of any gender.

In the case of spaces like domestic violence shelters and prisons, where some checks and paperwork are the norm, how does one ensure everyone’s safety? What about someone in a lesbian relationship who faced domestic violence at the hands of a cis woman – do both partners have the right to enter that shelter? Doesn’t that perpetuate the danger that the survivor is in? Or if a cis woman is imprisoned for physically and sexually assaulting other women, is she not a danger to others in a women’s prison? In spaces like these, it is possible to conduct a detailed assessment and apply several criteria before deciding who is allowed and who is not. If someone is known to be a danger to others in that space, they shouldn’t be allowed no matter what gender they are. Applying unreasonable standards only against trans people, or excluding them altogether, is not the solution.

Why none of this matters to pretenders

As for pretenders, someone who really wants to commit a crime will still find ways to jump through hoops. It is not that difficult to lie to a psychiatrist after all, and not get caught. And a predator who happens to be trans might even go through a physical transition and still commit a crime.

Just like predators can exist among cis men and cis women, they can exist among trans people too. At an aggregate level, trans people are still far far more likely to be the target of violence than to commit violence. And if we do not stop all cis people from entering public restrooms or getting the right IDs just because some cis people commit crimes, then we shouldn’t stop all trans people either due to the real or imagined risks posed by a few.

While playing Sophia Burset in Orange Is The New Black, actress Laverne Cox once needed to film a few scenes as her pre-transition self. She offered to do those scenes herself and ‘butch it up’ as much as possible, but she couldn’t do it convincingly enough, so those scenes were eventually played by her twin brother.

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