On Gender and Sacrificing* Womanhood: How transness and feminism go hand in hand

From Arlo Everlove of Getting to Know Arlo

Photo by BAILEY MAHON on Unsplash

We are all shaped by the quiet drums of our upbringing, by a society that folds us into its patterns, by the indelible marks of our experiences. Comments, rules, unspoken expectations are etched into the corners of our minds, carving pathways into our bodies for our thoughts to follow. Whether we like it or not, memories linger, whispered reminders of who we were told to be. Sometimes in a blaze of rebellion we fight to rewrite them, but even then ignoring them is not an option. Think of the girl who cuts her hair short in college, a rebuke to the echo of her mother’s voice urging her to “act like a lady”. Or one that bares her belly in defiance of decades of cautionary tales about modesty. Their mothers don’t need to witness these acts of defiance: the rebellion is internal, directed only at the phantom voice in the backs of their minds. So whether we conform or rebel, we are always in dialogue with the past, forever negotiating with who we were taught to be.

It’s tempting to see our past as a burden, but the truth is much more complicated. These patterns, even when they feel suffocating, are born from our brain’s attempt to ensure our survival. There is a purpose for this behavior. Take the anxiety that any socialised woman feels as soon as the sun sets and the streets empty, this is a survival mechanism. Tragically, these shared experiences, though varied, weave a bond among women* – a collective understanding.

But these experiences, rules and behaviours are complicated when we think of transness. The world shouldn’t be seen through the binary lens where we divide the world between men and women, I know that as well as any other gender queer person. But having been socialised as a woman, I cannot escape the shadow of these experiences. And I’ll admit: it is hard not to think of men as the enemy. Every negative encounter with men – a dismissal, a leering gaze, an unwanted hand or unfunny joke – chips away at my hope for connection. Every negative encounter blurs the line between openness and naivety further than the last.

When I was young, most of my friendships were with boys. I felt more at ease with them, and connection came easier than with girls. The things I loved – climbing trees, playing football and building huts in the forest – aligned more with their worlds than with the girls around me. But adolescence came, and with it, change that pushed me further from boyhood. The effortless friendships we once shared grew strained. My body’s shifting contours seemed to create a gap between us, one that widened with each awkward comment or lingering gaze. It started with small remarks and having to work twice as hard to be accepted within male dominated spaces but slowly developed into a streak of disappointments with almost all of my guy friends.

And I remember really struggling with this. Male friends whose intentions I trusted, too often turned out to want something else. Their hormones complicated their intentions and jeopardized our platonic friendships. Growing sexual desires twisted friendships into something unfamiliar and fraught. I remember feeling betrayed by the dishonesty of their motives and the times I was taken advantage of by men left me distrusting. By the time I entered adulthood, most of those friendships were gone, casualties of mistrust or disappointment. My few enduring connections with men are now either queer, trans or familial.

But in this transition, I am navigating a path towards men’s masculinity, stepping into a world that has often felt uncomfortable, and even hostile. And to be honest: I am terrified. What does it mean to become one of them – the very figures who have so often been a source of pain to me or my friends? I am scared that I have no idea what I am signing into, I am scared of how lonely I could feel as a man and most of all I am terrified of what it means to be joining the other side. How do I reconcile this shift with the feminist fight that once felt core to my identity? Am I giving up something sacred, something that shape

I don’t think I ever truly felt at home in womanhood. Female-dominated spaces, while comforting to many, always felt awkward and in later stages even uncomfortable to me. Yet I carried the feminist fight fiercely. When I came out as trans to my mom, she was surprised to hear me say I struggled with my gender and had been for a while. The expression of my gender ‘struggle’ as a kid had never appeared to her as a signal or point to transness, but rather as a feminist rebellion against restrictive gender roles. In her eyes, my love for sports, my resistance to pink and my delight in playfighting were all signs of feminist independence, not clues to a deeper dissonance in my gender. This behaviour all fit mini me and did not, in her eyes, affect my womanhood in the slightest. A conviction that is a testament to her own struggle against gender roles.

And there is something beautiful about growing up in a home where gender roles are not enforced. It gave me the freedom to explore, to just be. But it also blurred the lines of femininity so thoroughly that it felt untouchable to me. My mom’s unwavering belief that “women can be anything” left no room for the thought that I might not want to be a woman at all. When I wished for my period to disappear so as to not deal with the painful cramps; for a valid reason to get rid of the breast I had a growing resentment towards; or the aspirations to become muscled and have short hair, I didn’t see these as signs of transness. How could I, when women had been framed as infinite and immutable.

In a conversation the day after I came out to her she apologised for this. She blamed herself for not seeing “the signs”. Part of me wishes that she did, because that might have made the last five years easier. But the freedom that her worldview gave me as a kid I am beyond grateful for. Part of me also bubbles in pride or feels more secure in this process knowing that despite all this I am figuring it all out.

And yet, a part of me feels like I am giving up a piece of myself. To be a feminist man is wildly different from being a woman who is almost forced into feminism. The experience of being socialised as a woman – the vigilance, the collective understanding of danger and resilience – feel intrinsic to who I am. To transition, to embrace masculinity, feels both liberating and like a betrayal to those bonds and a past version of myself who was forced to experience these things.

I remind myself in moments like this that I am transitioning for myself (that’s right: active tense). Transitioning is not about escaping womanhood; but about finding harmony within myself. It’s about listening to my body and the part of me that blushes at the use of my name or the right pronouns. It’s about honouring the dreams of a body that feels like home. It’s about walking through the woods at dawn, when the water of a lake catches my reflection and for once, seeing someone I recognise.