Abstract
The presentation of this article is to address in detail the situational experiences and social circumstances of trans men living in Poland today. Based on results arrived at through the author’s research, this article focuses on a number of accounts by transgender people of social reception of trans masculinity in Poland. The arising problems which trans men face in these situations are highlighted by the severity of the kinds of social pressure which are placed upon them, most of which are aimed at teaching them to conform according to the normative patterns of masculinity as commonly acknowledged in Polish society. Polish trans men’s attitudes to these pressures and their subsequent responses oscillate between passive conformity and conscious, performative resistance, which is herein analyzed.
Due to the recent developments in its history, Poland has become an important country in which to study trans masculinity. In Poland, as in other European countries formerly belonging to the communist bloc, trans men 1 (female-to-males [FTMs]) are said to significantly outnumber trans women (male-to-females [MTFs]; Imieliński and Dulko 1988, 168; Bieńkowska 2012a, 39). According to some statistics, the proportion of trans men to trans women in Poland is 4:1 (Strzelecka 2007; for a critical commentary on the attempts of “counting” the transgender population in Poland, where credibility of these estimations is called into question, see Kłonkowska 2015a, 124–25). Also, the fall of communism in Poland in 1989, followed by its emergence into the European Union in 2004, has considerably affected Polish people’s worldviews, their perspectives and their notions of certain social roles and how they are thought to function within Polish society, especially in the case of gender roles. The differences in defining masculinity within the context of communist ideology, and most notably after the transformation of the political system in 1989, followed by entry into the European Union in 2004, are at once highly visible (Arcimowicz, 2003). Moreover, the political and ideological changes after 1989, and in recent years, have significantly influenced the legal and social experiences of transgender people in Poland. It is important to note that Polish transgender people born and raised in different decades seem to differ not only because of a generational change in the attitudes toward the transgender phenomenon, which can also be observed in other countries (Hines 2007), but also in part to the milieu of differences from the social and political situations in which they were raised and grew up.
It is correct to state that a certain amount of information about the transgender phenomenon has started to appear in the Polish media in the last few years. However, a lack of knowledge and an array of imagery of transgender people which has in part been wildly inaccurate remains dominant in the attitudes of many parts of Polish society. Due to a lack of social acceptance, in attempt to avoid being exposed to violence (Kryszk and Kłonkowska 2012, 264), transgender people in Poland prefer to keep their gender identity hidden from other people for as long as possible (Kryszk and Kłonkowska 2012, 237–38, 268–73). In a survey-based research conducted in Poland, only 4.3 percent of transgender respondents indicated that they felt perceived as normal people and that as a consequence were socially accepted. The most prevalent of answers given showed that transgender people were perceived as “freaks” (73.1 percent) and as deviant and degenerated individuals (62 percent). They were also viewed as being ill, and requiring the attention of specialists’ (33.7 percent)—thus arousing unwanted pity. A large percentage of the answers provided also indicates that a significant part of Polish society simply identifies transgender people with gays and lesbians (57.6 percent), or has no knowledge about the transgender phenomenon at all, and is arguably completely unaware of the existence of transgender people (50 percent; Kryszk and Kłonkowska 2012, 261).
Also, the gender reassignment process in Poland is governed by a series of convoluted legal and medical procedures, with an intricate gatekeeping system based on expert discourse and its conceptual categories (see Dynarski 2012b; Śledzińska-Simon 2010; Olczyk 2014; Kłonkowska 2015a). 2
Theoretical Background
This article is figuratively located where men’s studies and transgender studies intersect. Men’s studies are well acknowledged in the United States and other English-speaking countries (e.g., Connell 1995; Connell, Breines, and Eide 2000; Gilmore 1990; Kaufman 2013; Kimmel 2010, 2012, 2013; McCaughey 2012; Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 2003, 2013; Way 2011). Similarly, the social aspects of the transgender phenomenon have been thoroughly explored by English-speaking scholars (e.g., Currah 2008; Devor 1989; Ekins and King 1996, 2006; Feinberg 1996, 1999; Hines 2007; Hines and Sanger 2010; MacKenzie 1994; Plummer 1996; Ramet 1996; Stone 1991; Stryker 1998, 2008; Stryker, Currah, and Moore 2008; Stryker and Whittle 2006; Sycamore 2007; Valentine 2007; Whittle 2000; Wilchins 1997, 2004). Also, there are publications which intersect within both fields of research, most notably in the United States (e.g., Cromwell 1999; Devor 1999; Noble 2006; Rubin 2003; Schilt 2010).
On the other hand, men’s studies have only recently begin to develop in the arena of Polish social sciences (e.g., Arcimowicz 2003; Fuszara 2008; Kluczyńska 2009; Melosik 2006; Wojnicka and Ciaputa 2011), and transgender studies are only now emerging in Poland. The research on these topics in Poland is limited and is rarely published in English, thus rendering it unknown in terms of international recognition. Polish transgender studies, which have only recently been acknowledged by social sciences, historically speaking, have been the preserve of sexology and psychiatry (e.g., Imieliński and Dulko 1988, 1989) and viewed primarily through an essentialist framework. More recently, new paradigms based on feminist approaches, social constructionism, and queer theory have been applied (e.g., Bieńkowska 2010, 2012a, 2012b; Dynarski 2012a; Kłonkowska 2013, 2014, 2015a). These approaches offer promising, albeit currently underexploited opportunities for understanding the transgender phenomenon in a Polish context.
The majority of Polish research on the transgender phenomenon as effectuated in the field of social sciences have primarily focused on providing insight into the generality of social situations, such as the context of their environment, as well as the self-perception that trans people have of themselves, in particular depicting the aforementioned group of people as largely homogenous. Yet, more detailed research is needed, especially in order to explore particular issues, and with the intent of discovering diversity among trans people, as there are significant differences in the situational and social reception of different groups of transgender people (see Serano 2007, 2–3).
This article is underpinned within the social constructionism approach and is largely inspired by Foucault’s concept of the tool of power–knowledge (Foucault 1980) and Butler’s theory of gender performativity (Butler 1999), as this theoretical framework seems to be the most appropriate in which to fully understand the complexity, variability and assignation of gendered roles and identities.
The aim of this article is to show the specifics which make up the various social situations affecting trans men in Poland: social reception, the influence of expert discourse governing their legal and medical gender recognition, their efforts to negotiate personal and social identity in the context of social expectations. This study aims to expand as much as possible Polish transgender studies and to highlight that different groups of transgender people in Poland may have different social experiences for different reasons.
Methodology
This article focuses on transgender people’s accounts of social reception of trans masculinity in Poland. I was interested in the reaction of their social environment on their decision to “abandon” the gender assigned to them at birth, and in particular their experiences in “acquiring” masculinity. The topic was inspired by suggestions from members of a support group for transgender people, which I facilitated, starting in 2010 until the present date. Regarding the confidential nature of these meetings, none of the originating data have been used for the purpose of the publication.
The applied methodology has been inspired by grounded theory in the constructionist conceptualization approach (Charmaz 2006), which seemed proper for the implemented theoretical perspective. The research was based on forty-two in-depth, intensive, semistructured interviews (Charmaz 2006, 26). They were carried out among transgender people in Poland, among whom fifteen self-identified as trans men, seventeen as trans women, and ten as otherwise gender nonconforming people. The interviews were collected for the purpose of larger research, in which the respondents were asked about their attitude to their gender (dis)identity; the process of discovering it; the reactions of people from within their social environment; experiences with experts’ systems governing the gender reassignment procedures; their own attitude to medical and legal gender reassignment; autostereotyping; their private and professional life; the situation of transgender people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community; plans for the future; and strategies of adaptation and assimilation versus active resistance toward social expectations. The analysis for this study encompassed parts of the interviews which focused on the personal and social situations of trans men, as perceived by trans men themselves and by other transgender people. It was a cross-case analysis, in which the following thematic areas have been given specific distinction: attitudes in blending into the cisgender society, visibility and social reception, social and expert discourse expectations, attitudes to socially acknowledged models of masculinity, acquiring male privilege, and finding life partners.
The interviews were collected between November 2010 and May 2015, which allowed me to accommodate for potential changes of attitude within almost a five-year period. The research participants were from different parts of Poland, mostly from Gdansk, Warsaw, Wroclaw, and surrounding villages. The youngest participant was nineteen when the interviews were conducted, whilst the oldest was sixty-two. Some of the interviewees were members of a support group which I facilitated, whereas others had been recruited through the snowball method. All of the participants were informed of the scope and purpose of the study. The interviews were conducted in places selected by the participants. All of the interviews were in Polish, recorded and transcribed personally by the author of this article, which was of importance to the research participants, who had stated feeling uncomfortable had any third party had access to the recordings. The following segments have been specifically selected from the aforementioned interviews and subsequently translated into English.
The research outcomes were also supplemented by a study of Polish Internet forum (transseksualizm.pl) populated by transgender people, and eight autobiographical stories of transgender people (four of trans men, three of trans women, and one of an otherwise gender nonconforming person), collected by the author of this article (Kłonkowska, Bojarska, and Witek 2015). The content from the Internet forum was studied with the consent of the forum administration. Since being granted access to the archival materials, I was able to analyze data within almost the time frame of eight and a half years, from January 2007 to May 2015.
Research Results
Noticeably, when sharing their opinion on trans men’s experience—my respondents didn’t describe it per se, but mostly in relation to the experience of trans women, 3 and were much less focused on comparing to the experience of people with nonbinary gender identities. This kind of narrative presents masculinity as a phenomenon that is to be defined in relation to femininity (see Kimmel 1987). As Riki Wilchins (2004) claims, “By being not-Man, She serves to give Him meaning. Yet, apart from Him, She has almost no independent meaning herself” (p. 41).
(In)visibility and Social Reception
First of all, it has been pointed out by almost all of my respondents, that trans men are less “visible” in cisgender society than trans women. Trans men can more easily blend into society, also before the transition, which is because of the general social consent for somebody acknowledged as female crossing the gender boundaries, adopting the common forms of male gender performativity (e.g., clothes, haircut, behavior, etc.) and almost no social consent for somebody acknowledged as male crossing the gender boundaries and adopting female gender performativity. As it’s been noticed by Julia Serano (2007, 15), “It’s ok for women to wear ‘men’s’ clothing, but ( … ) men who wear ‘women’s’ clothing can be diagnosed with the psychological disorder transvestic fetishism.” My respondents came up with similar conclusions: They [FTMs] even before the transition have it easier. Because a girl may live and dress as she pleases. She may wear hair the way she likes it. If, on the other hand, a man grows his hair, paints his nails or (God forbid!) wears a skirt—it is clear that there’s something wrong. ( … ) And at this point they [FTMs] don’t experience such a trauma ( … ). (Katarzyna)
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In my opinion FTM persons are perceived better because in society there is something like … well, a girl is simply seen as “a tomboy,” but a boy who displays female features is generally portrayed by a great part of society as “a fag” or a “tranny” and I think that more often such people are being discriminated. Even in the streets when people see a girl dressed like a man they’ll say “a butch,” right?—everyone’ll think that and go their own way. But when they see a man wearing a dress, he may be immediately beaten up. (Dawid)
What is more, many of my respondents have noticed that trans men generally receive a better form of social reception than trans women, and not only due to their lesser “visibility.” As it has been noted by several of the interview participants, this might be connected with a greater appreciation of and less expectations of men in general: I think that for a very simple reason, a reason … well, connected with the man’s position in our society—let’s say it clearly, higher position—and at the same time lower expectations on the side of men and their certain looks … so it seems to me that trans men more easily blend into the background, are more easily accepted by the society. Well, it had to have manifested itself on many levels. ( … ) We always expect differently from men and we expect less—it seems to me—and it is certainly a ‘clue’ to everything. (Karolina) With FTM (i.e., when a girl transitions into a boy) there is a more unconscious or maybe more conscious attitude of the society: ‘Oh, ennoblement, social advancement, it’s gonna be a man’. ( … ) On the other hand, when you’re an MTF it works like this: ‘It’s a freak. He downgrades himself socially’. (Weronika) What they want to say is that what madman would, out of his own free will, want to be a woman? (Jola) The female-to-male transition is (in the social hierarchy) a step up. The male-to-female transition is a step down. Even women think that way. The ordinary, average, normally reasoning women, would more easily accept the fact that one of them became a man than that a man will become one of them. (Emilia) Well, even at work, because I changed my job after the correction … I see that they’ve started treating me more seriously. As if I knew more than before. (Piotr) also at home ( … ) earlier my mom was always trying to teach me how to cook, in which she never succeeded, and now she let it go. It is definitely a privilege, now that she let me off the hook. Earlier she would also say things like, “you’re a girl and you won’t even help me peel these potatoes.” Now, she let go. She even says, “sure thing that a man doesn’t know how to peel potatoes, so I will do it myself.” There are such situations. She let me off the hook with the cooking and this is definitely a privilege. [Dawid] For the family everything was OK ( … ) [if it was the other way around] I think there may have been a different reaction. For example, my grandfather was … he had this opinion that a girl can act a bit like a boy, but a boy must be masculine. So I think that if it was the other way around, opposite situation, there may have been some problems. Instead, in my case there weren’t any and everything was OK. (Dawid) My dad—I suppose, it slipped out—once, when I was doing something, that in his opinion wasn’t very feminine, said “well, I’d like to have a son”. (Marcel). I was 12, well something like 11 or 12, it was the first time when my parents caught me epilating my eyebrows … So when my father caught me, when I finished epilating … He got to me and started beating me up … My mother came: “we’ll put you in a psychiatric clinic, you psycho! We’ll put you in a clinic”! And so on, and you know, such threats—so I started hiding away from them … (Marianna) [Mother] acknowledged it with a statement that is still very telling today: “well, if you wish, wear dresses and walk around the house like that!,” after which she ridiculed me and ended the whole discussion. (Magdalena)
Life Partners and Heteronormative Masculinity
It also seems that trans men find it easier to find life partners than trans women do, an unofficial rule which is in force mainly for heterosexual
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trans men. Previous research outcomes (Kłonkowska 2015b) show that heterosexual cis women in Poland seem to be much more accepting of transgender people than heterosexual cis men and are more likely to be in a relationship with a transgender person than homosexual cis men, and even homosexual cis women. Several of my respondents have clearly highlighted that trans men do not face many difficulties in finding a cisgender female partner: most FTMs form happy relationships with the “genetic girls,” even before the transition, because women are a lot more tolerant, accepting and besides the whole corporeality, able to notice someone as a person. No man (maybe one in a billion) would get emotionally involved with MTF before treatment. (Grzegorz) He said that he could be happy with me, that he likes me and all that. But it could have worked only on a desert island where nobody knew us because otherwise he would be all the time afraid that his friends would start asking questions or someone would find out or something … and that he would be rejected. Anyway, I would always have that feeling from him that I’m not completely authentic, that I have to make it up to him somehow and be better-looking and better-dressed than “genetic girls.” (Maryla) Because, see girls cling to FTMs and they have no problems with finding a girlfriend while MTFs are alone and they can’t find a man because men treat them … you know how they treat them. They [men] are, I think, more afraid of themselves. (Weronika) I frankly admit that I was more afraid of coming across negative reactions from males than females, due to the fact, that … I don’t know … I was afraid of that and I thought that men will receive me and treat me worse than women … ( … ). Men are more aggressive, less tolerant, maybe also their level of awareness is lower than the female level of awareness and their sensitivity may be a bit lower too … (Magdalena) I’m afraid of one thing: everywhere you can hear, there’s been a lot of such stories, that a guy didn’t know who he’s dealing with, and when he found out he killed that person. There’s been a lot of such murders around the world … and always in one direction. (Marianna) it is all based on proving oneself that you are that man and you can have a “genetic” girlfriend who sees a guy in you. (Marek) Generally speaking, an FTM before [the final surgery] would feel a bit hunted down, less manly being in a relationship with a guy. Not everyone could give you a feeling that you are men like others. More likely women (I know it for a fact from FTMs who have women). (Dorota) The opinion itself depends on a given doctor’s or psychologist’s opinion of what a trans person should act like, look like and feel like. Not every man has short hair. Why should an FTM? Not every man is tough and has a typically masculine hobby. Why should an FTM? (Edward) We had to, in 200 percent, implement the stereotype of our desired gender and blend into the crowd after the transition. If someone didn’t fit he was eaten up also by the transgender community because he spoiled the image. (Marcin) My trans colleagues who identify themselves as homo lied to their doctors ( … ). They had a choice of saying they’re straight and getting their medicines right away or admitting they’re gay or bisexual and be forced to undergo psychotherapy “because maybe something might be changed in a patient”, it was clear what they would choose. (Iza) Such doctors [diagnosticians] draw a conclusion that all trans people are straight. This is what they tell their next patient, that’s what they write in their publications, and this is how their publications are being cited in the Internet. And as a result, a few years later, a poor little trans person who is looking for some knowledge and identity discovers that since their sexual orientation is different, it means that they must be some kind of a “pervert” and will not qualify for treatment. (Sławka) Transsexuality “itself” is easier to diagnose, being a homosexual casts a bit different shadow on this diagnosis—also, we have to add that the bare fact of being a homo- or bisexual may be difficult to accept (Radek) a lot of people deny the possibility of TS being homosexual and portray these issues leniently or treat them as a sign of uncertainty. (Marek) I’d prefer to be hetero. Besides, how will I explain it to my mother. (Tomasz) Oh, God, I like men, so maybe I’m not a true transsexual. (Janek) I live with a woman. I can’t imagine a man touching me … as long as I have my present body. If [my body] were “proper” I wouldn’t have such objections … (Zdzisław) In my opinion—very often the bare fact of starting treatment causes the FTM transsexual to feel more self-confident and a bit more reconciled. ( … ) It reassures his own masculinity. As a result, he doesn’t have to be afraid, not even before himself, that he’s unmanly and fulfill the ideal of masculinity which is, among other things, being a “womanizer.” (Marek) By gaining a still deeper conviction about our own masculinity, we stop treating the image of a guy in bed beside us as a threat to this masculinity. (Sławomir)
Blending in
Also, more than half of the respondents noticed that Polish trans men—more often than trans women dissociated themselves from other transgender people when already having transitioned. This may be caused by a simple fact that they more easily blend into the society of gendered men and women, and they do not need to keep to the transgender community, when looking for support or a sense of belonging. well, I don’t think I will come to any group meetings any more. It was useful and all when I was transitioning, you know … I got information, those [surgeons’] addresses and so. What for now? Of course I did advise some new people later … so I did repay what I’ve been helped by others before, and I guess it’s been enough. (Adam) too much to lose (Sebastian)
Discussion: Privileged Position, Gender Conformity, and Strategies of Resistance
The outcomes of the research indicate that transgender people in Poland who are transitioning from FTM are in many ways in a privileged position in comparison to those who are transitioning MTF. Yet, there is a price for these privileges: pressure to conform to the socially acknowledged concepts of masculinity. Of course, all transgender people in Poland when confronted with diagnosticians and their apparent expert discourse are expected to meet the categories which describe, classify, identify, and distinguish individuals by means of several codes referring to established norms (cf. Foucault 1978, 2003; Turner 2008), that gain access to individuals, their bodies, gestures, and activities (Foucault 1980, 151). However, in the case of trans men, these expectations seem to be distinctively in force.
As Judith Butler explains, there must be a stable sex expressed through a stable gender (masculine expresses male, feminine expresses female) that is oppositionally and hierarchically defined through the compulsory practice of heterosexuality. (1999, 194) That the boy usually chooses the heterosexual would, then, be the result, not of the fear of castration by the father, but of the fear of castration—that is, the fear of “feminization” associated within heterosexual cultures with male homosexuality. (Butler 1999, 76) Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being. (Butler 1999, 43–44)
At this point, a rudimentary question appears: why do people transitioning from FTM experience these pressures more than other transgender individuals?
Generally, trans men seem to experience more pressure than trans women to conform to the socially acknowledged standards of normative gender performativity after their transition. Trans women, on the other hand, seem to experience the same kind of pressure before their transition (cf. Kłonkowska 2013). At the same time, before transitioning, trans men do not conform to the gender assigned them at birth the same extent as trans women are expected to and that trans women do not conform to such an extent as trans men do in their post-transition gender. In other words, both trans men and trans women interviewed in Poland were more likely to conform to the socially acknowledged model of masculinity at some point of their lives than to the model of femininity at another point. This is perhaps connected with the overall cultural elevation of masculinity in Poland, and thus, as already stated, lower social acceptance of MTF than FTM transitions. Men accept women who want to be men, because it is someone else who wants to be a man. And here’s a man, who despite the—let’s say—higher position in society, on a labor market, financial market, chooses to be a woman. So, he stands—let’s say—on the more difficult side ( … ). (Katarzyna) men are brought up thinking that they must be very masculine. Boys were always taught that they shouldn’t cry because it’s not appropriate. For a girl it was normal to cry but for a boy it was inappropriate. I think it comes from that. Later even between themselves they want to be very masculine and do not accept those who aren’t. (Dawid) Slowly, very slowly I started to consciously depart from the pattern of a “true transsexual.” I was looking for signs, that you could live differently, that you could be happy and fulfilled. [Marcin] I don’t have to be ideal. ( … ) I don’t have to be more masculine than all the other men, to be one of them. I don’t care about my height, how many scars I will have, how I will change during the hormonal therapy and most importantly—it is not the doctor’s note that determines if I have the right to feel like a man, or not. ( … ) I don’t see any reason to run away from who I really am. (Edward) Masculinity as well as femininity are absolutely overestimated in everyday social contacts. ( … ). For me, they are one big limitation, an attempt of closure. (Wiktor)
Conclusions
The aim of this article was to show the specific situational experiences of trans men in Poland: their social reception, the influence of expert discourse governing their legal and medical gender recognition, and their efforts to negotiate personal and social identity in the context of social expectations. At two stages, unexpected observations were made which pertained to the perception of transitioning MTF as social elevation, and the experience of compulsory heterosexuality, especially when interrelated to the advancement of bodily transition. This study also demonstrated that unlike in previous Polish publications in which the transgender community was presented as homogenous to a large extent, it appears that different groups of transgender people in Poland may have had different experiences and different social receptions.
Julia Serano identifies that both the personal and social situations of various groups of transgender people may differ significantly: While I do believe that all transgender people have a stake in the same political fight against those who fear and dismiss gender diversity and difference in all of its wondrous forms, I do not believe that we are discriminated against in the same ways and for the exact same reasons. (Serano 2007, 2–3)
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Amanda Kennedy for linguistic corrections and the individuals who shared their stories with me in interviews.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: I received Kosciuszko Foundation fellowship for theroretical study for this research project.