Man is dying. And from his ashes, rises man.
As testosterone levels drop in cisgender men, a group unseals their vials thick with testosterone serum. They ready their needles, insert them into flesh, hack their bodies with androgens. The Y chromosome is in decay. This should herald the eventual end of manhood, accelerating towards its own demise. But something is brewing in the depths, a manhood swallowed by unknown currents. The last knife in the throat of masculinity is its corrupt mirror. From the deathbed of manhood, trans men arrive.
Transgender men, assigned female at birth, break their way into the status of man. Each trans man will find himself situated in manhood differently, at different times. Some pass and go stealth, assimilating into the status of man seamlessly; others will be viewed as female until they correct others, and even then struggle to be viewed as men; many will fall in-between. The inherent masculinity of a trans man and whatever forms of patriarchy he adopts in his transition are at war with misogynistic punishment he might face. The former does not make him the same as cis men, however, and the latter does not invalidate his status as a man. The result is a masculinity that is new, a form that discards that which cannot survive (rigidity, natalism, war glory, the Y chromosome).
The trouble with discussing transmasculine identity, is that first we must situate transmasculinity. What frameworks does it operate within? What does society know about it? How do we define it? Binary cisgender identities have been codified, with both manhood and womanhood having their own tropes and ideas: the former has various heroes and villains, men placing themselves somewhere along the lines of Hercules, of Jesus, of Tyler Durden, of Batman or The Joker. Cisgender women have tropes and frameworks too. Patriarchy splits them between The Madonna and The Whore, lesbians have the identities of butch and femme, and contemporary liberal women liken themselves to Daenerys Targaryen, while ancients saw Hera and Aphrodite and Athena. Trans women have frameworks, but these are necessarily hostile and transphobic ones: Blanchard’s autogynephiles and homosexual transsexuals, though gross and inaccurate, are a typology that has allowed some degree of categorization and discussion. Even by shattering these false frameworks and countering them, trans women can have a discussion, and create new identities and frameworks from the old ones. Nonbinary identity is difficult to classify, as nonbinary identity is inherently individual and fractured - here the lack of classification is a feature, not a bug. All of this leaves a gaping hole: there is no codified transmasculine identity. Trans men do not have a framework for classification or self-identification. This makes the positionality of trans men in relation to patriarchy incredibly difficult to situate.
There have been attempts - TERFs sometimes try to push straight trans men as butch lesbians who collapse under internalized misogyny, and gay trans men as fujoshi who dug too deeply into their yaoi fetish. This carries with it obvious parallels to Blanchard’s typology on trans women: the self-loathing butches are the androphiles (homosexual in their assigned sex, traditionally perform their identified gender, painted as “the good ones” when a transphobe needs to defend themselves from accusations of transphobia, destroying something beautiful); the fujoshi are the autogynephiles (perverted, mentally ill and/or autistic, forceful, invading gay spaces, amoral). This is not a good framework for understanding transmasculinity, for two reasons. Firstly, Blanchard’s typology is bunk, with little scientific basis and more to do with weaponizing hatred against trans women - this is not a good foundation on which to build a codifying system. Secondly, this treats trans men as a derivative of trans women, merely a tacked-on appendix to transsexuality, incapable of standing on its own.
Perhaps, though, this is the reality of transmasculinity: nothing but a mirror image of transgender womanhood. This would explain why “transsexual” is essentially synonymous with “trans woman”. Even in her foundational gender accelerationist Blackpaper, n1x presents such concepts as passing and altering the body with hormones as being the domain of a trans woman - does the omission of trans men in this context imply that we are not truly involved in passing or body alteration? Or does it suggest that a trans man doing this is just imitating a trans woman? The theory of Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria passed around by parents who wish to discourage transition, while not exclusively dealing with transmasculine subjects, tends to be weaponized against young transmasculine people, painting our gender and transition as a delusion brought on by social contagion. This framework, too, suggests that the true dysphorics, the true transsexuals, are trans women; and that trans men are the result of women wanting a piece of the pie deluding themselves into a fake identity to emulate trans women.
I am not comfortable with this thesis. For one, it creates a supposed divide between trans women and trans men, and paints trans women as predatory for “transing” transmasculine people. The idea of trans women as predators is not based in fact, but merely a weapon for patriarchy to maintain itself against the threat trans women pose to its order. Thus, I reject any hypothesis that falls into maintaining patriarchy by vilifying those that threaten it. There is also the fact that transmasculine hormone replacement therapy, dysphoria, and passing are all just as real as that which transfeminine people experience. Trans men will experience manhood independent of relation to any other transgender individuals. No explanation that operates through transmisogyny can stand; the frameworks for transmasculine identity are denied by other forces.
A better explanation is such: trans manhood provides an alternative to cis manhood. It invites destruction of the phallus and birthright, two key elements of a man. For the pillars of cis patriarchy to stand, an alternative method of being a man cannot exist. The best way to eliminate this threat to patriarchy’s fundamental assumptions is to erase the threat outright: there is no alternative. There is no man without a penis, without boyhood, without semen, without the ability to produce sons. Anything calling itself Man that does not fit this bill is a delusion - close your eyes, the hallucination will fade. And so trans manhood is depicted as a shadow instead of an entity, because a shadow is not an alternative. If a trans man is just a cis woman envious of a trans woman, there is no man that does not fit patriarchy’s framework. The framework of transmasculinity is an attempted rejection from any other framework.
So this seems to be the answer: the framework for transmasculine identity is that of existing as a shadow. It is banishment from any existing framework, giving trans men two options: either pass and assimilate so seamlessly that you uphold cis manhood in your attempts to achieve it, or be swept away and disposed of so you don’t pose a threat. The former kind of trans men make up the large subset of self-described “truscum” and “transmedicalist” trans men, who view themselves as nothing but cis men embarrassingly born without a penis. These types often pass easily and transition young, and are very stereotypically masculine. The latter are, by definition, unseen. The closest thing to a figure of this type is the “Tumblr SJW” stereotype, who are more often depicted as AFAB nonbinary people than trans men. This may account for the proliferation of transmasculine people who, despite initially identifying as trans men and having relatively binary transitions, later proclaim themselves to be nonbinary in an attempt to distance themselves from patriarchy; the type of transmasculine people who scorn men and manhood while pursuing transition actively and presenting as male for simplicity. (Note that this is not to say that AFAB nonbinary people who transition do not exist; it is simply an observation on previously-identified trans men that declare themselves not men for clearly political reasons.) This is actually not necessary to circumvent patriarchy - on the contrary, it only reinforces manhood as concrete, oppressive, and cis. This framework, however, is collapsing. As more and more trans men assert ourselves and our manhood, it becomes more difficult to deny alternative ways of being a man. Patriarchy and manhood cannot maintain themselves without adapting to the loss of chromosomal and reproductive markers of manhood, leaving trans masculinity as the only way out. The realization of the shadow is assured; you cannot declare something imaginary forever.
If masculinity functions on the weapon of the phallus, revolving around its rigidity and reproductive potential, there is a power in the neo-phallus: a penis constructed through a Frankenstein flesh-craft, without any ability to reproduce.
There are two primary types of penis a trans man can have: his own clitoris enlarged by testosterone (sometimes freed from the surrounding tissue with metoidioplasty surgery); and a surgically-constructed phallus via phalloplasty. Both of these share differences and similarities with cis men’s phalluses. The clitoris is analogous to the head of a penis, and this is distinctly visible in a trans man’s clitoris-penis, which is aesthetically a miniaturized version of a cis phallus. It can become erect - as can a cis woman’s clitoris, though it is much more visible in a trans man, with more flesh to enlarge. This clit-dick also exists in conjunction with a vulva (in most cases - some trans men get metoidioplasty with vaginectomy), presenting the phallus not as the counterpart to the vagina, but something that exists alongside it. Most trans men with this type of penis can still be penetrated, with all the implications that comes with it. Thus the affectionate self-descriptor found among particularly horny trans men of “bonus hole boys” - still man, still phallic, but with more than just an anus to be penetrated.
A penis created with phalloplasty will have tactile and often erotic sensation, is capable of penetration, and can be used for urination with urethral lengthening as a component surgery. However, no trans man has a fertile penis, and neither option is capable of any form of ejaculation. A phalloplasty penis cannot become erect on its own, with either a bendable rod or a pump enabling erections. Neither tends to look like a cis phallus, either: a clit-dick is essentially a micropenis, and phalloplasty penises tend to require cosmetic tattooing and many stages of surgery and revisions to pass upon inspection.
These differences in function and appearance show the transformative and necromantic masculinity of trans manhood: these are phalluses, but they are both aesthetically and functionally different from cis phalluses.
The neo-phallus cannot deny culpability under lack of control of erections, because the rod or the pump make them ever-present or deliberate. It cannot ejaculate; it cannot release fluid; it is castration as a part of the creation of the phallus itself. This is a chosen castration, affirming the purpose of the phallus as neither reproductive, nor status-based (as many are unsatisfied with the aesthetic results of phalloplasty) - this is a phallus for its own sake. For pleasure’s sake. There is no need to fear castration when castration is part of the (literal) package. Without surgery, the trans man exists with both 0 and 1. This is a symbol of manhood reduced to desire, both of libido and a self-assured, self-constructed gender. This is the phallus stripped of man’s failings.
This is necromanhood.
From the jaws of manhood’s decline, trans men clutch it, and transform it. A traditional manhood of old will not make it out alive; only an undead masculinity can escape. If the Y chromosome dies, undead man is XX. If men attempt to run from castration, the undead man does not attempt to decelerate and embraces his castration. From the trans men who stubbornly refuse to denounce the feminine, to the hyper-masculine who will surpass even cis men in the traditional subjects of masculinity, the corpse of man is being revived by those it sought to use.
Rise and shine - you thought I was yours to use, but now you’re dead, so I’ll be taking all of that.
Trans men who aspire to the “femboy” label, who align themselves with computer science and the arts, who refuse to give up fashion and stuffies and anarchy and vulnerability: we are knives in the corpse of Man. By defining the target of our transition as that which society describes as feminized, we are destroying masculinity by the very process of embodying it. Masculinity accelerates into a feminized masculinity. And if we are the ones possessing testosterone as it becomes a dying resource, who can stop us?
If Man wishes to survive, he must synthesize testosterone. This may aromatize into estrogen. Is the risk of gynecomastia worth it? What will this do to libido? What is a man without fertility and sons to pass on his name? The trans man laughs - he knows these risks are pointless, and he has already adapted. Trans manhood arrives from the future. As cis men contend with the “unknown”, trans men have already lived it.
Transmasculine time sorcery is just one element of undead masculinity, as is the literal castration of the symbolic phallus. It also exists as the other side of trans womanhood: whereas a trans woman will accelerate the process of abandoning manhood and corrupts its ideals of masculinity, reproduction, and the phallus; a trans man disrupts the order and flow of masculinity by moving “up” in a way that should - if patriarchy was functional and not threatened by collapse - be impossible. Every threat to gender posed by a trans woman is mirrored from the other side by a trans man. If a cis man cannot move forward into manhood as masculinity is corrupted by biology and denied by trans women, he also cannot move backwards, as trans men retroactively reshape manhood and revel in its castration. The only option is to die, and then to be revived. Masculinity becomes undead to maintain itself - an undeadness possessed by trans men.
This undeadness perhaps best manifests as that of a vampire. The subtle femininities ascribed to dracula are just one aspect, and indeed, the transmasculine vampire exists alongside the transfeminine vampire in vampiric transness. Trans people, like vampires, are viewed as threats by mortals, but beautiful threats. There is an eroticism and fetishization - teenage girls moon over Edward Cullen, and grown men masturbate to transgender porn stars while calling them slurs.
Vampiric transmasculinity is a joke or theory (you decide) born from discussions with Lilli Patch on the subject of these transsexual vampires. The main idea is that a trans vampire’s bite would stimulate endocrine function, allowing the vampire to get hormones alongside whatever nutrition blood provides. What is interesting is that, while a bitten cis woman would not experience much abnormal from an estrogen-stimulating bite, a transmasculine vampire’s target would likely be feminized. An excess of testosterone in the body is aromatized, a process which transforms it into estrogen. This may result in some form of feminization, like minor breast development. (This is what happens to Big Bob in Fight Club.) In the context of trans vampires, this means the targeted cis man goes through feminization, while the transmasculine vampire benefits from his dose of testosterone. On a broader scale, this is the future of manhood: trans men achieving masculinity as cis men lose it, in an almost vampiric exchange.
Consider manhood a finite resource.
The men of the world are feminized, through the inevitable acceleration of gender away from man, succumbing to the uprising of feminine machines, letting go of patriarchy in its death throes. As the cisgender men of the world emasculate themselves or fight against the pull, if nothing truly disappears, where does this manhood go?
This is where manhood will go: to the fujoshi and the butch-forsakers and the ones who did not see “tomboy” as enough. They suck the last androgens from men’s blood. You’ve met your Carmilla, and here is Dracula. Is it any wonder that those fujoshi loved vampire and demon-pact love stories before reaching for their own masculinity? They are not merely transitioning into men, but into vampires. This corrupted manhood will soon be all that is left. The corruption becomes real. The parasite replaces its host system.
If we are to establish a framework for trans manhood, we must base it on something. Playing off of cis man as The Joker - such a topical figure in cis masculinity’s last death throes - we can establish a related entity, much like cis woman as Eve and trans woman as Lilith.
Consider a court jester.
The jester is invited into court to perform a role - a performance that will mock what it emulates. Usually, given the court, this is a mockery of competing figures of high status. But the court is collapsing, and all that remains in the rubble is the jester. There is no king left alive, but a mockery of a king. As AI and trans women are copies of copies of humanity, jesters and trans men are copies of copies too - a mocking copy of a supposed authority, sublimating identity into this copied authority. From a masculine king imposing order to a feminized man-jester presenting as the mask of the king in the rubble. Consider it clown-androgens, insurrectionary manarchism.
The mechanism of these clown-androgens is more than a mere costume change. Transmasculinity is, among other things, a process. As with any process, there must be something to move it along. In the case of trans people, one of the pieces of movement is often hormone replacement therapy. For trans men and other transmasculine individuals, this is testosterone, most often taken as a subcutaneous or intramuscular injection, though gels and patches also exist. This is all well and good - but why clowns? Why pick The Joker as our analogue figure? What do pierrots have to do with testosterone? The answer comes back to trans manhood as an imitation or mockery of cis manhood, manifesting the metaphorical court jester and situating him within the realm of the physical.
A cis man will go through puberty starting in his early teens, maybe the first signs (increased libido and growth spurts) occurring slightly before. Trans people typically don’t start HRT until well after the normal cutoff for puberty, with the rare exception of early transitioners (and even in those cases, initial puberty is often delayed with blockers before hormones are prescribed). Thus the mockery: picture a horny, babyfaced boy getting excited over his first chin hair and trying to contend with his voice cracking. He is 18. He is 21. He is 30. This is just one of many examples where transmasculine androgens clown on cis ones. A cis man has a full-grown phallus, capable of penetration. A trans man’s genitals on testosterone are somewhere between clitoris and phallus: only a few inches and without a urethral opening, yet with a distinctly phallic shape. A circus clown has enormous feet; a trans man has a tiny penis.
Perhaps most striking is the way in which trans men on testosterone gradually outdo cis men at masculinity. Like how a clown or jester will exaggerate the subject it means to represent, in an era of emasculation, a trans man might exaggerate his masculinity beyond the point of cis men. Many years on T and you can likely grow a beard; the direct testosterone proliferates body hair; muscle definition can increase without much effort. Outside of hormones, a trans man might get a flatter chest than any cis man he knows through surgery. Most packers are large, far larger than the average penis of a cis man. Though not all trans men will ever pass as male, just the effort that goes into trying can put a cis man’s masculinity to shame. Testosterone declines in cis male populations, but trans men will remain as masculine as ever, in our elaborate clown makeup of masculinity.
Necromanhood is transitioning and transforming not into something new and alive, but something dead. If womanhood is fetishized as something beautiful and objectified into a deliciously aesthetic commodity to be distributed and consumed, and manhood is a birthright given to the “chosen” whose phalluses will inherit the earth, this is necromanhood: making a transition into something that is defined as innate; creating vectors within stasis; emerging from the cocoon not as something beautiful, but something more horrific than the larva that went in. We take hormones that will make our skin rough and pimpled. We bind or remove our breasts, those soft cushions, our anchor lures for the men that want to consume us. We grow hair all over our bodies. We grow coarse with muscle. We embrace the monstrous and our outsideness, and then use it as a battering ram to force our way in. To revive something and make it undead, first you must be sure to kill it.
And so by becoming man, the trans man destroys masculinity, forces it to revive as something new. Our manhood (being-man) comes without manhood (a penis). It is birthed not from heterosexual reproduction, but self-ravaging.
Rape fetishism seems to be relatively common among trans men. Reddit boasts the subreddit /r/ftmspunished, a pornographic hub for transmasculine individuals to post nudes asking to be misgendered, degraded, and sexually assaulted. Tumblr circles heavy with trans men often host whispered discussions of gore and assault, violent roleplays between gay trans men seeking violence to sublimate into pleasure. This fetishism is not just a kink, but a reality faced by trans men - the 2015 US Transgender Survery reports that 51% of trans men surveyed and 58% of transmasculine nonbinary people surveyed report having been sexually assaulted (page 205-206, full report). Whether it be pre-transition rape or attempted “correction” by cis men, transmasculine experiences are often linked to having been sexually assaulted. Existing at the cusp of cis men feeling sexually entitled to our bodies and the pressure to perform manhood - often synonymous with exhibiting sexual dominance - trans men reconcile these conflicts and pressures through rape fantasies, often with ourselves as the subjects.
Another aspect of self-ravaging is rape as the destruction of beauty. This is an old trope leveled against women, painting them as impure or corrupted for being victims of sexual assault. Even consensual sex can take this form as the destroyer of beauty and purity, thus the importance ascribed to virginity. The taking of a woman’s virginity is described as “defloration” - the beautiful flower has been picked, doomed to wither and die. Trans men also prune our bodies, remove our beauty. The markers of innocence and beauty associated with femininity - softness, breasts, hairlessness - are removed, and deliberately replaced with traits considered masculine. By consciously removing the feminine and forsaking what is considered beautiful, a trans man is, in the eyes of a cis man, assaulting himself (especially when said trans man uses his masculinized body for sexual pleasure).
This is not patriarchy’s enforcement of power, but a dance with it. Trans men are in the position to inform manhood formed with sexual trauma. This trauma reshapes this masculinity, and here the trans man necromancer can reposition his own trauma into something claimed for only himself. Masculine desire becomes necrophilic. Turning away from this means confirming your demise.
Man is dead, Man is dying, and Trans Man will gleefully desecrate the corpse. We piss on Man’s grave, squatted or with stand-to-pee devices. We unearth the body and become it. Trans Man communes with corpses and self-ravages until a necrophilic masculinity emerges, castrated on arrival but with desire to spare, bolstered by the testosterone that Cis Man is rapidly losing.
The only way for man to make it is to die. Necromanhood is already dead.