When you don’t change your pronouns but They still call you “him”
Step right up and read about the Existential Crisis of a Femme-Presenting Trans Man. You think I’m making it up but I’m not.
Since the day I came out as a trans man, people have assumed that I would drop my femininity like a bad habit.
I didn’t change my pronouns, but folks started referring to me as “him.” They started calling me “bro” and “dude,” when they hadn’t used those words to identify me before. While part of me felt validated by these things, since my masculinity had been erased and ignored for most of my life, another part of me felt pressured not to stay true to myself in favor of fulfilling the expectations of others.
Oh. Oops. But isn’t that what we’re told to do? With threats and menaces if we’re slow to comply? Also, what remedy is there for this ambivalence? Would coming out as non-binary solve the problem? Or would that just lead to a different kind of feeling pressured?
I retired my impressive makeup collection for a good stretch of time, with pain and the belief that I needed to perform one specific idea of manhood now. I looked in the mirror at myself in a skirt and grimaced with internalized transmisogyny. All I could see was a “man in a skirt,” as if that’s a bad thing.
My therapist told me the feelings I’m experiencing are natural, that it’s expected for me to be questioning what my relationship to femininity would be going forward on my path to transition. At first, I feared starting hormone therapy would mean giving up all things feminine. Was I to abandon my strong female role models, like The Halliwell Sisters, Malala and Lady Gaga, growing up? Was I going to stop binge-watching Sex and the City and painting my nails? And what was I going to do with all the lipstick I’ve acquired over the course of my beauty writing career??
A large part of me feels like saying yes, perfect, go on this way, because it is the logic of the whole thing and it will eventually end up with everyone giving up the latest social contagion and pretending it never happened.
But another part sighs heavily because it wants to point out that this is what we evil TERFs keep saying: just do the stuff you like to do, wear what you like, watch what tv you like, wear lipstick or don’t according to your preference, none of it changes what sex you are and nothing about what sex you are requires you to wear lipstick or not wear lipstick.
Also, thinking about something other than your Self would go a long long way to rescuing you from these quandaries, and, bonus, it would make you a less tedious and more useful person.
I normally don’t have much sympathy for people who try to play the “it’s so confusing!” routine about trans people. You don’t have to understand the finer points of someone’s theories about gender in order to let them live their lives as they prefer, and to show some basic respect in terms of honoring their choice of name and pronoun.
But this article, yeesh. I can only imagine the people in the author’s life being legitimately confused about what Sebastian wants from them.
“I’m a trans man!”
“Ok, great, I’ll use male pronouns for you from now on. Ok, uh… bro?”
“Oh, but that doesn’t honor my femme side.”
“Dude — if I can call you that — it’s a frigging pronoun, not a biography. It can’t possibly hope to be a complete recognition of all the aspects of any person. That’s too much to ask from two or three letters.”
“But how will people know how special and unique I am? That even though I’m a man, I like Lady Gaga and Sex and the City?!”
This is the kind of language that fucks me right off. I’m a woman, albeit a boring old natal woman not a super cool transwoman, and few things make me angrier than this assumption that as a female I like pink and glitter and so on. I know I’m preaching to the choir here but goddamn it I spend more time than I want explaining that I do math for a living and like computers and video games, scuba diving and weightlifting. None of those things make me a fucking man, just because stereotypically they are “masculine”. And I’m not an aberration – I’ve met no end of other women like me.
Bollocks to the lot of it. Wear a skirt, wear lipstick, call yourself a man, go for your life. Just dont expect me to give a shit what you do, as long as you’re not hurting anyone.
The uncharitable cynic in me is wondering if this person actually wants to be a woman, but doesn’t want the inevitable cascade of shit that goes with being a woman. So instead they’re trying to grasp aspects of male priviledge, but hold onto femininity. Frankly I wouldn’t blame them at all if that is the case.
So. The foregoing is a list of things Sebastian is worried they may have to forego as a result of transitioning to a presentation that is not (socially) compatible with those things. The first thing I noticed was that this is yet another example of someonoe coming so close to understanding that these expectations are nothing more than the baseless stereotyping that feminism is trying to throw off, only to take a left turn into weirdsville at the last moment. Ah, well.
But the second thing I noticed is: why the fuck is respect for Malala (Yousufzai) on that list?? The others I get, because even though there’s no reason for it, they yet are considered ‘girly’ and therefore also non-manly… but why the fuck can’t men respect Malala? This item could have – no, should have – been the catalyst for a realisation that the whole gender expectation thing was bunk, but no.
Sebastian has transitioned to male bodied (or will soon), but wants us to know that male bodied people don’t have to match the masculine stereotypes… oh and also the term for this is a ‘femme presenting’ (trans) man.
Jesus fucking christ, no. It’s ‘man.’ Likewise ‘woman,’ and they are the two sexes. All of that other shit is the straitjacket known as gender.
“Free to Be You and Me” was supposed to be a definite step forward. Apparently it was just the social equivalent of the moon landing, something we touched once, then retreated from.
Also, ever notice how “breaking free of the binary” seems to mean “desperately clinging to the binary”?
Sebastian’s gender stereotyping is worthy of Phyllis Schlaffly, or Trump.
Good point about Malala – I overlooked that, being more focused on the towering narcissism of the whole.
But actually ze/whoever said “Was I to abandon my strong female role models, like The Halliwell Sisters, Malala and Lady Gaga, growing up?” So it’s not a matter of men not admiring Malala but of men not needing female role models…so in other words the answer to the question is yes. That’s kind of the point. If you come out as or transition to or decide to identify as a man then yes you are abandoning things that make no sense if you’re not a girl or woman – like strong female role models. Boys and men don’t need strong female role models because they have the ones who have always dominated. It’s not that cruel cis people are barring any doors, it’s that the very assumptions of the ideology that says you can “become” a man make it absurd to try to take your strong female role models with you.
I’m just trying to get my head around the idea of a woman identifying as a man who presents as a woman. That middle bit seems a tad superfluous to me.
Most unique snowflake on a block full of unique snowflakes, each with their own specific gender identifications, their own pronouns no one has ever heard before but better not get wrong, and their own idea of what it means to be a man/woman/pizza.
I have seen tifs who, now as “men”, find themselves able to enjoy the sparkly, lacy “girly” clothes and makeup that used to cause them so much anguish. In fact they go overboard with the sterotyping because now they can be drag queens.