Walt Whitman’s line comes to mind…
I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.
I am large, and contain multitudes.
Humans have many various tendencies within them. Sometimes one will come to the forefront and play an important role, while tendencies that had previously been important recede into the background. External circumstances do encourage some qualities to advance and others to recede. Other times, the changes are internally driven, either consciously and purposefully, by the individual herself, or… they happen for no known reason but spring from some deep, unseen well of potential within us.
In my case, people told me they were astonished when I came out as transgendered. They claimed they had not seen the tendencies within me. Knowing myself better, I knew those tendencies that had existed all through my life back to my childhood, but never sprouted, grew, and blossomed until recently. In retrospect it’s clear how my hidden potentialities came to the forefront to produce this change. People say it was sudden, but I could see the inner development happening at deep levels before it surfaced. People see what they’re prepared to see. A radical new development can be happening right under their noses, but they’ll remain oblivious unless you make them look at it.
I am perplexed when my family members tell me I’m not the same person they knew. How can they say that? All that’s changed is my external appearance and activities. My personality went through no radical sudden change. You who only read my words online can see that easier than people who look at my appearance.
This is a philosophical position that I feel is important to make a stand upon: You (my family members) do not determine my identity. Your role as family is to provide a basic context for me to function in as a member of society. You cannot decide my identity. I know myself to be exactly the same person I was last year before I went TG. I recognize my own selfhood underlying the changes, and I know that it does not change. So what determines the identity of an individual? Are we no more than the aggregate of other people’s impressions of us? That’s the philosophical assumption implied by my family telling me I’m “not the same person.” Shouldn’t the continuity of an individual’s self-awareness count for something? I feel belittled when others tell me that they can decide for me who I am, that I cannot know for myself who I am. That’s just wrong.
If people change, what changes? The very personhood itself? Or just certain roles and characteristics? If I change all my roles, quit my job, move to another country and ditch my citizenship, change my gender (already did), change my name, speak a different language, start a new career, divorce and remarry and get a whole new family… does all that make me a different person? I will still retain my own self-awareness; I will still be conscious that there is an unbroken inner continuity of my selfhood. Nothing can efface that. Maybe that’s what Bob Marley meant when he sang "You’re runnin’ and you’re runnin’ and you’re runnin’ away. But you can’t run away from yourself."