Radical Feminism is for Transmen.
My research asks how sexual violence against transmen should be understood. Large surveys in North America consistently report high rates of sexual assault among transmen (~50%), yet these experiences sit awkwardly in existing theory and legal analysis. They are widely acknowledged in empirical research but rarely examined as a problem of interpretation.
In broad terms, my work situates transmen within feminist analysis rather than outside it. Doing that requires bringing sex and gender expression into the same frame. Drawing on Jack Halberstam’s concept of female masculinity, I examine how masculinity carried on female bodies becomes socially legible and how that legibility shapes vulnerability to violence. Gender nonconformity often draws attention, while the body itself continues to be read as female. In those moments, sex remains the structural axis along which violence is organised, while gender mediates how that structure is enforced.
One implication follows quickly. The sexual assaults reported by transmen frequently resemble patterns long discussed in feminist work on violence against women and differ from male-male rape. These assaults often occur in private settings and involve men already known to the victim. They tend to unfold through familiar dynamics of access, coercion, and enforcement of norms attached to female bodies. Yet contemporary frameworks that treat gender identity as the primary way of classifying people can make these patterns harder to recognise.
I call this shift epistemic substitution: a change in classificatory framing in which sex is replaced by gender identity as the lens through which risk and harm are interpreted. When that happens, the social pattern doesn't disappear, but it becomes less visible. Motives tied to gender regulation flatten, and responses from institutions begin to track the new classification rather than the underlying structure of violence, placing transmen at greater risk. We can't address what we can't see clearly.
Methodologically, I combine feminist narrative inquiry with legal and historical analysis. Survivor narratives are treated as relational forms of knowledge and interpreted thematically, structurally and dialogically, with attention to how institutional settings shape what can be said, heard, and recognised as harm. Alongside this work, I examine how courts interpret sexual violence. My current legal research focuses on Canadian sexual-assault law following the 1983 Criminal Code reforms (Bill C-127), which replaced the offence of rape with a formally sex-neutral offence of sexual assault. Although the doctrine is neutral, a reading of court documents with transmen complainants shows that interpretation still depends on how the social meaning of violence is understood, which is fragmented and inconsistent across cases.
Theoretically, I draw on feminist rape theory (Brownmiller, MacKinnon), socio-legal scholarship (Craig, Smart, Naffine), and theories of epistemic injustice (Fricker). More broadly, my research examines how institutional frameworks shape the interpretation of gendered violence and how shifts in classification affect what forms of harm become visible in law, policy, and public awareness. Transmen do not fall outside feminist politics; in many cases their 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)
