Aaron Kimberly, January 8, 2025
I’m fifty-one and started taking testosterone at age thirty-three. The vast majority of transmen of my generation and earlier lived within lesbian spaces and were often feminist and lesbian-centred before medicalizing. Grappling with our feminist values and beliefs was once a common “transition” task for each of us as we began to look like “the enemy” and occupy male social spaces. As young lesbians medicalize at an alarming rate, and radical feminism becomes more mainstream, likely to win the culture wars, this grappling is once again poignant and necessary, though few are taking up the task. It’s been my personal mission for the past several years. I’ve found what I’ve expected. The theory works; praxis is complicated.
The trans activist versus radfem battle is largely linguistic, now with devastating legal implications for lesbians and our spaces. Trans activists have typically appropriated and distorted terms, which deliberately veils the mechanisms for female medicalization to appear as men and, therefore, does nothing to challenge the underlying realities of female-specific oppression. Reconciling transmen with radical feminism necessitates the reclamation of the correct understanding and usage of the terms “gender” and “gender identity”.
I therefore defer to the following:
That gender is a socially constructed confinement of the sexes to roles and clusters of characteristics, limiting the heterogeneity of the sexes1
That gender plays a significant role in the development of Gender Identity Disorder (GID). (2, 3)
That gender identity is a developmental, cognitive process, defined by developmental psychology, not a “gendered soul” (4)
That female-specific oppression motivates women to medicalize to become male passing.
Note: I’m using the terminology GID, not Gender Dysphoria. The GID diagnostic criteria were limited and focussed on a very specific cognitive phenomenon. Gender Dysphoria is so loosely defined that it’s come to mean almost nothing but any reason under the sun for why a girl might believe her life would be easier if she were a boy. This is a social phenomenon, not a specific, diagnosable condition. They do, however, converge on several points, when GC feminism is applied. That is, on the function of gender on self-concept.
Gender Identity
The trans activist definition of this term is an elusive, entirely subjective, disembodied gendered soul that may or may not match one’s sex. Take, for example, this definition as applied to Canadian law:
“Gender identity is each person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is their sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum. A person’s gender identity may be the same as or different from the gender typically associated with their sex assigned at birth. For some persons, their gender identity is different from the gender typically associated with their sex assigned at birth; this is often described as transgender or simply trans. Gender identity is fundamentally different from a person’s sexual orientation.”
The original meaning of this term is a necessary correction: the cognitive, early life formation of an awareness of one’s own sex, as articulated by Robert Stoller, whose interest was the identity formation of those with complex DSDs.
While sex is indeed biological, immutable, and binary, the cognitive process through which each of us comes to understand our sex is more complex. While sex is specifically defined by biology, gender identity is a conceptual gestalt. While I disagree with much of Stoller’s theories, I do agree with him about the development of gender identity. He identified three factors which work interrelatedly in this unconscious process of cognitive categorization, a process that typically begins around age two to three years old:
Biological sex
Environmental factors such as familial dynamics and attitudes
Other biological factors, such as the virilization of a female by a medical condition like Congenital Adrenal Hypoplasia (CAH) which impact environmental forces
Cognitive categorization is an important and necessary developmental process. We must group things. Male versus female. Cats versus dogs. Predatory animals versus safe ones. Usable information versus irrelevant information.
This deep psychological scaffolding typically remains flexible through childhood, beginning with the most basic of stereotypes and continuously integrating new information and maturing sophistication. Most children, by age three, can accurately identify “boy” versus “girl” and which they are but will struggle to categorize those whose characteristics fall outside of their limited criteria. Given opportunities to encounter a broad range of presentations, their categorical criteria protracts accordingly. This process is so universally reliable that its conceptual usefulness is limited to rare cases, such as those with specific Disorders of Sex Development (DSD) where the “other biological factors” could cause identity disruption, especially if those differences are not well tolerated within the family, community or culture. For more than ninety-nine percent of the population, there is no conflict between gender identity and sex. Psychologists who work with children with specific DSDs, and their families still, to this day, sometimes make predictions about which gender identity a baby with congenital sex differences will later formulate and best adapt to, regardless of their actual sex. A controversial and ethically challenging practice.
Gender Identity Disorder in Childhood
In rare cases, if there are conflicts between sex, environmental/cultural factors and other biological factors, a young child may make a categorization error. This typically emerges around age three. Conflicts in gender identity formulation are most commonly related to proto-homosexuality and, less commonly due to the rare occurrence, DSDs. The child may observe that their individual traits (physical and/or behavioural) may cluster towards how they conceptualize the opposite sex, thus placing themselves in the incorrect category. In most cases, this will organically be corrected if the child’s cognition remains flexible (cognitive inflexibility, such as with autism, may hinder development), if they are exposed to less strictly stereotypical information about the sexes, and if there are no adverse experiences related to an acceptance of their sex. Unlike rare psychotic delusions in which an individual fully believes they are the opposite sex, those with GID are aware of which sex they are but fail, to greater or lesser degrees, to fully adapt to their sex, socially and psychologically, due to a persistent cognitive dissonance. Once fully consolidated by adolescence, a gender identity schema becomes more rigid and less changeable but, individuals and their families can be supported to better adapt and reduce conflict.
Dr Paul Vasey, Professor of Psychology at the University of Lethbrige studies male homosexuality in locations such as Samoa where effeminate boys and men, called fa’afinine, aren’t as limited to cultural constructions of masculinity. He found that, in such cultures, distress related to sex nonconformity is rare and the drive to medicalize is virtually nonexistent. He concluded that childhood onset GID should be removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSD-5), because the distress experienced by sex nonconforming homosexuals isn’t mental illness, but a societal ill.
In the Stoller gender identity model, what radical feminism can influence is the second and third of the three factors: familial and cultural messages about sex and sex differences.
As many radical feminists correctly contend, without gender, Gender Identity Disorder (GID) would likely not exist. If there were no cultural constraints on how we define male-typical or female-typical, there would likely be more diversity in expression dispersed across every population, which a child would observe. Therefore, regardless of how their traits cluster, those children wouldn’t formulate a concept of “typical” and a categorization error wouldn’t occur, except perhaps in very rare cases.
Gender and the Female-specific Motivations to Medicalize
An individual’s drive to medicalize and legally change sex needs to be somewhat parsed out from the concept of GID. It isn’t and shouldn’t be inevitable that those who experience persistent gender identity disruption will want to medicalize. Further, GID is only one of many motivators for medicalization. Anecdotally, since I’m not aware of any research that clarifies motivation, there are several primary drivers for women to want to pass as the opposite sex:
A history of sexual violence, experienced or observed
A history of attachment trauma (e.g. children in foster care are over-represented in trans statistics) (5)
Societal-level adverse events such as discriminatory job loss
Masculine “butch” lesbianism which compounds all of the above
In an interview I recorded with Jessi in January 2025, she, a sixty-nine-year-old butch lesbian who took testosterone in 1987, at age thirty-three, until 2017, described her own motivations:
“…when I was 21 and that was in 1976 and I didn't know about transitioning anything except for Christine Jorgenson… I had no idea up until 1985 there was even an option for female to male right and I started looking into it because of my background as a separatist lesbian and as a lesbian mother who had a child. My daughter was born in 76 in July and I came out in September of 76, yeah so September October so she was born and I came out period and so I was a brand new mom lesbian mom out of the closet very vocal, very active. I'm a big activist and I always have been and I didn't know about the whole, I mean, it was a rude awakening to find out about the fact that lesbians were unfit mothers, you know, in court and that a lot of the women that were uh, coming out that time were running from their ex-husbands and from Child Services trying to take their kids from them and I ended up being part of that, I got to hide my kid thing and, um, that was very difficult. She ended up living with my parents when she was about seven and through high school because I had to earn a living keep a roof over my head and I had a baby girl and that was all taboo for out lesbians back then in the 70s. So, I was fighting the system and I wasn't the only one, it was a uh um, that was the thing going on back then is lesbian mothers were losing their kids in court. So, I sent my daughter to my parents’ house in order to keep her out of the system and the other pieces to it were that I was already being mistaken as a sir I was being mistaken as a man. Didn't matter. I've always presented as a masculine uh, lesbian and it got in the way a lot… it got in the way of finding work. They wouldn't…I went into a place at one point and they said, “we don't hire dykes here” because they could say that and get away with it, um you know. I got kicked out of a couple of different apartments and houses because they discovered or they didn't let me into their apartment or house because of the lesbianism. So, it was all basically working against me and I just wanted to get on with things you know.” (6)
Jessi’s story is common among transmen of Jessi’s generation and my own. Contrary to popular belief, most of us do not medicalize due to an identification with men, but to escape the adverse events we experience as women, in order to leverage the patriarchal legal and social structures which limit our bodily autonomy, sexuality, legal protections, and full participation in public life.
As many radical feminists posit, women would be unlikely to medicalize to live as men if it weren’t for sex-based oppression and homophobia. Butch lesbians, nonconforming to both the standards of female beauty and availability to men, are most likely to take the brunt of both misogyny and homophobia.
Since it had once been the norm, with few exceptions, for transmen to be butch lesbians, often with feminist backgrounds, it was also common to hear transmen describe their deep inner conflict, and feminist analysis, of their own decisions to medicalize and masculinize. We moved into male social spaces, often not liking men, and experienced deep grief upon moving out of lesbian spaces. While on Women’s Land in the summer of 2024, I discovered that many young lesbians of that community, historically connected with the Michigan Women’s Music Festival, are grappling with the same dilemma of reconciling radical feminism with their decisions to take testosterone. Xenon is one such lesbian I met there. She’s a twenty-four-year-old actor and welder from North Carolina who remains committed to her lesbian identity and radical feminist community but, has started taking testosterone and had a double mastectomy due to persistent GID and social oppression. During our recorded interview together, she acknowledged the ways in which gender and discrimination have been factors in the formation of her GID, which hasn’t been relieved by her connection with radfem community because of the discrimination and social challenges she faces in society at large. She laments how this impacts her relationship with her community:
“…it's a lot of cognitive dissonance that I have to live with I think because, um, it does, it feels like a betrayal still to some extent. When I first started [medicalizing] it really felt like a betrayal, um, because I got into, um, lesbian feminist theory probably at 16 or 17 and, um, read all of the theory I could get my hands on, um, apart from the Dworkin books that nobody can get anymore because her husband let the press rights expire or whatever but, um, so I uh, I worked really hard to understand myself from a lesbian feminist perspective and um was really hardcore … I all I wanted was to be in a separatist community … I think separatism is essential and nobody I know who's, uh, discovered themself in any meaningful way would have been able to do that without finding a community of people who were like them which is especially important for lesbians, um, but my understanding of all that being mostly theoretical for a long time, um, kind of it allowed me to live in a bit of a fantasy world in terms of how well women can actually get along with each other even lesbians even separatists um… my experience of gender and sex dysphoria was more universal than it seems like it is um, and so then by the time I got to larger spaces like the land - larger festivals, um, it was kind of easier to see, oh I'm I am actually still in the minority here this still isn't necessarily a community that understands my experience, um, because like dysmorphia…I do think that…the center of what my dysphoria feels like it feels like I'm in some way supposed to have male sex characteristics and that is, um, not only not that common amongst um radical feminists but kind of, uh, isolating because not it's not well understood…I can't believe anymore that gender dysphoria is purely socially influenced, um, because I did everything I was supposed to do to cure myself of it and it didn't work, um, including actually find a community but, um, yeah it's it's all a soup of contradictions because, you know, I remain devoted to female sex separatist spaces and, um, I just, uh, I want to make sure that that includes those of us who don't necessarily look like women anymore.” (7)
Jessi and Xenon’s accounts are much like my own. I sobbed uncontrollably for a week following my first injection of testosterone, under the grief and gravity of my decision. Like Jessi and Xenon, I had been a female-centred lesbian feminist, disliked men, but decided to medicalize due to persistent GID, driven by severe homophobic abuse and oppression.
Theory Versus Praxis
As I’ve outlined, it’s not difficult to reconcile radical feminism with the choices some women make to medicalize once terms and concepts are unadulterated. Without gender and sex-based oppression, there would be no GID, and there would be no motivation for women to appear as and live as men. The elimination of gender would be preventative of GID but, the world as it is, steeping ourselves in radical feminism and lesbian communities isn’t a cure for GID once it fully consolidates. The condition is compounded by the existing day-to-day realities of the violence and social rejection we continue to experience as sex-nonconforming women.
For young lesbians like Xenon, the challenge is not only reconciling radical feminism with their decision to be male-passing, but also the ethical, logistic and social dilemmas related to their desire to remain in lesbian communities. The many young lesbians I met on The Land this past summer clearly articulated their understanding that their generation has to grapple with this in ways that previous generations didn’t, because so many young lesbians are now medicalizing. Sadly, they simply don’t have lesbian community unless they all stay together.
An application of radical feminism to transmen would be beneficial to address the many ways transmen/male-passing women continue to experience female-typical oppression:
Countless transmen I’ve worked with in my clinical practice as a nurse have been sexually assaulted, with few, if any structural supports in place for them to prevent or respond to this violence.
Transmen are routinely sidelined in most aspects of activism and public discourse.
Supports and service provisions for transpeople are largely designed for the needs of men, not women, though women and girls are now the majority seeking hormones and surgery.
As lesbians struggle to maintain or create women’s only spaces, due to how “gender identity” is being written into law, the protection of such spaces depends on their ability to visually identify the sex of those who enter. If male-passing women were permitted, how would those spaces be protected from men?
Though testosterone is a known mood and libido enhancer, it has little impact on the socialized behaviour of the women who take it. Years of social adaptation to appearing male, however, does. When we start passing as men, we quickly learn how gender functions in our society. Expectations and cues change, prompting awkward at best and violent at worst situations for us if we do not behave in ways our culture demands we do as “men”. For example, early in my male-passing days, I was interpreted as an effeminate gay man. During a lunch break one day, I was wandering the neighbourhood, window-shopping to pass the time, when I was confronted by two men (presumed heterosexuals) on the sidewalk who called me a “faggot” and accused me of “checking out their assess”. The threat of physical violence was salient in those early months, until I adapted to male culture and the etiquette of male spaces. We often need to learn de-escalation skills, as male-male violence is a reality we learn to avoid. Eventually, that adaptation becomes automatic.
Our relationships with women change. Passing as male means we activate the defences women have in the presence of men. Women we encounter on the street need more space from us. We’re seen as suspect if we demonstrate affection and interest in babies and children. As a nurse, I was advised to be less nurturing with patients in my care on the ward, and to have a female nurse on hand as a witness whenever I performed some routine bedside care, to prevent misinterpretations and accusations of misconduct as a male-passing nurse.
Transmen are women, but both men and women hold us to account with a different set of rules than they do other women. We are placed within a male gender box, whether we like it or not and, therefore, do not pose a challenge or threat to patriarchal gender categories, but merely shift to another point within those categories.
Socialization isn’t permanent, but the effects of testosterone are. Even if transmen drop the “man” label, we will always look like men. I haven’t taken any testosterone in a year. Little about my appearance has changed. I still pass as a man and likely always will. This can be a painful dilemma for many detransitioners. As Keira Bell correctly pointed out, about her own detransition, there is no reversal, there is only stopping.(8) There is seemingly no feasible pathway back, in its entirety. Gender will not be abolished in our lifetime. The best we can do, it seems, to align with radical feminism, is to acknowledge that our sex hasn’t changed and never will. We should record our sex accurately in all data, including healthcare and population statistics. Our identification should record our accurate sex. We should defend women’s only spaces, though we may never again belong in many of them. I will never belong in a women’s rape crisis centre, neither as staff nor as a woman in need of care, should an assault occur. My appearance and voice would frighten the other women. I will never belong in a woman’s bathroom or changing room. My appearance and voice would frighten the other women. I will never belong in most lesbian-only spaces. If they let me in, how would they keep men out? Passing as a man and demanding to be called “ma’am” would ask people to betray their eyes and ears, in the same way that a man making that demand would.
Reconciling why women become transmen and radical feminism is easy, in theory, though no one wants to be forever reduced down to their decisions nor the trauma that inspired those decisions. At best, transmen can participate in the radical feminist challenge to gender by the public assertion that our virilized appearance is an expression of our sex, protected by freedom of expression, not by claims that we are men. But, transmen are resistant to that public disclosure since it undermines the very cover they sought to avoid the violence and discrimination they experienced as butch lesbians. Praxis does not make perfect, but transmen would benefit from the collective concern, care and interest of radical feminism, regardless of whether or not we can share spaces, because our interests are indeed more similar than dissimilar. A growing number of young lesbians are desperately asking for our understanding and an intergenerational investment in our reconciliation. For them, this task is urgent and unavoidable.
References
1 Wittig, M. The category of sex. Feminist Issues 2, 63–68 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02685553
2 American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Gender Identity Disorder. In Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders IV 1994.
3 Vasey PL, Bartlett NH. What can the Samoan "Fa'afafine" teach us about the Western concept of gender identity disorder in childhood? Perspect Biol Med. 2007 Autumn;50(4):481-90. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2007.0056. PMID: 17951883.
4 Stoller R. Sex and Gender: The Development of Masculinity and Femininity, Routledge. 1968
5 Kimberly, Aaron. Bearded Lesbians Podcast (2025) Jessi: Lesbian Land. Substack https://aaronkimberly.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/154178356?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts
6 Trans Youth Can, WPATH 2020. Transgender and Gender-Diverse Youth Referred to Clinic for Puberty Suppression or Gender-Affirming Hormones in Canada: Baseline Characteristics From The Trans Youth Can! Cohort. https://transyouthcan.ca/results/wpath-2020/
7 Genspect. (2022). Detrans Awareness Day Webinar 2022 – Keira. https://youtu.be/vLiXgY6ZJPw?si=R1ugxVG_Jixc1iQZ
8 Kimberly, Aaron. Bearded Lesbians Podcast (2025). Xenon the Land Dyke. Substack. https://aaronkimberly.substack.com/p/ep-4-xenon-the-land-dyke
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