Being masculine doesn’t make you bad.
Wanting to be masculine doesn’t make you bad.
Choosing to uphold toxic masculinity and the patriarchy is harmful. Don’t do that one.
Masculinity isn’t inherently toxic.
This is important. The kind of parody hyper-masculinity we find expressed by bigots like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is not representative of masculinity in general.
You might argue that it is impossible to define what masculinity is without ending up with long lists of gender stereotypes. You would be right.
Still, the need and desire to express oneself as a man or as masculine is real, and this desire is often (but not always) anchored in a firm male gender identity.
That masculinity does not have to be aggressive, arrogant, violent prone, sexist and misogynistic. It can be compassionate, protecting, expressive, and chivalrous (just to mention a few adjectives that come to mind).
None of the trans men I know embody the ideals of toxic masculinity. Indeed, I would argue that most trans men can and will contribute to the refinement of a new non-toxic masculinity.
To bind your chest, experts recommend using a chest binder for the safest and most effective results.
If you are unable to purchase a chest binder, you may be able to use a sports bra, or wear loose-fitting clothing to effectively flatten the appearance of your chest.
However, there are many health risks that come with chest binding, so it’s important to understand how to do it properly.
Testosterone is not a “violent” hormone. It doesn’t make you “more aggressive” or a worse person, it doesn’t make you “dangerous” or “toxic”.
Transmascs do not need to be “warned of the dangers of T”. We do not need to spend our transitions terrified that we’re going to become a danger to those around us- that HRT is going to turn us into a monster.
Everyone experiences mood swings during hormonal shifts (pregnancy, menstruation, menopause, estrogen HRT, etc.) and while you might have grumpy moments or feel anger/frustration that you need to learn to handle differently, that doesn’t make you a bad person.
Testosterone can change the way you access/process emotions somewhat, but if you’re already thoughtful about how you handle your feelings and treat others, you’re going to be fine. It’s normal to lash out on occasion, by accident, and then apologize & work to do better. It doesn’t make you a bad person. Everyone on HRT is prone to this, and everyone experiencing hormonal changes is prone to this.
Getting HRT should be positive and affirming; you should not have to spend your entire transition terrified of becoming a monster.
//As promised, the next installment of #QueerHistoryMonday - today is all about The Countess aka Pauline aka Arthur W aka Arthur Berloget, a Parisian singer in the 1850s/60s. Here’s a picture she drew of herself at her toilette in 1874.
When talking about The Countess we immediately run into one of the main problems of queer history: which name, pronouns and gender do you use? The Countess was assigned male at birth, which has left the vast majority of historians talking about her as ‘him’ and 'a man’.
However, the reason we know about The Countess is because of the autobiography she left us: “The Secret Confessions of a Parisian: The Countess, 1850-1871”, written in 1874 and finally published in 1895. In it she describes her joy in living as a woman, how The Countess was the name bestowed upon her in a moving ceremony by her fellow 'filles’ and tribade sisters (before that she had been Pauline for a number of years), and the sadness it caused her to have to revert to being 'a man’ for a stint in the army and then later in prison.
So it seems only right to respect her own self-knowledge, let alone her life experience, and use 'she’ and 'The Countess’. The “Confessions” are an amazing document, not only because of what they contain, but the authority with which they are written, and the author’s background.
The Countess was born into a working class Parisian home, and transitioned in her teens, becoming the kept woman of a member of the nobility. She then became a café-concert singer, a courtesan, an army deserter and then a robber, which led to the prison sentence.
She was something of a dilettante artist throughout her life, and her autobiography is illustrated by her own drawings. Below is her depiction of her fellow 'fille’ 'La Charles’:
The Countess left behind the most incredible record of queer Parisian life in the mid 19th century. To cherry-pick just a few of the wonderful insights found within: The Countess came out to her mother and was supported and cherished as a daughter; the tribades [lesbians] and the 'filles’ [transfeminine] or 'mignons’ [darlings] are described as a family, and are depicted as providing mutual support (and some amazing champagne-drenched parties), and it was possible (certainly in The Countess’s case) for a woman assigned male at birth to have a successful performing career.
The theatre (whether the popular café-cons or the other forms of Parisian theatre) was a popular place for filles/mignons, tribades, sapphists, and garçons (masculine queer men) to cruise, and also to hero worship their favourites on stage.
Throughout her work, The Countess makes clear distinctions between different groups of queer people: those who experience same sex attraction and are very much in line with their assigned at birth gender, and those who 'want to be’/live as the other gender.
In her milieu, these groups came together as friends and lovers, though her closest friendships are describes as being with fellow filles, her 'sister’ tribades, and with cis women sex workers who supported her, helped her with her 'transformation’ and showed her the ropes.
Here’s The Countess’s picture of a typical tribade - she notes that many don’t pass as men due to their “lovely curves”, but one - “B” - “adopted men’s clothes and looked ravishing in them. Even men were fooled, and women went wild over her.”
While “The Confessions” reflect some of the common literary/sexological mores of the era - “why am I like this?” “Oh, my life of voluptuous sin” etc. - they have a glorious defiant tone along with that, and some very tender moments.
If you’d like to read them in their entirety, you can find them in “Queer Lives: Men’s Autobiographies from Nineteenth Century France” (2008). This book is a wealth of source material, but presented throughout in a disappointingly (to my mind erroneously) cisnormative way.
So, instead, I’ll leave the final words to the Countess herself, radiant in the success of her transition, 180 years ago: “I, who had so desired to be a girl, have triumphed over natural law.”//
Myles Brady-Davis, a nonbinary and transmasculine parent, has now been recognized as the father of their child in Illinois. They are married to Precious Brady-Davis. Both of them are influential leaders in the Chicago LGBTQ community.
Under the current system, the person who gave birth is automatically titled “Mother/Co-parent” on their child’s birth certificate. Due to this policy, Myles Brady-Davies, a transmasculine person who uses they/them pronouns, would be outed each time ID was required for their daughter.
Myles expressed the importance of an accurate birth certificate, “All families deserve to be safe and respected, so why would our family be any different? For us, it is critical to have a birth certificate that affirms and respects who we are to each other as a family. An inaccurate birth certificate would create confusion, and for us, that could be dangerous. What parent would accept that?”
Top photo of Precious Brady-Davis and Myles Brady-Davis by Allison Kortokrax. Bottom photo: Mystic Images Photography.
Masculinity does not belong to men. A behaviour, a look, an attitude, women and non-binary people have as much right to masculinity as men do. In my own life, particularly as a queer person (and as a soft butch, apparently), I am surrounded by butches, daddys, zaddys, studs, stems and masc femmes. These women embrace their masculinity and wear it with pride, but face misgendering, abuse on the street and endless presumptions from strangers.
In a world that still, for the most part, expects women to dress like that that little triangle-skirted logo on toilet doors (as a butch I know once said, “what’s that triangle, my c*nt?”) it takes bravery to present yourself like a man. And you’re likely to get chucked out of said women’s toilet if you do.
For these reasons, it can take a while to feel comfortable expressing your masc side as a woman. It can be a journey. We often think of the feeling of dislocation between inner self and outer self as particular to trans people, but you don’t have to be transgender to experience this.
A woman does not have to be trans to express masculinity. Nor does she have to be a lesbian.
Ok, my story (earlier I sent 2 asks but they were incomplete/incoherent). When I was 16-17 yo I thought I was trans guy but I dissmised it since it didn't feel right. Right now, when I'm 19, I'm questioning myself again. I feel barely connected to my female identification. I don't want to have breasts but I don't feel uncomfortable with them. I don't like it when I'm looking feminine. It's makes me uncomfortable. Sometimes i think I'm cis girl and later I think I'm demigirl and I'm confused.
crossdreamers answered
What am I? A trans guy? A demigirl? A crossdreamer?
Anonymous has also sent me the following questions:
I don’t have gender dysphoria but I feel off with my gender. I mean, I think I’m barely connected to my gender identification, sometimes I’m not sure if I even have gender identity. I don’t want to have breasts but I’m comfortable with them. Sometimes I want to have a penis but sometimes not. I think terms graygender or demigirl fits me best. But I still fear that I’m just cis girl trying to be “special snowflake” or something. Sorry for my English.
and
A little correction of my previous ask: I think I can be crossdreamer and demigirl since my connection to female identity and sex is little. But I still fear that I’m just cis girl.
And here’s my answer (to the best of my ability):
I understand perfectly well how you feel. It took me several years to come to that find out who I am, partly because I had repressed my gender variance, refusing to think about it, and – to the extent I did think about it – it scared me. There was a lot of confusion, for sure.
We are all afraid of social exclusion and losing our loved ones, and even if there has been a lot of LGBTQA progress, there are still transphobes out there.
So the first challenge is, as I see it, to embrace the transgender journey. For most transgender people, this journey takes time. And in spite of what the newspapers may tell you, only a minority of nonbinary and transgender people are 100 percent certain about who they are from the age of four. So it is OK to question everything. And there is not one “correct” goal for this journey.
The second challenge is to get beyond the restrictions of human thinking. We use language to understand the world around us. We have to, but there is no one to one relationship between the concepts we use and the world “out there”.
Our words are, at best, approximations, and people also use words to control what people think and do. This is, for instance, why transphobes are attacking the word “gender” and would like to force us reduce gender to biological sex. The word “gender” makes it possible for us to think about gender identity as something independent of biological sex or assigned gender. It helps people like us, but offends the kind of people who are scared of diversity, tolerance, compassion and progress.
Unfortunately there are also trans people who would like to use language in this way, insisting – for instance – that you need to have gender dysphoria to be transgender. This is – frankly – nonsense. Transgender is an umbrella term covering all types of gender variance. (Documentation on the meaning of the word trans here, and the argument for why you do not need gender dysphoria to be trans here.)
The third challenge is to get beyond the binaries. The bigots like binaries, because they can use them to force people into one of two neat boxes, defined by them, making it easier to control them. But neither sexual orientation nor gender identity are clear cut binaries.
We know now that gender identity may vary from clear cut woman to undeniably male. Yet, as far as i understand it, there exist no persons in the world who are exclusively female or exclusively male – if you look at their personalities, abilities, interests, gender expressions as well as their sexual characteristics.
But even if most people are a mix of pink and blue (to use the colors of the stereotypes) most people feel comfortable with the gender they were assigned at birth. They are cisgender, not transgender.
As soon as you feel uncomfortable about being classified as your assigned gender, you are – as I see it – some shade of transgender. That does not mean that you have to transition, or that you have to take hormones, but it means that you have to reflect carefully on who you are.
If you fear that you are cis girl (in a world were so many people insists that you have to be cis to be socially acceptable) I would say that you are not a cis girl.
In spite of what transphobic TERFs and religious extremists may tell you, questioning your own gender is not a modern “snowflake” trend or fashion. We have documentation of gender variance all the way back to antiquity. Most experts in the field (doctors, psychologists and trans activists) agree that gender variance is a real thing. The feelings are real. The identities are real. The journey is real.
Several of the terms you are referring to reflect the need for a language that captures the diversity of gender as well as the transgender journey.
Nonbinary is a word that can be of help to those who are uncertain about their gender, and those who feel that their gender lies between or beyond the two traditional genders. “Demigirl” is but a variant of nonbinary or genderqueer.
Use the words that feel meaningful to you right now, and change your vocabulary if you find new words that are more on target. Ultimately you are the only one who can know who you truly are. No one else has the right to define your identity for you.
Marriott Traveller (!) reports on the Perfect Sidekcik gym in Oakland, California, which helps trans men find themselves:
That sense of safety is exactly what Nathalie Huerta, who founded the Perfect Sidekick around 5 ½ years ago, works to create for her members — around 80% of whom identify with LGBT communities. At the Perfect Sidekick, group classes begin with participants sharing their names and preferred pronouns. Instead of gender-segregated change rooms, there’s one big locker room open to folks of all gender identities. The gym’s staff is required to attend regular sensitivity training.
Huerta (pictured above) tells about her own gym experience:
“I noticed that as my sexuality started to evolve, my experience at the gym became shittier,” she told Mic. “As my gender expression started to change and I started to present and look more masculine, I noticed an even bigger change.” Changing became a source of stress. “The locker room was definitely an awkward thing,” she said. “Women would cover themselves up if I came in the room. They’d be like, ‘This is a women’s locker room.‘”
Custom Suits to Make Transgender and Female Clients Feel Handsome
Bindle & Keep is a New York based taylor company who makes bespoke suits. The idea of making suits for women or female bodied gender-nonconforming people came from Rachel Tutera, who runs a blog called The Handsome Butch. She propositioned the tailor, asking if he, with his expertise in men’s
suits, would make them for women like her — not women’s suits, but the same things he was making for men, with the same masculine profile, but for
to women’s bodies.
