You Don’t Have to Return to Womanhood

When there is a story we’ve heard a million times, so much that we know the beats before they happen–it becomes an archetype. While with any story the readers and listeners will interpret it differently, with an archetype there is an almost universal understanding of what is being said or explored or shown to us. If I were to tell you a story, and say it is a Mulan story, you would know exactly what I mean, and exactly what plot beats to expect.

The character of Fa Mulan is not the origin of this trope, but she is arguably one of the most famous examples. In almost every mainstream example of this kind of story, we have a girl or a woman facing some barrier that she must pretend to be a man to pass. These stories typically explore identity, sexism and sexuality, they are often ways of exploring queerness with plausible deniability.

These stories also blatantly pull from transmasculine people’s experiences, but in such a way to erase the fact that they are doing so. The maleness is a phase, a necessary step for her to rediscover herself as a woman. While Mulan is presenting as Ping we watch him struggle to fit in with the men around him and not be outed, we watch him face sexism for not being man enough until he proves himself.

You will see these beats repeated in many other examples: Blue Eye Samurai’s Mizu, Persona 4’s Naoto, Rose of Versailles’ Oscar etc…All examples of women living as men to overcome an obstacle or to reach a goal, the common sentiment around characters such as these being “they must pretend to be men because of misogyny.”

By the end of their stories, and even sometimes during them, there is a return to womanhood. Some of the examples I gave are more muddy, Mizu’s story is not finished and Oscar’s “heterosexual” relationship is very gay coded. Generally, however, they are found out by a man in an invasive way (seen naked, groped, etc…) and often end their stories presenting feminine once more and in a relationship with a man. She’s the Man, a 2006 film retelling of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will, shows Viola to be a girl that rejects femininity prior to her “pretending to be a boy.” After her return to femininity, after exploration of gender roles and presentation, she wears the debutante dress she previously despised, and is joyful at a ball she did not want to attend prior. Her becoming a debutante at the end is very telling, there is not a more feminine role she could have stepped into from being a sporty tomboy at the opening of the movie.

Ostensibly, these are girl power stories, “girls can do it too” stories that feature characters who struggle with their identities and presentation in ways that often mirror transmasculine people’s struggles and experiences. The song Reflection from Mulan, on inspection of its lyrics, is about not fitting in as a woman, being unable to be the wife that she is expected to be, and after asking “when will my reflection show who I am inside?” Our protagonist runs away and “disguises as a man.” And yet the end of the movie has her return to her prior feminine presentation, return to womanhood, and marry a man.

The regularity at which we are exposed to stories like these impacts our views on transmasculine people and on gender nonconforming women. The idea that it’s a phase or that we do it to escape the rigidity of womanhood and the oppression of misogyny are ever present and often arguments thrown at transmasculine people after coming out of the closet. Multiple real historical figures are subject to this misconstruing too, they were trans men, they lived as men or expressed the desire to do so, however they have commonly been regarded as women “pretending to be men” to access male privilege. Examples include James Barry and Mark Read. James Barry is now more commonly understood as a trans man, but Mark Read is not, despite living as a man and using a male name for most of his life.

This archetype is so pervasive it finds itself in, and played off of in stories written by trans people. In Arden Powell’s The Potion Gardner the main character, Florian, uses a magic ring to “disguise as a man” after realising he isn’t a woman (this novella also has him outed as trans by the love interest walking in on him naked). In Fern V. Bedek’s Blessing of Salmakis a supporting character, Frankie, was born as a girl, raised as a boy against her will, and then returns to being a girl (this is against her parents’ wishes, she is fairly transfeminine coded). H.A.’s The Chromatic Fantasy lightly parodies this trope as after the main character Jules makes a Faustian bargain with the devil to become a man and escape the covenant he is captured by his fellow nuns. They have him strapped to a bed and talk about how they will have to cut him up and feed him to the wolves when he (in pseudo fashion) woefully cuts in about how he will run away and about how he must pretend to be a man–that way he will never be traced back to the covenant. They fall for it and let him live, and of course he goes on to live as a man.

This archetype represents a couple things. The more common is the tendency people have to view someone as their assigned sex at birth, regardless of what that person does to transition, until they prove it enough (and what constitutes as enough shifts per person, per decade etc…) that it is appropriate to view them as how they identify. In that vein it often portrays the transition as temporary and/or “something she was forced to do.” The archetype can also represent the inner turmoil transmasculine people feel about their own identities–about whether they’re “sure they’re really a man” or “if it’s just internalised misogyny.”

In The Chromatic Fantasy there are scenes where Jules talks to himself, specifically, he talks to a cruel version of himself that spouts his insecurities back at him. One of these interactions stayed with me long after I finished the book:

“What are you even trying to do, anyway? Are you sure you aren't just traumatized by womanhood for normal reasons?”

“Why are you doing the Devil's work when he's not even here?”

Prior to this, his internalised self and he go back and forth, being cruel about how he looks, his sexuality, his bottom dysphoria (which he claims not to have but to some extent has). His internalised self also says this: “Maybe you could just be someone’s wife. Forget trying to be a man. You like men and you’re not very masculine as it is.”

These insecurities are very commonly internalised among transmasculine people, highly because they are common sentiments said to us. The archetype I have discussed thus far plays into these views, and broadly how people view us. I do not believe it to be a conscious thing, simply a matter of consistent exposure and acceptance that “of course girls want to be boys, but they are still girls at the end of the day.” Shortly after I had come out as a trans man I had multiple friends question my masculinity.

One in particular questioned why I “wanted to have long hair” and why “I wanted to be a boy and date boys.” At that point, wouldn’t it just be easier to stay a woman? I was accused of not being masculine enough, of being too attracted to men–and this is to say nothing of the fact that trans men are often seen as self hating lesbians when they’re into women. I was mostly sapphic as a woman, and in some very Feminist circles. One friend who I discussed Feminism with a lot talked about how most “transmasc and enby people are just girls who hate being girls because of misogyny” and she used her “trans phase” as partial evidence. There was a brief period where she socially transitioned and used he/him pronouns, I was supportive, and I was supportive when she said it wasn’t for her. But that only went one way.

The subject of conversion therapy tactics in Radical Feminist spaces used against transmasculine people is discussed in depth in Jude Ellison S. Doyle’s Did I Leave Feminism? In particular, this excerpt stands out to me:

“Radical feminism was the methadone that would keep transmasculine people from slipping back into their old habits and/or genders. If you learned enough feminist theory, and worked to expand the definition of womanhood from the inside, your gender dysphoria would magically become livable. If it didn’t, you weren’t yet feminist enough to feel it working.”

I would like to highlight part of this: “to expand the definition of womanhood from the inside” in a bubble, this would be a good thing. The archetype of “women disguising as men” is used for this often. Girls and women should be shown that they can be who they want and present how they want. In the context of transmasculine people and transmasculine coded characters, however, it takes a more insidious meaning. In this context the idea is to say that “even if you take testosterone and get top surgery you can still be a woman, you can still come back to womanhood. Even if you feel you are not a woman you can still be a woman, all women are different.” It is used to flatten masculine identity and chosen masculine presentation into something that “can exist within womanhood” as a means to convince transmasculine people to “not become men.”

Much of the resistance to transmasculine transition comes from sexual entitlement, and in the archetype we are discussing you can see that. Much of these characters are outed against their will via being exposed or groped. When I was in my early to mid twenties and using dating apps, I encountered many cis men who “wanted to fuck me while I was still feminine.” Many people would interrogate me on whether I’d taken hormones or had surgeries before planning any dates or hookups. Recently, I was shown by a friend that one of my essays was shared in a reddit thread about the erasure of transmasculine representation in media. In that thread a lesbian lamented in the replies about how a “beautiful woman she dated transitioned into a man.” She took care to describe how the changes from testosterone ruined her attraction. I obviously understand that lesbians are not attracted to men, however the describing this transition like a tragedy, like a loss–that stuck with me.

When we transition it is a loss for people attracted to the pre transition us, almost as though we robbed them of their sexual and romantic exploits. And furthermore, tactics such as forced pregnancy have been used to stop or postpone transmasculine people from transitioning by their abusive partners. The removal of resources and community, being treated like gender traitors, like we “turned our backs on our sisters” these are tactics used to stop transmasculine transition, all while using faux supportive or progressive language.

There was a text-based game I played last year called It Sucks to be Us by Tofurocks. You play as a closeted trans man who is masquerading as sapphic, and when you leave a Halloween event you run into another trans man in the same position as you, the two of you bond while stuck at the same bus stop. You learn that he detransitioned due to an ex convincing him it was better for him to be a butch lesbian. At one point he tearfully asks you if you find him disgusting for being a man instead of being a butch lesbian.

Xinyu is nearly the reverse of the archetype in our discussion. He is a man who due to social pressure, re closeted into being a woman, before gaining the confidence to live as a man again. He represents a struggle familiar to many transmasculine people fed this narrative that we will “get over this phase and be women someday.”

When on the bus with Xinyu, the player character has this dialogue:

"You helped me realize that I've been holding myself back, because I kept thinking, 'I feel miserable and ashamed of myself because of sexism, so I just need to study more feminism, sociology, and gender theory. Being proud of my body that bleeds and cramps against my will should help me stop being so uncomfortable in my own skin, plus it'll help me stop dissociating.' But where does the line between the internalized misogyny end and the dysphoria begin?"

In the best ending of the game, the two of you overcome this struggle and take testosterone together.

Due to our internalised ideas around trans manhood, around “not wanting to be a girl” we often do the Devil’s work to ourselves. We hold ourselves back, we let the ignorant comments dumped on us hold us back. I can’t reasonably expect the archetype of the “woman disguising as a man” to disappear or alter in favour of a more compassionate one, I can’t reasonably expect transmasculine experiences to stop being grafted onto “girls can do it too” stories–but I can highlight the harmful perceptions of transmasculine people it causes–

–And I can ask you to give yourself grace, and stop letting every cruel tactic you’ve internalised prevent you from self actualising. I understand the feeling of “what if I’m just pretending? What if I really am just a woman?” And I understand what it is like to have even my friends accuse me of “not really being a man” of “maybe just being traumatized by misogyny.” So I will simply end on the words I needed to hear:

It’s okay to be a man, it’s okay to be masculine. It doesn’t make you like men who hurt you, it doesn’t make you less of a Feminist. At the end of the day, being true to yourself will make you a better person to those around you. The “return to womanhood” is not a canon event, and you should never let your identity be dictated by what other people tell you is right or wrong.