“I Get Fire Inside Me That Tells Me I’m Going to Defy.”: The Discursive Construction of Trans Masculinity in Cape Town,South Africa

Abstract

This research extends our understanding of trans masculinity in South Africa. Drawing on in-depth interviews with seven trans masculine-identified individuals, we analyze the discourses that trans masculine individuals draw on to make sense of their experiences of gender and their embodiment and performance of masculinity. There are three key findings. First, we found that trans masculine people deploy competing discourses of gender to make sense of their gender performativity. Second, participants drew on discourses of sexism, genderism, and transphobia to illustrate the complexity of constructing counter-normative masculine subject positions. Finally, while trans masculine individuals discursively positioned their masculinities as caring, their constructions of masculinity simultaneously contained complicity with dominant discourses about hegemonic masculinity. The findings highlight the diversity and complexity of masculine subject positions taken up by trans masculine individuals.

Keywords

trans masculinity masculinity gender discourse South Africa

Introduction

In South Africa, transgender identity has come to be understood through narratives of transitioning from either male to female or female to male, keeping in line with hegemonic understandings of the gender binary. This understanding of gender is prompted by religious, racist, patriarchal, and heteronormative moral and societal codes that impact the everyday lived realities of transgender people in South Africa (Morgan, Marais, and Wellbeloved 2009). Patriarchal ideals underpin the binary construction of identity, where gender is always constructed through oppositional categories of woman or man supported by an abiding context of compulsory heterosexuality (Reygan and Lynette 2014). This dominant binary construction of gender is also sustained in part by the unrelenting anti-LGBT rhetoric that thrives within cultural, religious, legal, medical, and educational institutions that perpetuate gender inequalities, homophobia, and transphobia. In South Africa, anti-queer rhetoric constructs counter-normative genders and sexualities as “un-African,” “unnatural,” and Western imports (Vincent and Howell 2014).

The South African Constitution is lauded as one of the most progressive in the world for its prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender (RSA, 1996). Writing on transgender refugees in South Africa, Camminga (2019, 245) notes that the Constitution has “unintended and progressive consequences regarding access and protection for those who might consider themselves transgender…and [who] seek refuge in South Africa.” Alongside the constitutional protections, transgender people in South Africa are also made provision for by the Alteration of Sex Description and Sex Status Act 49 of 2003 (henceforth, Act 49), which allows individuals, under certain conditions, to alter their sex recorded at birth and thus have identification that reflects their gender and sex (Government Gazette 2004, 4). While this is a significant piece of legislation, it is important to note that Act 49 maintains a binary imaginary of gender, in which a change in a person’s sex descriptor in their identity documents is possible through male to female or female to male sex categories. The binary imaginary of gender, however, is deeply embedded within the legal, sociopolitical, and cultural fabric of the country. For example, in what is considered the largest and most representative survey of attitudes towards gender and sexuality nonconformity in South Africa, Sutherland et al. (2016, 3) estimate that around half a million people “have physically harmed women who dressed and behaved like men in public.” Such instances of violence against trans and gender nonconforming people continue to thrive in a sociopolitical climate that is deeply patriarchal, homophobic, and transphobic.

Transgender is one form of gender embodiment and identity that, in all its complexity, allows us to imagine gender embodiments that queer the norm. The term “transgender” has been used as a collective term to denote the “wide range of histories and experiences of individuals whose sense of self does not conform to the gender assigned to them at birth” (Carrera, DePalma, and Lameiras 2012, 667). At the center of this article is an analysis of trans masculinities as a modality through which articulations of masculinities can be explored. We use the term “trans masculinities” to refer to a broad array of masculine gender identities and expressions of masculinities that fall outside cis-gender binary discourses and understandings of masculinities. Trans masculinity is an important analytical category, revealing the porous, paradoxical, and sometimes inconsistent nature of constructions of gender through an analysis of discursive articulations of masculinities. While the term “trans masculinities” certainly encompasses myriad masculine embodiments, the research question driving this article asks how young, self-identified trans masculine and nonbinary individuals living in Cape Town understand and perform masculinities.

Discourse, Gender, and Trans Masculinity

Discourse is understood as “consisting of related statements which cohere in some ways to produce both meanings and effects in the real world” (Carabine 2001, 268). Central to this study is the productive power of discourses and how these intersect with gender identity in the construction of trans masculinity (Foucault 1978; Butler 1993). Discourses reinforce heteronormative and homo/transphobic ideologies, cultures, and social norms. For example, discourses that present gender as essential or ones that present counter-normative genders as abnormal and unnatural are organized in ways that uphold cis-heteropatriarchy. Gender, in this study, is not understood as essential or totalizing but as “a multiplicity of discursive elements that come into play in various strategies” (Foucault 1978, 100). Individuals, however, do not merely take on gender scripts and reproduce them as they are. Gender norms are resisted, troubled, and altered; as Foucault (1978) phrases it, there is a certain reciprocity between the subject (the one who becomes) and power. How gender is performed, therefore, is continually shifting, changing, and contingent on time and context.

Contextualizing Trans Masculinities

The corpus of literature on masculinity studies, both from the Global North and Global South, has theorized and documented masculinities as plural patterns of practice that are connected to men, relational, contingent, and hierarchically arranged (e.g., Frosh, Phoenix, Pattman 2001; Hearn 2012; Ratele 2016). This contingency of masculinities implies that what is understood as manhood or masculinity changes over time and across cultures (Ratele 2016, 9). While there have been important insights into the study of masculinities, the literature has focused almost exclusively on cis-gender men’s masculinities, often presenting masculinity as cis-gender men’s prerogative (Gottzén and Straube 2016, 219; Aboim 2016, 225). And yet, masculinities are not the exclusive embodiment of bodies assigned to the male sex but a collection of roles, behaviors, and imaginaries that are continually being challenged and, as such, transforming. Trans masculinity research, therefore, has occupied marginal space in critical studies on men and masculinity (Aboim 2016). In a critique of this silence, Aboim (2016, 226) writes that the continued silence in critical studies on men and masculinities on transgender masculinity is underpinned by the assumption that trans men are not “relevant for transgressing the boundaries of male privilege and changing the order of masculine domination.” In this article, in contrast, we argue that trans masculinity is an important and productive analytical category, illustrating the entanglement of gender and sexuality in the situated understandings and constructions of masculinities in South Africa.

Scholarship on trans masculinities has been growing steadily over the past two decades, with most of the work produced from the Global North contexts (see Abelson and Kade 2020 for a review). Drawing attention to the constructions of masculinity among transgender men, research shows increased investment in technologies of the body that are utilized to produce muscular, physically strong, and fit bodies that communicate normative interpellations of masculinity (Farber 2017). While transgender men socially recognized as men by others can benefit from the dividends of patriarchy (Rubin 2003), this does not imply that transgender men transition for this sole purpose. In fact, in Kłonkowska’s (2018) study on trans masculinity in Poland, trans men perceived to aspire to “social elevation” experienced pressure to conform to normative embodiments of masculinity undergirded by compulsory heterosexuality. Other studies report a departure from masculine norms where transgender men construct masculine subject positions by drawing attention to diverse ways to embody masculinity. As Green (2005, 295) argued in his qualitative study of trans men, “maleness and masculinity [are] not the same thing and […] masculinity does not depend on having a male body or having a penis.” Similarly, in a study of trans masculinity in Iran, Saeidzadeh (2019) notes that the transgender men were critical of dominant norms of masculinity and did not seek to conform. Saeidzadeh (2019) reports that transgender men constructed their masculinities in relation to attentiveness to women, and T. J. Jourian (2017) found that the transgender men in his study desired masculinities that “felt authentic to them,” which often entailed masculinities that were crafted with “intentionality” and “gentleness.”

This body of scholarship highlights the fluidity of masculinity embodiment—that there is nothing essential or inherent in transgender men leading them to adopt a particular masculine style or specific orientations to what masculinity entails in the first place. This implies a need for situated accounts of gender-variant and nonconforming masculine embodiments where gender practices may differ significantly from what we currently understand through the terms and narratives available through the LGBTI discourse (e.g., Camminga 2019).

Transgender in South Africa

The limited research in South Africa on transgender identities and experiences focuses primarily on psychomedical narratives of transgender identity and on the attitudes of health care workers toward gender diverse individuals (see Luvuno, Ncama and Mchunu 2017; Newman-Valentine and Duma 2014; Spencer, Meer and Müller 2017). Scholarship here evinces the frustrations and barriers to accessing gender-affirming health care—particularly medical transitioning (Husakouskaya 2013). Rubin (2017, 135), for example, reports on lengthy waiting periods (between one and seven years) for the processing of applications for medical transitions; in some instances, applications were even lost.

Studies have also explored the lives of transgender people and how they navigate coming out (Van der Wal 2016), transgender identity work (Monakali 2017), transgender masculinity (Francis 2014), and the experiences of transgender refugees in South Africa (Camminga 2019). Though this body of work is small, these studies draw attention to the complexity of navigating livable transgender subjectivities in South Africa, the influence of culture and religion on transgender people’s decision to come out publicly, and transphobia (Francis 2014; Monakali 2017; Van der Wal 2016). In his life history study of how a rural transgender man in South Africa “enacts, negotiates, resists and reproduces dominant understandings of gender and sexuality,” Francis (2014, 554) found that “masculine essentialism” is misleading. In documenting the strategic navigation of masculine subject positions, Francis (2014, 547) underscores the fluidity of masculine embodiment and how it is tied to a transgender man’s navigation of gender in ways that grant him “recognition as a man.”

Similarly, using autobiographical narratives and photographs as a tool of self-representation, Van der Wal (2016) investigated the discursive and material impact of “coming out” on transgender individuals. The trans man participant in Van der Wal’s study explained that the public visibility of his trans and masculine identity through the photographs was shaped by the textual codes accompanying the image, arguing that the text accompanying the image allows the viewer to read the image “correctly.” Further, van der Wal reports that the participant’s fear of losing control over his body image is mediated through maintaining consistency between how his body appears in photographs that he shares publicly. Choices surrounding the disclosure or nondisclosure of trans identity are central to how transgender people navigate livable gender subjectivities. In their study of transgender refugees in South Africa, Camminga (2019) found that access, passing, visibility, and rights presented tensions for how the participants in the study navigate livable lives. In particular, Camminga (2019) notes that for some, being visibly read as transgender complicates access to accommodations and employment. Further, Camminga writes that for Arthur, a trans man participant in the study, “passing is key to maintaining rights and being read as human…as a man in a community of men” (Camminga 2019, 224).

Francis (2014), Van der Wal (2016), and Camminga (2019) all show that transgender subjectivity is navigated through the often slippery dichotomy of visible and invisible, where recognition, acceptance, and sometimes survival frequently hinge on transgender people’s embodiment and performance of normative gender subjectivities. Notably, while the material realities of many transgender people in South Africa are complicated by social, economic, religious, and cultural factors (Mavhandu-Mudzusi, Helen, and Sandy 2015), research has also documented transgender people finding belonging and acceptance within their families and communities (Francis 2014; Van der Wal 2016).

The international and South African research detailed above reveals that there are clear parallels in normative ideas of masculinity embodied by cis-gender men and trans men/trans masculine individuals. Furthermore, this work highlights the dominance of patriarchal masculinity in determining which forms of masculinity are privileged as more desirable to embody and what embodiments are recognized as “masculine.” While the studies explore meanings attached to masculinity among trans men, they focus primarily on transgender men who have undergone some degree of medical transitioning. The present article adds to the growing scholarship on trans masculinity by exploring discursive constructions of gender (masculinity) in Cape Town, South Africa, with particular attention to how trans masculine-identified individuals draw on various gender discourses to construct livable masculine subject positions.

Data and Methods

The data that appear in this article are drawn from an exploratory qualitative study that sought to understand how trans masculine individuals understand and perform gender. We used purposive sampling to select participants with the objective of yielding insights and understanding of trans masculine subjectivity (Merriam 2002, 12). Because Facebook has been reported to be a useful tool for targeting and recruiting members of stigmatized social groups (Dalessandro 2018; Worthen 2013), recruitment was carried out through the social media platform. The first author shared an invitation for participation on their¹ Facebook account and in closed groups for trans and nonbinary identifying individuals in South Africa, of which they are a member. Snowball sampling followed, whereby Facebook friends and those who participated in the study informed others they believed were eligible for inclusion. People who self-identify as trans masculine, were between 18 to 35, and lived in Cape Town were eligible for participation (see Table 1). The participants are largely black, university educated, and living in urban areas around Cape Town. At the time of the interviews, four of the participants were undergoing hormone replacement therapy, and one had undergone top surgery.

Table 1.

Participants Details.

Participant	Pronouns	Age	Race	Gender	Sexuality	In a Relationship (Y/N)
Lee	They/them/their	23	Black	Nonbinary	Queer	Yes
Karabo	He/him/his	32	Black	Transgender man	Heterosexual	Yes
Luke	He/him/his	29	White	Transgender man	Undefined	No
Henry	They/them/their	28	Black	Nonbinary	Queer	Yes
Mike*	He/him/his	27	Black	Transgender man	Queer	Yes
Seth	He/him/his	19	White	Trans masculine	Queer	Yes
Buhle	He/him/his	23	Black	Transgender man	Heterosexual	Yes

The first author conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with seven trans men and nonbinary masculine individuals to understand how they make sense of their experiences as trans masculine individuals (Seidman 1991). This is a small sample. Nevertheless, it befits research with an understudied and hard-to-reach population. The sample size also allowed for a more nuanced inquiry into and analysis of participants’ understandings and experiences of trans masculinity. Interview questions focused on the participants’ understandings of gender and their experiences as gender questioning or gender counter-normative individuals in the contexts of schooling and work, romantic relationships, public and private spaces, and their relationships with parents and significant others. Interviews lasted between 60 and 180 minutes and were conducted in various settings, including participants’ homes or spaces available to them. The interviews were approached as collaborative meaning-making events rather than objective, value-free instances of information extraction. In this instance, interviews themselves are discursive events; they are finite and limited to the moment and conditions of their occurrence. The participants articulated themselves in a combination of languages that included English, IsiXhosa, and IsiZulu, and translations, done by the first author, are marked by square brackets.

Prior to data collection, written informed consent was obtained from all participants. Six of the seven requested that they be identifiable through their names in the research. As such, and as permitted in our ethical clearance, we uphold their right to be identified. The participants were briefed about possible implications of being identifiable in the research report and subsequent publications. Chosen visibility in this kind of research is not only an issue of social justice but also important for transgender people who academic research so often marginalizes, pathologizes, and erases. All names of third parties and places are anonymized with pseudonyms. The authors are black, queer South African scholars engaged in gender and sexuality research. Their personal experiences of being black and queer inform their approach to knowledge production, and so does their academic training. The authors are cognizant of the history and impact of research with gender minorities in South Africa and approach their research from a critical approach that disrupts the pathologizing, classist, racist, and heteropatriarchal lens through which trans identities have been framed.

We utilized two analytical methods to enable a broad exploration of competing and complementary discursive constructions of trans masculinity. The analysis utilized within-case and cross-case analysis (Merriam 2009) and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA hereafter). The first level of analysis, within-case analysis, focused on reading and rereading interviews, separately assigning codes to excerpts relevant to the research questions (Merriam 2009). Descriptive codes allowed for the creation of categories that were collapsed into themes. Subsequently, we conducted a cross-case analysis across the individual participants’ data to develop thematic generalizations to describe the participants as a group in relation to the research question (Merriam 2009). Cross-case analysis involved reading the narrative accounts, discussing emergent patterns, offering possible explanatory statements, and comparing our interpretations. During cross-case analysis, we analyzed emergent themes from each participant interview to develop a deeper understanding of the cases as a whole, providing generalization across the seven individuals (Merriam 2009). Through this iterative and layered analysis, three themes illustrating the conceptualization and performance of trans masculinity emerged.

We further analyzed emergent themes using FDA. We reread the collated themes with specific attention to how trans masculinity is “spoken of” and what discourses participants drew on to make sense of themselves and their experiences (Carabine 2001, 281). Three discourses emerged from the three themes analyzed: (1) trans masculinity as constructed through a sex-gender specific body’s narrative of the body, supplemented by an appeal to heterosexuality as “natural”; (2) sexism, genderism, transphobia as complicating the navigation of self-reflexive and nonviolent masculinity; and (3) discourses of care and emotionality in the context of relationships and their centrality to constructing affective masculinities.

Discursively Constructing Trans Masculinity in Cape Town

This section is divided into three parts, reflecting the three discursive constructions we discovered in our analysis. The first part explores and analyses the discourse of sex-gender specific bodies and heterosexuality that participants cite, which constructs gender through a binary notion of female and male bodies. Specifically, we highlight how trans masculine individuals draw on a discourse of medical transitioning to legitimate various trans masculine subject positions. Second, we explore how participants cite the influence of being socialized into a cis-heteropatriarchal society and sexist, genderist, and transphobic discourses on their navigation of masculinity, particularly in public spaces. Third, we examine the discourse of care and emotionality in the context of romantic relationships, highlighting the affective as a significant aspect in the construction of trans masculinities.

Hetero-gender and Sex-Gender Specific Bodies

The participants in this study discursively invoked sex-gender specific bodies as undergirded by heterosexuality and biological cis-normative assumptions of what men’s bodies ought to look like. The participants articulated their feelings and experiences of living in their assigned gender in relation to their felt gender. In doing this, they invoked a “social construction of the body” narrative in ways that discursively positioned themselves as responsible for altering their physicality to be in line with privileged and accepted embodiments of masculinity. Particular effort was made by trans men to particularize the bodily forms of gender embodiment that constructed them as men. Below, Buhle, a 23-year-old black trans man, spoke of his experience of being socialized as a girl and the implications of that assignment for his navigation of gender:

I never felt right as a girl. I was never like, I never even dated a boy for like two days, never. I always knew there was something wrong with me…I felt like I was stuck in the wrong body. If I was born in the right body, which is a man, I was going to be a straight man.

Buhle’s language reflects the coalescence of gender and heterosexuality in the construction of legitimate and socially acceptable masculine subject positions. Heterosexuality is discursively mobilized as legitimating his masculine gender, deemphasizing the possibility of being framed through homosexuality. The idea of transgender as a movement from one sex and gender designation to another has implications for how sexuality is constructed and understood. Indeed, in Buhle’s comments, the malleability of sexuality is resisted through an invocation of a “natural” heterosexuality.

Bodies are crucial sites where masculinity materializes (Abelson and Kade 2020). Asked about his idea of masculinity, Seth, a 19-year-old white trans masculine individual, shared:

I don’t hate God for making me a woman. I just feel like you gave me this body, and this is not how I want my outside to look, and I’m gonna change that. I don’t like my hips; they’re way too big, um, obviously I don’t like my boobs, obviously they can go. So, I want to look more masculine, like more buff and stuff.

Drawing on a specific idea of the binary sexed and gendered body, Seth’s comments emphasize the social validity and legitimacy of a masculine body predicated on legible masculine body norms—where “hips” and “boobs” do not fit the desired profile of masculinity. Muscular bodies that conform to socially constructed standards of masculinity are more privileged. Trans masculinity is constructed through a discursive logic that approximates cisnormative body ideals where the trans masculine body can only appear and be recognized as “masculine” or “manly” through musculature (Vidal-Ortiz 2005). The discourse of “sex-gender specific bodies” circumscribes the domain of what qualifies as intelligible gender displays and embodiments through defining the conditions necessary for a body to appear and be recognized as belonging to either a woman or a man. As other research has also found, physical fitness is central to the construction of trans masculinity (Farber 2017). In line with this, Mike, a 27-year-old black trans man, expressed similar sentiments in response to how he relates to masculinity and the body:

I go to the gym. I’m trying to be consistent because I’m just like you’re going to look amazing. When I’m there, I stare at myself, and go; you’re going to have biceps and imagine things on myself. I want to look like a Dorito, muscular.

The disciplining power of exercise is discursively positioned as central to achieving a masculine body. Mike likened his desired body structure to the triangular shape of a Doritos tortilla chip—where the upper body is broad, and the waist is narrow. For most of the participants, the bodily structure imagined and desired drew on a powerful exercise narrative—where trans masculinity is constructed through muscularity and fitness (Farber 2017). The centrality of the body in the materialization of masculinity is further illustrated by Seth’s remarks regarding his embodied expression of his masculinity:

I see trans masculinity as like a step up from a tomboy. So, like identifying masculine. I don’t wanna say identifying as a man, but like identifying more masculine, enjoying masculine things, and dressing masculine, portraying yourself as more masculine. I bought a packer so that I could have that bulge, but I bought a packer that was huge, so when I put it on, I was like, this looks like a have a huge boner, so maybe not, so I don’t use it often, I barely use it.

The construction of trans masculinity through sex-gender specific bodies articulated by most of the participants in this study underscores the powerful ideas of biological essentialism that imply normative sex and gender characteristics materialized in and through the body. The phallus, in particular, is perceived as central to achieving intelligible, normative masculinity. Seth’s comment underscores the oscillation between desiring the intelligible embodiment of physical markers of masculinity or maleness and the failure of attaining normative masculinity.

Some of the bodily changes brought about by medical transitioning—for instance, a beard, a deep voice, and fat redistribution—facilitate the recognition and intelligibility of trans masculine individuals by others (Abelson and Kade 2020). And for some participants, medical transitioning held the hope of alleviating body image problems. For instance, below, Mike spoke about the potential that medical transitioning has for his body:

I need to do the medical transition because I know that will change my body, and I’m hoping that when that does happen, I’ll have a better relationship with my body. I’ll be able to look in the mirror. Because I don’t look in the mirror, when I look in the mirror, I look at my face. When I walk past a place that has full body reflection, I look away because I don’t think I’m looking at myself.

Mike’s statement highlights the centrality of medical discourses in the construction of transgender knowledge (Luvuno, Ncama, and Mchunu 2017). Negotiating trans masculinity is caught up in psychomedical discourses that articulate bodily alienation through the dominant idea of “right” and “wrong” bodies and the implications thereof in transgender men’s body narratives. It specifies and normalizes how transgender is understood. As Hines (2007) argues, the medical discourse has worked on structuring specific understandings of transgender identity. For some trans masculine participants in this study who had already undergone testosterone therapy, medical transitioning was framed as “a matter of life and death,” as Karabo, a 32-year-old black trans man, clarified:

I’ve been on T for over a year now, since April last year. I really have an amazing team; I’m seeing Dr (redacted), my psychologist, she’s amazing, and also my doctor, Dr (redacted), who does the hormones and stuff. I felt like it was a matter of life and death, and I have no regrets. So, I don’t care if I have to pay till like I’m 90, but for me to be happy and be who I am, especially at night when I’m about to sleep thinking, Karabo—it’s worth it.

As in other nations, the cost of medical transition presents barriers to many transgender people seeking gender affirmative health care in South Africa. While Karabo self-funds his medical transitioning and can access private medical care, many transgender people in the country rely on an under-resourced and overwhelmed public health care system (Camminga 2019) with long waiting lists for accessing medical transitions (Spencer et al. 2017). Most of the participants in this study had already begun the process of medical transitioning and reported relative ease in accessing gender-affirming health care as a result of their financial stability. Consistent with the research, those who utilized public health care reported a more complicated process of accessing hormone replacement therapy compared with those who used private health care services.

Psychomedical discourses were drawn upon to legitimate the alignment of the body with the perceived and felt self. The participants also emphasized sex-gender specific bodies, which speaks to complicity with hegemonic masculine gender norms. Participants described the materialization of trans masculinity as contingent upon emulation of hetero-gendered and cis-gender male-adjacent bodily norms.

Negotiating Anti-Patriarchal Masculinity

In this section, we explicate the participants’ reflections on the kinds of masculinities they (aspire to) embody. All the participants spoke openly about their socialization into feminine gender roles, raised as girls in hetero-patriarchal contexts. When talking about their embodiment of masculinity, however, the participants in this study adopted discursive positions that resist cis-heteropatriarchal norms. Below, Seth commented on how he grapples with his masculine identity in relation to living in a patriarchal society where the threat of gender-based violence and sexual violence are ubiquitous:

Living as a female and seeing what females have to go through is difficult. Like it’s difficult to swap sides. There was a huge part of me that was scared of white males. I’ve got this huge fear of rape, although I’ve never personally experienced any sexual assault or anything…like now to be the person that you’re scared of…and like if I look in the mirror and with my dysphoria and stuff…it’s like an internal battle. Do I want to stay unhappy with myself and not become what I’m scared of…? I don’t know.

Seth’s comment speaks to the pernicious treatment of women in South African society where gender-based violence and sexual violence against women and femme-presenting individuals are endemic (i.e., Boonzaier 2017; Gqola 2015). Drawing on a discourse of violent masculinity, Seth described his negotiation of masculine subjectivity within the powerful hold of masculinities articulated and reinforced through violence against those perceived to be subordinate.

Illuminating the complexity of navigating available violent masculine ideals, Karabo spoke in particular about undergoing medical transitioning as some kind of “betrayal”:

I was scared for the longest time of umuntu wes’lisa [a man], besides my dad—he’s an amazing guy. I had a lot of sexual abuse happen to me when I was a child, and to me, I felt like transitioning would betray who I am somehow. Like you become lowo muntu wes’lisa [that kind of man] who does wrong things. I felt like…what if I become a monster.

The challenges posed by the dominance of violent masculinity in the negotiation of nonviolent trans masculinities reveal the contours of what masculine subject positions are possible in this patriarchal social context. By implication, trans masculinity enters this discursive space as a potentially violent articulation of masculinity if it is rendered intelligible only by conforming to patriarchal notions of masculinity or as a renunciation of violent patriarchal masculinity. Participants described reflexively negotiating trans masculinity while simultaneously considering the potential of embodying violent masculinity or being perceived as doing so. The participants’ narratives also highlight a shift in their experiences of gender relations and inequality, particularly regarding the threat of violent masculinity to women and femme-presenting people. The relationality of gender is highlighted as power shifts become more pronounced as a result of the status of being men and occupying masculine subject positions.

Some participants highlighted the pervasiveness of genderism in dictating their navigation of public spaces. Genderism refers to hostile readings of gender-ambiguous and gender nonconforming bodies (Browne 2004, 332). Speaking about their experience of navigating public spaces as a nonbinary person, Henry, a 28-year-old black non-binary masculine-presenting participant, commented:

I’ve had people that told me, “stay in your lane.” I’ve literally had people say those words, “stay in your lane. The world was designed for people to be or live particular lives, and this is not it”. Sometimes it brings me down, and sometimes I get fire inside me that tells me I’m going to defy this. That’s why I continue to embrace and move into spaces I want to move in regardless of how I’m going to be defined. I’m not going to suppress myself because you’re not comfortable with it.

Genderism functions as a disciplinary tool of the discourse of cisnormativity that marks the landscape of gender knowledge in South African public life and social institutions (Rothmann 2018). The dominance and sedimentation of gender norms in public spaces do not preclude resistance to these norms, as the condition of power is that it produces not docile bodies but resistant bodies (Foucault 1980). Some participants pushed back and embraced a gender nonconforming masculinity which speaks to the porous qualities of gender, even within an injurious, cisnormative, heteronormative, patriarchal, binary-enforcing context.

Transphobia is a disciplinary object of cis-gender masculine norms, and it works in ways that shape the experience and expression of trans masculinity for our participants. Below, Lee, a 23-year-old black nonbinary person, explained the disciplinary questioning of their gender as they move in different spaces:

The environment reacts kindly to cis passing trans men because then they’re just assumed as men, and that is what they want, and that is what they receive…but it’s different when they think you’re some kind of queer, but they can’t place you because now the questioning becomes dangerous.

Here, Lee described the genderism they experience in publicly occupying a trans masculine gender expression that calls the gender binary into question. The understanding of transgender through the idea of movement from one sex and gender designation to the “opposite” other is sustained by the discourse of medical transitioning, which in South Africa has, rightfully, facilitated the access to gender-affirming health care and legal services for transgender people who seek those services. While the South African Constitution (RSA 1996) and the accompanying Act 49 (Government Gazette 2004) have theoretically created radical opportunities for the imagining of different gender embodiments (Camminga 2019), our participants illustrate that such laws have not always translated into transformations in the gender imagination of the South African public. Indeed, research has documented the disproportionately high rates of violence perpetrated against gender nonconforming people in South Africa (Sutherland et al. 2016). Cis-heteronormative norms and inequality shape the configurations of space and make intelligible bodies that extend the norms and modes of being in that space (Ahmed 2006).

Lee’s comment speaks to a gendered discourse that violently marks the contours of what is acceptable masculine or feminine gender embodiment. The gender nonconformity of trans masculine participants in this study highlights the troubling of normative assumptions of gender, particularly in dominant configurations of space as cis- and heteronormative (Kiguwa and Langa 2017). Talking about his experience navigating public spaces pre-transition, Buhle recalled the implications of being visible as gender nonconforming in his community:

Yoh! it was risky; it was scary, not a day I felt I was safe. Even when I’m going out, I’d have to make sure that I have a crew just to make sure I’m safe, I’m comfortable. I used to smoke cigarettes, and there were people if I’d walk alone…there was this guy who was like, ok “wena ucinga uzophatha apheKas’lam? Awazi ndim ophetheyo apha?” [So, you think you’re going to rule in my neighborhood? Don’t you know that I’m the one in charge here?], “and you’re like this, and now you’re smoking, aren’t you aware that I’m the only guy who’s allowed to walk around smoking and everything”.

Buhle’s narrative speaks to a larger cultural discourse of how “real” boys/men and girls/women are supposed to behave, particularly in spaces that are already configured as inherently cis-heteronormative. The confrontation also marks the threat of gender nonconformity to the stability of hetero-masculinist norms (Swarr 2012). Trans masculinity is navigated against this backdrop of an ever-present threat of violence and suppression of nonnormative embodiments and performances of masculinity.

While the participants in this study relied on normative and restrictive masculine discourses to articulate their negotiation and navigation of masculine subject positions, they also resisted harmful interpellations of masculinity through reflexively engaging with potential interpretations of their masculinity as harmful. Highlighting the powerful influence of socialization into feminine gender norms and roles in a heteropatriarchal society, the participants underscored the importance of reflecting on the kind of (trans) masculinities they (desire to) embody and perform.

Discourses of Care, Emotionality and Romantic Relationships

In the book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love, bell hooks (2004, 27) writes that “patriarchy demands of men that they become and remain emotional cripples.” In line with this notion, some of the participants in this study contemplated emotional incapacity and stoicism as signs of strength and as validating their expressions of masculinity, particularly in the presence of others. For instance, some participants expressed concern that their masculinity might be “doubted” if they showed emotion. Below, Seth shared how he sees his masculinity in relation to notions of care and emotion:

My masculinity looks like a lot of caring and just a lot of raw emotion. I think that’s one of the things I still struggle with the most, dealing with my emotions and feeling weak if I have emotions. It’s like an external thing. Like if I show emotion, they are gonna like to doubt me.

While Seth spoke of caring as important for his realization of masculinity, the threat of being perceived as “weak” for expressing positive and uninhibited emotions remained a “struggle” in his relationship with his enactment of masculinity. Seth’s comment positions the expression of positive emotions as potentially devaluing the legitimacy and intelligibility of his trans masculinity as an already subordinated masculine embodiment in relation to hegemonic patriarchal masculinities. Relatedly, Karabo, who had been in a relationship with a cis-gender woman for eight years at the time of the interviews, constructed the difficulty in being emotionally expressive, particularly in relation to feelings around his gender identity, as “unfair” to his partner:

My partner and I have been together for eight years. At first, I’d find it hard to communicate how I’m feeling, and obviously being in the dark about what is going on with me is not fair to her. But, being with her, I don’t know what happened or what she did, but I’m able to say it out when I’m not ok.

Karabo spoke to emotional transparency, specifically as it pertains to his gender identity, as an act of care in his relationship. Similar to Karabo, the discursive space of romantic relationships was invoked by some of the participants as central to the construction of trans masculinity where interdependence, challenging the dominant–submissive dynamic, was preferred. Transgender people’s romantic relationships, therefore, were here shown as potential sites of validation of transgender identity (i.e., Galupo et al., 2019). For instance, Henry, who had been in a relationship with a queer cis-gender woman for three years at the time of the interview, spoke about the difficulty of navigating heteronormative-inspired relationship dynamics as a masculine-presenting individual:

In previous relationships, I found it difficult because I was still trying to navigate and trying to be conscious of who I am, and I think my partners as well expected me to be a particular way, and I wasn’t that person, and when I met my partner, it was kind of like, kind of happy and ok to be just who I am and be comfortable to be who I am and allowed me the space.

Henry positioned the space of their current relationship as “comfortable” and encouraging them to explore their trans masculinity. Henry’s comment illustrates how the affective-discursive space of romantic relationships can allow the exploration of gendered embodiments that counter rigid cisheteronormative norms, ideals, and expectations. Similarly, Seth spoke about the importance of his relationship on his decision to start hormone replacement therapy: “One of the main reasons I was ready to start T (testosterone) was that my support is definitely there, and it’s been there for a very long time. I’m not scared that it’s going to go away.”

The participants drew on notions of care and emotionality to underscore the influence of interpersonal relationships on their embodiment and practice of masculinities. Care in the context of romantic relationships was stated as central for the trans masculine participants to explore their gender in spaces where they are supported and affirmed.

Discussion and Conclusion

This study set out to contribute to trans masculinity scholarship with a focus on how dominant discourses of gender shape the construction of trans masculinity in South Africa. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, we traced the dominant and popular discourses that trans masculine individuals draw from to affirm, challenge, and reject particular masculine subject positions. We found that trans masculinity is constructed through three dominant discourses of gender: (1) participants produced constructions of trans masculinity through a sex-gender specific bodies narrative supplemented by an appeal to the discourse of heterosexuality as “natural”; (2) drawing from experiences of being socialized into a hetero-patriarchal society, participants invoked discourses of sexism, genderism, and transphobia as complicating their navigation of nonviolent masculine subject positions; and (3) participants described the appeal to discourses of care and emotionality in the context of romantic relationships as central to the construction of trans masculine subjectivity.

This research extends our understandings of trans masculinity with the following important sociological insights. First, we found that trans masculine individuals appeal to normative constructions of sex, gender, and heterosexuality by deploying the discourse of sex-gender specific bodies, through invoking cis-gender male bodies and constructing masculinity through muscularity. Appealing to images of muscular cis-gender male bodies—bodies devoid of cultural markers of femininity—speaks to complicity with the very dominant gender norms that render transgender identity unthinkable. Further, the strategy to uphold heterosexuality as evidence of masculine identity and masculine subject positions was evident in the participants’ insistence on hetero-masculine identities and subject positions. The sex-gender specific bodies discourse also constructs bodies as somewhat passive and deterministic, of which gender norms are imposed and materialized. Importantly, constructing trans masculinity within the sex-gender specific body idea allows trans masculine individuals to make sense of wanting to “change” their embodiment of gender to reconcile felt gender embodiment with how the body appears.

Second, the participants drew on discourses of sexism, genderism, and transphobia to illustrate the complexity of constructing counter-normative masculine subject positions. The participants’ experiences of violence and being socialized into feminine gender roles made them acutely aware of the kind of masculinity they desire to embody. Coming from a context deeply embedded in gender-based violence against women and femme-presenting people, the trans masculine participants in this study shared concerns about struggling with how their masculinities would be perceived by others. The participants describe the pervasiveness of patriarchal norms of masculinity as limiting the possibility of creating masculine subject positions not conflated with violence. It is also significant that while trans masculinity makes a claim to and is visible in public spaces, the participants’ narratives highlight the personal cost attached to claiming specific public spaces that were often violent and derisive. The pervasiveness of gender-based violence and sexual violence in South Africa (Gqola 2015), therefore, implies that the construction of alternative masculinities might not necessarily rely on violence as a marker of legitimacy and respectability.

Third, a valuable insight from this study concerns the role of care and emotionality in the context of romantic relationships in navigating patterns of masculinity. While trans masculine individuals invoke discourses of care and emotionality in positioning their masculinity as caring, this research also exposes how normative masculinities influence their complicity with hegemonic discourses about masculinity where expressions of positive emotion are constructed as devaluing or devalued masculinity. Despite this, we found participants claimed that the discursive spaces afforded in some romantic relationships offered sites of resistance and were critical for the navigation of counter-normative masculine subject positions.

Trans masculinity in South Africa is understudied. More work is required to broaden the scope of situated understandings of trans masculinity. Toward this, our research with trans masculine individuals shows how binary understandings of gender, informed by cultural and religious beliefs, are still deeply embedded in the landscape of gender politics in South Africa. The violent reaction to and punishment of gender nonconformity (Sutherland et al. 2016) in public spaces serve to reinforce acceptable gender behaviors for men and women. The violent reactions, coming primarily from men, speak to the dominance of men’s power and patriarchal masculinities in determining who gets to navigate public spaces freely and safely in South Africa. Our research with trans masculine individuals also highlights that masculine essentialism is misleading. The participants’ narratives underscore that there is no fixed masculinity but instead competing and complementary discursive constructions of trans masculinity. Our analysis also shows that while masculine subject positions are diverse, the dominant and dominating discourse of masculinities emphasize the power and, in some instances, the desirability of cis heteropatriarchy. This desirability reflects the power and normalization of cis-heteropatriarchal gender relations in South African society.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the authors and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This article is based on the research supported by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant Number: 117416).

Note

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