My Heart Doesn’t Fit in a Box
A reflection on trans lives, human complexity, and the limits of our labels
It’s not uncommon these days that I involuntarily offer primitive prayers, crying out Oh My God. I am deeply saddened, and have been for years, but increasingly so, for the ongoing progress in the assault on the trans community. From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry. I am sorry you are living in a time when so many people are either afraid, ignorant, or have ulterior motives and using you as a scapegoat.
But let me step back for a moment.
At the highest level, we are all people. We all have hopes, fears, and lives shaped by both biology and experience. Human variation is real and worth appreciating. The problem is not that this variation exists. The problem is what we do in response to it.
But this is not abstract. Right now, a specific group of people is being targeted through policy and public discourse in ways that have real, immediate consequences for their safety and dignity.
However, out of fear, out of ignorance, out of a desire to hold certain things fixed, out of distraction, many have chosen to scapegoat this community, who, through no fault of their own, do not fit within what some have decided are our social “norms”, and now are a source of significant problem in our society. Though this community makes up (estimates vary but let’s say) <1-5% of the population, many legislative bodies are spending a disproportionate amount of time actively making the lives of these individuals significantly harder. As I recall, the role of government, at least in the US, is of the people, by people, and FOR the people, and in order to form a more perfect union. Union as in coming together, not as in eradicating diversity. Yet, in the last month or so I have seen:
Kansas retroactively canceling driver’s licenses if they did not match one’s designated gender at birth. So, if someone had a then canceled license, they would be driving illegally if they were driving to get the ‘legal’ license. Moreover, the Kansas law also established what amounted to a bounty – a private right of action allowing anyone who suspects someone is transgender to sue them for $1,000 in damages for using the "wrong" restroom in government buildings.
Ohio lawmakers passed a bill in the House (not a law yet at the time of writing this article) that wearing makeup while performing that is inconsistent with your designated gender at birth is a crime. That seems highly discretionary and problematic in terms of enforcement. Many men wear makeup, particularly on camera. Some just anyway. Many women don’t. Maybe ‘Big Makeup’ will step in and fight this one. Further, who’s to say what performing means. If a woman who presents more masculine is playing guitar in the park, is she breaking the law? This is a pretty open door to the erosion of civil liberties, but that is a bigger picture and I don’t want to take away from the clear and present assault on trans people here and now.
Idaho passed a law that one must use the bathroom associated with the gender that was designated at birth. So, now someone in Idaho, designated at birth to be female, but presenting with broad shoulders, large biceps, and a full beard, must use the women's bathroom. That makes everyone uncomfortable. It may cause a fight. It may cause a call to the police resulting in wasted time for law enforcement since that person should be using the women’s room by law. Alternatively, if the person uses the men’s room, they are now breaking the law and could end up in jail. Nikson Mathews, a trans man with a beard and chair of the Idaho Democratic Queer Caucus, recently testified: "Every single day when I'm out in public, I have to decide: Do I feel like going to jail today, or do I feel like being attacked."
Again, the operative concept here is ‘designated gender at birth’, and that is inherently problematic. Regardless of how we explain any of this, no one should have to justify their existence in order to be treated with dignity and basic rights. It’s also worth acknowledging something we often oversimplify when we talk about sex and gender. The reality is far more complex than two clean categories suggest.
There are well-documented biological variations that complicate the idea of a strict binary:
Some individuals are born with XY chromosomes but develop typically female bodies due to androgen insensitivity
Others are born with XX chromosomes but develop typically male characteristics due to hormonal conditions
Some people have variations like XXY chromosomes or chimerism, where multiple genetic patterns exist in one body
These are not edge cases in theory. They are part of the natural variation of human biology.
There is something worth naming about what is happening underneath all of this. We label things in order to understand them. Classification is the foundation of science, of knowledge, of how we make sense of a complicated world. That impulse is not wrong. But labels have a shadow side. When we draw a hard line and say this is one thing and that is another, we sometimes mistake the line for reality. The line is ours. Nature does not always agree.
Light does not stop being blue before it becomes green. A person with autism does not flip a switch between functional and not. These things exist on spectrums, and the spectrums are real even when our categories are not. The same is true of sex and gender. As the biology above demonstrates, the variation is far greater than two clean boxes would suggest. When we force a spectrum into a box, we do not eliminate the spectrum. We just make it harder for people to live safely within it, and in some cases, we make it illegal.
I am writing this for a few reasons, and I want to be honest about all of them.
First, for those who are suffering, you deserve to know you are not invisible. Many of us see what is happening. Many of us are angry. Many of us are grieving alongside you, even if we are not living it the way you are.
Second, for those who are still finding their way to understanding. Those who sense that something is wrong but haven’t quite landed on why, or who have been handed a narrative about trans people that doesn’t quite sit right. I hope the specifics here help. Not to argue, but to illuminate. The more clearly we can see what is actually happening to actual people, the harder it becomes to look away.
And third, I want to be careful here, because this is not a moment that calls for easy optimism, and I don’t want this to sound like cold comfort or a reason to wait. But I do see something unexpectedly hopeful buried inside all of this cruelty. Not enough to make today okay. But enough to hold onto. Bear with me.
What I find somewhat ironic about this urgency to say no, trans is not real. It is a social construct. If you are a boy, you are a boy. If you are a girl, you are a girl. Well, then to that I say fine, but you must then refine your understanding of what a boy or girl is. Girls can have beards and boys can have breasts. Girls can have broad shoulders and play rough while boys can enjoy makeup and wear dresses. If you drop the rules for what makes a gender a gender, then trans people don’t have to fight to be another gender. Perhaps conservatives are actually paving a way toward a warmer embrace somewhat in spite of themselves.
But that is way down the road and may or may never happen. Today, we have brothers and sisters, friends, family, neighbors who are being targeted, disenfranchised, attacked physically, verbally, and legislatively. As of March 20, 2026, there are 500 anti LGBTQ bills in the US. 500 bills targeting less than 10% of the population. We have so much more significant issues than what makeup people are wearing or what bathrooms people are using. In my role, I’m continuing to think about what it means to show up in ways that protect dignity and belonging at the local level, even when the broader environment feels uncertain.
To all of you who are suffering, you are not alone. Many of us see you. Many of us hear your cries. Many of us are trying to help where we can. I am deeply sorry, and I hope our society at large can change faster than it will.
If this reflection has been of value, you’re welcome to support the time and care that go into this work.
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