Trans Bodies, Cis Power

No cis (non-trans) person should ever critique the power dynamics of a trans person’s body.

Digest that.

If you wanna talk power and privilege we need to refocus the lens, just a lil bit.

Whose gaze scrutinizes trans bodies?

Whose words shut down trans lives and possibilities for embodiment?

Whose norms dictate there can only be two sexes, two genders, two bodies, and two qualities – masculine or feminine?


I have lived thirty-four plus years struggling to carve out a place of survival for a body I feel most comfortable with. That includes thirty plus years living as a girl, tom/boy, dyke, woman, and butch, who picked up weights at age 8. That includes being degraded for touching a basketball. It includes being taunted for throwing a football. It includes being assaulted for enjoying sports at all. I literally had to fight my way through my elementary school years just so I could participate in activities I enjoyed, and it includes giving up most sports at all over my lifetime due to gender segregation.

It meant having my gender questioned, and being the subject of misogyny for developing strength, and muscularity. It meant going through high school being scrutinized as less than a girl, less than a woman, and being deemed not worthy of dating or being in the realm of possibility for desire. It meant being ridiculed for not simply being “ugly” as in fatphobia, but attacked on a daily basis psychologically, emotionally, and verbally as an adult for challenging what it means to be a man or a woman. It meant being excluded from most service jobs and employment based in feminine norms. It meant being threatened with physical assault so many times I lost count. I am lucky my shouting back has staved off attacks.

I have dated queer women with rad politics whose words have delayed my decision to embody my self wholly, by years. I have been subject to lesbian norms that fetishize breasts and possess butch bodies, all the while de-crying the terrible impact and burden on cis lives and identities of the possibility of transness. I am lucky to have created a space for myself at all, to make decisions that support my body, my health, and my wholeness.

And now, I inhabit myself fully and am told consistently that my body reminds queer women of a rapist. That being athletic and muscular is simply a facet of masculine privilege. That I am simply perpetuating male dominance and patriarchy by developing a body I feel most okay with. License is taken freely, to degrade my body, yet again. I am told I must cultivate guilt for walking through the world in this new body, and that I must wear on my sleeve and repent for on a daily basis. And, I see trans guys feeding the mill with uninformed comments repeating the degradation of my body, my choices – from guys who have not walked through the world surviving a lifetime of gender freakishness specific to a body considered too athletic, too muscular, too masculine.

There are ways to hold individuals accountable for the abusive behaviors they perpetuate without painting all masculine presenting trans people with the same brush as cis men, and with the same erasing lens that guesses at gender identity, and experience. There are ways to talk about cultivating new masculinities that disrupt traditional power dynamics, and acknowledge the huge disparity in access and privilege gained from passing as a white male without glossing over all the experiences of racism of trans men of colour that undermine their masculinity. I can’t even begin to comment on the psychic and physical violence trans women have endured around their embodiment from all facets of queer community as well as the rest of society.

Discussions can be had that challenge insight, awareness, and gentleness in ways that do not reproduce transphobic attacks on our lives and do not dichotomize gender, yet again, as masculinity vs. femininity.

I challenge us to do better.