I have long believed that trans men and transmascs have a particular neurotic obsession with purity. From creating layers of identity to distance themselves from maleness (nonbinary men and demiboys and HRT he/him butches who previously expressed loving men and proud bisexuality or even gayness), to the callout-happy tendencies of many of these circles, to the uncharitable readings of anything and anyone not immediately digestible. I’ve seen many a transmasc decry anime, messy queer art, and anything else deemed “problematic” in a way that I scarcely see anywhere else. I have been called a suck-up to patriarchy, nbphobe, and creep for falling outside the dogmatic lines so common in these circles. I constantly feel like I am walking on eggshells around other trans men.
I found my answer to this— “what produces this purity neurosis in transmasculinity?” —from Freud, of all sources.
Sigmund Freud’s theories have become the subject of pop culture and derision. I am no Freudian myself, but there’s more to him than the wholesale rejection would have you think. One interesting bit is the role and origin of the Superego, part of the dynamic of Id, Ego, and Superego.
According to Freud, “id” is unconscious, and deals with desires[1], both erotic and those of death drive. Erotic drive is prescribed the force of creation and proliferation, and death drive that of destruction, whether it be sadism or self-harm[2]. Ego grows from the id, mediating the sensations of the outside world on the body, replication objects of the id’s desire (whether that be sexual desire, destructive hate, or something in-between) as part of itself, satiating the unconscious through conscious and preconscious (or subconscious) processes; the ego also forms the exterior ego and self through the process of emulating these objects. The superego is a bit more strange.
The superego is said to develop from the resolution of the first Oedipus Complex, before the ego is fully formed. The superego often takes the form of the father, as a figure emulated and yet despised in the Oedipus Complex, interfering with desires for the mother and becoming an object of apathy, which is later resolved into self-identification. Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than that—for one, Freud asserts that everyone is innately bisexual, and thus identification with and desire for both parents can manifest, with the end resolution of which parental figure is assimilated into the self and which is doted on and desired being a (or the?) determinant of sexuality and, to a degree, gender expression. Freud is a lot more queer than expected! Though the Oedipus Complex seems bizarre and morally repulsive, something can be said for innate bisexuality, and developing gender through emulating and aspiring to be either your mother or father.[3]
Oedipal origins aside, Freud sees the superego as the driver of conscience and guilt. He speculates that the more one subsumes their father into themselves and identifies with him, the more they are weighed down by guilt. The criticisms and harshness of the father become your very own guilty conscience; the ego is somewhat pitiful in that light, bending to the rage and criticism of the fatherly superego guilt.[4]
And here we come to trans men.
In my own transition, I found myself shocked by how much HRT is making me resemble my father. I always looked like him, even at my most feminine—I have his eyes, his chin, his facial structure. Testosterone only made me more of a copy. I also found myself understanding my maleness through the lens of my father, with him as the subconscious guiding light for what a man is. I even ended up picking a name and middle name that led to us having the same initials, without intending to—at least, not consciously. I am transitioning into my dad.
I am also a deeply guilty person.
I have reckoned with suicidality and considering myself a monster for as long as I can remember. Throughout my life, I have often been sure that I am a bad person. There’s many factors to this, of course—the vilification faced by autistics; later, the vilification of queerness; simply not fitting in, and how “other” is often synonymous with “evil”; developing Borderline Personality Disorder due to trauma, a disorder so many people seem to think means Bad Person Disorder; and genuinely, truly hurting people, either out of fear or pain or completely by accident. Justified or not, I have been tormented for years by a voice telling me that I am evil, that I must repent, that I should feel guilty for even existing. A screaming superego.
Interestingly, many places where this superego guilt has merit come directly from being a trans man. I have engaged in misogyny, objectified women, spoken over them; sometimes this was for my own safety (the conditionality of transness, needing to perform the worst of manhood to not be rejected from it, to not be outed and misgendered and victimized among cis male peers); sometimes it was my own carelessness and male socialization (which, yes, I believe trans men experience; to say otherwise is not only willfully obtuse, but falls into rhetoric that is transmisogynistic.)
So that’s what it is: the transmasculine tendency to have an overly-developed superego. We emulate our fathers, idolizing them and despising them, transitioning into them. We modify our bodies and social roles to replace them. But in doing so, they become part of us, and become our guilt. The purity neurosis so particular to transmasculinity is the result of a domineering superego. Though this is of course present in cis men (as my friend put it, “the Oedipal complex has proven more AGAB agnostic than Freud himself”), the degree of severity is extreme in trans men and transmascs; that guilt is so often pointed outwards, and that identification with the father so much more urgent. Cis men and trans men are, after all, both men; but trans men often have an exagerrated and intensified manifestation of these tendencies.
The more you identify with your father, the more guilty you become. The transmasculine purity and policing complex is an overgrown internal father.
Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id. Translated by Joan Riviere. London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at The Hogarth Press, and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1927. Accessed https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.218607/page/n5/mode/2up