mutual recognition: who decides if you are real?

we are taught from childhood that our identity is our own. that we can be whoever we want to be, that self-expression is a freedom. and yet, at every stage of life, we find the opposite to be true. identity is not something freely chosen—it is something negotiated. and worse, it is something that can be denied.

to be recognized—to be truly seen—is to be granted full participation in society. but who holds the power to recognize? who decides if your identity is real enough to deserve dignity, rights, and safety? and what happens when that recognition is withheld?

for those who exist comfortably within pre-approved categories, identity is a quiet thing, a fact so mundane that it never needs proving. a cis person does not have to declare themselves cis. a citizen does not have to convince the world they belong. a straight couple holding hands in public does not have to justify why they should be allowed to.

but for others—trans people, nonbinary people, migrants, stateless individuals, those whose very bodies challenge imposed norms—recognition is never guaranteed. instead, it is a battle, an exhausting and endless demand to justify one's own reality.

consider the trans person who is asked, day after day, to explain their gender, to produce documentation, to endure skepticism as if their own word is never enough. or the migrant who, despite having built a life in a country for decades, is told they do not belong because a government ledger refuses to acknowledge them. the very act of existing becomes an argument, a plea, a performance designed to satisfy those who hold the keys to legitimacy.

what does it mean to live in a society where recognition is something that must be granted? where your right to exist as you are is contingent upon the approval of strangers? the power to bestow or withhold recognition is a weapon, wielded in ways both subtle and overt.

it is the court refusing to recognize a nonbinary person’s gender marker. the hospital insisting a trans patient must be admitted under their deadname. the refugee whose life is paused indefinitely because a government does not see them as worthy of status. the partner who cannot visit their loved one in the hospital because their relationship is not legally recognized. the child whose identity is invalidated by parents who refuse to accept them. the store clerk who hesitates before handing over a credit card, studying the name too long, deciding whether or not to challenge it.

these are not small moments. they are existential refusals. to be denied recognition is to be denied access, safety, humanity. to be told, over and over again, that your existence is subject to debate.

what does it do to a person—to be asked, again and again, to prove that they are real? what toll does it take to constantly anticipate skepticism, to be forced to curate evidence of one's own authenticity?

it is not just the legal battles, the paperwork, the systemic barriers. it is the daily exhaustion of preempting questions before they are asked, of weighing every interaction to determine whether it will be safe, of knowing that at any moment, your identity could be dismissed. it is the knowledge that in any given space, your right to simply be may hinge on the assumptions and biases of those around you.

it is one thing to build an identity; it is another to be constantly on trial for it.

if recognition is something that must be granted, then it can be withheld. if identity is only valid when others agree, then it is never truly ours to own.

but what if identity was not a negotiation? what if a person’s existence was not dependent on bureaucracy, on social validation, on the whims of institutions that see only categories rather than individuals?

what if the simple truth of a person’s word was enough? what if to say i am was all that was required?

for some, that world already exists. for others, it remains just out of reach, behind a locked door, with someone else holding the key.

and the question that remains: who gave them the right?