The Utilization of Toxic Masculinity to Gatekeep Transmasculinity
Toxic Masculinity is often brought up in speaking about problematic and harmful ways men engage with women, and with good reason. This portrayal of masculinity, of what it means to be a man, is harmful and can lead to very real consequences when taken to the extreme.
Less often, however, is there conversation about how toxic masculinity hurts cisgender men. I think it’s also important to note that toxic masculinity’s treatment of cisgender men further impacts how our society views transgender women and utilizes it as a major contributing factor to the transphobia that transgender women face.
Something I’ve almost never seen spoken about, though, is the impact of toxic masculinity and the transmasculine community.
To start, let’s talk a bit about what toxic masculinity is. If you search for information on the internet, there are a wide array of definitions you can find and examples to describe it. A general definition would be that toxic masculinity embodies the promotion of toughness, anti-femininity, and power when looking at the preferred traits of men.
This can show up in a myriad of harmful ways.
Toughness can be promoting rough-housing with young boys or punishing boys and men for showing emotions outside of anger (like sadness or enthusiasm). It can also include the assumption that men are great at feats of strength and having the ability to handle manual labor tasks.
Anti-femininity is rooted in a rejection of anything seen as feminine. This can contribute to attitudes around men taking care of children, showing affection with anyone who is not their partner or outside of sexual behaviors, and asking for help when they need it.
Finally, power is something to always be sought after. A man’s worth is rooted in the power and status he holds, and a contributing factor is tied in to how well he demonstrates toughness and anti-femininity for how much power a man can be afforded.
Check out this website below for some additional information if your curious. There’s also plenty of videos on YouTube and other websites of folks speaking in depth about the harmful affects of toxic masculinity on men and women.
Keeping in mind the above information, it does follow that transfeminine people would be harmed by toxic masculinity. With anti-femininity at the core of it, a rejection of masculinity to embody a more feminine aspect of oneself would be a direct threat to toxic masculinity.
Less thought of, however, is the embracing of sorts that transmasculine people would experience because of the rejection of femininity to embrace a more masculine aspect of oneself.
When paying attention to public discourse around transgender people, it is nearly always focused on transwomen. Transmen are frequently excluded from the conversation, likely due to the acceptance of masculinity in our culture while femininity is rejected.
But what about transmen actively engaging in toxic masculinity?
Something I frequently think about is how every single one of us gets a baseline of messaging for how we are expected to show up in the world. In the United States, everyone gets similar messaging from the media and from overall culture found here. There is additional messaging received depending on the region in the United States you live in, as well as your religion, race, ability status, and family culture.
Since we don’t live in a bubble, we can often see messaging directed towards others different than ourselves, or even in the way that the messaging changes depending on how we navigate the world.
Toxic masculinity, for example, is explicit in how men are expected to navigate the world. But women are also impacted by it because in order for men to meet the expectations toxic masculinity expects, it requires the subjugation of women.
When thinking about transgender people, we have also received the same messaging of what it means to be a “man��� or a “woman”. Many people who fall under the umbrella of “transgender” reject the messaging as a part of their transition. However, because the messaging is so engrained into the bedrock of this country, we have the effect of not only cisgender people invalidating transgender people, but we also have many transgender people who invalidate other transgender people.
I came out as transgender in 2015 after a six month identity crisis (which could be its own story). In that crisis period, I sought a lot of information about what it means to be transgender and how a person would “know” if they were trans. Unfortunately, a huge amount of the information I could find enforced toxic masculinity. For transmen, in particular, there was gatekeeping both within and beyond the transmasculine community on the level of acceptance a person could have in the community depending on their perceived experience of being transgender.
For transmen, you had to be hypermasculine. If you weren’t, everyone (including other transmen) would write you off as “not really trans”.
This showed up in things like:
Being VERY invested in sports.
Having a major interest in cars.
High amounts of time spent at the gym working towards a strong body.
Rejection of anything considered feminine, including things like make up, colors, having longer hair, wearing “feminine” clothes, liking cats, and showing emotion.
Additionally, if you didn’t follow a specific, predetermined path in your transition, then you also weren’t considered trans.
Here is a list of required expectations for a transition to be considered “valid” by the transmasculine community (that was present online in social media) in 2015:
You had to change your name because your deadname was so abhorrent to you.
You had to be on testosterone, and if you weren’t, you had to be very upset about not being on it yet.
You had to have major dysphoria when it came to your body. The presence of anything resembling a “woman’s” chest was to be treated like the stuff of nightmares. Honestly, it was seen as a right of passage when a transmasc person was able to get top surgery in order to have a more masculine-presenting chest.
Having something like a menstrual cycle was also seen as the literal worst. To spend a week every month being reminded that you weren’t “a man” because of your body anatomy being so strongly tied to women impacted people substantially.
Additionally, there were a lot of conversations the transmasculine community had around getting a complete hysterectomy as a part of transitioning. Specifically, a lot of people talked from a place of fear because no one knew the long term effects of taking testosterone on the reproductive system. Rumors would catch like wildfire about how being on testosterone longer than five years would cause uterine or ovarian cancers (honestly, this still may not have been studied yet, so the validity of these claims is unknown).
Connected to the above, transmasculine folks were expected to hate the notion of conceiving a child using the anatomy they had. Pregnancy was a woman’s activity, and we as transmen were accepting womanhood if we became pregnant and chose to carry the baby to term. It was almost unheard of for transmen to get pregnant after they began transitioning.
Finally, the surgery cisgender people like to focus on: bottom surgery.
Interestingly, in the transmasculine community there is less pressure to get bottom surgery completed. This is likely because it is a lot more than one surgery, depending on what is sought out. And results are widely varied. See the below for a quick overview of surgery options for transmasculine folks:
Though bottom surgery is recognized as a personal decision for every transmasculine person, the expectation was that you had to want to have stereotypically presenting “male” genitalia. Additionally, you couldn’t just want a different set of genitals, you would have to actively be very upset by the genitals you do have.
Tied in with bottom surgery comes the use of packers and STPs (stand to pee devices) by those who can’t or don’t pursue bottom surgery. The transmasculine community would often expect one another to use (at a minimum) packers so that we could look as “male” as possible. STPs are helpful for engaging in social norms around men in bathrooms, particularly using urinals. Additionally, some are designed for use in sexual activities. Ultimately, there’s a lot of penis envy expected in the transmasculine community.
*These above experiences/expectations are absolutely valid for people experiencing them. This is in no way diminishing their experience, but a critique of the expectation that EVERY transmasculine person HAS to experience all of it, otherwise they would not be seen as trans.*
Frequently ignored, however, is the encouragement of this behavior by medical providers. Insurance companies already dictate what care anyone with insurance can receive, but when you are transgender, the only way insurance will cover any transition related medical care (if it even does) is to receive a diagnosis of “Gender Dysphoria”. And unfortunately, to get this diagnosis and have many medical professionals take you seriously when transitioning, you not only have to express that you are transgender, but you also are expected to be experiencing “clinically significant distress” about it. There are medical providers who are accepting and understanding, but many are not.
The thing I realized, though, is that so many of these norms and expectations are rooted in toxic masculinity. The transmasculine community was acting as a gatekeeper to what it meant to be a transman and rejecting people who didn’t fit in exactly by utilizing the same toxic masculinity that had been weaponized against all of us. And we were doing it to each other.
Unfortunately, I hardly saw pretty much any other representation of being transgender at that time. The result? I engaged in some very problematic behaviors for the first couple of years into my transition.
I truly believed that the only way people would believe me when I said I was transgender was to engage in these behaviors and act as the embodiment of the most harmful ways to be a man.
Some of this was rooted in my experience. Some of my family did not believe me when I said I was transgender and said I was only doing it because I had made friends with “the wrong crowd”, choosing to transition because it was trendy to do so. A reflex reaction to get them to take me seriously was to be as masculine as possible (though only in the harmful forms of masculinity). Additionally, I started going on and on about how much I hated my body and wishing violence upon it because I couldn’t change it. It was not the best time to know me.
Ultimately, it comes down to this: the transgender community faces so many barriers from so many directions. But the direction you least expect it comes from within the transgender community itself.
Especially since marriage equality was legalized in the United States in 2015, our society pushes a narrative that the LGBTQ+ community is thriving and the most accepting community to be a part of. This narrative has been encouraged by many in the community, as well. Too many people in the community refuse to acknowledge our perpetuation of systems of oppression on each other. Sexism, transphobia, racism, and ableism are rampant in our community.
Toxic masculinity contributes to quite a large portion of that.
For the transmasculine community, it can be seen pretty distinctly in how everyone expects transmasculine people to act. From the expectations of what a person has to do to physically transition to be taken seriously as trans to how they engage in the world, transmasculine folks are told in every direction how they are expected to act if they want scraps of respect towards their transition.
So why do we, as transmasculine people, perpetuate that towards each other?
The reason I even began writing this is because I’ve seen so many people entering the transmasculine community recently who have felt they cannot engage in anything that can be perceived as feminine because of how the people around them act. When they share on social media, though, there are far too many transmasculine people who enforce the notion that they have to conform under strict rules to be taken seriously as trans by those in the trans community, too.
Toxic masculinity harms everyone.
Everyone.
We, as transmen, should be better aware of that harm. For those of us who spent a decent portion of our lives being perceived as women, we should be aware of how toxic masculinity harms women. And as we navigate into more male spaces, it’s important to pay attention to how toxic masculinity hurts men, too.
Toxic masculinity is what tells us that we can’t keep having long hair.
Toxic masculinity is what tells us that dresses can’t be worn.
Toxic masculinity also tells us what music we can listen to, what hobbies we can have, who we can be friends with, what movies we are allowed to like, what foods we can eat in public, and what kinds of bonds we can have with others.
If you walk away from reading this with anything, let it be this:
There is no one way to transition. If you think you’re trans, you’re welcome in the community. If you realize that you were mistaken about being trans, that’s okay, too.
Being transgender does not mean you have to disavow every aspect of who you were pre-transition. You can like the things you like, even if it is typically associated with a different gender than you identify with.
If someone tries to restrict your access to the LGBTQ+ community, particularly the transgender community because you are perceived by them as “not trans enough”, know that there are a large number of us who would disagree. One person’s voice is not representative of the whole (just as mine is not, and plenty will disagree with what is written here). You will find your people if you continue searching.
If we were all a homogenous group in the transgender community, it would ultimately be a very sad place. Diversity helps us thrive, and pushes us to continue growing in new directions. And, if we are challenging what our society assumes is gender, we have the capacity to push for change broadly in how people understand gender simply by existing and asking questions.
It is an act of revolution to be exactly who you are and thriving.
We face enough hatred from those outside of our community. They’re already working to destory us. So why help them do it by attacking each other?
We are stronger together as a community than we will ever be as individuals.
