What does transgender mean?
To explain what transgender means, let me make this simple analogy to soft-drinks.
Let's say we have a can of coke and a can of lemonade and I
swap the contents around, so I put lemonade inside the coke can,
and I give you this coke can and you drink from it,
you will be able to taste lemonade, you can smell lemonade, because we swapped them around, right?
Kind of like that is how some transgender people feel, that
what is in the inside isn't the same as what is on the outside,
and it's actually what's on the inside that matters.
When I say it's what is on the inside that matters, I'm referring to identity and
people's identity sits between their ears,
not between their legs.
By the way, it doesn't make any sense to talk about
transgenderism as being unnatural or abnormal
- those are moral judgments.
We can talk about transgenderism as not being a statistical average, on the other hand,
just make sure not to get average and normal confused.
We know that about 1% (depending on which source you look at) of
the general population is transgender and this 1% figure is steadily rising.
More and more sources are referring to this,
and it probably has to do with the fact that more and more people are courageous enough to come out.
It is however still difficult for many transgender people to come out,
because there's such a stigma involved, because not all transgender people
fit into the categories of either being a male or being a female.
And I think there's not enough information around, on what it means to be transgender
People think transgender people are crazy, and it's not a mental illness
It's not a psychological disease or a personality disorder or any of those things. In fact,
many transgender people experience problems because of the surroundings:  our culture has a binary view and
transgender people don't always fit into this model. The binary model means that there are two units - you have
men and you have women. These two categories are none discussable
and this is what the binary model refers to, which is enormously
limiting, because it means also that you have one way to be if you want to be a "real" man,
and there's a certain way to be if you want to be a "real" woman,
and this is enormously limiting to all of us because it cannot encompass the huge variety
that mankind represents. We're all individuals, right, we all have our unique fingerprint, and
part of this fingerprint is our identity, just as our sexuality, just as many other things
and no two people are alike!
I hope you got something out of this very short explanation, if you have questions or comments,
you're welcome to put them in the comments below and remember - nature doesn't make mistakes -
nature makes variations.
I'm Karina, and this was outspoken.
