A gay man doesn’t need a therapist’s letter to be gay. A lesbian doesn’t need a doctor’s approval to date women. But to access gender-affirming hormones or surgery, trans people often undergo years of psychiatric evaluation, “real-life experience” tests, and bureaucratic hurdles. Our identity is pathologized in a way sexual orientation is not.
If you strip away the struggles, the transgender community has gifted LGBTQ+ culture with radical imagination.
: Gender identity refers to one’s internal sense of being male, female, or another gender. This is distinct from sexual orientation, which describes who a person is attracted to. Transgender people can identify as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or any other orientation.