Beyond the Binary [A Trans-Masc Becoming]
Words by Charlie Crowe (They/Them)
I want to have a conversation with you.
I want to be candid and vulnerable and honest with you.
I want to have a conversation about masculinity and I want to have a conversation with you about femininity. I don’t want to talk about the male and the female, the dichotomy of sex, although I do acknowledge a cultural overlap exists between sex and gender and that one’s expression of these is an autonomous experience.
I want to have a conversation with you about my gender identity and the space that I occupy within society and therefore gender roles within society.
I want to have a conversation with you, and I feel nervous about having it.
“Now there is, in every society, a dichotomous distinction: that between male and female. Although this dichotomy need not be phrased in terms of A and Not-A, it is particularly susceptible such phrasing. In societies through the world, everyone, "known and knowable," is either male or female, one or the other, but not both. Furthermore, there is no third possibility…”
(Salih, 2002)
I want to talk with you about this third possibility. I want to talk to you about the change I felt after my top surgery in 2018. I want to talk to you about the two selves I have become: the pre surgery self and the post surgery self. I want to have a conversation with you, and I’m hoping you’ll listen.
Do you remember, Dad and Others, when I was five years old, that I wanted to work on fire trucks? I wanted to wear the big yellow suits and the big red hat and climb big tall buildings that were intoxicated with smoke and fire. I wanted to be the first person in and the last person out. I fantasised about giving oxygen to civilians that I’ve carried out on my shoulders and to pets I’d rescued from big tall trees, all before myself. In this dream I am a hero, though never silent about the heroism. I’d beat my chest and high five my friends and accept compliments like pocket money. Do you remember, Dad and Others, when I was six, when I started playing soccer and only ever wore my soccer shorts to bed, hurtling about the house after dinner time satisfied with my little pink nipples on show, my chest beamed outwards saying look at me please, witness my masculinity. Do you remember, Dad and Others, when I was eight and I broke down one evening because you told me I had to start wearing t-shirts to bed and all I heard was that my masculinity was inappropriate. Do you remember, Dad and Others, that the theme song to The Simpsons was playing in the background and how the scent of salted peanuts wafted through the house?
“…it is necessary to point out that the terms sex and gender are not synonyms… Gender refers to the continuum of complex psychosocial self-perceptions, attitudes, and expectations people have about members of both sexes.”
(Tsend, 2008)
I was assigned the sex of female at birth and curiously, what ‘type’ of genitalia I have matters. This is because, from what I have witnessed, my appearance confuses you; the rush of eyes palpable as you scan down my body from short hair, to flat chest, to ‘birthing’ hips. Curiously yet again, it’s also important to mention that I don’t feel that I am a man and I don’t feel that I am a woman. I am neither and both. Some days I am more man than woman, and vice versa. Some days, the ones I savour most, are when I recognise that what culture sees as maleness or womanness are simply stereotypes and a list of boxes ticked, to which I tilt my cap to this recognition and place in my back pocket with my forgotten groceries list from last week.
Do you remember, Dad and Others, how my cheeks rosied when you would suggest how pretty I’d look in skirts, in blouses, how beautiful I’d be with pink nail polish and shaved legs; how I should stop shopping in the boys section because it is not right for a girl to look like a boy. Did you notice, back then, how I was intoxicatingly afraid of being called a woman, girl, female, lady, she, her. Do you remember when I told you about top surgery, not looking for support but hoping for it, and I cried behind the door of the fridge in your new house hoping the coolness would calm down my nervous system? I am privileged to have had top surgery, the scars on my chest now the centrepiece of my pride. The morning of, I had two best friends in the hospital with me to steady my nerves, my partner to hold my hand, my mother a silent champion reading in the corner of the room. Pre surgery I never wore singlets, afraid that the tightness would reveal my 10D breasts, the last line of defence before my ‘femaleness’ would be exposed. Top surgery hasn’t eliminated the fear of being misgendered, but it does make it easier to move through when it does happen. I wonder about this fear, when and why it was birthed, and the psychology of nature versus nurture. I wonder, more so, why it’s less frightening to be identified as a man; why that when this happens it gives me a rush between my legs; why it makes my chest push out like it did when I was six years old. Do you see now how and why I find enjoyment in my appearance confusing you? Do you see how it is validating that I am doing my gender expression right.
“Gender… is an identity tenuously constituted in time -an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts. Further, gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.”
(Butler, 1988)
I was fourteen when my sexuality first ran away from my body; breadcrumbs traced behind the lips of boys I’d kissed only when my friends were watching. The first time my body tried to catch up was when I was sixteen and in my first queer relationship. It was a quick hello and some distracted small talk. Then I experimented with sexual pleasure on other bodies in high school, theirs with mine. I kissed fiercely, fucked in bathrooms and carparks at lunch time between drags of cigarettes. Cum stained our knee length catholic skirts, cigarette ash on our dirty shoes. We’d hear the school bell ring, laugh, and walk opposite ways to class. I was careless with their bodies and I didn’t protect mine. Thirteen years on and I am still learning to care. I think I’ll always be learning how to do this.
My body was able to catch a small breath from running after my sexuality in the months leading up to top surgery. Seeing the date closing in where my breasts would no longer be daily baggage was so arousing that one night I handed my girlfriend the strap-on that I routinely wore, bent over on the bed and asked her to fuck me. She relished in this and turns out, so did I. I surrendered my body in a way I hadn’t been able to do before because I didn’t care how my breasts hung below me, clapping together in time with the thrusts of my girlfriend behind me; a celebration of my ability to swallow the habit of being the one who always wore a cock.
“While cisgender people may be criticized for incorrectly displaying their gender, their failure does not come at the cost of discrediting it.”
(Pugh, 2017)
I started watching porn when I left high school. I didn’t question where I was sourcing this entertainment, I didn’t question the ethics of sex work. Once I found the category I liked (a quick discovery), it became a predictable nightly event: say goodnight to my parents with a kiss on the cheek, get into bed with a glass of water on my bedside table, pull the bed sheets tight around me, plug in my headphones, and search under the ‘Reality’ category “dad fucks babysitter”, “stepdad and daughter”, “man fucks cheer squad”, “slutty teen gets punished for skipping school”. I’m sure you’re familiar. Just as I was about to climax, I’d quickly fast forward to the moment the man ejaculated on his beneficiary. Over the next few years, a shameful pattern emerged and habits were formed. From these searches, I learnt that the goal of sex was penis worship. Each video ends with a close up with the penis ejaculating on a mouth, chest, ass or back. And that was it. That was the highlight and the point of sex.
“Toxic standards of masculinity rob masc-identifying people of the right to safely express themselves as they see fit and can create pressure to play a role, rather than simply exist as themselves.”
(Weiss, 2018)
Within my pre surgery and post surgery self, I have explored role play with sexual partners, sometimes being sucked off wearing a dildo, sometimes I pretending to masturbate. Often I’ve fucked my lover from behind, a position of dominance, and have always ended this scenario needing reassurance that my actions were okay. I’m a masc presenting person. I am not a man. Yet, it is equally important that I acknowledge my role as someone who engages in mostly masc/femme sexual dynamics to deconstruct toxic masculinity behaviour. I am still learning to care, and I’m still learning, or rather unlearning, habits of toxic masculinity.
Since becoming my post top surgery self, the need to fulfil the criteria of masculinity has lessened. I still watch and enjoy the same porn, but now I pay for it. I still engage in power dynamics during sex, but I am more willing and able to play the submissive role. I still pay for meals and drinks on dates, but I don’t question my perception as being the ‘provider’ if I can’t financially do this. I still want to be a hero, but I recognise that you don’t need me to save you. Since surgery, my sense of masculinity has heightened because I am less quickly assumed as a woman. Thus, the necessity to overcompensate by demonstrating traits of dominance founded by the necessity to prove masculinity has become less pressing. Toxic masculinity is a denial of femininity within the self, and for me, overcoming this concept was recognising that I could embrace the feminine parts of myself too; that being feminine no longer means I will be seen as a woman.
I wanted to have a conversation with you, but I realised it was also a conversation I needed to have with myself.