The Beautiful Failure of Being a Man
Trans men and cis men have more in common than you might think.
There’s a notion I run into quite frequently in trans inclusive spaces, which holds that trans men are just different from cis men in a fundamental way.
Cis men cannot possibly relate to the vulnerabilities and insecurities that trans men face, according to this argument, because they’ve never experienced gender minority status. And because trans men have been impacted by both transphobia and misogyny throughout their lives, they understand the gender-marginalized experience in ways than no cis man ever could. It is this understanding of oppression, and the intimacy with it, that supposedly makes trans men safer to be around and more trustworthy than cisgender men.
Cis men are the oppressor class, as most good feminist-thinking people understand it, and their cisness and manhood appear to work together to keep them exalted.
There is no separating those dual sources of power in how many people arrange their politics. Cis men’s identities are seen as almost anti-intersectional: all the violence and entitlement they wield falls under the single banner of man. And in effect, this point of view parcels trans men out of manhood — we’re argued to not be an oppressor class in any situation, to not belong alongside men in men’s spaces, to never be secure, to never be powerful, and to not be beholden to the standards that other gender minorities might apply to cis men.
The argument that cis men are fundamentally different and other than trans men is also used to justify the creation of things like “women & trans” spaces, and event policies that permit anyone but cis men to attend. It creates a fundamental asymmetry, this way viewing the world, because it holds that any person who was assigned female at birth is inherently more trustworthy by default, and belongs in all gender minority spaces, whereas any person who was assigned male at birth must disavow that identity repeatedly, and convincingly enough, if they are to be accepted as anything but a privileged oppressor.
The fundamental logic driving the idea is transmisogyny, in other words — and it endangers trans women immensely. It also has the side effect of completely invalidating the identities of all transgender men, and cutting us off from a large, diverse population of other men who suffer from the same tangled nexus of racism, body-shaming, fatphobia, anti-effeminacy, homophobia, ableism, and gender repression as we do.
If manhood is seen as impossible to separate from cisness, then there’s no room for trans men’s masculinity to be recognized at all — or for any other man’s marginalizations to be recognized for the ways they interplay with his gender. And that’s a big problem for anyone who believes in gender liberation.
As a gay, transgender man, I have found great healing through my relationships to cis men. From the moment I began broadcasting my own male identity into the world, cis men have approached me offering not only acceptance and warmth, but a true recognition of our shared struggles.
There was the straight, cis, Indigenous male coworker, who confided in me that he mourned the long hair he’d needed to cut in order to be seen as professional, and who feared being sexualized by his white, female boss. And the white, cis guy bowler who worriedly asked me if his shoes made his feet look too small. There was the old man in the Master Roshi cosplay at the anime convention, who chatted me up in the men’s room one of the very first times I used one, and put me at ease by asking for help with his makeup.
These are little things, but they’ve helped me to feel less alone. So many of the men I’ve encountered and built intimacy with in my lifetime as a man has offered me pearls of sensitivity — and I’ve been downright shocked at how much their fragile bits inside them resemble my own.
These men tell me they feel downright inhuman at times, despite belonging to the gendered category that theoretically possesses agency and humanity in the extreme. They do not meet the culture’s masculine standards, as it seems nobody ever fully can, and so the idea of manhood imprisons them just as much as it pretends to free them. And if they are in some way oppressed — due to white supremacy, say, or systemic ableism — they often find themselves dangling on the edge of not being seen as a man (or even a full human) at all.
By revealing to me their dating insecurities, bodily self-loathing, fear of masculine violence, and sources of repression, these men have affirmed my own tortured relationship to masculinity as in fact downright typical, and have helped me understand how gender oppression actually operates and how we all might escape its clutches.
Gender liberation, in the end, is not a war between the good group and the bad. It is a collective struggle against the laws, cultural norms, social rules, and institutional policies that restrict all people, and uses rigid gendered categories to keep us so restricted.
I think if we are going to be able to move forward in this fight, trans men must abandon the notion that other men are fundamentally the “bad” gender — and that we don’t belong to that category because of our transness. We must embrace manhood as a state of both strength and profound lostness, an immense liability as much as it is a source of gender euphoric joy, and see the frustrated wanderings of other marginalized masculine people as of a piece with our own.
And so, in the interest of helping us all find our way to each other, here are some of the major struggles that trans men and cis men have in common:
Gender Dysphoria
Many people believe the experience of having gender dysphoria is something like having a phantom limb, or seeing the wrong image in the mirror, but that’s rarely true.
For a lot of trans people, gender dysphoria feels more like a maddening insecurity about how we look and how we are being perceived that seems to know no satisfaction, a mental itching that wanders all across our bodies, our faces, down our throats, across our hairlines, and even all over our clothes. It’s the uncertain sense we are not being ourselves correctly, an out-of-placeness that makes our very being feel like it has no right to exist.
Gender dysphoria is not caused by having the “wrong” gendered brain for one’s body (the notion of “male” and “female” brains is a myth), nor is it a mental illness afflicting only trans people. Rather, gender dysphoria is a pretty sensible trauma response to society’s unrelenting and coercive gendering. All people are categorized as a gender, assigned rules, and threatened with becoming less of a person should they fail to measure up. This means that even cisgender people can experience the terror of feeling that they’ve failed to enact their gender correctly and make themselves socially acceptable— a sensation that often gets called “gender dysphoria.”
I think I first realized that cis people could be gender dysphoric when the actress Amanda Bynes revealed she had tumbled into a major depressive episode after watching herself portray a male character in the comedy She’s the Man. The disturbance she felt from watching herself enact the “wrong” gender sounded exactly like how I felt back when I looked in the mirror at myself as a “woman.”
In 2019, when Jason Derulo complained about his bulge being removed with CGI for his role in the film Cats, I was reminded once again that cis people can feel utterly, dysphorically wrong in their bodies or how they are perceived. Each year, millions of cis people spend thousands of dollars on breast augmentations, jaw implants, hair plugs, and leg-lengthening surgeries, at least in part for gender dysphoric reasons, and if you’ve worn both male and female clothing before, you’ve likely recognized how much of the tailoring of garments is done to deliberately accentuate or even manufacture the gendered features of a person’s shape.
Cis people feel ill-at-ease in their bodies, and fail to measure up to gender normative standards too. That’s how artificially constructed and harshly enforced these standards really are.
In recent years, I’ve spent a good amount of time in gay male bathhouses. When I reveal this fact, even to other gay men, I’m sometimes met with confessions of deep bodily insecurity. The idea of being nude in a highly gendered sexual marketplace often causes people’s worst gendered fears to bubble up.
“I could never go to a place like that,” one cis gay man in his forties confessed to me. “My dick is too small. Nobody would ever want to look at me.”
“I wouldn’t fit in there,” said another cis man, a short, effeminate type with long flowing hair. “They might think I was a girl and kick me out or harass me.”
These men knew, of course, that I don’t have a penis, and can be mistaken for a woman from some angles. And I had just told each of them I’d never had any problem visiting the sauna. Yet they couldn’t shake the sense that I was doing manhood correctly enough, and they were somehow doing it wrong. Despite ostensibly being “cis,” they weren’t quite sure that manhood as a category could hold them as they really were — not when they were nude and vulnerable, surrounded by their idea of the proper man.
Of course, having been in these spaces frequently, I could have told them that nobody there is the “proper” kind of man at all. There’s just regular human beings in there — with sunken chests, stretch marks, amputated limbs, multi-layered bellies, rounded backs, tiny hands, and eye patches.
Over the years, cis men have shared dozens of gender dysphoric insecurities with me, about everything from the width of their shoulders to the length of their eyelashes to the way they hold a can of beer. And in some of the sections below, we will explore more specific examples, because these sources of dysphoria mirror trans men’s almost exactly. But it’s important to establish first that the major commonality across both groups of men is our fear we’re not being men correctly at all.
Every man, I believe, grapples with the disjoint between their actual, complex human selves and the strong, built, stoic, powerful, masculine image that has been pushed upon us. And we fear living up to that standard because the consequences of that failure can be so harsh — these norms are quite violently imposed.
Failing to be a man, in some sense, is what being a man actually means. We are united in the precarity of our position, as powerful as it is.
Hair Insecurities
“I wish I could grow a full beard so that I could pass better,” says Topher, a trans guy with long hair in his mid-twenties. “But I’m realizing that cis men with long hair get misgendered often too.”
Dunmer, a bisexual trans guy, echoes this experience. “In this one chemistry class a few years ago, both me and this cis guy got called ma’am by a professor. I’m a rather effeminate/androgynous dude, but I have prominent facial hair. And the other guy who got misgendered was pretty masculine, but had long hair and was clean shaven. We both just kinda looked at each other and shrugged after it happened.”
I’ve found that numerous cis and trans men harbor deep insecurities about their hair — where it’s growing, where it doesn’t, how it looks on their bodies, and where they might be losing it. It may sound like a frivolous subject at first blush, but hair is integral to gendered perceptions, as well as how others view our sexual attractiveness, race, and age.
Trans men worry frequently about potential hair loss on T for more aesthetic reasons. I’ve known numerous trans masculine people who have avoided starting hormones because they’ve feared eventually going bald and becoming “less attractive.” And in this we aren’t alone, as 52 billion dollars gets spent each year (by people of all genders) on hair loss prevention treatments.
“It’s helped me to realize that cis men are also scared of going bald,” says Topher. “When I worry about something gender-wise, I ask myself if cis men deal with what I deal with, and it’s helped me settle into my identity more.”
Cis and trans men also share complicated feelings about body hair. Though being covered in a dark blanket of fuzz certainly reads as “masculine,” male beauty standards for the last several decades have eschewed hairiness in favor of a the glistening, action-figure-y look. Trans and cis men alike often fear that hair sprouting on their backs will make them unattractive, or that growing a “neckbeard” will be seen as slovenly. And it’s no coincidence that hairiness has often been linked with fatness and being racialized in many people’s minds — the uncontrolled proliferation of hair is often cast as animalistic, unclean, disgusting, less than human.
But some men have sought refuge from such punishing standards within the gay Bear community.
“I have never felt more welcomed in my masculinity than I have around other bears,” says Kody, a trans male bear. “I’m literally growing in my manhood — getting bigger, hairier, louder, taking up more space. While being really soft and tender too.”
Body Image Struggles & Fatphobia
Kody’s partner is Alan, a cisgender man who never felt welcome in mainstream, “circuit-y” gay spaces. Though the two men arrived into manhood on different trajectories, they tell me the exclusions they face are almost the exact same.
“I don’t fit on the standard-sized seats on the bus, and flying is almost impossible,” Alan tells me. “It’s very difficult for me to find clothing that fits, let alone anything that lets me feel sexy. When I go to most so-called ‘gay’ events, whether that’s a leather party or a Kim Petras concert, I get looks of disgust and people try not to let me pass them.”
While his partner speaks, Kody nods along enthusiastically, then reaches for his hand. “We wear the same shirt size, 5XL. I get stares. I can feel sometimes like I’m too ‘hippy’ and this and that, because I’m trans, but the real, everyday problem for both of us is fatphobia.”
Alan considers this. He says, “The world is not set up for you, if you are fat or you are trans. Spaces are literally built so you can’t move.”
Many trans men worry that our bodies are the “wrong” shape to ever be read as masculine. Sometimes, insecurity about our body curves or size can turn downright catastrophic — I’ve met numerous trans guys who refuse to even try transitioning, so certain are they that their wide hips or thick thighs will never allow them to be accepted as men. Even trans men who are multiple years into transition will sometimes express doubts that they truly count as men, because they’re still too round or soft in the supposedly “wrong” places.
But all it really takes is sitting down with a few plus-sized cis men and looking at the sheer diversity of real male bodies to reveal that our worst insecurities are distorted. Most cisgender men do not have Captain America Dorito chip body, either — and many of them feel feminized, objectified, or dehumanized because they have fat in places they’ve been told men’s bodies should not.
A few months ago, I posted a video of the perfume & cologne influencer Jeremy Fragrance dancing around in a form-fitting suit to my Instagram stories. A guy friend popped into my private messages, commenting that Jeremy looked surprisingly wide-hipped in the video, and had an almost an ‘hourglass’ shape.
“Jeremy Fragrance has trans guy swag here,” my friend said. “Don’t you think?”
I could see what my friend meant. With his high waist and hips that were about the same width as his shoulders, Jeremy’s body wasn’t a far cry from my own. The guy had what could be called a vaguely transmasculine shape— but he was also an incredibly thin, muscular, conventionally attractive cisgender man, about as close as a person can possibly be to societal ideals.
If someone like Jeremy Fragrance could be said to have a trans body, then almost any man could.
I’ve been physically intimate with men of nearly all sizes, and in appreciating the many shapes that manhood can take, my body dysphoria has been almost entirely cured. There are cisgender men with breasts as large as the double-D’s I had before my top surgery; there are guys with soft, round torsos and padded thighs of all gender assignments at birth. Men can be hippy, heavy, and luscious, their many shapes as comparable to various fruits as women’s bodies are said made to be, and just as delicious.
The straight-up-and-down male body we see on the restroom sign or in the fitness videos is nothing but a societal instruction, and it’s one most men’s bodies are far too unruly and real to follow. And these unrealistic instructions don’t exist solely for transphobic reasons — but to enforce other oppressions like white supremacy as well.
Racism
“As a Latino trans guy, being short and having a big ass is something that most of the men in my family also experience,” one reader of my blog told me. “It’s been cool to have discussions with family members about being short men (and complaining about finding pants that fit when your ass is big and your legs are short), and also it’s a good reminder that a lot of body standards just feed into white supremacy.”
Many of the reasons that trans men do feel out-of-place within men’s spaces can be traced back to simple racism. So many of the conventional standards of manhood are in fact only white (and typically wealthy white) male standards. The ideal man’s body — buff, tall, and bearded, but without too much hair or fat in the “wrong” places — is really only attainable to a subset of people of European ancestry. Nonwhite men can often relate to one another in finding this ideal unattainable, be they trans or cis.
“None of the guys I grew up with can grow beards either,” says Jun, a Japanese trans guy. “When I studied abroad in the UK, I felt dysphoric about being too small to wear men’s sizes, but at home I can easily find shoes and gloves in men’s sections that fit me, and I don’t stand out as different.”
The role of a man as his household’s sole breadwinner is also largely ahistorical and culturally irrelevant outside of white, middle-class homes within the imperial core. It’s far more common for all members of a family to share in labor and meeting a household’s financial demands — because frankly, most people aren’t wealthy enough to do anything but all pitch in. Today, there are very few legible social roles available for a man who cannot work and wield financial power over others — but a majority of men in a majority of the world cannot do that, and never have been able to.
In almost no other times or places in the world has the “Man,” as most of us now know him, existed. Throughout the world, men have been physically affectionate with one another, worn showy outfits and makeup, gestured foppishly, ornamented themselves with frilly garments, or cried — and been celebrated in their masculinity for doing so. And so, when trans men fear that they cannot perform masculinity correctly, they’re mostly insecure about not aligning themselves enough with wealthy white supremacy.
On the flip side of things, trans men of color frequently butt up against the risks of being seen as too masculine and powerful — concerns that Black cis men also know incredibly well.
“When I started passing, that’s when things got worse for me,” says Kaiah, a middle-aged Black trans man. “Strangers would put their bags in the seats next to them on the train so I couldn’t sit down. Walking home at night is more dangerous. In the gentrified neighborhood I live in, the cops will tail you.”
He tells me that when he passes other Black men on the streets these days, he’s overcome with feelings of protectiveness toward them.
“I always knew we were at risk,” he says. “But it’s a very ugly, visceral sensation when people are afraid of you.”
For Kaiah and other dark-skinned men like him, it is impossible to broadcast the correct type of masculinity no matter what they do — because they lack the privilege and power to ever be the right kind of man. The full advantages of manhood are restricted to those who are wealthy, conforming, and crucially, white.
Ableism
Cis and transgender men are also denied full access to manhood if they have disabilities. By relying upon others for support, they once again violate the dictate that a man be independent and strong.
”“I am a disabled man,” an anonymous Tumblr user explained to me. “I have that in common with cis men too. Men who are afraid they are not manly enough because they are not physically strong, because they cannot endure hard labor, or work out or play sports. Men who are ‘weak’ for being mentally ill, or autistic, or expressing their emotions at inappropriate times.”
There’s another piece to this though, beyond the fear of being seen as weak or in need —after all, a privileged man in a patriarchal society typically needs multiple women to manage his home, feeding, dress, hygiene, and personal affairs, and will be utterly incapable of handling such duties himself. What really gets a disabled man un-manned and un-personed so severely is his vulnerability, and the fact he can’t wield power over others (especially women) in the ways men are typically expected to.
My friend Trans.Peaks puts it this way, “Patriarchy punishes men for failing to be men. And being a man is usually defined as oppressing women. Men that can’t do this, that can’t oppress women, are feminized and pushed into a lower class.”
I’ve occupied many disability justice spaces over the years that have included both cisgender and transgender men, and I’ve seen how some of these dynamics play out.
On the one hand, disabled men who depend upon their wives or mothers for daily care are feminized and objectified by the rest of the world — passed over, sneered at, and talked down to, if they are even addressed at all. Many of them have been sexually harassed or assaulted by other men, in locker rooms and classrooms, and they’re usually unable to access the physical power or financial status that would allow them to be respected as men.
But at the same time, disabled men who are insecure about their social position may attempt to reclaim “manhood” for themselves by harassing and exerting soft social power over women.
In one instance, a disabled male wheelchair user had to be removed from a group I was a part of, because he had a long track record of cornering female aides in elevators and cajoling them into performing sex acts for him. In Autistic self-advocacy spaces, you can find the same kind of boorish masculine entitlement as just about anywhere else: men will talk at length over women, critique how women express themselves, and undermine women for having so-called “emotional” reactions while centering their own concerns and pressuring people to date them.
It is often men who enjoy very little societal power outside of the Autistic community who seem most primed to do this. They aren’t, as a rule, traditionally masculine — they’re the soft, “nerdy” types who have been beaten for speaking with an effeminate lisp and mocked for liking My Little Pony. They possess both massive social disadvantages, and the frustrated entitlement of someone aspiring to masculinity— and these dual insecurities damage them and everyone around them.
Men do a lot of hurtful shit when they feel their manhood is precarious. And trans men are no exception.
Toxic Masculinity
“Every time I was forced to socialize with cis men peers, it felt like we were all playing a game at who can fake being the most masculine,” says Margaerys, a trans masculine person. “And I was not interested in participating. But I could tell they would all be a lot happier if they unmasked the bravado and incessant sexist commentary of our woman peers.”
One of the major ways that cis men signal belonging to one another is by putting on an amplified ‘masculine’ act. Beyond the antics of playing physically tough with one another or talking about gaming and sports, a great deal of this ritual relies upon disparaging women — or disparaging one another by comparing them to women.
Colin, a gay cisgender man with multiple disabilities, says he was often made the focus of such sexually charged performances. “As a young man, I’d get shoved around a lot. And then it was guys making jokes about me sucking dick, or getting assaulted and wanting it. At times the veiled threats became physical reality.”
Colin learned to cope with this barrage of insults and violence by withdrawing into himself — never speaking or moving a muscle in a way that would flag him as powerless, feminine, or easy prey.
“I sucked it all up inside,” he drops his voice into a lower tone that sounds practiced and restrained. “Don’t give them anything to work with. Nothing to see here, just a normal guy.” To preserve his safety and humanity, he was forced to hide all that was feminine about himself. But, he says, that also has meant giving the people that he loves very little of himself as well.
Once I started being read consistently as a guy, I instinctively started shielding myself behind inhibited masculinity somewhat like Colin. I could feel people’s eyes on me when I made a limp wristed gesture, or leaned against a table with my back arched, so I stopped myself from moving my body in those ways. Instead, I made my face stern and scowling, and did not look or speak to anyone I didn’t know.
I sometimes talk about this version of me as my “straightsona.” Straight Devon is nearly featureless, and chronically depressed. He answers questions curtly, and does not engage with strangers. He can’t relax enough on the dance floor to do anything but stomp and nod his head, and his (tiny) hands are forever hidden in his pockets. He doesn’t care about or enjoy anything.
I hate being Straight Devon — and I hate that some straight men actually fall for the act, and try bonding with me by talking about the women they are fucking, or trying to fuck, or the bitch that’s divorcing them and the accusations her daughter made against him. Once, I got into a Lyft and sheepishly confessed to the driver that I was on the way to watch Rupaul’s Drag Race in a bar, using my sad little Straight Devon voice. The driver thought I was a straight man talking about watching literal drag racing, and began a long diatribe about the multiple families he had started with multiple women who had no idea about one another, and the long drives he had to take between their homes.
When he tried showing me pictures of the women he was victimizing, I had to actually stifle the self-protective instinct to play along. I made sure to express disapproval, but not so much disapproval that I stopped being seen as an acceptable straight man and risked getting thrown out of the car or worse.
Though few of us readily admit it, trans men are socialized to engage in the exact same aggressive, sexist posturing all other men do. No matter what we were labeled as at birth, and no matter how we were raised, we noticed how manhood was defined by the culture surrounding us. We observed the actions of our fathers, uncles, brothers, and male friends. Perhaps we emulated the boys we knew, and delighted in being told we were not like other girls. Like everyone else, we heard the music made by abusers and child predators on the radio, and watched films whose directors and producers harassed actresses on set.
We inhabited a world that held men’s desires as central — and said that if you didn’t want to aggress against others, you weren’t really a man. As virtually all people are, we were gender socialized to believe in a binary that objectifies women and exalts men — and we show that cultural training in how we relate to others, just as much as any other man does.
“Female Socialization” is a Transphobic Myth
This piece was originally published to Medium on August 2, 2021. Why I’m migrating my Medium archive to Substack.
This means, of course, that we are as capable of being predatory as any person — and in fact, we have numerous social incentives to do so. Trans men often teach one another to “pass” better by consuming a lot of public space without concern for others, cutting women off in conversation, or sexually initiating without concern for others’ limits.
One trans man who messaged me anonymously put it this way:
“I really, really hurt people, and I did it as men are encouraged to do, and as they are rewarded for doing. I found affirmation in hurting people, and it is so fucking easy to do this without even really thinking of it because it’s the entire culture you’ve come up in.
I’m not even talking like, obvious cases here like physical domestic abuse & intentional date rape. There are so many subtle boundary erosions, there’s weird gray areas around drugs & alcohol, there’s attitudes and expectations in established relationships, there’s the potential to exploit community for personal gain. There are partners who will fear you, and freeze and fawn and will not tell you no.”
Many trans men feel that cannot possibly wield male privilege, because they constantly risk ostracism, brutalization, and sexual assaulted for failing to be the right kind of man. But that fear is one we share with numerous queer, gender-nonconforming, and marginalized men. We each try to protect ourselves from abuse and violence by lashing out from behind our protective masculine shields — but they only keep us walled off from one another and denied tenderness and connection in the long run.
Loneliness & Disaffection
The months since Trump’s election have been marked by an ongoing conversation about the problem of male loneliness — and the debate about whether it is truly a problem.
Young men have moved toward the far right in sizeable numbers, and some liberal feminists have suggested that the solution to this is for women to impose a sex strike against them, and refuse to make any space for men in their lives. Other commentators have argued that today’s young men lack any meaningful social roles to fulfill, and that because of the economic collapse and the isolation caused by social media, their purposelessness and alienation has made them easy for hate movements to exploit.
It is true that men today are profoundly lonely and disaffected — but the social science data shows that so is just about everybody else. Researchers observe there’s been a worldwide increase in loneliness — among adolescents, young adults, elders, workers, unemployed people, women, and men.
Everyone is finding it incredibly difficult to foster healthy community ties and feel supported right now, and many different groups have coped with their despair by falling into hyper-passionate, fringe internet groups. Yet it is only the loneliness of men that gets framed as problem that must be fixed by others — and for which women are blamed, because they had the audacity to set boundaries in their personal lives.
It’s a narrative I’ve heard a few times before. In the fat liberation movement, women are the most vocal and committed activists by far. They build the support groups, write the books and blogs, host the podcasts, and organized the pool parties — only for plus-sized men to turn around and cry that nobody makes spaces for them. In the trans community, it is often trans women who put in the social labor of making and moderating the discussion groups, or maintaining the forums online — only for trans men to complain that trans women are “too visible” and no one is making enough spaces for men.
One reason that men are so inescapably lonely is that they’re not putting in the work of getting vulnerable with other people, or offering others social support. This is not the fault of women. Nor is it caused by men’s inherent evil or selfishness. No, the norms of masculinity are simply so restricting, and the range of acceptable male behavior so thin, that scores and scores of men have no concept of how to meaningfully connect.
Men have been conditioned to believe that catering to other people, anticipating their needs, providing service to them, and bearing their wounds to them is something they are not capable of, or should do. The emotional withdrawal and artificial displays of strength that protect their manhood are also what makes it impossible for anyone to get close. You can’t start a club because that would mean admitting you are lonely. You can’t be nice to someone, because then they’ll know you need them.
The only way out of this prison is mortifying — it’s by debasing yourself enough to admit you have needs, that you can never be the all-powerful, disconnected man society expected you to be.
Kaz, a gay trans man, describes the disaffection and repression of his fellow men this way:
“As I’ve spent more time with men as a man, I've noticed how common it is for them to intentionally deepen their voice, project masculinity out of either insecurity or safety concerns, and suppress anything that could be deemed effeminate.
I've noticed men trying to pretend they're not scared of walking home alone, or don't ever cry, only to break down to me later about it (feeling safer confessing to me than cis male friends).
It isn’t just trans men that are trying to “pass” as men, or only gay/bi men trying to pass as straight. Everyone’s performing all the time under the fear of constant scrutiny.”
We are united, ultimately, in the unsuccessful performance.
I actually do love being a man. I have found becoming one to be healing, connective, and beautiful. Perhaps what I like most about being a man is the inability of any of us to ever really be one.
I am most fully myself among the gay men who speak in lilting, feminine voices, and the disabled men who don’t have the strength to push open a heavy metal door. I feel safe with the men who have had their bodies groped, their hair and dress criticized, the hands on their hips beaten out of them, who cry at animal videos and can’t hold down a job. I am at home alongside the male victims, the men who are bad at being men, the men who have tried and succeeded and hated it and then tried to do good.
Conventional masculinity asks that we hand over all of our weakness — and with it, everything that allows us to love or be loved. It eats away at our needs, our unique dreams, the quirks of our bodies, our greatest fears, our squeals of happiness, and our culture — so that we might crush anyone who is still possessed of such frivolous, feminine, altogether human faults.
Every man feels the temptation to give himself over to this power, yet each of us finds that the fullness of our selves is too large for manhood to contain. In aspiring toward manhood, we are at once victims and perpetrators, frightened children and soldiers whose weapons cut just the same. To really be a man is an obligation to not do to others what has been done to us, to not lash out in our fear — to never arrive, to never fully succeed, and to be better for it.
It’s a curse, it’s a privilege. It’s a silly pantomime. It’s difficult but it’s still a hell of a lot easier than most other folks have it.
And that’s true whether you’re a cisgender or transgender man.
Huge thanks to Trans.Peaks for the lovely conversations about men’s place within trans feminism that informed this piece. And thank you to every man both trans and cis who allowed me to interview them about this topic, or shared their stories on my Tumblr.
This is an insightful and compassionate article. I absolutely agree with your conclusions about the tiny, unsustainable box of patriarchal manhood and what it does to men and those perceived as men.
I have also experienced the anti-man sentiment in queer spaces as deeply harmful. I am nonbinary and appear to most people to be a man. Sometimes I look and dress more feminine. I shapeshift between different presentations. Right now I have a full beard. I have felt significant pressure to hide/suppress my masculinity in queer spaces in order to "belong" or be seen as safe. Regardless of my identity, I have felt shunned at various points by people who assumed me to be a man, or felt fear of my masculinity. In the past I felt this sense that only by fully transitioning to womanhood and rejecting all masculinity would I be seen as safe. I don't feel safe or that I belong in "women and nonbinary/trans" only spaces, despite being nonbinary and trans. This is especially the case when I am presenting more masculine.
This isn't a pressing concern anymore as I have found my confidence in myself, and recognize that reactive harm as a result of people's trauma under patriarchy. However I do think there is a lot to be unpacked there around the sense that "male-bodied" people are fundamentally unsafe, as well as the shunning of masculinity outside of a narrow range. It seems that in many spaces, masculinity is only allowable (and desirable) when performed by butches and more androgynous transmasc folks. Whereas when I (tall nonbinary amab, I know you disagree with that label but it matters to how people perceive and treat me) and more masculine/"passing" transmasc people present masculine it is seen as dangerous or somehow not queer.
Wow, I identify with this so much as a cis man. As a teenager, I was constantly thinking about how my body moved, was I doing it the right way. (Probably also due to untreated anxiety). This was a beautiful, healing read.