gender

i wrote this post last July and then forgot to actually post it because it didn’t feel finished.

is it time for gender thoughts again?

my relationship with labels has been becoming increasingly more antagonistic over the past few years. i’ve noticed this especially recently, having gotten out of 2 long-term romantic relationships about 4-5 months ago. both of my ex-partners are trans. one of them, in describing himself and his partners, uses very specific language—he referred to me as transmasc. which is not necessarily inaccurate, i suppose, but i have realized since the breakup that i am actively uncomfortable being called transmasc.

and i think it's because of the expectations surrounding that label. i think that my inability to deal with expectations is behind a lot of the tension in my relationship with the concept of labels.

for whatever reason, i don't feel this way about “white.” and i think that's because whiteness is not an identity. it's a social hierarchy. there is no point in me denying my whiteness, just as there is no point in me denying my class. there are still solidarities to be drawn, bonds to be forged, but those happen despite whiteness, not because of it.

but gender and sexuality and the ways that i experience those and relate to other people… that has baggage.

when someone calls me “transmasc,” i don't feel that they are seeing me for who i am. i feel that they have dug around for the closest label that they think fits me, and they're applying it without asking if it actually fits me. the things that people who are transmasc do, the goals that they have, are often not things that i do or goals that i have. i have thought long and hard about medically transitioning: hormones, top surgery, hysterectomy. the least visible of those is the one that i am certain that i want—the removal of my uterus, the removal of the thing that makes me “fertile.” i don't want top surgery; i want people to stop assuming that breasts = woman. i don't want to go on hormones. but there is an extent to which people, particularly trans people, assume that every person who is described as transmasc or a trans man wants those things. and that's my beef with those labels. the assumptions behind the labels are simply so inaccurate to my experience that i cannot stomach being labeled in those ways.

the simplest way to describe my gender is that i am a man. but i don't look like a man, physically speaking, and my masculinity is not the version that people first think of when they think about men. i am not interested in performing cis masculinity. i do not aspire to a cisgender standard of manhood. and i think that's a pretty big divide between me and a lot of other trans people—my dysphoria behaves very differently to a lot of other people's, because my dysphoria is not comparing me to a cis standard; the discomfort and pain that i feel are because i don't understand why gender is structured in the ways that it is, and i am unable to conform to those structures.

i am trans. i am deeply trans. the framework that i use to think about gender is entirely trans. i am trans, and i am a man, and i am not a trans man.