persistentlyfem:

I’m not on tumblr much, but every time I do a browse lately, I’m coming across posts asserting that the practice of dating and having relationships with trans men is very, very lesbian indeed because of “history”.

this ignores the fact that our history was this way because of necessity. that many trans men adopted butch ways and lifestyles because there were no other options for them. it also ignores how their personal identities were often honoured and recognised by those close to them. within their relationships and in their intimate circles they were understood as men who had nowhere else to go, even if the broader community didn’t know this about them. this is why, when trans men began to medically transition in greater numbers, there was such a rush by the butch-fem community to protect them – we’d known all along that some of our number were trans men, and saw first hand the often common struggle they shared with butches. we had compassion and love for them on this basis and fought the lesbian community to recognise and understand the complexity of their identities. 

this shared history is important to remember and honour, but clinging to it as a fixed state that should never shift or change completely disregards the evolution and progress of the LGBTQI community over the years. trans male identity has a presence now that it didn’t before, and that has effected change as well. to ignore this change is to live in denial, anchored to the past.

times change. so should we. other traditions of the old communities were brutal fights between butches and sneering contempt towards fems. these are aspects of our history as well. should they also be held sacrosanct simply because of that?

from what I observe, most of the arguments center around physiology. that because trans men are born with bodies that are assigned female, it only makes sense that lesbians would be attracted to them. that the physical reality of their bodies – with breasts and vaginas – make them female regardless of their gender identity, and therefore lesbianism in their lovers can be upheld.

I have heard this argument countless times over twenty years. I used to believe it, as well. in the old days, you were prejudiced if you were a fem who refused to date trans men, so dogged was the insistence that the only difference was the word they used to describe themselves. and trans identity politics just weren’t the same back then.

then I actually dated trans men. 

here’s the thing: a lesbian can be attracted to a trans man based on appearances. trans men who aren’t medically transitioning often do superficially look like butches, and many have a history in our community that deepens the appearance of that connection. I am often attracted to trans men I see out on the community, at a glance anyway.

but, astonishingly enough, physiology isn’t actually sufficient to sustain attraction to another person.

I understand that for so many who are reading these claims – so many who have very little actual experience in community – these arguments seem convincing enough. they blur the distinctions of identity sufficiently that many will wonder what the difference really is. a superficial materialism is positioned as the central concern. if trans men do not ‘pass’ in heteropatriarchal society, they cannot possibly be man enough to contradict your lesbianism.

these arguments so wholly focus on the physical it’s easy to forget that the ways we conceptualise and contexualise ourselves have a huge role to play in how we relate to and interact with others, that the ways identities are constructed by society impact on the formation of our inner selves.

a trans man conceptualises and contextualises himself as a man. this impacts how he sees himself in relation to me and other women. how he positions himself in society, his attitudes and values, what he wants and desires. through actual, practical experience, I came to realise that this is what so absolutely distinguishes trans men from butches, and why I ultimately could not find satisfaction or happiness in interactions with them. they are not lesbian. they are men. their physiology is absolutely beside their psychology when it came right down to it – no matter what others might insist, I was with a man and it caused me the same discomfort, unease and distress that being with a cis man did.  as time passed, more and more fems around me – who had as readily believed physiology was the most significant contributing factor – began to echo these same feelings. we felt deceived, and confused. I have seen these arguments for history made as though fems have never had any conflict or resentment over our identities being forced to expand in this way. our attempts to resist, to counter the insistence that anatomy alone should be enough to persuade us, our own private confessions to each other, our struggles, have been almost completely erased. as always, the concerns and needs of fems take quiet second place to those holding masculine identities.

because it’s in the way that trans men understand themselves that makes them something other than butch, or masculine of center, or a dyke, or even female. it has nothing to do with their bodies. or even the way they present themselves – although that is also often distinct from butches. 

here’s the thing: trans men may share history with our community, but it’s more complex than that. there were those of us who knew they were always there, but just as many – if not more – who didn’t. or who ‘knew’, but didn’t really take it seriously. all throughout our history since the 40s there are many who have claimed to respect trans male identity and then continue to misgender and treat trans men as women – and who interpret their silence in response as complicity. trans men also hid their identities in butchness. some went their whole lives pretending to be butch, rather than a man. some were in relationships in which their manhood was never acknowledged, or shared, in which they submitted to being seen as women. there was intense hostility and suspicion towards them as ‘different’ to the other butches in some part of the community.  there was also an entire contingent of hidden trans men who successfully ‘passed’ and never came into contact with the lesbian community at all. 

a coherent, widely held construction of trans malehood is an extremely contemporary development – it simply didn’t exist in earlier decades, which also would’ve had a significant impact on how trans men understood themselves in comparison to now.

to frame our history as something that was tidy, linear and wholly contained and shared is ahistorical ignorance and incredibly misleading.

the construct of materialism that is being used to equate butches and trans men as occupying the same position in relation to other power structures is also being used to argue that lesbians should date trans men, or that it is lesbian to do so. this completely ignores the fact our attraction to others is based on so much more than physical appearance – that it is actually our personalities and identities that more truly cement attraction. and yes, the way we identify is invariably bound up in how we contexualise ourselves in society. to pretend this has no bearing on our relationships – or that it shouldn’t – is an argument for gross and unnuanced simplicity that is blatantly and immediately contradicted by our actual practices. 

a butch and a trans man may both invest in material practices that are superficially the same, but the perspective they are coming from and how they frame themselves within those practices is where the true distinction lies. and this most definitely impacts how they consequently position themselves in relation to others. this can be hard to define in words, but it is something that is keenly felt in the practice of actually dating them and is the chief contributing factor in why me and so many other fems I know no longer date trans men.

I consider it an attack on fem lesbianism – an identity I had to fight to reclaim from ‘queer femmeness’ – to insist it is lesbian practice to date and pursue relationships with trans men. it is once more an example of fem identity being trivialised, minimised and obliged to change in response to the demands of others. ‘queer femme’ as a term evolved in butch-fem community as a way for femmes to pay respect to their transitioning partners’ maleness whilst not erasing their own non-heterosexuality. to ignore THIS aspect of our history in favour of demanding that dating trans men be accepted as lesbian practice seems deliberately malicious to me. it is summarily erasing everything that trans men, queer femmes and lesbian fems have been fighting for over the last few decades in order to have our identities and experiences respected and recognised in our communities.

my fem contemporaries who still insist it is lesbian to date trans men invariably exhibit other outdated prejudices and modes of thinking, deliberately confine themselves to echo chambers in which they are rarely challenged, and are overly invested in the opinions of transmasculine people. the rest of us want our lesbianism back, the freedom to refuse men in any way eclipsing our desire restored. 

one final word: if someone’s genitalia is all you need to cement your attraction to them, then I would posit you are not only incredibly shallow, but that your standards – especially for a supposed lesbian feminist – are very, very low.