As someone who identifies as a trans-masculine person, and a lesbian, I have often been met with scepticism and exclusion within the queer community. But do I have to abandon my own history of being as having lived as a lesbian, tomboy, and dyke? Often conversations around trans-masculinity and sexuality are dictated by heteronormative ideals, centring institutions of marriage and family. Emancipation for queer people, is defined through the means of binaristic and heteronormative presuppositions about gender and sexuality. The goal of many queer people thus becomes to assimilate into pre-existing institutions which legitimise queerness while dictating the boundaries of who can be queer. For example, they oftentimes try to mirror cis-heterosexual marriages, by emphasising traditional scripts such as monogamy, legal recognition, following religious rituals, and so on. This leads to them upholding traditional values which often are patriarchal and casteist.

Within such a framework often many queer identities are further made invisible and invalidated, seen as disruptive to the identities that are taken for granted. Such is the position that I find myself in, as a trans-masculine lesbian both within and outside the queer community.

Although historically there has been a meaningful fluid connection between trans-masculinity and lesbians, where many ‘butch’ lesbians identify as trans-masculine, popular media and the growing tendency of myopic and rigidly classifying identities often obscures the long-standing connection between the two communities. Due to this, the trans-masculine community and the lesbian community are seen as two separate and segregated spaces. Therefore, people like me are suspended in an awkward and uncomfortable position, where one is alienated from both trans-masculine and lesbian spaces. A lot of trans-masculine groups and communities are centred around heterosexual trans-men, where gender transitioning is seen as a linear progression, from “female” to “male”; where one’s manhood is accompanied and authenticated by heterosexuality. Unlike many trans-masculine people who identified as lesbians/tomboys/butch pre-transitioning, I refused to abandon my ‘lesbian’ identity post-transitioning. A negotiation that took time to flourish. Being ‘lesbian’ is often viewed as a watered-down version¹ of ‘cis-woman desiring another cis-woman’, by a cis-patriarchal lens. Most representation of lesbians in popular culture is often driven by this cis-patriarchal lens, which sexualises them for the gaze of men, leading to the invisiblisation of lesbians who are either butch, or transgender. However, what it means be a lesbian, over time has come under active transformation. It has extended its definition to include those who do not identify as a ‘cis-woman’, covering a variety of gendered expressions. Thus, coming to terms with it, involved embracing the possibility that lesbian desire can extend beyond cis-womanhood.

The discrediting of neo-identities such as non-binary by the state and the legal apparatus also complicates matters, by often holding traditionalist and assimilation viewpoints that “empathize commonality” (Baia, 2018, 1021) with the dominant, cis-heterosexual values. Such values seek for a commonality and universality in how sexuality and gender are constructed, where any particularity ought to be abandoned in the face of the state, and social mores. Therefore, issues of ‘queerness’, in the legal landscape from marriage to adoption and to succession, etc. are often viewed in relation to the normative, heterosexual understanding of kinship, and marriage. In India, queer identities, especially those that are non-binary and homosexual do not receive legal recognition, or are restricted within the boundaries of the gender binary.

Transpeople are medicalised and pathologised wherein their ‘trans-ness’ is validated by doctors, and seen as a condition that needs to be cured. This is done through the legitimisation of trans-identity and through the psychological distress of ‘gender-dysphoria’. Such an incongruence between mind, body, and feelings, is thought to be treatable/cured through medical interventions such as surgeries to affirm one’s gender, and hormonal therapy (Hendrie, 2022). However, the “curability” of gender “deviance” is mostly associated with conformity to the gender binary system, i.e. the more a trans-individual looks/acts/conforms to the gender norms dictated by social mores.

I wonder, how does one then hold contradictions and complexities that are unintelligible? Perhaps it is through this complexity that new forms of subversive acts flourish. Perhaps a refusal and resistance to dominant narratives of sexuality and gender is the way through which the community can mature.

There can be an overlap between butch and trans-masculine lesbians. Many butch lesbians identify as cis women as well. However, trans-masculine lesbians, often present as masculine in their gender identity and appearance, with or without medical intervention, even though they do not identify as men. ² Them holding on to their lesbian identity often inherently challenges multiple rigid categories such as ‘man’, ‘woman’ ‘lesbian’, or ‘queer-ness’. Their very existence, therefore, problematises sexuality and gendered expectations simultaneously.

The sociologist Max Weber (1946) asserted how every ‘scientific fulfilment’ or rather, theory, “asks to be surpassed and outdated” (138). One should read ‘theory’ as an extension of ideology itself, where one’s construction of reality is intimately linked with the ideology that is shaped by theory. That theory, which could be cultural, religious/spiritual, or scientific, propels society and hence life itself. Therefore, it becomes important for the queer community to not be too lost in holding on to ‘true’ and ‘real’ versions of sexuality and desire, but rather, leave space for ambiguity, complexity, and fluidity. Our theoretical underpinnings of sexuality, which often end up rigidly categorising sexuality and gender, need to resist doing so in order to include the lived realities of those who do not fit neatly within traditional frameworks of such classification. This is not to suggest the complete abandonment and eradication of identity, but rather it is an effort to draw attention to the importance of embracing complexity. It becomes pivotal for the community to be able to resist self-policing of identity and embrace a sense of self that is dynamic and fluid; and therefore more expansive.

The purpose of this article has been to be critical of pre-supposed assumptions around sexuality and gender that are seen as commonsensical and obvious. The view that gender-identity is rigidly defined by sexuality, and the existence of trans-masculine people, like me, identifying as lesbians is threatening to the construction of lesbianism itself, is being problematised. For masculinity has existed without men and does not need to be defined in terms of privilege and power alone. A lot of times, the retaliation against neo-gender identities within queer spaces is a product of deep-rooted transphobia which seeks to hold on to traditional gendered roles and identities.

The policing and controlling of queer identities often lead to queer people confining themselves in a prison of their own making. My identity as a trans-masculine lesbian should not be invalidating to lesbians or trans-men. Rather, it should stretch our imagination of gender and desire, revealing their instabilities and complexities. Perhaps it is within such an expansion that we can find emancipation for all.

¹The ‘Watering-down’ of lesbianism: To see lesbianism as ‘cis-woman desiring another cis-woman’, is to deny the existence and prevalence of lesbians who do not identify as cis-gender women. The Lesbian community has had a long history of inclusion of transgender and non-binary people which is often overlooked by mainstream representation of the community. However, the patriarchal lens has traditionally framed lesbianism through the confinements of what is desirable to men, therefore distorting and weaking the diversity present in the community. This is often done to make it more palatable to patriarchal-male centric mores.↩︎

² Butch and Trans-masculine Lesbians: Although both groups present in a traditionally masculine way and there can exist overlaps in their identification, a lot of times, Butch lesbians identify as cis women regardless of their masculine gender presentation. On the other hand, trans-masculine people do not identify as cis-women and choose to either socially or medically transition from their gender assigned at birth. ↩︎

References:

1. Aguila, U.D. (2008, November) Entrevista con Judith Butler y Paul B. Preciado (Interview with Judith Butler and Paul B. Preciado) Tetû
   Retrieved from: https://paroledequeer.blogspot.com/2014/09/entrevista-con-judith-butler-y-paul-b-preciado.html
2. Baia, E.J. (2018) Akin to Madmen: A Queer Critique of the Gay Rights Cases. Virginia Law Review. 104(5), 1021-63
3. Hendrie C. (2022) The Trap Of Transmedicalization: Holding Communities and Identities Hostage. Honors Journal.
   Retrieved from: https://www.colorado.edu/honorsjournal/sites/default/files/attached-files/hj2022-genderethnicstudies-hendriethetrap.pdf
4. Weber, M (1946) Science as a Vocation. In H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills (Eds.) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. (pp. 129-156) Oxford University Press.

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