Why Are Transmen So Feminine?
I grew up believing that transgender people were just extreme homosexuals.
When it came to women who identify as men AKA “transmen”, I thought they were all super butch lesbians.
Like, I thought they were lesbians who were so masculine, they just decided to take the next step.
As it turns out, I’m not the only one who thinks of transgenderism in this way. When I came out as lesbian to my West African father, his face grew into a worrisome expression as he waved in his general crotch area.
“You’re not going to get the surgery, are you?” he asked.
“No, Dad. I’m not.”
“Oh…thank God!” he exhaled, clutching his chest with relief.
Bless his heart.
At the time, I thought it was a very ignorant question to ask, but now I’ve begun to think that he may have had a point.
Back then, transgenderism hadn’t quite blown to the proportions it has today…
So up until that point, the small minority of women who did identify as transmen, tended to be gender nonconforming lesbians who were serious about full-scale medical transition.
My very first exposure to a “transman” was through my cousin, Judith. From the time I was a little girl, Judith used to visit our family home looking like your typical androgynous lesbian. As the years went by, I hadn’t seen or heard much about her aside from rumors and family gossip about her troubled life.
Years later, at age 16, I went to visit my Aunt’s house, and Judith was there—as Alex. She looked and sounded like a more attractive version of Fonzie from Happy Days. Practically unrecognizable, Alex had made a stunning transformation. Had I not known her before, I would have never guessed that she was born female.
My next encounter with a “transman” came when I was 18 years old. I briefly dated a butch lesbian, only to discover that she was starting her transition to “become” a man.
She told me that, apart from a pending medical transition, she was also taking classes to masculinize herself—to learn how to walk and talk like a man.
All of this stuff was totally foreign to me. I was just a sweet lil’ femme in the wild, looking for some shuga!
Male swagger classes? Voice lessons?!
What in the world…
It was at that very moment that I assumed she must prefer to be called “he” but naturally, it was hard to make the switch in my mind. So I kept fucking it up and apologizing, which she was very gracious about. She never once pressed me to view her differently or change my language.
Anyway, these two lesbians were my first intimate encounters with transmen in the mid-late 2000s.
Over the next few years, I continued to see the same pattern: women who chose to identify as men, really wanted to be viewed as any other man.
Their ultimate goal was to blend in with the male population as much as possible. They strived to see themselves as men, and to be viewed by others, not as a special type of man—but as a man, period.
Women like this, often made radical changes to their appearance. And most of these women were masculine lesbians to begin with, so they had likely already been mistaken for men prior to transition. For some women, trans was the “next step” to identify as they were often perceived.
But that’s not the case today.