Wait, is that a trans guy? - the Terrains of Trans Masculinity

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Roundtable Format

Abstract

Wait, is that a trans guy? If hegemonic masculinity is a model that expresses “widespread ideals, fantasies, and desires” what would a hegemonic trans masculinity entail (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 838)? If we understand masculinity as embodied from a particular place, enacted as it is embodied, with lived effects from the reproduction and influence it has in society, masculinity is plural. Consequently, the question is not who is doing masculinity, but rather how is masculinity being done (Aboim 2016, 227-230). The image of the contemporary transmasculine figure in broader media and culture might call to mind the young white transmasculine figure, here to offer us a neoliberal stance on rights and representation. Even in their everyday lives, as Miriam Abelson argues, geography, region, and class impact trans men as they strive for-a “just right, regular guy” masculinity; something between the hypermasculine tropes of rednecks, douchebags, and thugs, and effeminate and emotional masculine tropes of faggy men. Like constructions of cis masculinity, trans masculinities are constructed against the excessively racialized and sexualized “other.” Is transmasculinity, especially as more people come out as trans, destined for hegemonic masculinity? Or how might trans masculinity offer space for new intellectual and political possibilities?

This roundtable emerges from our conversations at ASA 2024, as we attempted to collectively list the existing scholarship on specifically trans masculinity, a reflection of our own curiosity and desire for the study of transmasculinity. Our research interests span physical cultural studies, media studies, Black studies, and decolonial environmental humanities, and offer different angles for tackling themes related to transmasculinity. This roundtable centers around our myriad questions about transmasculinity with the intention of having a dialogue about the forces that shape transmasculinity and the stakes of its embodiment. Our meandering questions include: How do trans masculine people practice masculinity? How, then, does a queer masculinity emerge in relationship to trans masculine gender? How do we contend with the trans masculine body? What are the ways in which this trans masculinity is legible, or illegible? How does this play out in cultural realms like politics, media, sport, and the university? What is the trans masculine subject’s relationship to trans antagonisms? In this stage of American empire that is so influenced by masculinist domination, how might thinking about a specifically trans masculinity invite us to consider new forms of sociality, and articulate new modes of knowledge production? Notwithstanding, how might trans masculinity, through its relationship to masculinity and United States, be co-opted in doing the work of American imperialism? We offer intentionally broader and ranging questions in order to hold space for the variety of turns this conversation might take. In the end, we hope this conversation demonstrates the various avenues for considered and continued exploration and study with trans masculinity, both within the academy and beyond.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Chair

• Isaac H. Essex, Brown University

Panelists

• Adrian King, University of Illinois @Urbana-Champaign

• Jordan Keesler, University of Maryland

• Amira Lundy-Harris, Pomona College

• Cassius Adair, The New School

Biographical Information

Jordan Keesler, jkeesler@umd.edu
Jordan Keesler (ze/they) is a doctoral student in The Harriet Tubman Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Ze currently works on historizing trans sports studies to theorize how gender functions as a skilled tool within sporting cultures. In particular, they are interested in how trans people navigate, claim, and transform athletic spaces that fundamentally shape possibilities for expression and survival. Their research has appeared in the Sociology of Sport Journal and The Transgender Athlete (2023). Previously, they received the Barbara Brown Outstanding Student Doctoral Paper Award from the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport for their work on phenomenological understandings of transness in softball and rugby. Additionally, Jordan serves as the Director of Membership and Outreach for WGS South where ze helps foster feminist and queer visions of the South. When ze is not keeping up with their studies you can find them playing rugby with the DC Furies.

Isaac Essex, isaac_essex@brown.edu
Isaac Essex (they/he) is a doctoral student in the Department of American Studies at Brown University, where he also serves as the Graduate Coordinator for the Center for Environmental Humanities at Brown. Their work in trans studies thinks alongside decolonial environmental humanities and aesthetics and visual culture to think through queer and trans endurance amid hostile climates, extractive economies, and ecological precarity. They think with the notion of “weathering” as it refers to the act of endurance that is being worn down, and the attempts to withstand atmospheric pressure that foster modes of survival amid a climate of hostility. His critical and creative work has been published or is forthcoming in such places as Transgender Studies Quarterly, Sinister Wisdom, Apiary, and PANK.

Adrian King, adrking@umich.edu
Adrian King (pronouns: he/they) is a PhD candidate in American Culture at the University of Michigan. He earned his BA from Hendrix College and his MA from Brandeis University in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Adrian is currently writing a dissertation titled "The Cop You Never Knew and The Uncle You Always Wished You Had: Black Transmasculinity on Contemporary Television". Outside of the academy, Adrian is a competitive roller derby skater.

Amira Lundy-Harris, amira.lundy-harris@pomona.edu
Amira Lundy-Harris (they/he) is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Pomona College. Their scholarship is situated in the emergent field of Black trans studies, to which they bring a deep engagement with Black feminist thought and an interdisciplinary methodology drawn from kinship studies, digital studies, public spheres theory, communication, and cultural studies. They previously held the Nancy L. Buc ‘65 ‘95 LLD hon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University. They received their Ph.D. in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park and their BA in Black Studies and Sexuality, Women's & Gender Studies from Amherst College. Their current book project explores Black trans people's creation and cultivation of kinship bonds. Their work has appeared in TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly.

Cassius Adair, adairc@newschool.edu
Cassius Adair (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at The New School. His writing appears in American Quarterly, American Literature, Feminist Media Histories, Avidly, The Rumpus, Nursing Clio, Misadventures Magazine, Semiotic Review, and Transgender Studies Quarterly. He is a coauthor of the experimental scholarly book Technoprecarious (MIT, 2020) and is currently writing a book about transgender people and computer history. He is a Virginian