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Sex, Recognition, and Harm
My work asks why sexual violence against transmen is often acknowledged, but not always well understood.
Large surveys show high rates of sexual assault among transmen. But numbers alone do not explain how that violence happens, why certain risks cluster, or why survivors may struggle to make sense of what happened to them. My research asks how sexual violence against transmen becomes knowable, believable, and institutionally recognisable.
Why talk about sex?
Sex matters because vulnerability is not shaped by identity alone. Many transmen move through the world as masculine, transmasculine, male-passing, socially male, lesbian, same-sex attracted, gender nonconforming, or some combination of these across the life course. At the same time, sexed embodiment and female social location may still shape exposure to violence, family control, economic dependence, reproductive vulnerability, housing insecurity, and institutional response. In my work, sex is not the whole explanation. It is one part of a broader analysis of how harm is produced and interpreted.
Does this erase transmen’s identities?
No. Recognition matters. Transmen should not have to give up recognition of their identities in order to have sexual violence taken seriously. But recognition alone is not always enough. Institutions may recognise a transman’s identity while still missing the sexed, social, bodily, or economic conditions that shaped the harm. A sex-based analysis does not have to replace gender identity. It can strengthen recognition by making the structure of vulnerability easier to see.
What does female masculinity add?
Female masculinity helps explain the continuity in many transmen’s lives. It gives language for histories that may include childhood gender nonconformity, masculine presentation, lesbian or same-sex social worlds, transmasculine identity, and female social location. These histories do not always fit neatly into one category. For my work, female masculinity is a bridge. It helps hold sexed embodiment, masculine expression, and social meaning together without reducing transmen either to gender identity alone or to female embodiment alone.
Why do categories matter?
The categories we use shape what institutions can see. Sexual violence against transmen may be interpreted as anti-trans violence, male violence, sex-based vulnerability, punishment of gender nonconformity, individual trauma, or some combination of these. Each frame may reveal something, but each can also miss something. This matters in research, law, policy, healthcare, shelters, sexual-assault services, and public discourse. If the categories are too broad or too narrow, the harm can become harder to recognise and harder to respond to.
What is the goal of this work?
The goal is not only theoretical. Better interpretation can support better institutional response: more accurate research categories, more responsive services, clearer policy, and forms of recognition that do not erase the conditions that shape vulnerability. My MA work developed this framework through feminist narrative inquiry, survivor discourse, and socio-legal analysis. My PhD research will extend it through a larger qualitative study of sexual violence against transmen, with new attention to classification, sociology of knowledge, and the social structures that shape how violence is narrated, recognised, and understood.
“Female masculinities have held very different meanings in different eras.” — Jack Halberstam
Image Credit: Claude Cahun Self-Portrait, gelatin silver print, c. 1927. Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections
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