Tweet
Manning Up photo by Wolf
“Manning Up” is an upcoming anthology of the unique and diverse experiences of trans*men. Here, several of the writers share what the project means to them.
Mitch Kellaway, one of the editors of “Manning Up: Transsexual Men on Finding Family, Brotherhood, and Themselves”, writes this in the introduction:
Transition is only the beginning of our stories. When we started collecting trans men’s personal narratives for this anthology, it was with the simple belief that trans people telling their own stories can be both a profoundly healing and revolutionarily defiant act, When space is made for presenting transition narratives within the wider context of an individual’s life, complex, heartwarming, and rawly human tales emerge. And, just as these essays present diverse experiences of what it means to be human, they also present divergent understandings of what it means to be a man, to be trans, and be a trans man, (or trans*man, transman, transsexual man, transgender man or FTM) – three distinct, though interrelated, identities.
I wanted to find out from some of the writers why they wanted to be part of “Manning Up”, what the work meant to them, and what they hoped readers would take away from it. The answers were as revealing as the stories they share.
Shaun LaDue, Always Moving Forward:
I wanted to share my story with other people, not just other trans men but other people who want to learn about what it’s like being trans, and what it is like transitioning later in life. When I started researching trans issues on the internet I found there was a lot geared for younger trans men by young trans men, which is great, but not everyone who transitions transitions when they are young. Some of us transition later on for a myriad of reasons: family, circumstances, education, or health, to name a few. I was relativity young when I came to understand that certain boys and men who didn’t feel like they were male could change. For some reason I didn’t make the connection that girls and women who didn’t feel like they were female could change could. I didn’t do the overgeneralization that most people would have done. For a long time I thought I had to make do with what I had and learn to live with being uncomfortable in my own skin and mind. Once I talked to a counsellor and he told what was what I found myself and I have felt so free and true.
I hope readers learn what it is like to be trans by reading our stories; they can live vicariously through us and perhaps become allies and help make the world a better place for a new generation of transpeople. Transpeople come in all shapes, sizes, colors, background and we all want to be true to ourselves.
Willy Wilkinson, Sculptor:
I contributed to Manning Up to add my perspective to the growing body of work by transmen that articulates our journeys and experiences of manhood. I wanted to speak from a perspective of family interconnectedness and to give voice to Asian transmasculinity, including the ways our experiences of racism attempt to erode our masculinity and sense of self. In my piece, entitled “Sculptor,” I use the metaphor of my father’s process as a fine wood sculptor to describe the ways that I sculpt myself into the man I am becoming, and the ways I am sculpted by my children and the men in my family who came before me.
In “Sculptor”, I speak to the way my father shapes and refines the intrinsic nature of the wood to reveal a work of art in much the same way that trans people sculpt and transform ourselves as we bring our intrinsic essence into the world. I also describe a childhood experience of finding recognition and understanding in a gender transgressive peer, yet feeling silenced and subjugated by their race-based comments. I hope that readers will contemplate the intersections of race and trans experience, and the particular ways that racism gets directed at Asian people and often goes unquestioned. I also hope that readers can resonate with the masculinity of fatherhood, and the ways we learn from our fathers and care for and protect our children.
A. Scott Duane, Men Like Me:
My piece was about making sense of manhood as a gay man who is not masculine in the traditional sense. I thought it was important to talk about how we as gay men find community with each other, and how we can make sense of being queer, effeminate, transsexual, and male all at the same time.
When I began my transition, I felt a lot of pressure from the men around me — both trans and cis — to be masculine in the traditional sense. That didn’t work for me, so I went in search of men who I felt a little more kinship with. Through a long and bumpy search, I found those men in all kinds of odd corners: naked yoga class, radical faerie gatherings, and weekend retreats in the woods. Finding connection with these men gave me a sense of confidence in who I had become. Though I was atypical, queer, effeminate, and trans, I was no less of a man than my straight, masculine, cisgender counterparts.
Manning Up was a perfect opportunity to talk about this journey. Writing about it was cathartic. There are some parts of my story that are deeply personal, and even painful, but I’m proud to put them out there. I know there are other guys just like me out there, and I want them to feel some of the same kinship that I found.
I hope that my part of Manning Up finds its way to a lot of queer men — both cis and trans. I’ve been surprised at how much my own struggle with masculinity and manhood has resonated with some of the cis queer guys I’ve encountered. And for the queer trans guys out there, I hope that they take away a newfound urge to seek out all kinds of men — not just other trans men, but cis guys too — and create the connection and brotherhood that so many of us crave.
Micah, Just Living
It wasn’t until I received the gone-to-print notice, the blurb, and read the reviews, that I became stunned my piece was included at all. The book is very much about masculinity, and men, and trans men, of which I am none. Yet somehow there I find myself, among them – which in part is what my piece is about.
If I had to guess as to why my essay was chosen – this assumption being, of course, a reflection of my own viewpoint – is that trans men have influenced and shaped my journey, despite being someone who is not transitioning towards male. Perhaps there is more room in the trans male community, and in this wider dialogue of manhood, than initially meets the eye.
I hope that readers can see beyond masculinity and femininity, beyond trans as being just about one gender or another, or even about gender at all, and more just about life and living.
Readers of “Manning Up: Transsexual Men on Finding Family, Brotherhood, and Themselves” who are accustomed to the typical media-driven trans*narrative of self-loathing, substance abuse, and a lifetime of pain will find a variety of stories that go far beyond what we hear about on talk and reality shows. Readers who are just learning about trans*people’s experience will find the kind of diversity that we should expect to hear more as trans*visibility increases.
And anyone who is interested in the questions of what masculinity is and “What makes a man?” will find new, provocative, and even funny and sentimental answers.
Edited by Mitch Kellaway and Zander Keig, “Manning Up: Transsexual Men on Finding Family, Brotherhood, and Themselves” is available for preorder.
Read a full review here.
You might also be interested in:
What Does the * in Trans* Stand For?
10 Things You Should Never Say to a Transperson (That Have Been Said to Me) – Justin Cascio
What I Learned From Watching Men (Before I Became One)
Cover photo by Wolf
Like The Good Men Project on Facebook
—
The post All In: Words from the Men of “Manning Up” appeared first on The Good Men Project.