If there’s not a set-in-stone criteria for transness, some folks can feel a sense of loss, or wonder how various resources can be allocated without any sort of rules for who is and isn’t considered “trans.” But given where “trans enough” came from and how it’s been used, its pretty clear that the current criteria are, well…harmful. So how can we move forward?

Unfortunately, we’re not immune to the context in which we were raised. Trans people have used “trans enough” ideology to gatekeep our own community spaces, and have harmed ourselves in the process. Ultimately, we must learn to make space for all the many different ways that one can come to interact with, claim, and even release trans identities.

The idea that there is some standard of trans ness that makes any given individual authentically or truly trans is a powerful, seductive concept. This idea has been used by cisgender people for a very long time to control trans people—their access to medical and social services, their access to identity documents (like passport, ID cards, etc), and their access to all the many privileges that cis people enjoy, regardless of their gender.