Yikes

 IS ONE'S IDENTITY A 'PARADOX OF CHOICE?'
Well, hey, I was in a decent enough mood today until I watched that Barry Schwartz TED Talk. I've never been fond of TED Talks; I think they're usually reductive and condescending, and I made it a point not to watch any of the suggested ones for this course unless absolutely necessary. This week, I thought, 'hey, I could give one of these a shot!' The title and summary of Schwartz's Talk made it seem like it was going to be about decision paralysis, and that's certainly something I experience a lot, as someone that suffers from ADHD.
I didn't watch the whole thing, because I got about five minutes in and the guy put up a transphobic comic panel so that he could sneer about how 'personal identity' is a choice, now. Thanks for that, teach. Good to know you vet your content for potentially hateful views.
So, now I'm sitting with the unpleasant reminder that most people think that gender and sexuality is a choice–a choice that they find disgusting and ridiculous. So, instead of talking about a decision that I have made in life, like my career path or my education level or where I live, I'm gonna go ahead and talk about a decision that isn't anyone's to make: gender.

WHEN DO YOU DECIDE WHO YOU ARE?
No one can really answer this question. Life is a constant series of discoveries about oneself, and while a lot of the 'finding out' happens around one's 20th decade, it never really stops. And it's not a decision, for the most part. The decisions we make are about what parts of ourselves we want to emphasize, to prioritize, to discard, to hide. The decision of a transgender person is not which gender they are. It isn't a cisgender person's decision which gender they are, either; that's decided for them by the doctor that delivers them as a baby. The only difference is that at some point in the life of a transgender person, they realize that that doctor made the wrong decision.
So, what is a choice that a transgender person has? They can, to some extent, choose how the world perceives them. They can choose to transition, whether that involves changing their name or undergoing hormone replacement therapy or any number of other things. Though, the way that they're perceived is still going to be somewhat at the whims of other people. Or, if a transgender person decides, they could not transition, which doesn't involve changing their gender back, but rather suppressing their actual gender so as to avoid endangering themselves.
One has to weigh the options heavily for this kind of choice. Transition might help mental health, might improve confidence and reduce dysphoria and make life generally easier, but it might also make someone more visible, more at risk of violence and discrimination. For many transgender people, the choice is how they die: suicide or murder?
So, no, being transgender is not a decision. At least, it's not one made by the trans person. Instead, it's a choice made by the people around them. Society at large constantly defines and redefines what it looks like to be a man and a woman, and individuals reinforce those definitions by picking clothes for their children or, you know, murdering transgender people. I will not beat around the bush on that whole murder thing, either. I will not make light of queerness the way that Barry Schawrtz does.
Truly, I want you to think about the idea of transness being a decision. If a decision like that were to be available in your life, a decision that could make your life infinitely harder, more expensive, more dangerous. A decision that could alienate your friends and family, that could get your children taken away from you, that could prevent you from holding down a job or a home because it is still legal in most states right now to deny queer people housing or adoption rights or employment with basically no consequences. If that were a choice, why would anyone make it?

Maybe, just maybe, the consequences of not transitioning are so grave that it isn't really a choice at all.