I was having drinks with a friend the other night, and as often seems to be the case with lesbians these days, we fell into a discussion about the relative prevalence of trans men now as compared to, say, 10 or 15 years ago. 

My friend’s question was: why now?  Why are there so many trans men, particularly young ones, at this moment in time?  My first response was a version of the “backlog” argument I made a few years ago on this blog: trans men have always been around; it’s just that a more extensive physical transition was less available until recently, so many of them chose to live as butch lesbians.  My friend didn’t buy it.  Her arguments were: (1) It’s still expensive to transition, so it’s not like it’s that “available” now compared to 10 years ago, and (2) There have always been people born as women who identified as men and lived as men.  

​She’s right about both, I suppose--although I'm certain that hormones, trans-positive therapists, etc., are a lot more prevalent than they used to be.  (Maybe are we wrong and there aren't more trans men, just more trans visibility?  But I don't think we're wrong.)

Or, perhaps it is not about scientific or hormonal or surgical availability; perhaps it is about cultural availability.  Perhaps it used to be the case that someone born a woman who identified as masculine didn’t used to have models for what a transition was like, or a community that would be accepting, or—and this is crucial—the internet as a trove of resources and potential connections.  Perhaps this lack of “cultural availability” made it more difficult, because even though transitioning is hard now, maybe it was a lot more isolating back then.  I feel like it had to have been.  So I guess that's still a "backlog" argument, but a different kind of backlog argument.

Another possible explanation is that there has been a resurgence of gender essentialism—maybe it just seems way more comfortable and plausible to live as a gender-conforming man than as a gender nonconforming woman.  As my friend told me, “Lesbians have never been in fashion.”  True enough (although we have our flashes of hip visibility every now and again—see, e.g., Rachel Maddow on the cover of Rolling Stone).  But it’s not like trans men are “in fashion” in a mainstream sense either—I’m hard-pressed to think of trans men with Maddow-level visibility.  Then again, trans men are men, and often pass as cis men to everyone around them—and men have always been in fashion.  So maybe if you don’t have a strong sense that you were born in the wrong body (I know that many people do—I’m talking about those who don’t), but you know you’re masculine, it’s psychologically more comfortable to be a guy.  

I don’t know.  I don’t have a good answer to my friend’s question, and I thought it was kind of an uninteresting question in the moment (duh—the backlog thing + scientific advances). But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a good question.  Why now?  ​​

I'm writing this post to help me think through a reaction I've felt recently.  I don't fully understand it, so bear with me.  I've written a bunch about trans issues in the past--for example, explaining how dysphoria can be experienced by non-trans people, the differences between butch women and trans men, discussing some infuriating anti-trans sentiments in the lesbian community and the tension between butch women and trans men, and giving advice to a reader trying to figure out whether he or she was trans.  I'm interested in trans issues not only because equality and respect for trans individuals is fundamentally important to the queer community at large, but also because understanding people's transphobic impulses can tell us a great deal about how we understand sex and gender.

So here's what's been bothering me.  Lately, I've met a number of people who identify as butch women (and sometimes, but not always, as genderqueer), and who exclusively use feminine pronouns (she, her, hers), and who also modify their bodies in various ways consistent with popular understandings of masculinity: specifically, taking moderate amounts of testosterone, which (particularly if paired with certain kinds of physical activity) can result in major masculinization of the jawline/shoulders/etc.  So as a result, many of these women look way more "masculine" than a woman who does not take supplemental testosterone.  The fact that this is a trend does not bother me; people should be able to do whatever they want with their bodies.  What bothers me is my own reaction.  There's a little piece of me that feels like they are "cheating" or "having it both ways" by taking testosterone but not being trans.  My internal reaction is super disturbing to me, because on an intellectual and spiritual level, there is literally no reason for me to feel even a little bit uncomfortable!  It makes no sense.  My own reaction is intolerant, wrong, and inconsistent with my values.

So here's what I think is going on.  On most people's idea of what a "woman" is, I am pretty far on the masculine end of the spectrum.  I like being a masculine woman; it is who I am.  And I would like to think that my satisfaction with my own identity is wholly internal.  But, of course, this is impossible; we are social animals, after all.  When I see a trans man, I am not "threatened" or bothered in the least, even viscerally. He's in a different category from me.  He is a man.  But the women I am describing take male hormones and identify as women.  They put themselves in the same category as me: masculine woman.  But since they are taking testosterone and making their bodies and presentations more masculine, I feel less masculine in comparison to other people in my "masculine women" category.  Maybe my discomfort comes from this perceived threat to my masculinity.  If so, this is interesting but disturbing, in part because I like to think of my own identity as self-contained--as stemming from me, not from my relationship to the rest of society.  Except, of course, that I don't exist in a vacuum.

As you can tell, I haven't thought this through completely, but I wonder if anyone else has felt anything like this. I talk to butch women occasionally who say that they feel "pressure" to transition.  I can honestly say that no one has ever pressured me to become trans (although occasionally people assume that I must be "at least thinking about it," since so many of the masculine women they used to know have become men). There is not much personal allure for me in the idea of existing as a man.  I like being a woman.  But I guess I also like being a masculine one, and I guess that that masculinity is more precarious than I would sometimes like to acknowledge.

First off: Caitlyn Jenner is a brave human being.  Anyone who has the courage to come out as something different--as something that others make fun of or ridicule or malign is brave.  It takes courage to be yourself whenever "yourself" isn't what most other people are.  

I've been increasingly bothered by the rhetoric surrounding Jenner's coming out, and about the precise nature of the ostensibly supportive comments I've been reading and hearing.  The ones that bother me most have come from well-meaning straight women in the public eye who talk about how beautiful Caitlyn is (true) and how courageous she is (also true), and who show a sudden empathy for the plight of all trans people (by which, frankly, they tend to mean trans women).   (Sidenote: I'm going to use the term "straight women" in this post to refer to a particular kind of straight woman that tends to: (1) embrace the gender binary (2) but support gay rights (3) but glare at me in the women's restroom.  You know the type.  If you're a straight woman who reads this blog all the time and doesn't look askance at butches in the restroom, please know that I'm not talking about you.)

It's not that Caitlyn Jenner doesn't deserve kudos and support--she certainly does!   But a significant chunk of the mainstream support I've seen seems to totally embrace gender norms.  If Caitlyn looked like, say, Rachel Maddow, I daresay that she would have fewer straight female supporters talking on podcasts and posting on Facebook pages about much they love and support her.   Nor, I suspect, would she have graced the cover of Vanity Fair.  I do not think Bruce Jenner coming out as a woman is the big draw.  I think the big draw is Bruce Jenner coming out as a woman of a certain kind--as a woman who embraces the type of femininity that fits neatly into the existing gender binary with which people are comfortable.  I don't think they're thinking, "Wow, this really complicates how I think about gender!"  I think they're thinking, "Wow, this gorgeous woman was trapped in a man's body!"

As a New York Times article astutely pointed out the other day, the brain-body distinction is not so clear. Here's an excerpt:

While young [Bruce Jenner] was being cheered on toward a university athletic scholarship, few female athletes could dare hope for such largess since universities offered little funding for women’s sports. When Mr. Jenner looked for a job to support himself during his training for the 1976 Olympics, he didn’t have to turn to the meager “Help Wanted – Female” ads in the newspapers, and he could get by on the $9,000 he earned annually, unlike young women whose median pay was little more than half that of men. Tall and strong, he never had to figure out how to walk streets safely at night.  Those are realities that shape women’s brains.

Which is true, at least to some extent.  To say that Jenner always had a "woman's brain" doesn't take into account that she had a man's social experiences--and that our experiences powerfully shape our brain chemistry, our pocketbooks, and our self-understandings.   Acknowledging this doesn't make Jenner any less of a woman (something the article really seems to miss).  But not acknowledging this minimizes the social experiences of cis women and girls, and reduces trans identity to a simple case of "wrong brain, wrong body."  Jenner had a certain set of experiences particular to her identity, and they should be respected in and of themselves.

Frankly, I'm also jealous.  I wish that straight women would embrace women who look like me with as much openness as I see them embracing Caitlyn Jenner.   In short, I wish that straight women's newfound "acceptance" of different versions of what it means to be a woman extended more broadly in my own direction, not just in Caitlyn's--that they would show so much love and support for women whose gender presentation and ideas of womanhood don't look like their own.