I recently read this post by Devon Price which details its experience of coming off testosterone, and found various aspects of it quite grating. I have admired Price for several years, after reading its book Unmasking Autism which totally reframed the way I understood myself, and also occasionally reading its posts which I found comforting, since in those days I wasn't on Tumblr and encountering reasonable takes on transmisogyny from (what I then considered to be) a transmasculine perspective was rare and valuable to me. So I was surprised to read this article and feel so negative about it. (The post is 6 months old now, so I expect I may be rehashing old ground by bringing it up, but I've only been on Tumblr a few weeks and I never saw it brought up in the various other online or irl trans spaces I was in at the time so I thought I'd put my thoughts down anyway.)
The post discusses how Price had been on T for around 7 years, and fully passed as a man in public, only to to realise that it felt dysphoric from both its physical appearance and social position. It is now undergoing what it describes as a "transition/detransition/retransition/whatever the fuck you want to call it," by reverting to endogenous estrogen augmented with estrogen cream, it/its pronouns, and being "whatever the fuck I am from moment to moment, and accepting that it won’t be instantly recognizable". That's great.
My eyebrows were raised, though, by Price's saying "I think my transition has some real commonalities with those of trans women and trans feminine people," such as, "feeling joyful at being freed from the expectations of masculinity, even as it means encountering sexism a lot more," and, "though I will never be targeted by transmisogyny in the ways that my trans sisters are, I will never disavow you or my proximity to you, and I will use my new position to speak over sexist trans men and smack down other ignorant TMEs even louder." Hmm.
One has to wonder what "new position" Price is referring to here? It describes in the post itself how coming off testosterone and identifying away from manhood has reduced its social status, resulting in being treated less seriously in social situations. How could a lowering in social position empower Price to speak louder against sexist trans men? Surely another trans man is better placed to do that than any kind of non-man. The only way this statement makes sense is if Price is referring to an increased proximity to trans womanhood by virtue of the change in identity and hormone profile. I think this is reinforced by "I will never be targeted by transmisogyny in the ways that my trans sisters are," having the unspoken corollary "but I am targeted by transmisogyny all the same."
One has to read the rest of the post to find where these supposed commonalities with the transfeminine experience lie. Much space is devoted to physiological changes like skin-softening or muscle-loss (both relatable to transfems, but not really The Point) or else to improvements in vaginal health and the regaining of fertility. Talking about these could, I suppose, be construed as in poor taste given the assertion that it is a similar experience to transfems, but I am inclined to give Price the benefit of the doubt here given that it is principally a post about changes coming off T, and these are important changes, albeit ones which if anything demonstrate how different Price's "retransition" is to a transfeminine transition.
The only particular change mentioned in the post that mapped onto transfemininity was that of increasingly facing misogynystic street harassment and harassment born of the intersection between misogyny and racism, although it's hard to see how these are transfeminine experiences rather than generic experiences of those-perceived-as-women.
The real meaning, I guess, of Price's "I think my transition has some real commonalities with those of trans women and trans feminine people," comes in the list of things that haven't changed. Thicker body hair, facial hair, a lower voice, and some facial masculinisation stand out as examples that might be relatable to trans women. But whatever "commonalities" these could represent are rather hampered by the assertion that these changes are "lifelong or long-lasting, and thank god for that; I would not be as content in my funny little de-man-sition if I wasn’t holding onto some of my most coveted changes." So it is similar to a transfeminine transition in that there is e.g. facial hair, but Price does not find that facial hair distressing nor particularly want to get rid of it, nor apparently does it need to get rid of it (beyond shaving) to be read as cis female in public. As a trans woman who wants to get rid of her facial hair, who feels intense dysphoria whenever she sees it, but whose facial hair is so thick that it looks like a 5-o'clock-shadow even immediately after shaving plus a layer of concealer, I cannot say I see any commonality between Price's experience and my own.
I think, if anything, Price's post demonstrates how unlike a transfeminine transition its experience has been. One part of the post which stood out was a paragraph about Price's apparently frequent hours-long masturbation sessions. And while I think it's great that people can talk about this, and have no issues at all with Price doing so, I think if a trans woman was employed as a Professor at a prestigious educational institution like Loyola University there is no way she would risk writing something like that on her public blog. (And incidentally, I did check to see if there were any trans women employed at Loyola and could not find any, but cannot ofc be sure of that as a fact.)
Other similar examples crop up throughout the post. While living as a man, Price states that, "most hookups were surprised that I didn’t have a penis when they brought me home." Again, that's amazing, it would be great if we could all live in this world where we didn't feel that we might be murdered or imprisoned for bringing a hook-up home without disclosing our genital configurations, but some of us don't live in that world.
On another occasion Price refers to feeling free to behave again how it did as a child. "My friends and I behaved exactly like this when we were growing up. I have missed it. Being a swaying, fidgety, thousand-yard-staring girlie who eloped through public space like she owned it," it says, followed by, "as a man, I felt this kind of behavior was completely inaccessible." Given the context of this coming after Price's claim that its "retransition" gave it insight into the transfeminine experience, I find this reference to girlhood (plus the understanding that those given the social role of "man" are punished for behaving this way) to be somewhat unpleasant. "Walking down the street, I sing along to my music at full volume and feel more okay being seen," it adds. That's great, when I was 4 months into my transition I would wear a hoodie with the hood up no matter the temperature and speak as quietly as possible to avoid drawing attention to the very masculine features that Price is so proud of retaining.
A particularly odd paragraph is used to explain the increase in sexism faced by Price after no-longer identifying as a man. Price states that it had been using the term "detransition" when presenting as a man, and no-one objected. But as soon as it underwent its own "detransition" it started to get backlash from transfeminists calling it a "grifter". Price characterises this as a non-man being criticised for something a man can do with impunity, and therefore sexism. But this characterisation of transfeminists' behaviour hardly makes any sense. The idea that transfeminists are more lenient to men than they are to non-men (even those who do not face transmisogyny) is totally absurd and bears no resemblance to reality. Is it not much more likely transfeminists consider statements about "detransition" from a trans person to be far less notable or worthy of critique than statements made on that topic by a "detransitioner"? Price's framing of its "fellow trans feminists" as misogynistic is also a more-than-a-little concerning in light of everything else.
But really, all of these things I've mentioned were not the main source of my discomfort with this post. That came when Price said this:
After many years of trying, it seems to me that ‘manhood’ amounts to mostly this: harnessing the power that one holds over other people, particularly women, and repressing one’s weakness so that societal power does not go away.
And yeah, there's a lot of truth in that, but how did Price not know this already? To fully succeed at being a man requires you to oppress. Many an uncracked egg was transmisogynised in her youth because of her failure to oppress. I am one of those. Even well before puberty, I was telling off other boys for making sexist jokes or comments, the result of which was bullying, social exclusion and early-onset transmisogyny. I failed to be a man before I could even get started, because you are not allowed to fully be a man if you don't partake in the oppression of women.
Price says, "I was centered, uplifted, listened to, and respected when I was on T," but I was also "on T" (endogenously) and would've publicly referred to myself as a man for two decades and I was never centered, uplifted, listened to, or respected. Being "centered" is a two-way street: people give you the opportunity to take up space that could have been taken by someone else, and you take it. But in the taking of it you are centering yourself, you are a collaborator in your own centering. Testosterone doesn't magically give you "male privilege", it gives you the option of taking that privilege. And if you take that option rather than refusing it, even if you relent after some years, it says something about your character. To be clear, it is possible to be a man and be a good person, but that involves actively refusing to be centered and uplifted above women, it involves actively making yourself smaller so that women can be uplifted instead. And it seems it took Price a surprising amount of time to come to this realisation for a self-described transfeminist.
Devon Price is not a man, but all the same it was able to be a much better man than I ever was. It was able to reap the rewards of male privilege that I was never allowed to access. Devon Price is not a woman, but it is treated as a woman in society, and specifically treated as a cis woman, something I will also never be allowed to access. Price's article purports to demonstrate commonalities with the experiences of trans women, but what it actually shows is that society allows people like Price to choose between being treated as a man or as a woman, but society allows transfeminine people neither of those options.
Price states that after having experienced the social role of 'woman' and the social role of 'man' it now feels like neither, rather it feels like "a living object or eternal fantastical creature existing beyond the human inventions of species, sex, or age". And here is revealed what is really meant by being exempt from transmisogyny: it is the freedom to exist beyond the human invention of sex. Some of us aren't allowed to exist there: we want to, but we're banned. This post is written from the place we're banned from entering, while also telling us it knows how we feel and shares in our struggle. Thanks, Devon, that really means a lot...
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