Grappling with societal expectations

In August 2024, Virat (name changed to protect his identity), who had medically transitioned some years ago, wrote a text on a Telegram group for Indian trans men, cautioning others against transitioning. “You will neither be a girl nor fully a boy, you will always be stuck in between,” he said.

As he wrote further, it became clear that he felt “stuck in between” because his family’s gendered expectations of him did not align with his perceptions of masculinity and manhood. His family still expected him to cook, clean, and do other household chores. In his view, this gendered expectation was his family’s way of indicating that they did not fully accept his gender identity as a man. In Virat’s eyes, doing household chores was not really expected of a man. According to the 2019 Time Use Survey conducted by the Government of India, only 5.6 percent of Indian men in rural and urban areas participate in cooking, compared to 75.2 percent of women; 7.4 percent clean and maintain their dwellings, compared to 64.8 percent of women.

Other members in the Telegram group responded to Virat that the notion that only women should do household chores is wrong. But Virat did not respond further.

It can be painful and frustrating to go to great lengths to align your gender and sex with your inner knowing, only to then still feel that you are partially accepted by your family, and not loved for your whole self. 

However, even for those whose natal family accepts and affirms their gender identity, the process of adapting to gendered responsibilities and expectations anew involves tradeoffs.

Karanvir, who lives in a small town in Punjab, spoke to me through an audio call on Zoom. “Many years back, I wrote on a wall in my house that I will be(come) a man. And I confirmed to my father that I will go through with it. I was very determined. After I got my surgery, I walked my father back to that wall. When he read my words, he had tears in his eyes.”

Karanvir’s family was ultimately very supportive of his transition. Before his father passed away, he acknowledged Karanvir as the family’s eldest son and told him to look after the family. Although he would not have chosen to be a farmer, Karanvir takes care of his family farm now, while also working a desk job. “I have to consider the needs of my family and look after them. We all have dreams, you know. My dream was to play volleyball abroad. But now I’m conscious of the responsibility that I have to look after my mother and brother.” 

Navigating transness and manhood together is a nuanced experience that expands certain possibilities while restricting others. Although Karanvir had achieved his long-held dream of transitioning, taking on the social role of a man—with all the expectations inherent in it—had cost him his other dreams.

When I asked Karanvir what makes someone a man, he said, “the first thought most people have is that a man’s sexual performance and stamina decide his manhood. But that’s not it. A real man is someone who respects and cares for others.”

Masculinity need not be toxic

In the current cultural moment, the dominant progressive response to violence by men is to vilify all men and masculinity in general. While it is undoubtedly important to call out violence by men, in my opinion, it is equally important to listen to masculine people’s nuanced experiences and to normalise more self-aware and loving embodiments of manhood.

In a piece titled “Intersections of Caste and Race with Transgender Identity” published by the Center of Law and Policy Research, Sweta Kishan, a trans nonbinary person, wrote about the struggle of grappling with the fluidity of their gender identity. Specifically, they felt troubled because they had internalised the dominant narrative that masculinity itself is inherently toxic: “I still question if I should force myself to live as a cis woman again, so that I am not seen as trans or man” because “that implies toxic masculinity.”

But as Casira Copes, a Black feminist writer and traveller, pointed out in her article for An Injustice Magazine, the view that is currently in vogue among feminists—that masculinity is inherently toxic— is rooted in the same sort of gender essentialism that once argued that men are inherently smarter or more rational than women. In her view, this line of thought, which relies on the assumption that certain traits are biologically hardcoded into people based on their gender, promotes transphobia.

“Not falling prey to that harmful ideology means being inherently suspicious of statements that try to claim that men or women are “naturally” or inherently certain ways. While socialisation affects us all in ways that manifest gender-prevalent behaviors, at the end of the day we are all human beings with equal capacity for kindnesses and cruelties,” she wrote.

In a paper titled ‘Dangerous Privilege: Trans Men, Masculinities, and Changing Perceptions of Safety,’ Miriam Abelson, professor of gender and sexuality at Portland State University, explored the hostile interactions that many trans men navigate after transitioning. Several of her interviewees mentioned that while they “no longer had the same fears from when they lived as women, such as walking alone at night or being raped,” their male identity made them vulnerable to other forms of violence. 

Leo, a 36-year-old Black man who was 5 years into his transition at the time of being interviewed by Abelson, described an incident where another man suddenly and aggressively invaded his space on a public bus. When Leo reacted in self-defence, the man ended up punching him repeatedly. In Leo’s view, “changing to a position of power relative to women is not wholly positive for trans men because it entails being subjected to other men’s violence in a new way.” When a trans man begins to be seen as a man by the world, he quickly realises that he could still be a victim of violence—with the caveat that other men may expect you to fend for yourself, whereas they may be compelled to ‘save’ and protect a woman.

Misunderstood, even within the queer world

The threat of violence that many trans men face is often invisibilised—even within queer-trans spaces. Shaman recalled a meeting he attended in 2016 with prominent trans women and Hijra activists, where he was asked whether trans men really face any discrimination or violence. “Why do trans men even want to get included [in the transgender rights bill]? When you are on the streets, nobody is teasing you,” he recalls being told. 

Questioning the assumption that trans women are more at risk of violence, Shaman argued, “trans men and trans women both face violence and issues, particularly from their families, but in different ways.”

Speaking from his experience of running shelter homes for trans persons, he said, “When trans women leave their homes, their families let them go because some of them are disgusted that their ‘male-born child’ wants to be a woman. But when a trans man comes to our shelter home, there will be police behind them, there will be parents behind them.” This reaction typically stems from the natal family’s hope that they can “save their child’s honour” by confining him to the family home. “Both trans men and women experience forms of violence that cannot be compared,” Shaman concluded.

Multiple trans men I interviewed for this article said they felt their existence is erased by the popular public imagination that still centers transgender identity around trans women and Kinnar or Hijra people. “The popular understanding of transgender is ‘thirunangai’ or ‘hijra’, who are trans-feminine people. There is very low visibility of trans men or transmasculine people under this term,” noted L Ramakrishnan, vice president of SAATHII, a Chennai-based human rights NGO, in an interview with the Times of India. 

Transgender men who are queer, gay, bisexual, or asexual also face widespread erasure in queer-trans and cisgender, heterosexual spaces. Particularly in India, I have observed that transgender men are expected to only be heterosexual. After transitioning, Reyansh, a 27-year-old pansexual man began to attend gay parties in Pune because he wanted to build solidarity with others in the community. But when he would share that he was a trans man and he was dating a trans woman, cisgender queer people would ask him, “if you wanted to date each other, then why did you transition?” “Lesbian, gay and bisexual cis people lack sensitisation when it comes to our sex, genders, and sexualities,” Reyansh said with a shake of his head and a resigned smile.

Even though the popular imagination of who is trans, who is a man, and who is queer often exclude them, many trans men in India are refusing to let others’ limited thinking define them. They are leading advocacy efforts to advance the social and economic rights of trans men, responding to crisis calls, and creating support networks that allow others to transition safely and live well. In doing so, they are pushing the boundaries of what masculinity can be and making more liberated futures possible.

What if trans men were fully supported by their families, doctors, and welfare measures to transition and live flourishing lives? What if cisgender Indian men actively sought to learn from trans men’s experiences? What if men—both trans and cis—were fully free to choose how to embody masculinity, femininity, or androgyny? What if this allowed new, healthier imaginations of manhood to take shape that break cycles of violence? My own learning and growth have shown me that if we are to meaningfully work towards collective liberation, our activism must not dismiss masculinity as toxic. People must evolve beyond this view, which carries latent anti-trans attitudes, and notice how violence also affects men. As the distinguished scholar, writer, and liberation worker bell hooks said, “To create loving men, we must love males.”

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This essay is part of queerbeat's Youth Storytelling Project