Transgender Men Are Sexist, Too
In a recently rerun 2002 episode of This American Life: Testosterone, Alex Blumberg interviews transgender man Griffin Hansbury, who has self-injected testosterone for seven years. Griffin describes how since he has started hormone therapy, he has been called a misogynist by women. He disagrees with the term but concedes he treats women poorly. Griffin attributes his disrespect for women in the street to higher testosterone levels, but I argue that his blatant sexualization of women was always present and stemmed from a culture of anxious men who display masculinity by oppressing women.
Griffin is the same, sexist individual he was before transitioning. He at first claims that he only began to check out women after testosterone, but later, he acknowledges, “[Before transitioning,] when I would do a poetry reading, I would get up and I would read these poems about women on the street. And I was a butch dyke, and that was very cutting edge. And that was very sexy and raw.” Griffin sexualizes feminine people now, but his behavior began long before the hormones kicked in. Testosterone is a sorry excuse for his actions, which promote rape culture. The difference between his experience before and after testosterone is that now he is criticized because of his position within a group that systematically oppresses feminine individuals. Testosterone itself never makes adolescent boys “beasts,” as Griffin claims. The sexism is there regardless.
Furthermore, I counter Griffin by arguing he is misogynistic because of culture. His socially cultivated anxiety about maleness influences him to degrade women. Masterson (2014), writing about masculinity in the ancient Greco-Roman world, illustrates fragile masculinity by pointing out how every man’s action is scrutinized to maintain maleness: “Much is made of gestures and use of the voice: a constant refrain, implicit and explicit, is that gestures and voice are to be carefully cultivated so as to convey a natural masculinity. The irony of embracing artifice to reveal a natural manhood was productive of anxiety” (p. 24). Ultimately, men care so much about producing what they perceive as natural masculinity and rejecting what could be considered feminine that they create an unnatural manhood.
Griffin, too, buys into the anxiety of being emasculated and therefore reproduces toxic, artificial masculinity. As he becomes recognized as male, which occurs at the same time he takes testosterone, he adjusts not only his gestures but also his treatment of women. He says he quickly learned that there is “…stuff that [men are] not supposed to do… Men — walking down the street is a constant battle. It’s a constant contest.” Griffin thinks that he needs to act differently because he is male in order to prove himself. Even in the episode, Griffin participates in a “contest” of masculinity by joining a podcast to bond over objectifying women. It makes him feel elevated and less emasculated because in today’s society, “bro talk” is an accepted function of manhood. Yet Griffin can be a man without sexualizing strangers. A careful analysis of Griffin’s interview reveals that societal expectations of manhood and his lack of awareness — not hormones — made his masculinity fragile and subject to reproducing sexism.
This episode brought to light how transgender men and masculine people are just as susceptible to misogyny as every cisgender man. Griffin believed being trans made him immune to misogyny, when in reality, he was exposed to the same cultural expectations for manhood that have shaped other, sexist men. Instead of passively adjusting to a male environment, transmasculine people must relearn how to speak to feminine people more respectfully. Misogyny is not an unavoidable, natural result of hormones — it is a product of anxiety produced by patriarchy, and it is something that all masculine people must recognize and work to eliminate.
Works Cited:
Glass, I. (Host). (2002). This American Life. (Radio). WBEZ.
Masterson, M. (2014). Studies of Ancient Masculinity. In T. K. Hubbard (Eds.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities
