Content Note: This piece contains discussions of mental health and past trauma.

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Let me start this by saying: people don't transition because they are mentally ill. They don't transition because of traumas in their past. People transition because they are trans - and to say otherwise is wilfully ignoring the point. 

Case in point: I am not trans, I have not pursued any steps to medical transition, and only a few socially - a gender neutral name and a more fluid way of dressing and being. I'm 28 and I have Dissociative Identity Disorder. This is about my own experience with gender, the gender of my parts or alters, and my own experience only. I know cis people with DID, I know trans people with DID, and I know my own scattershot approach to gender. 

For those who don't know, DID is a trauma-caused condition, and not related to psychosis or psychotic disorders. It's, as I like to say, PTSD on crack. It's a disorder of the mind that children who are exposed to severe, repetitive, and inescapable trauma get - their young brains split into parts, or alters, to cope. I like to say my brain sent out minions. DID effects around one percent - or 1 in 100 - people. This makes it more common than a peanut allergy or an eating disorder - and around as common as having red hair. If you're reading this, you know someone with DID. They might not have told you - most of us tend to say we have PTSD. 

This is because of stigma - that we're crazy people, incoherently "switching" left, right and centre, or we have serial killers in our heads . In actual fact, uncontrollable constant switching only happens in around 6% of cases. The other 94% of us would be difficult to pick out of a crowd, even if you know us well. We're also not a statistically significant amount of crime perpetrators, even given that we account for 1% of the population. I can't believe that needs clarification, but thanks to Hollywood, it does. It also doesn't make sense for us to develop murderer alters - it's a protective, defensive mechanism, not an aggressive one.  

So, why the lecture about DID? Because I can't understand my own gender without it. People with DID have parts or alters - parts of the original consciousness that have split off to contain particular memories or skill sets. These parts develop into their own personalities or "identities" - this is the "identity" part of dissociative Identity Disorder.  Most will have their own speech patterns (one of mine says "Hella" and uses slang I emphatically do not - whereas my 12 year old boy alter Jack uses terms I would never) their own gestures, taste in things like clothes, music or food (mine all take their coffee differently and some like food I don't), memories and yes, genders.

Mixed gender systems are almost universal in DID - I'm yet to read about or meet a person whose alters are all the one gender. Because mixed gender systems are so common, it can be argued that DID is a strange form of gender diversity. I call it "diverse by default."  That's not to invalidate my trans siblings or gender diverse siblings with DID - that's just how I understand myself. 

To the extent I understand myself, anyway. My wardrobe looks like you let loose around seven people of varying genders and ages loose in Kmart. Which is, essentially, what happened. I understand what's expected of the gender I was assigned at birth, and by and large, move through the world that way - although in queer spaces I'm almost always clocked as enby, and people default to "they" as a pronoun for me, despite the fact I don't look particularly androgenous or fit the (wildly inaccurate) stereotype of what an enby person "looks" like. 

I think it's the funniest fucking thing, and am a bit deliberately difficult to pin down. Adds to my mystique. It's also a guilty sort of privilege - most non binary people in my life fight harder, in the same circles, to be consistently gendered correctly. I'm not entirely sure what vibe I give off or how this happens, but I wish I could bottle it and give it to the enby people in my life. Maybe as a spray. That'd be cool. And here I am, wandering in the wilderness again far beyond The Point I Was Attempting To Make. Happens a whole lot when you have DID. 

I find gender in my parts (alters) so curious. Most of them developed when I was very young. The implicit associations we have with masculinity and femininity are on a very raw kind of display. My masc alters tend to be protectors - ranging the spectrum from confident and cocky Captain, who often runs meetings for me, to angry, abrasive little boys who channeled the rage and anger I felt during my trauma. My femme alters are people-pleasers,sufferers of a million rules from twisted regimes I didn't understand. They're perfectionists and the keepers of appearances. My littlest little (little is a term we use for younger alters) is the most enby little fuck, but still carries the weight and the burden of her assigned gender - or, more accurately, of the expectations placed upon the gender she was born. What four year old belongs as a therapist and a caretaker? None of them do. 

And, this is ducking the issue around what trauma happens to the bodies of those who end up with DID. Spoiler alert - a lot. There's a reason we dissociate from our bodies to such an extent we end up with alters. It's a hard issue for me to touch. 

How do you answer the question "what gender are you" when you have more than one consciousness? And if you choose to bring it up, how do you avoid people drawing the inference that all trans people have some messed up shit going on? 

I use the term "disorder" (and "messed up shit" and many more unprintable terms) to describe DID because it is a disorder. It is not a natural variant in the broad spectrum of humanity. It's an incredibly adaptive approach to unconscionable harm inflicted by shitty humans on a child. And then, it becomes entrenched and maladaptive - causes suffering - or else it wouldn't be a disorder. Being trans or gender diverse is a (beautiful) natural variant. People are born a bunch of diverse ways, and that's what makes them great. Being trans is not disordered or wrong. No child should have to develop DID to cope, it's caused by harm and has harmful effects, and that's the difference.   

My gender? I don't know. When you're such a plural person, so composite, it's hard to give an answer. I think I'll just keep doing what I do - working with my heart, my head, my hands and my soul. I don't need to answer a question that other people ask me to their satisfaction. I'm satisfied with my own lack of answer - my own way, my own being.