ou are a butch woman, you dyke.”
“How dare you co-opt our male only space?”
“You came up in my search for females, you fag.”

The last line came from a confused boy looking for girls online.  I list myself as female if it is absolutely necessary to be listed at all, not because I am female-identified, necessarily, but because I’m not male-identified.  I look like a male with my clothes on, but in one particular way, I’m still more like a female.  And I’m alright with that.

I have been on testosterone now for 6 years -- or, as it’s more commonly referred to as, “T.”  I “pass” as male full-time, without question or doubt.  And yet, because I don’t self-identify as a male, I, by my mere existence, threaten many transmen.  My refusal to identify as male scares many transmen I’ve met so much that they are pushed to going out of their way to take me down.  My identity, they feel, somehow undermines their safety.  You see, I look just like other physically transitioned (those who have undergone medical transition) transmen.  While my experience has been similar to their own, I am not like the “stealth” transmen who are not out as trans but living full-time as male and don’t disclose the trans identity.  If it can be true that I, differently self-identified, can transition the same way, then maybe male-identified, closeted transmen can be like me, but who I am is not a person those in the closet for any reason can allow themselves to be.

It isn’t as if I fuck with gender on so much of a presentation level that they can separate from me.  I don’t wear dresses or makeup – or even glitter.  I wear men’s clothes and I wear them the way most men wear them.  I don’t bind my chest, my breasts are small enough to make that unnecessary.  Without much effort, I pass exceedingly well, 100 percent of the time.  The effect of the “T” is all that society needed for me to be read as male.

To  many, I am a big scary monster.  I look like them, but underneath lies the spawn of the devil - someone who reads as male because of hormones, but doesn’t identify as a male and therefore, in the mentality of this group of people and its highly pressure-driven definitions, cannot actually be a transman.  Simply put (and it is very clear to them,) transman equals male.  What seems to baffle and miff them is the idea that in a broader sense, transman can include masculinity that is not necessarily male.  Okay, now, hold on right here.  Am I crazy, or isn’t that what FTM transgender is?  An FTM can be a man who is not male.  Doesn’t that make sense?  Well,  those who believe that I am not a transman because I am not male-identified also believe I am not trans at all, but am actually a butch woman who has arrived to steal away the experience of transmen, invade their trans-only space, and co-opt their language.  To call myself trans irritates them because they feel I’ve taken a word that I don’t rightfully own.

Without fail, the accusation is of actually being a butch, which is something I have never been -- even when I did identify as a queer woman.  On the contrary, I identify as femme, but that would just blow their minds if I even mentioned it!  In some people’s minds, identifying as femme would just make me even more of a woman, or at least, less of a man.  Traditionally feminine characteristics, be they performed outwardly or in my case, lived in my emotional experience, particularly as a partner (boyfriend,) are highly looked down upon by much of the trans-masculine community.  I’ve known quite a few who have attempted to remove themselves from anything remotely related to women, even in the most distant way, just in case whatever remained might “give them away.”  I’ve heard comments that relate to things like “if I were a girl, but I’m not so what do I know?” or “I don’t wear dresses, I’m not a cross-dresser.”  These may be valid points, but they devalue the history of living as a woman and having at least some, if strained, understanding of that social experience.  Personally, I’m no use matching eyeliner to stockings, but the fact is I never was good at that.  That doesn’t mean that I was never a woman.  But this is my experience.  Some transmen believe they were always men.  I, unlike those who identify that way, was actually a woman for a little while.  I was awkward and uncomfortable, and preferred to be a man the whole while, but a woman I was.

One of the transmen with this mentality of male-identified-only transsexualism told the genderqueer/trans group I belong to that he would like to educate me because apparently he knows how it all works.  Having written, spoken, performed, filmed, photographed, and – oh yeah,   lived, as trans obviously does not qualify me as knowledgeable on the subject.  He harassed me and humiliated me to the transmen listserv he moderates.  That group, of course, all agreed with him.  In their world, transmen get top surgery (removal of breasts to create a visibly male chest) and the idea that someone would not bind their chest before surgery, or even not get top surgery at all, is not only unfathomable, but angering as well.  Men don’t have breasts!  Well, this man does (kind of!)... (continue reading)