Memories of being a transgender person in grad school
*Editor’s note: This article has been published anonymously at the request of the author. It was originally written in Korean and has been translated into English.
I didn’t identify as transgender and non-binary until after I entered graduate school. I was scraping by on assistantships and scholarships to make my medical transition, so I was pretty poor for about half of my time in grad school. I spent a few years living on the cheapest plan possible with an old cell phone that was long overdue for a replacement, cutting back on food, eliminating hobbies, and living extremely frugally. During that phase, I pretty much just lived in school and studied all the time. I remember doing pretty well during this time and being considered a standout. I was ahead of my peers, won awards, received recognition, and was sent abroad as a visiting researcher.
I went through the whole transition process without coming out because I didn’t know what would happen if I did. Even when I underwent the surgery and needed a long time to rehabilitate, I lied about which surgery I was undergoing. I lied to my parents, whom I hadn’t come out to either, and said I was going abroad for some research for school. I can still vividly remember the pain I experienced as I was grading finals remotely after my surgery, when I was told to not sit down.
Holding a secret is not a good way to fit in with people, and because I’m non-binary, trans, and also not in a relationship and not having sex, I didn’t have a place in typical conversations with straight friends, including those about celebrity gossip, the specific sports they played (like soccer), showbiz, the type of YouTube content they watched, and other topics of interest to non-queer men. I couldn’t even lead with a different topic every time I sat down to a meal with friends, because I could only think of a handful of topics to talk about, and I could only talk so much about them in a week. The conversations that came up were like this:
For example, if the topic was hair loss, the conversation started with hair-loss shampoo, then moved on to health foods, then medications, and finally ended with “If you take female hormones, your hair will grow back, but then you’ll be a woman!”
In fact, because of how commonly this topic was discussed, there was an atmosphere of exclusion of non-male students at meals, coffee times, and other social occasions. As a non-binary person, I would naturally feel left out.
There was the option of eating alone—and there’s nothing wrong with this—but it’s just that this socialization extended into the night, when they had drinks, and important decisions were made over drinks. Deciding on research topics, finding people to collaborate with, talking about attending conferences—such practical decisions were made in my absence. Of course, not all of them were made this way, but the gap between the male majority and the rest of the non-male group started to widen. There weren’t enough numbers or a formed network of non-male individuals that they could help resolve something by coming together. And the only people who were considering dropping out of grad school, or actually dropping out, were the ones who were pushed to the outside of the process.
Against this backdrop, my mornings began with a desperate effort to resist lethargy. I swallowed my psychiatric medication and barely got out of bed to go to work. Sometimes, I’d take a hormone injection in the lab, but no one cared—their interest in me had long since faded. I didn’t greet anyone when I arrived at work. I didn’t answer the phone coherently due to panic, and on top of that, I didn’t have good cell service at home, so some people had chosen to publicly criticize me in group chats rather than reach out to me individually.
In the midst of this prolonged neglect and isolation, my professor seemed unwilling to teach me; he would tell me to “get along with the students” and that “networking is important,” but there was no real feedback. And in a lab atmosphere where students learn from their seniors, not the professor, I ended up learning nothing and choosing to teach myself. I was afraid to approach other researchers, afraid to say the slightest thing, afraid to ask questions, because I had memories of being publicly criticized in group chats, or of being ignored outright. For example, someone would make an announcement at a meal when I wasn’t around, and I would be the only one who didn’t get the message; sometimes I showed up to school alone on informally planned holidays for the entire team.
As I’ve said before, I’m not out of the closet. Issues with pronouns don’t arise in Korea, thankfully. I use my legal gender when filling out various documents, and when I go to the bathroom, out of habit, I just go to the men’s bathroom because my assigned gender is male and everyone believes that this is my gender identity. This has always been the case, even when I’m traveling for business, which is why, after my surgery, I’ve seen strangers, outsiders, or people meeting me for the first time at conferences surprised to see me in the restroom. But if a colleague who knows me happens to be around, they address any surprise and unease a stranger may feel by explaining that they know me and that I am in the right restroom.
The dysphoria I feel in the bathroom—or in referring to myself as belonging to a particular gender—is nothing new to me because I’ve long since gotten used to it. As a transgender person, I’ve experienced a great deal of distress in the form of this dysphoria. The gender dysphoria was not as considerable though as compared to other experiences of isolation, where I felt simply pushed out because I had a secret or because I was different, and all this triggered even deeper isolation.
No one tried to exclude me openly, and if they did, it was done without realizing they were doing this. My experiences of intentional exclusion were few—I can count them on the fingers of one hand. And I don’t think anyone had any great malice in mind, but once I started being pushed outward, I was pushed outward continuously and crushed. I don’t think this situation is unique to me because I identify as a member of the LGBTQ community. But for anyone who has ever had any reason to feel like they do not fit in with a group, and for anyone who doesn’t have a support system to hold them up outside of the lab, it’s a structure that is bound to crumble quickly for them. And I could see everyone who could be held accountable standing by and watching.
Was it just that academia wanted someone who was “normal” and therefore comfortable interacting with “normal” people and having “normal” topics of conversation? I eventually grew tired of this isolation and dropped out of the course and pursued other avenues. But every time I find myself craving academia, research, and the joy of discovery and problem-solving, I can’t help but feel briefly miserable. I can’t help but wonder what I should have done differently. What needs to change for an outlier like me to have a place in it? Is it me or is it everyone else?
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