In this post I'll unpack some of the thoughts that helped me identify as trans. For the longest time I thought that being trans is an innate thing that people know from their early childhood and have an unshakable belief in — I now know this is true only for some.

This is a summary of some realizations that helped me in unlearning some of the bullshit I've been taught as a kid / young adult / not-so-young adult, that stood in my way of identifying as trans and beginning a transition. (And with transition I don't necessarily mean medical transition, but simply re-contextualizing myself as a trans person)

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

Let's address the most obvious, most important and hardest to act on point first: It's my life and I can do what I want with it. There may be material conditions preventing you from doing certain things (lack of access to gender affirming care, unsafe living situation, mental health struggles etc), but morally there is nothing from stopping you doing basically anything. To drive the point home, you can even do things that you know will make you miserable — it's your choice.

This is both a blessing and a curse — you are the sole creator of your identity, no matter what any psychologist might ever tell you. However, no matter what any psychologist might ever diagnose you with (hello F64.0 / HA60), you're still the sole creator of your identity and “being trans” is not something that can at all be diagnosed. In fact, over the last decades, the pathologization of trans people through psychiatry has moved to diagnosing the distress that may arise with a trans / gender diverse identity, not the identity itself (although most practitioners didn't get the memo yet). In any case, this means that you cannot delegate a definitive conclusion on your identity to an external person, you'll have to figure it out yourself (although having a therapist help you do that might still be a precious resource).

You can (and should) do whatever you want:

• Use any name you like
• Use any pronouns you like
• Perform any gender presentation you like
• Identify as any gender you like
• Take any hormones and do any surgeries you like

And none of those have to correlate in any way!

You're allowed to make mistakes

Crucially, you can also allow yourself to make mistakes. As a possibly trans person, you're operating in a system that is hostile towards any kind of gender exploration, it's all about being certain and “having always known” (ideally just be cis, please). It's just natural that you may do certain steps to fit a “trans narrative” in your transition and later come to realize it isn't for you. The point is not to buy into the fear mongering of TERFs around detransition. Detransitioning is probably not something to aim for from the start, but people regret their knee surgeries more than trans people do their transition, yet nobody's asking them to do years of therapy before. Life will not end if you take a new direction on your gender journey! Neither now, nor if you're de- and re-transitioning.

Being trans vs living trans

One thing I have only recently come to realize, is that I have a much easier time answering the question “do I want to live as xyz gender / trans”, rather than “am I xyz gender”. Many cis people I've talked to don't have an innate feeling about their gender – they were assigned one at birth and haven't felt the need to change it. For trans people, there is the expectation of the aforementioned unshakable, long-held belief in one's gender identity.

I've held a misconception for a long time, that just because something is a social construct, it is not real. Take e.g. money: A fiction invented by humankind, defended by all-powerful nation states, but purely a social construct. Nonetheless, if you have none, that has very real and material consequences. You're forced to work throughout your entire life, just because of it.

The analogy here is, that even though gender may be a social construct and just from nature there's no such thing as a “man” and a “woman”, only a multitude of bodies with differing biological characteristics (some of which happen to be related to reproduction), we are raised on the core belief that humans are neatly segregated into two fundamentally disparate groups of men and women with distinct personality features and bodily abilities. This fiction creates very real-world consequences (patriarchy), that probably billions of people suffer from. You may not like it, it may not be nearly as relevant as we are taught to believe, but the fact remains that any space you navigate will try to categorize you into one of these buckets.

Thus, even if you don't feel like a certain gender, if you decide to step out of your assigned role for whatever reason, that changes how you interact with the rest of the world, that still holds that belief. I'm not saying that every gender nonconforming person is trans, rather I want to move the focus from “who am I” to “how do I want to interact with the world”. If the latter gives you an answer that is a gender or presentation other than the one assigned at birth, then you can do something about it, without necessarily having to go through the mental hoops of realizing “I am actually irrevocably a xyz”.

This also ties with other commonly found (and great) advice in trans spaces to stop focusing on identity and to start focusing on “what do you want” — irrespective of identity, would you feel better using different pronouns, a different name, changing your presentation, etc.

Or to put it bluntly: If you'd rather engage with the world as a certain gender, than the one you currently do, that may be enough reason to just do it.

Change your gender as often as you want

Finally, you can change your mind at any point in time.

This is less helpful advice for social transition (in a transphobic world, outing yourself as trans once will probably stick in some way), but for yourself, it's worth keeping in mind that there's absolutely nothing wrong with changing your gender as often as you want. This also includes a framing where you perceive your current transition (or related thoughts) as not rooted in childhood — I personally have wondered often enough if I've always been nonbinary or if I've had a change in gender in my twenties. In any case, I'll never let anybody, including myself, set this in stone for the rest of my life!

Further reading

• Am I trans?

• Am I trans enough? (Book)

FLINTA is an acronym used in german speaking regions for women, lesbians, inter, nonbinary, trans and agender people. Sometimes it is extended to also include people questioning their gender identity and/or marked with an asterisk (“FLINTA*“) to indicate further identities that might fit in but are not explicitly named. I'm omitting the asterisk here to avoid confusion with footnotes. Increasingly “safer spaces” are being created based on this inclusion criterion – a space for FLINTA people, declared as “FLINTA only”.

FLINTA spaces developed out of women's spaces (later women/lesbian spaces), which were established in the wake of second wave feminism. Gradually some of them opened up to other gender identities under the assumption of shared oppression under patriarchy.

As a transfem nonbinary person that falls under this term and has been politicized in a sphere that uses the concept extensively, I want to offer some critical thoughts on it that have kept re-surfacing when discussing FLINTA spaces with others and entering them myself.

I hope I can add to the discussion around FLINTA spaces and help people reflect on some important aspects when considering creating such a space.

Do you actually want a FLINTA space?

Given the history of FLINTA spaces, it's not surprising that many of them are overwhelmingly used by endo* cis women. There are more endo cis women than trans + inter people, so in itself this is expected.

* endo = not inter

The crux is to me, whether a space also centers this endo cis female perspective and sidelines other identities as “add-ons”, or tries to give a voice to those identities, too. This needs some self reflection!

Society by and large ist not only sexist, but also transphobic, so bringing together a bunch of endo cis women, even with well intentions, does not necessarily constitute a safe space for trans and inter people — at least some reflection on (internalized) transphobia needs to happen. To me, that could be something like a statement that outlines the space's understanding of FLINTA, the shared vision or approach or a short spoken input when entering the space/starting the event to inform about the policy.

Also consider if FLINTA is the appropriate umbrella term you want to invite (e.g.: if your event is about menstruation, just invite people that menstruate).

Forced outings + erasure

Since FLINTA is (in my experience) often primarily made up of endo cis women, anybody who's not that, will for better or worse be outed as “something else” (or be read as an endo cis woman and made invisible in their identity).

E.g. if you enter such a space with any kind of “male”-looking characteristic, people will assume you're

• a transmasc person (on Testosterone)
• inter
• a transfeminine person who doesn't entirely pass

If you are being perceived as an endo cis woman and you're e.g.

• nonbinary
• a transmasc person
• inter

, then you have to out yourself if you don't want to stay invisible in your identity and/or risk misgendering. This essentially creates erasure for both transmasc and inter people.

The “endo cis men / FLINTA” dichotomy

This is arguably heavily informed by my transfeminine nonbinary perspective:

Dividing the world neatly into 2 categories (FLINTA and endo cis men) may be very convenient (just replace “women” with “FLINTA” and “men” with “endo cis men” and carry on), but it fails to address the lived reality of FLINTAs and endo cis men and it kills all the nuance in gender identity that I'm desperately hoping we'll all realize exists eventually.

• Not all FLINTAs share the same lived reality and have the same needs (not even all endo cis women do)
• Not all “endo cis men” are actually that: gender can shift, they may be nonbinary or transfeminine after all, but only find out later (like me)

Dividing a huge spectrum of variety of bodies and gender identity into one still huge spectrum (FLINTA) and one tiny dot (endo cis men) is unfair to anyone assigned male at birth who does not identify with their birth gender or wants to explore their gender identity freely. We have to make a huge leap to finally consider ourselves trans enough to actually go to a FLINTA space. There's a pressure to “pass as FLINTA”, which if you think about it, makes no sense, because there is literally no bodily characteristic that can not be present in both FLINTA and endo cis men.

Inviting people that are questioning their gender identity is a very welcome first step to alleviate this specific problem, but that places us back at the “forced outings” point. (Admitting to anyone other than themselves that they are questioning their gender identity can be very scary for people that are early in their process or don't have a good support system)

Organizational aspects

I'll keep this one short. If you organize a FLINTA space: Who organizes your space and whose identities and perspectives are reflected in the organizing team? Consider that you'll rarely address the needs of anybody you're not directly interacting with. Also a good point in time to reflect why certain perspectives are not represented.

“Safety” re-contextualized, intersectionality

This is a great podcast on the topic from Booster Club, which touches a more fundamental critique on the concept of “FLINTA safer spaces”:

• What makes a space “safe”?
• Who is safe in that space?
• What kinds of violence are we protecting ourselves from? Are we effectively doing that just by excluding endo cis men?
• Is the space equally safe if you're BIPOC? If you're poor, disabled, gay or experience other forms of discrimination unrelated to gender?

I'm deliberately not touching on state-sanctioned violence as a means of safety here and who benefits from that, because that would derail this post.

The takeaway here is, that in the broader context of safety, it is clear that an invitation policy based on gender identity can at best be one building block towards a bigger concept towards safer communities. (Concepts that try to offer approaches outside of state-sanctioned “safety” are e.g. awareness, community accountability and transformative justice).

Now what?

I want to acknowledge 3 things, to close this post:

1. Resources are limited. Sometimes slapping that “FLINTA only” label on a given space is just the lowest-hanging fruit for the given goal. I've been there and done it before.

2. For a large majority of endo cis women, these spaces are probably freeing and a welcome pause from patriarchal behavior. I get that, but still urge you to think about the identities you're inviting in when making a space “FLINTA” rather than “woman”.

3. I struggle to come up with a good alternative concept to free a space from typical macho behavior. I like the idea of “centering” a space around certain identities while keeping it open for others, to also leave room for more nuance and fluidity. I personally also enjoy TINA spaces, but I feel like that addresses a different, more specific need (reducing cisnormativity).

Message me with your ideas about any of this, I'm genuinely interested!

Update 9th March '26:

I stumbled over this german blog post from a trans woman on the topic. I don't agree on every bit, but it elaborates on some arguments from my post a bit further and gives a more personal account.

#gender

Yes, I'm starting a blog in 2026.

I know it's a pretty retro thing to do, but I was recently inspired to look into the small web (find a bunch of websites here) and a friend shared a well-formulated argument for blogging and I'm in!

A couple of things excite me about the idea:

• I want to share what I have learned + exchange ideas with others
• I hate social media + the attention economy, so I don't want to enrich their platforms with my data
• I'm into privacy + control over my own data
• If even just 2 people decide to regularly read my thoughts, that's amazing

So here it is.

About me

I'm a white, transfem nonbinary person from middle Europe and grew up in the middle class. I've been able to pursue a university education in physics and computer science, which together with my inherent interest in “nerdy” things shaped my current skills + areas of interest.

I consider myself a leftist person and an activist, trying to contribute to various progressive causes in whatever way currently is feasible and feels effective to me. As part of that and through my lived experience, I've spent countless hours debating (both in my head + with others) the nuances of gender in a patriarchal cis-binary-hetero-normative world and still enjoy doing that. At the same time, I don't want to let identity politics distract from the material conditions that shape our daily lives and struggles.

That will basically be the background and perspective informing what is written here.

About this blog

It's a WriteFreely instance for now, the minimalist approach to writing and publishing appealed to me. You can subscribe to the RSS feed here. I will write this blog in English, even though it isn't my first language, both to challenge me and make it accessible to more people.

I want to write about various things that interest me and that I either have knowledge about that is worth sharing or an opinion that I want to get out there. I love doing “deep dives” into random topics to try and empower myself or others to do things I couldn't before, like electronics repair, IT, micro electronics and other stuff.

Finally, I'm setting myself an ultimatum and will only publish this post if I write at least one other post, so if you're reading this that must have happened, feel free to go check that out!

#gender #tech