Gender dysphoria is such a weird concept.
Words carry a lot of meaning, simple small signifiers, shorthands for entire concepts, he, she, each one carrying centuries of of meaning. Shorthands for the concepts of masculine and feminine. Gender dysphoria can be triggered by such a small simple word, because of the ideas those words represent. Being associated with something you know is fundamentally antithetical to who you are is distressing. Someone thinking you are the opposite of yourself is distressing.
Then theres the physical side of gender dysphoria. Feeling like your body isn't yours, like you're an alien in your own skin, feeling like something is deeply and fundamentally wrong with you. It eats away at you, it undermines your sense of self. It's hard to figure out who you are when you don't even feel like yourself. Feeling like your body is missing parts, or has parts that feel alien.
For me, I always wanted to be able to grow facial hair. I remember being in a "women's group" when I was 15 and asking if anyone else wishes they could grow a beard. No one else did. It confused me more than anything. How could someone not want a beard? While no one verbally ridiculed me for my question, I could tell that this desire of mine, to have facial hair, was viewed as an abnormality, another thing that separated me from this category of 'woman' that I was expected to fit neatly into.
And then theres the breasts. I remember when they first started growing, they hurt, they felt raw and tender for months. my mom took me to buy a training bra. I hated them, they were uncomfortable. I took to wearing tank tops with shelf bras, they were more tolerable. Then I started just wearing hoodies over a t-shirt. I thought it was acceptable enough, until I was grocery shopping with my mom in the refrigerated section and she asked if I had a bra on, because she could see my nipples. And growing up in a religious household, female nipples were assumed to be sexual, even on a 12 year old, and anything sexual must be hidden. So I had to wear bras from then on.
Periods, for me, also cause a lot of dysphoria. Its a painful reminder that I have a uterus, and all the expectations my upbringing shoveled onto the uterus. The expectation of childbirth, which I had no intentions of fulfilling at any point in my life, even as early as I can remember. I haven't had a period in half a decade, and I plan to keep that streak alive until I can get my uterus removed. But because of that, I've honestly forgotten what it's like to have a period, the feelings it brings up in me, aside from pain.
I remember first feeling phantom penis around 16 or 17. Feeling like I should have different genitalia, this feeling came up a lot during my periods too, with the painful reminders of the genitalia that I do have, and of the genitalia I felt I should have. At this point I was aware of my gender discrepancy, and identified as gender fluid.
I believe I chose this label because at the time it was necessary for me to play the role of woman frequently, and I did enjoy it at times, so I felt as if 'woman' was still a part of who I was, even though I hated playing the role of woman most of the time. It wasn't till 2 years ago that I reconciled that line of thinking with my actual identity.
I now identify as a nonbinary man. I was able to recognize the discomfort that playing the role of woman caused me, and I was in a safe enough environment to be able to drop the pretense of being a woman all together and shift to living a more comfortable and authentic life. I do still like to wear dresses and skirts and makeup, but I am not playing the role of 'woman' when I do. I like to feel pretty sometimes, but this does not make me a woman, or any less of a man.
In childhood, manliness, manhood, was presented to me in a very narrow way. Men were distant, strong, unemotional, and commanded power and respect. Womanhood was also presented in a narrow way, women were caring, meek, emotional, and were the subjects of their husbands or fathers, the only arena in which they commanded any respect was motherhood.
My feelings of kinship with men had little to do with the patriarchal ideals I had been taught. I had little interest in these systems of oppression that everyone else seemed to cling to for identity, I was only interested in them insofar as to use the rules laid out for gendered behaviour to manipulate other's perceptions of me. I wanted the attention and comradery of my male peers. I knew as a girl I could only get their attention by being attractive, by being a boy I could get their attention for my achievements, my personality, and my skills, so I attempted to embody the traits of masculinity I had been taught, while also maintaining an appropriate feminine identity when necessary.
However, no matter how hard I tried to be a boy, I would never be allowed to become one. I didn't seem to understand at the time that another core trait of masculinity is its opposition to femininity, therefore a female could never cross that gender line, at least not how and where it stood in the community I grew up in. I eventually learned to balance these two identities, feminine and masculine, to play both roles in ways that were considered socially appropriate, even while knowing one of them was the antithesis of my true identity. Having to pretend to be something other than myself was something I became quite skilled at, but it came at the cost of losing my identity. For years I didn't know who I was, what I liked, what I wanted, my personality consisted of what other liked, wanted, or expected from me.
It wasn't until I completely cut off that community, and all the expectations they had of me, that I was able to start learning who I was. Its a journey I will be on for the rest of my life, but at least now I know I'm going in the right direction.
I was always, on some level, aware of the concept of patriarchy, wether I had a name for it or not. It was an ever looming, oppressive force that kept my father from me, took my brothers from me, and held all the men I knew and dated behind bars of oppressive social rules. And I even helped to perpetuate it! I would mock my brothers for showing emotions, or acting 'feminine', I would join in on making fun of my male friends who dared to show affection towards one another by calling them 'gay' or 'women.' I followed the social guidelines for appropriate behaviour for men, and for how to correct inappropriate behaviour in other men. Mocking and ridicule were the weapons I used to keep others from ever truly getting close to me.
The few men that I dared to share the pieces of myself that I did know with were usually lovers, I succumbed to the myth that one's lover was the only safe harbour for the emotional self. I would ask and expect my male lovers to share their emotional selves with me, as I did with them, yet I would balk at expressions of negative emotions, doing my best to quickly soothe them, more to soothe my own discomfort at their displays of emotion. I desired a deep emotional connection, but had no idea how to connect. (this was, in part, also due to my autism)
I feel I have only truly begun to find myself in the past 3 years. For me, this self discovery was initiated by a very drastic and sudden change in circumstances. I had gone from a very repressive, manipulative, and confusing environment, into one of my own choosing and creation. I was, for the first time in my life, truly supported in who I was, and who I was becoming. I began to look critically and curiously at the world around me, trying to figure out how all of these isolated, intricate pieces of knowledge I had fit together to form a coherent picture of the world. I quickly realized that a lot of the pieces I had carried with me through my life were warped beyond recognition or repair. I began to disassemble my past understandings and beliefs, to look at them critically, to find the truth in them, and discard the rest, some pieces had to be discarded altogether. I began to better understand the way the world around me worked, how all the systems I had recognized, but not had names for, worked together to create the society I lived in. How Capitalism, Patriarchy, Colonialism, and Religion had manipulated the world into very narrow boxes and rulesets, so as to make the world easy and comfortable for the ones in power, the ones making the rules. I began (and continue) to learn how these systems hurt and oppressed the people it was said to protect and serve. How these systems depended on being able to oppress and dehumanize people, and depended on the majority of the working class turning a blind eye on this oppression and dehumanization. But it wasn't until recently that I came to the beginning of an understanding of how these systems made me dehumanize myself.
I realized a year or two ago that selling my labor for the means to survive was a form of dehumanization I was forced into by society, but it wasn't until recently that I began to understand my emotional repression as dehumanizing. For so long I had thought that in order to be a man I had to conform to the patriarchal archetype of manhood. I realized very quickly that this was not a standard I wanted to measure myself against, yet I struggled to find other standards against which to measure my manhood. I have no desire to hold power over others, only over myself. I want to form deep, emotional bonds with people, to have a deep, rich community I love. I have no desire to oppress others, I have a desire to raise them up. I have no desire to dominate or subjugate, I want to help people free themselves from self-repression and external oppression. The man I want to be stands defiantly against the patriarchal ideal of manhood. There is no standard against which I can measure myself, because the path I walk, the path of compassionate, loving, community driven manhood is not a well worn path, like the path of patriarchal masculinity. It is a path that me and few other men have set out to pave for others. But whenever I find a fellow traveler on this path, we are able to rejoice together in our shared journeys of love and community and healing.
I have found it to be all too common for trans men and trans masculine people to measure their masculinity against the patriarchal standards held aloft by society. They feel like in order to be considered men, they have to behave like patriarchs. Many realize eventually that these standards which they hold themselves to only hold them back from knowing themselves and others, but just as many will go their whole lives trying to be the best patriarchs they can be, embracing all the pain they are told they must endure, and inflicting pain on others, as they have been taught is their right as men.
It is because of this, that I believe that so many trans men struggle with their desire to be men, because they feel like they have to go from oppressed to oppressor to be considered a man by society. When we come out and/or start testosterone we are often spoken to and treated like traitors, cast out of our communities, and our loved ones often expect us to become violent and oppressive (because society has taught us that that is the nature of men) and they start to retreat from us, and we're expected to take all of this hurt and loneliness and anguish at being abandoned 'like men,' that is to say, repress our feelings. When we act in ways that defy the patriarchal ideals of manhood, we are told we are 'not real men,' our perceived 'femininity' is used against us as proof that we aren't the men we envision ourselves to be. (And when we do conform to the patriarchal standard of violence, oppression, and subjugation we are used as examples by those who seek to fearmonger about "confused women" and "the dangers of testosterone".) Yet we're expected to conform to patriarchal standards, or be stripped of our title of 'man.' These arguments are made by both the right and the left, by the straights and the gays, by feminists, and by conservatives. There is no safe haven where we are allowed to call ourselves 'men' without conforming to others ideas of what that should look like, even those who would call themselves our allies expect us to uphold an ideal that harms all it touches.
I think this may be why the idea of "transandrophobia" or "transmisandry" are appealing to trans men, because we do not accurately perceive the axes on which we are being oppressed. I think so many of us see and understand that we are oppressed for being trans and for being born female, and when we experience this form of oppression of our selves, we understand it as an oppression of our manhood, rather than an oppression of our self expression and refusal to capitulate to the patriarchal standards we know to be harmful.
Patriarchy seeks to oppress and suppress any opposition it has, it has convinced everyone exposed to it from birth that it is the natural law, and that any opposition to this natural law must be suppressed. It has made a police out of everyone who lives under it, we all do the work of reinforcing it, and suppressing all opposition to it. Trans men who seek to oppose the patriarchal ideal are oppressed and suppressed, not on the axis of manhood, but on the axis of our opposition to it.
I think an understanding of this is crucial if we are to continue our defiance of patriarchal masculinity. We must understand that the oppression we face for daring to defy the standards set by our societies is not an oppression of our manhood. That our manhood is our defiance, our decision to live with love and compassion, our love for and our protection of our communities and loved ones. We choose to live as men, and only we get to define what that looks like for us. Trans men, and all men, can choose to defy the oppressive force of patriarchy, but unless we do so knowingly, and in community, we are likely to fall back into the maw of patriarchal expectations.