Why I Don’t Call Myself a “Trans Man”
Even though I am both trans and a man
If being a trans man was, let’s say, a certain kind of a shirt, it would be the right size. I’m definitely a man and definitely the transgender type, but the shirt is uncomfortable for me to wear.
I love trans men and I relate to them, I love trans manhood and it is my own. But still, sticking that little label on my forehead feels like I have been simplified for the comfort of other people, feels like I have been robbed of something fundamental to my being.
Depending on who you are, you may have already seen the image that is trying to explain the trans label as an umbrella under which all non-cis gender experiences fall going around. In the image under the bigger “transgender” umbrella, there are two smaller ones, titled “binary” and “nonbinary”. There’s also another version of it, where only half of the smaller nonbinary umbrella is under the bigger trans umbrella, to show that not all nonbinary people identify as trans.
But even the edited, more inclusive version, explains my reasoning for the discomfort I feel that I’m trying to share with you.
(Side note: You can find the image I’m talking about if you google “transgender umbrella”. I’m not attaching it here although I would like to, because I cannot for the life of me find the original source. I apologize for the inconvenience.)
If you look at the image you can see that the label “trans man” is placed under the smaller umbrella titled “binary”. This is of course because a lot of trans men’s experience of gender is simply a “man” with nothing to add, or remove, or whatever else. And don’t get me wrong, that is equally as beautiful of an experience of manhood as any other. My discomfort lies in the fact that for the vast majority of people, that experience is all they are capable of accepting the label as.
What I mean by that is that if I told someone I am a trans man, they would most likely see me as simply a man, with nothing to add and so on (assuming they wouldn’t be transphobic of course). And that is alright, good even, that is exactly what I assume at least the majority of trans men want to happen when they refer to themselves as such. I am by no means writing this as an attempt to try and change that. I am merely writing this to try and bring maybe a few new people’s attention to the fact that not all trans manhood is the same, that not all trans manhood is binary in nature.
I am a man and I call myself one, I want to be seen and treated as one.
But I don’t want the people who are close to me, the people who I want to let close or at least close enough to have the possibility to have even a glimpse of actual understanding of who I am, to only know half of the truth. And that is exactly what the label “trans man” feels like to me personally, only half of the truth. Not any less (or more) important as the other half, but still, only a half.
I am completely, a hundred percent, a man. But that isn’t all there is to it. I am also completely, a hundred percent, nonbinary. I do know about the demiboy label (which you can also see in the umbrella image I’m referencing), and it surely is something I’ve seen some people assigning to nonbinary men in online spaces against their will. I do know that someone listening to me talk about my gender could assign it to me as well. And the thing is that there is nothing wrong with the label itself, it just isn’t mine. I’m not partially a man, partially nonbinary, but both in their entirety. Being nonbinary doesn’t automatically make me as a man to be a “man, but less”, a “man-lite”, but I do share a community with people whose experience that is.
Before realizing my manhood I had known I didn’t have a gender for years.
The realization surprisingly didn’t change that, it simply added something on top of it, or maybe next to it. During the realization process I remember describing the experience as “having a dude layer on top of my genderless void”.
Later I have understood that me being a man is quite intertwined with my gay attraction to men. Like how there are lesbians whose gender is also lesbian, my gender is gay. I reclaim the f-slur to describe both my attraction as well as my gender, as well as the ideology of “liberation not assimilation” I hold.
So, that is it, that is the answer to the indirect question in the title. Minus the one thing I didn’t mention yet, which is that all of the words I use to refer to myself genderwise (man, nonbinary & nonbinary man, depending on the context) tell the listener nothing about the gender that was forced on me. I find comfort and safety in that.
This is obviously and very understandably a confusing concept to grasp for the majority of people. Although nonbinary is a large umbrella of millions of different experiences, the way it has been talked about in media has more or less portrayed it as simply a third gender, something that is Absolutely Not man or woman. And that is sadly how it is often understood, at least outside of the trans community, but too often inside of it as well.
I have gotten used to not expecting much from cis people and binary trans people in this regard. But I must say that it is a very special kind of pain to see so many of my fellow nonbinary people, especially ones who are clearly active members of our shared community, to be making and sharing informative posts with definitions that leave so many of us out. Not only those of us who are always either men or women, but also those who are both, those who are partly, those who are sometimes. I saw these kinds of posts a lot just a while ago on the International Non-Binary People’s Day on July 14, a lot of them made by nonbinary activists, for allies to share. I’m not going to lie and say that didn’t hurt. It did. We aren’t a nearly nonexistent minority inside a minority, I know because I see us all the time, and I see us everywhere. I simply wish for our existence to be aknowledged, even just by those with whom we a share a community with. You can do this easily by adding one little word to your definition. Nonbinary, as in not exclusively a man or a woman.
If you made it here and are now struggling to understand, I do have a few last things to say.
You don’t actually need to understand. And in fact, if this experience of my gender isn’t something you share or something pretty much like yours, you can’t understand. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But if complex experiences of gender you don’t share and therefore can’t truly understand happen to make you feel uncomfortable or hostile, that is something I can only from the bottom of my heart wish you to work on. For the safety of myself, for the safety of my beloveds, for the safety of my siblings.
Here’s the thing: there are a lot of experiences of gender I don’t understand, experiences that make absolutely zero sense to me. It doesn’t cause me distress, and it sure as hell doesn’t make me cause the people in question distress. You want to know my secret? I have internalized the fact that gender simply doesn’t need to make any sense, not mine or anyone elses. I can only highly recommend the same strategy to all of you, although it might not be exactly easy.
We are human beings, we want things to make sense because that way things are easy to handle and comfortable to process.
But because we are human beings, we also contain so incredibly much more than can authentically be turned into an easy to handle and comfortable format for others to consume. And I am ready to die on the hill that we should never even have to try. Not when it comes to gender, not when it comes to anything else. You shouldn’t be expected to grind yourself into small bite-sized pieces for the comfort of others, and you shouldn’t expect others to do the same for your own comfort. We don’t owe anyone to be small enough to understand, and we aren’t owed that either. Respect and aknowledgement are both possible without understanding. And so is love, so is kindness.
