Radical Feminism is for Transmen.
Large surveys in North America consistently report high rates of sexual assault among transmen (~50%). These experiences are widely documented in empirical research, but they are rarely examined as a problem of interpretation.
My work combines sociological evidence on patterns of sexual violence with epistemological analysis of how those patterns are understood. Each puts pressure on the other. I argue that when violence continues to follow sex-based lines, replacing sex with gender identity in interpretation, legal reasoning, and policy frameworks produces a form of epistemic harm. Violence doesn’t disappear. It becomes less intelligible, with consequences for recognition, prevention, and response. I call this epistemic substitution, a form of epistemic injustice not captured by Fricker’s testimonial or hermeneutical categories.
In broad terms, my work situates transmen within feminist analysis rather than outside it. This requires bringing sex and gender expression into the same frame, where both remain available for analysis. Drawing on Jack Halberstam’s concept of female masculinity, I examine how masculinity expressed through female bodies becomes socially legible, and how that legibility shapes vulnerability to violence or supports social inclusion. Where gender nonconformity draws correction, sex remains the structural axis along which violence is organised, while gender mediates how that structure is enforced. Violence, including sexual assault, operates in part as a means of enforcing those boundaries.
Methodologically, I combine approaches. I have conducted a feminist narrative inquiry in which survivor narratives are treated as relational forms of knowledge and analysed with attention to how institutional settings shape what can be said, heard, and recognised as harm. Alongside this, I examine how courts interpret sexual violence when transmen are complainants. This legal work focuses on Canadian sexual-assault law following the 1983 Criminal Code reforms (Bill C-127), which replaced rape with a formally sex-neutral offence. Although the doctrine is neutral, court decisions involving transmen complainants show that interpretation still depends on how the social meaning of violence is understood, and that understanding is often fragmented across cases. My PhD work will extend this investigation, adding qualitative and quantitative studies of a larger scale.
Theoretically, I draw on feminist rape theory (Brownmiller, MacKinnon), socio-legal scholarship (Craig, Smart, Naffine), and theories of epistemic injustice (Fricker). Transmen do not fall outside feminist politics; in many cases, our experiences bring its central insights into sharper focus.
Professional Backround
Prior to becoming a graduate researcher, I worked as a Registered Nurse specializing in psychiatric care. I held roles across acute and tertiary settings, including staff nurse on a psychiatric stabilization unit at St. Paul’s Hospital (Vancouver), Clinical Nurse Educator with the BC Provincial Tertiary Eating Disorders Program, Clinical Supervisor at Foundry Kelowna, Clinical Instructor for the School of Psychiatric Nursing at Brandon University, and staff nurse in Geriatric Psychiatry at Brandon Regional Hospital. Across these roles, I worked closely with individuals navigating trauma, dissociation, suicidality, issues of self-relation, and the search for language to make sense of overwhelming experiences.
This clinical background strongly informs my research. Psychiatric nursing requires an attunement to the relational dynamics of care: how trauma is carried in the body, expressed through narrative fragments, and negotiated between survivor and listener. It involves noticing not only what is said, but what cannot yet be spoken. These practices translate directly into my approach to feminist narrative inquiry. I understand traumatic storytelling as uneven, cyclical, and shaped by the listener’s presence. I also recognize the cultural pressures that shape whether survivors feel permitted to speak at all.
My research draws on this clinical grounding to examine how transmen narrate sexual assault in contexts where the language available to them may obscure rather than clarify their experiences. In this way, my nursing practice and academic work form a continuous trajectory: both are concerned with how trauma becomes legible, to oneself and to others, and what conditions enable that recognition.
Profiles:
Pubic Statement (February 2025)
