Six years ago, I was working as a journalist at The Economist. One fateful day, the editor-in-chief asked me: “Why do kids keep coming home and saying ‘such and such is trans’?” I replied that I didn’t know, but would look into it. That conversation changed the course of my life.
The first sign that this topic was unlike any other was the way interviewees responded to straightforward questions as if simply asking them made me a bigot or fascist. Questions like: what does “transition” mean? Do people feel better afterwards? And the million-dollar one: should those feelings give them access to facilities for that sex? The second sign was the total lack of rigorous academic research on trans identification. Questioning the core mantra that “trans women are women” was verboten.
