Transmasc / Transfem Butch Dyke Essay
Been asked multiple times why I support trans men and transmasc people as a transfem butch and... all the "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other marginalized people" and the fact that I learned to love my butch dyke self FROM trans men and transmasc people aside: I fundamentally don't get the question.
Radfem ideology even when it includes transfems and trans women is so inherently corrosive to any real understanding of transgender existences because its binary and intersexist and just... incredibly reductive.
I've been called "honorary transmasc" by people I love and adore and... guess what: I AM transmasc in the sense that my transition as a transfem butch has been so hugely informed by my struggle to allow myself to be masculine and to be butch.
When I came out and began transitioning socially and then medically taking estrogen and progesterone the societal expectation I felt was very clear: I was a woman and I was to behave and present as such. What had previously been toxic masculinity with its "be a REAL man" now became "be a REAL woman" as transfem spaces and cis society alike tried to inform me in sometimes more, sometimes less supposedly loving and gentle ways that my presentation and identity wasn't acceptable.
In order to GET on estrogen I was forced to jump through hoops, to conform to a slew of old cis white male doctors idea of what "womanhood" was supposed to look like and then after that it never stopped. I was supposed to shave my face, shave my legs, shave my chest, to be less opinionated, to be less loud, to be less visible, less present, erase myself from the public eye, to place emphasis on the "trans woman" as opposed to "trans woman", to pass and stealth and to be silent about all of it.
Many people who imparted this on me were well meaning, they sought to help me ease my gender dysphoria and to enable me to pass unnoticed among a transphobic society with less harassment but to me as a butch lesbian this all felt just as horrible as trying to be a man.
I am not a woman. I became a woman as part of my gender transition in the way that Simone de Beauvoir wrote but my relation to womanhood was always familiar yet resistant.
I was a butch, I am a butch. I was a dyke, I am a dyke. I love womanhood and it molded and shaped me but it was always by exclusion and by my resistance to societal expectations of it. The truest form of self love and embracing my identity lovingly to me has been to recognize that I am, on the most fundamental level, a woman-adjacent nonbinary masculinity. I am trans masculinity because I am trans and I am masculine. I am transfeminine because that was my path to finding peace and love and comfort in my body. An estrogenized body with all this body hair and all this masculine demeanor and its flair.
