Trans Men/Mascs in Storytelling, Part One (8) We are Losing our Lesbians

 

“I glance at the mirror to see if I have become a monster. Just me looking back at me.” - Leslie Feinberg, Journal of a Transsexual, 1980.

We live in a world that does not recognize the fluidity of identity, or how identity can be heavily impacted by community and political ideology. This series would not be complete without talking about lesbianism and relationship between lesbian and trans community, and the bastardization of lesbian community to exclude trans people by TERFS.

Journal of a Transsexual is a personal account of experiences published by Leslie Feinberg (he/him in trans spaces, ze/hir neutrally, and she/her in cishet society), it was, as far as I can find, the first piece of writing he published on transness and discussing his experience being trans. While his story is often read as a detrans one, he referred to himself as a transsexual just as much as he did a butch lesbian up until his death. The account is full of heartbreaking accounts of harassment, assault, his being rejected from jobs, his trying to live as a woman after transitioning into a man and the distrust, scrutiny and cruelty from people around him in response to that. Even here, while he describes his identity much differently than he did later in life, he wrote this to show support for people who want to transition, arguing that everyone ought to have the right to do so.

On his pronouns, and identity, it is important to let him speak for himself:

“…For me, pronouns are always placed within context. I am female-bodied, I am a butch lesbian, a transgender lesbian - referring to me as ‘she/her’ is appropriate, particularly in a non-trans setting in which referring to me as ‘he’ would appear to resolve the social contradiction between my birth sex and gender expression and render my transgender expression invisible. I like the gender neutral pronoun ‘ze/hir’? because it makes it impossible to hold on to gender/sex/sexuality assumptions about a person you're about to meet or you've just met. And in an all trans setting, referring to me as ‘he/him’? honors my gender expression in the same way that referring to my sister drag queens as ‘she/her’? does.”  -Leslie Feinberg in an interview with Jamie Tyroler (she/her), 2006 ( https://web.archive.org/web/20141123060911/http://www.campkc.com/campkc-content.php?Page_ID=225 )

Feinberg, even in essays/articles I have read from other trans people, is often referred to as she/her, which is a simplification of a complex identity and untrue of one of the most influential trans writer’s legacy. Be honest, most of you reading this are trans, right? I view my work here as a trans space, I will honour Feinberg with the correct pronouns.

The quote that I pulled as the introduction to this essay is from an account where Feinberg entered the women’s restroom, presenting as a woman. The women see him and promptly leave, he then has a moment, seeing people from a demographic he once had and craves community with view him as untrustworthy– it makes him wonder if he’s turned into a monster.

In my essay expanding on Bhatt’s theories around the oppression transmasculine people face, I detail how due to the perception of womanhood being “corrupted” by transition, it causes transmasculine people broadly to relate to the feeling of turning into a monster– this is especially true for transmasculine people who have been harmed by men.

Journal of a Transsexual is commonly viewed as a precursor to the ever influential book Stone Butch Blues, therefore, understanding the personal accounts here, and Feinberg’s complicated relationship with his gender and sexuality is deeply important to understanding his later work.

There comes a certain experience with being a transmasculine person who initially identified as a sapphic woman and existed in sapphic spaces. When you come out as a man to cis people engaging in the radical feminism ever present in these spaces, you will be interrogated as to “why”, “why would you want to be a man?”, “Are you sure it’s not just internalized misogyny?”. People who you once held in close community begin to see you as a gender traitor, you have to prove that you’re “not fully a man” or “not one of the bad ones” to continue to keep community with them. The goal of many will be to convince you to “return to womanhood” and at some point, something will give, something will break.

Lesbianism as an identity has a complicated history, from the radical feminism of The Furies that saw it as “the only choice a woman can make to overthrow patriarchy” to our modern TERFS who see lesbian trans women as “intruders appropriating womanhood” and trans men (regardless of sexuality) as “poor lost lesbians”. When we define womanhood, and lesbianism as an extension of womanhood, by suffering, treating it as an identity you are born into– a “pain you inherit”, we remove the agency women should have and we refuse to see a world where women aren’t oppressed.

So what exactly is lesbianism as an identity? I’ll let a lesbian answer that:

“Lesbianism is loving women as identity.

I know several trans men who are lesbians. They are not women. They are often (somewhat definitionally) nonbinary but not in the way you’re thinking. They ‘perform’ masculinity in all ways. They Do masculinity. They enjoy being men. They feel like men. But they are also, crucially, lesbians. They were part of the lesbian community and they were still accepted within it. They not only love women, they also Love Women. It’s part of who they are first. They Do lesbianism. They enjoy being lesbians. They ‘perform’ lesbianism.” - Ela Bambust (she/they), The Lesbian Gender, 2025 ( https://www.patreon.com/posts/135102237?utm_campaign=postshare_creator )

The article discusses lesbianism as beyond just being attracted to women, it describes the way lesbians love women and comparatively how it is much different from how cishet men love women. The heavy scrutiny against trans lesbians (of any gender) is ultimately harmful towards letting people express their lesbian identity and presentation in whatever way is authentic to them. The moment we put standards on how masculine or feminine you can present or act in order to “be a lesbian” is the moment we begin to take rhetoric from TERFS.

Once more, from Bambust:

“You can be a lesbian if you want to.

I know people who do not identify as women. It doesn’t feel correct for them. They can’t, for whatever reason, transition. They feel trapped within their masculinity, feel it makes them complicit in unimaginable violence and oppression, and feel undeserving of leaving it. ‘I am a man, I am an oppressor, I do not deserve womanhood.’

I’ve heard this referred to as The Trans Woman’s Original Sin. By being born into masculinity, by being assigned male at birth, you must spend the rest of your life paying reparations, and you have to do that from within manhood.

Telling these people that they can be a woman if they want to is a lot like telling someone in a shitty relationship who doesn’t realize it’s a shitty relationship that they can just leave if they’re not happy. It’s true but that doesn’t make it easy, and it doesn’t make them receptive.

But I will argue that many of these people have already been lesbians.” - Ela Bambust, 2025.

I argue that scrutinizing what sorts of trans people are and aren’t allowed to be lesbians causes isolation for people who would otherwise find or retain community. To pull back an earlier thread, when faced with the threat of losing community, you will be driven to rash decisions. If you are too butch and to any metric identify with masculinity and desire to transition as such, there is only so far that you can go before it is “too far”– before you become a monster. Accepting trans lesbians and letting them transition however they need to whilst not denying them community broadly leads to more bodily autonomy for everyone.

Transmasculine lesbians to many seem confusing, how can one identify with maleness to any degree while being a lesbian? Perhaps we should let a transmasc lesbian explain himself:

“To me, being trans masculine means letting previously hidden parts of me run wild. It means being the dad friend, daydreaming about my eventual sea-horse-themed baby shower, and eagerly anticipating the time in my life that I’ll be celebrated on Father’s Day. 

Being butch is a similar but different feeling. It’s the same warm embrace of masculinity, while at the same time relishing in the butch/femme dynamic my girlfriend and I share. It’s finding euphoria in a carabiner of keys dangling from my belt loop and not criticizing the way my unbound chest looks in a tank top and flannel.

In identifying as a butch he/him lesbian, I sometimes run into TERFs. These are ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminists’ that think nonbinary and trans masculine people cannot be lesbians because they aren’t woman. I’ve had folks tell me that I shouldn’t be on dating platforms like HER because my pronouns and overlapping trans masculine identity isn’t what they’re looking for and makes them uncomfortable. To that, I say, swipe left if you can’t handle it.” Anabelle Weissinger (he/him), I identify as both transmasculine & a butch lesbian. Here’s why those aren’t the same., 2023 ( https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/12/i-identify-as-both-trans-masculine-a-butch-lesbian-heres-why-those-arent-the-same/ )

The rhetoric that “transmasc lesbians are forcing REAL lesbians to date them” very much echoes that of how TERFS talk about trans women. The idea that being authentic with your gender and sexuality is a pipeline to “being a danger to women and children” is a long held homophobic and transphobic belief, and we would be fools to believe that the queer community doesn’t turn this rhetoric onto “the bad queers”.

Our own are vulnerable to TERF rhetoric, the danger is its ability to corrupt well meaning queer people. When I thought I was a sapphic woman, I sought out lesbian and bisexual Youtubers as a means to find community and understanding. A particularly popular one when I was about seventeen to nineteen was Arielle Scarcella (she/her). I used to watch just about every video she put out, and unfortunately, you’re just going to have to trust me for much of this recollection, as she deleted many of her old videos.

Shortly after I came out as a trans man, and was still exploring my sexuality, she made a series of videos called “Trans Guy Week”, a video every day featuring a young trans man and discussing relevant topics. In particular I recall one of these videos featuring Alex Bertie (he/him) and another featuring Ryan Cassata (he/him). I recall Bertie discussing what it might be like to date a trans man, saying that the average trans man might not be well off financially. In the video with Cassata, Scarcella argued that trans men should have “vagina pride” as there are more nerve endings in vaginas– as though we should prioritize being a good sex partner over alleviating our dysphoria.

When Elliot Page (he/they) came out as trans in 2020, Scarcella was quick to engage in “lost lesbian” rhetoric, mourning “another lesbian being lost to trans ideology”. In a video where she interviewed a detrans lesbian she claimed:

“The reason I personally want to get involved in this conversation more is because most of the detransitioners are also female and most of them are lesbians.” - Arielle Scarcella, Detransition Lesbian: “It Was a Mistake” @ 2:46, 2020 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1bp6erhtCE )

We must note that the detrans lesbian who Arielle interviews has deleted their Youtube channel, hence why I am unsure as to an update of their identity and pronouns and will not name them. It is important to mention that the sentiments they express in this interview are “This was a necessary step for me [transition] but it is not who I am” and “I regret some of it, not all of it” also “I am not a lesbian, I’m bisexual, attracted to women and trans men” heavily implying that while at the time of this interview, this person was identifying as butch but did not view their trans experience as “damaging” or as something they “100% regret” and with their Youtube and personal videos on being detrans gone, I think it is important to view this with nuance and not assume they stand by everything they said here, as if that was so, they likely would not have deleted all of their videos. Arielle frames this in the title as more about regret than it actually is and uses this testimony to back her incorrect view that “more young girls are transitioning now than boys and that most of them are confused lesbians”

Julia Serano (she/her) debunks the idea pushed by Littman and her unreliable study that “more young girls are transitioning and regretting it”:

“With regards to those clinics, several have reported a significant increase in the number of AFAB adolescents seeking trans-related care over the last decade. Indeed, if you’ve seen statistics about ‘the rise of young girls identifying as trans,’ they are invariably citing these clinic-specific reports. In my ratio-shift essay, I highlighted one these reports (de Graaf et al., 2018) that framed this increase as part of a greater overall dynamic, wherein children referred to their gender clinic during the ages of 3–9 were disproportionately AMAB, whereas during the ages of 10–12 they were disproportionately AFAB. Their hypothesis (which jibes with my own writings about traditional sexism and transmisogyny) is that younger kids are often brought into clinics because parents tend to be more concerned about ‘feminine boys’ than ‘masculine girls.’ In contrast, adolescents are often referred to clinics because they self-identify as trans, and transmisogyny may lead AMAB adolescents to be more reluctant to come out as such.” - Julia Serano, Lies, Damned Lies, and Transgender Statistics, 2025 ( https://juliaserano.medium.com/lies-damned-lies-and-transgender-statistics-a6cd6c6b8e26 )

Her essay is very thorough in debunking ROGD and cites many studies that prove the opposite, in many cases, of Littman’s hypothesis. There is a deep seeded fear of “losing our girls/women” a severe discomfort many feel when “a woman becomes a man”, and that fear is the basis of many of these debunked ideas. Despite the over 80% satisfaction rate of transition, these fears manifest in “feminists” aligning with people opposed to bodily autonomy for anyone that isn’t a cis het man to regender these “confused young lesbians.”

In relation to Feinberg, many treat him as a “lost lesbian” and enact this same sort of fear on him and his work when it is analysed through a transmasculine lens. You cannot search up essays and analysis in regards to his work without finding people ignoring his trans identity and arguing about who is and is not allowed to “claim his work”. The troubling nature of this is that it spits on the face of the activism he engaged with in life and how he talked about his own work.

“People who have lived very different lives have generously related to me the similarities they recognized in these pages with their own struggles—the taste of bile; the inferno of rage—transsexual men and women, heterosexual cross-dressers and bearded females, intersexual and androgynous people, bi-gender and tri-gender individuals, and many other exquisitely defined and expressed identities.” - Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues Author’s Note, 2003 ( https://www.lesliefeinberg.net/ )

He valued collectivity in activism and saw his work as for everyone, for all of us to see our experiences in. In respecting his legacy, analysing it from any trans or even cis queer perspective is valuable. I do not aim to speculate whether or not Feinberg fell under the transmasculine umbrella, I don’t believe it’s relevant. Just as it is not relevant exactly what sort of trans experience he was writing about, in the most powerful sense, he was writing about trans experiences that all of us can relate to. As discussed prior, antitransmasculinity and transmisogyny are intertwined forms of oppression, it only makes sense that we can see ourselves in each others’ experiences. To attempt to claim and push away other trans people from connecting with writing about trans liberation is to attempt to destroy the solidarity these writings were intended to give us.  

Journal of a Transsexual reminds us of how it was for our trans elders in the 80s, it shows us where we were and is a call for us to keep moving forward. We can look back on this to see how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go. Until all of us have the bodily autonomy to live authentically, until all women and marginalized genders can live without oppression, we haven’t gone far enough. It bears repeating– feminism is not feminism if it defines womanhood by suffering and treats it as though it is a locked room that no one can get in or out of. Feminism, much like lesbianism, is about loving women far beyond seeing them as objects, and wanting for them the autonomy they have been long denied, even if that means some of them realise they aren’t women.