When Existence Alone Becomes the Conversation

Photo: The glowing screen of my laptop displaying the Facebook post that inspired this essay. A reminder that existence is not an argument. It is lived.

On how a quiet truth can unsettle those who haven’t yet faced their own.

The post was about the Williams Institute’s recently updated data showing that approximately 2.8 million Americans identify as transgender. The post was gentle in its simplicity. It did not petition, persuade, or defend. It only acknowledged that trans people are here, and have always been here, woven into the ordinary life of the nation.

We exist. That was the message.

Yet the response unfolded in the same familiar pattern. A wave of comments insisting that transgender identity is confusion, delusion, or pathology. Not because new evidence had emerged. Not because any new understanding of gender had been considered. But because our existence itself unsettled something deep.

A man replied to the post, saying:

“It’s a mental health issue. They are still a man or a woman, no matter what they want to believe. It’s simple.”

But nothing about being human is simple. The DSM-5 does not classify being transgender as a disorder. Gender identity is recognized in every major medical, psychological, and psychiatric institution worldwide. Intersex variations alone already defy the idea that biological sex is strictly binary. And cultures across the globe, long before Western medicine had language for it, recognized more than two genders.

The complexity is ancient.
It is the refusal to see it that is new.

A trans person in the thread responded quietly:

“I have been this way all 63 years. I am not asking for permission.”

There is a steadiness to truth when it is spoken without fear.

But the argument did not end. Because the argument was never really about biology. Biology was only the mask. The conversation was about identity. About safety. About the stories people tell themselves to feel solid in the world.

The man insisting on simplicity had a Ram truck as his profile picture. It is almost archetypal now, this symbol of masculinity worn as armour. In Western culture, some men are taught that masculinity is something fragile that must be defended, displayed, and proven. When masculinity is experienced as something that can be lost, identity becomes performance. And when identity becomes performance, symbols are asked to carry unbearable weight.

The truck was not a detail.
It was the language of fear.

This is where Ernest Becker becomes unmistakable.
If you don’t know who he is, I recommend learning about Terror Management Theory, which his writings inspired.

Becker wrote that human beings cling to their worldviews because those worldviews protect them from the existential fear beneath everything. We are meaning-making creatures. We need our identities, our roles, our stories, to feel stable and real. When something challenges the story a person uses to understand themselves, they react as though their life is under threat.

Not because they are in danger.
But because their sense of self is.

To acknowledge that trans people exist is to acknowledge that identity is not assigned solely from the outside. It is known from within. It reveals itself over time. It is something discovered, not imposed.

For many of us, that realization has been liberation.
For others, it feels like the ground shifting under their feet.

Becker taught that when the self feels threatened, the reaction will not be curiosity. It will be defence. It will be denial. It will be the refusal to allow anything new to be true. Because if the self is not fixed, then the story one has lived might not have been chosen freely. And that realization can be unbearable.

Trans existence does not destabilize the world.
It reveals that the world was always larger than the rules written to contain it.

The thread, like so many others, became a mirror.
Some looked into it and saw recognition.
Some looked into it and saw possibility.
Some refused to look at all.

But there were others. The quiet readers. The ones who do not comment. The ones who are watching carefully to see whether there is room for them in this world. They notice who stands with steady breath. Who does not apologize. Who does not shrink.

They are the ones these conversations are really for.
They are the ones who will remember.

We do not speak to convince the ones shouting; they only hear themselves.
We speak so the silent ones can hear, recognize themselves, and live.

Nothing more is required.

Author’s Note

I do not debate my existence anymore. I speak for those who sit in silence, waiting to hear a voice that sounds like their own.
If that is you, I see you. You are real. You always have been.

And if the one you are thinking of is your child, love them without hesitation. Nothing about them is wrong. The world is simply catching up. Some people cannot bear to see others live freely when they themselves were never permitted to. Their discomfort is not yours to carry.

Source:
The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law Press Release: Estimated 2.8 Million Transgender People in the United States
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/trans-pop-estimates-press-release/