There Is No Pressure to Transition

I'm going to say something that will likely be unpopular, and perhaps challenge some folks to stretch themselves and their own reflexivities.

Are you ready? Wait for it.... "There is no pressure to transition."

Still listening? Good. Allow me to explain. It is a very simple argument, and it goes something like this:

The lack of validation, affirmation, visibility, desire, congruence, acceptance and anything else you might feel as a butch or masculine identified person, is just that. It is completely valid in and of itself. This experience has nothing to do with transmen, or those who have taken steps to live congruently in their bodies, potential similarities in experiences and histories notwithstanding.

Now, I want you to sit with this idea. Read it over a few times if need be, and sit with it some more. What you may need to reconcile is not what you perceive to be a valorization or celebration of trans identities or expressions in some community circles vis a vis your own. What you may wish to reconcile is the internalized degradation of your own identity, as the stand alone issue. Once more, this has nothing to do with transmen/guys. To believe that there is pressure from our own community to transition in order to receive desire, recognition, and affirmation of one's queer masculinity is to falsely attribute a hierarchy of trans/masculine identities. In my opinion, there is no such hierarchy. And, I have seen that butch and/or transmasculine identities are very much sought after in our communities.

The space that trans guys have carved for themselves with various creative media and performance arts, activism and community building, is just that. Desire for trans guys in our communities, is just that. It has nothing to do with other identities and embodiments. People in our communities are also attracted to butch, gender variant, genderqueer, genderfluid, androgynous and transmasculine gender expressions. These folks *see* you, admire you, think you're hot and want to *do* you. They *get* you and will reflect and affirm your identity back at you. Does affirmation for one identity take away from another? I don't think so. They are separate things, not dependent on one another. However, the trans liberation movement may actually serve to highlight and make visible alternate queer masculinities that have yet to receive recognition and support.

Perhaps, if the affirmation or degradation was coupled with "So when are you going to transition?" I could see a certain external pressure to be something one is not. However, this reasoning also presupposes that transitioning is a decision that anyone can make, at any time. It is to suppose that one can undertake, at a whim based in peer pressure, the action of significantly altering one's appearance and embodiment, with all the social, familial, societal, work, spiritual, relational, and some potentially unknown or ambiguous physical risks, for the sake of a "favoured aesthetic." This notion is simply ridiculous, and deeply demeaning of the process anyone may go through in order to transition. By extension, it supposes that transmen/guys are necessarily the offspring of female masculine identities deemed unliveable for the stigma and degradation directed at such identities. This line of reasoning displays a deep misunderstanding and ignorance of transsexual and transgender identities and personhood.

I have heard other butches, and also gender variant and transmasculine folks talk about the pressure they feel to transition. And while I have spent the past 9 years struggling with my own desire to embody myself in the way I feel most comfortable, I do not confuse or attribute this desire with/to pressure from the queer community to transition. I'm really not sure how someone else's transition has anything to do with my identity. What I do see as a valid pressure is the lack of feeling *seen* for one's queer masculinity, or masculinity in and of itself. And because transmen or people who are masculinizing themselves through hormone therapy or surgery can often be read more easily for their masculinity, it is certainly understandable to feel the desire to transition to receive such recognition, when one feels so obscured, erased, and de-legitimized, and has very little broader acknowledgement and celebration of their identity.

But, in recognizing a degradation of one's own identity, I feel it is crucial to separate this experience from this idea that trans male masculinity is somehow deemed as the epitomy of queer masculinity (outside of cisgendered queer/male circles).

It serves nothing to one's own process of reconciliation within themselves to attribute one's distress to the successful embodiment of another.