Artifact 2 - Bilateral Dysphoria - Devon Price

In this essay, Devon Price describes his experience with gendered pressures as coming from all sides. After a masculinizing transition, he was glad to be out from under the pressure of femininity forcing him to do and so much that he hated to do and be. However, this was not the end of his journey: being male took quite its own toll, as well. In stark contrast, he felt unable express any feminine traits, lest someone see or treat him as a woman. In order to project masculinity, he felt the need to be unfeeling and cold, completely devoid of any feminine traits. While his particular experience is of course uniquely informed by transphobia, this fundamental struggle is not unique to just trans men, and is quite the direct example of the most fundamental tenant of masculinity: to completely and totally divide itself from femininity.

This concept is explored on page 144 in Gendered Lives, wherein the very first theme of manhood they describe is “Don’t Be Feminine.” For cis men, comparisons to womanhood are seen as deriding and play into the idea that femininity is inferior and thus they as men must be inferior. This is even more of a threat for trans men, as they experience this force of lessening while also under the threat of transphobia and invalidation of their gender identity. The unique intersection of roles at play is an example of why transfeminism is important to understand for all feminists: the only way to undo masculine sexism is by undoing the culturally-defined innateness of gender separation.