Transform the conversation

I would predict that every transgender person who has ever come out has been asked a variation on the question: "But what was your old name?" Or the ruder version: "But what's your real name?"

The problem is signified by the "but", stated or implicit. It implies I'm lying or being evasive. The questioner becomes a detective, with me as their case study. It is simple: my name is my name, as "real" as yours. Case closed.

Perhaps it's less offensive than a question about one's body or sex life but the name question is the tip of the inappropriate iceberg. Below the surface, ready to spew forth, is: "Do you have a penis?"

I am attempting here to set some ground rules for those of you who are not trans – those who are cisgender – who, perhaps with innocent intentions, ask these dreaded questions. I know from experience that, even for sensitive, progressive souls, the urge to ask these questions is as strong as the urge to sneeze.

If you have met a trans person and you pried and got away with it, it's because you have overwhelming privilege – the privilege of mainstream society saying you are normal and the trans person is an oddity to be examined.

Months after I changed my name, an old university friend wrote on my Facebook wall: "Hey [old name], this is [old name], right?" It felt as though I had woken up at school with no clothes on.

Maybe he missed the widely shared and commented-on status update where, rather than come out to each individual, I explained in one go that I was changing my name and now going by male pronouns.

Being trans has taught me to tread lightly. I know not to assume a person's gender simply because I know what their hair, face or body looks like. It's easy when you know how much it hurts to be misidentified.

Leng, who identifies as a trans man, recently told me about being at a party where a cis woman followed him around asking about his genitals and telling him he wasn't a real man. Clearly this was extreme behaviour but what I found almost more shocking was that no one else at the party intervened.

The lack of social conventions to do with transgender issues makes people do silly things – things they would never do in relation to cis people. Frankie, who identifies as trans feminine and whose biological sex is male, says the most common assumption people make about them (they use gender-neutral pronouns) can be blamed on society's age-old representation of the tragic, self-loathing trans woman in movies and books. Because Frankie has a feminine gender expression and a penis, people assume they must hate themselves.

Frankie would rather you didn't assume or that you didn't ask. But because you probably will, they'll tell you they're fine about it, actually. They even use it. For actual sex and masturbation, can you believe it?

In fact, because you were wondering, let's clear a few other things up. No, we weren't "born in the wrong body" and, no, we don't want a "sex change". These terms are created by cis society to make trans people more definable, less messy.

But we're not easy to understand and it's not because we're trans – it's because we're people.

I had a round-table discussion with four other trans people – Leng, Frankie, Jai and CJ. Transition meant a completely different thing to each of us; not one of us is currently interested in genital surgery. We also all have and enjoy sex in a variety of ways. This diversity was not engineered: it occurred as naturally as diversity would at a table of cis people.

In this article, I wanted to answer some of the common regrettable questions cis people ask trans people: Do you have a penis or a vagina? How do you have sex? and so on. My hope was that this would stop the inappropriate questions.

But writing this has made me realise I can't answer them. I can only speak for myself, and that isn't helpful to anyone except people I go to bed with. We get asked these questions not because people are interested in us as individuals but because they want to figure us out. They want to "get" us, but we can't be gotten.

So, enough questions. All you will do is to make another human being feel uncomfortable. Instead, ask yourself: Would I ask [insert name of cis acquaintance here] about their genitals? Would I comment on [cis person]'s lavatory or bedroom habits? No, I jolly well would not.

With that in mind, how about we leave it at "I'm as complicated/boring as you are" and talk about the weather instead? Or Google the answers to your questions. Google doesn't have personal boundaries, but I do – and they're probably very similar to yours. – © Guardian News & Media 2014

Fred McConnell is a Guardian digital journalism trainee.