Abstract
Matthew Heinz argues that masculinity studies are incomplete without integrating transmasculinity. Entering Transmasculinity: The Inevitability of Discourse works to integrate multiple academic disciplines, specifically the humanities and social sciences, to better understand transmasculinity. For Heinz, transmasculine is conceptualized “to loosely describe people who were assigned to the female sex at birth, who do not perceive this sex designation to be an appropriate representation of their gender or sex” (p. 2). Heinz focuses specifically on how transmasculine people come to understand themselves as (trans)masculine, the contradictions they face, and how transmasculinity is constructed and reconstructed through multiple discourses. To illuminate these complexities and contradictions, Heinz examines social media sites (e.g., YouTube, blogs, and Tumblr). In doing so, he illustrates the tension between academia, transactivists and transactivism, and transmasculine peoples’ own ways of understanding transmasculine identity. In four chapters, Heinz illustrates the coconstituting and contradictory discourses that inform transmasculine people in the United States, English-speaking Canada, and some parts of Europe. Differing from most masculinities scholarship in the west, this cross-national comparison adds a unique contribution.
Heinz argues, quite well, for more interdisciplinary research and dialogue. Heinz illustrates the ways in which distinct disciplines inform and circulate theory and inquiries surrounding transmasculine subjectivity or transmasculine people’s consciousness and identity—particularly in their relationship with contemporary hegemonic forms of masculinity. The book also integrates works from other transmasculine authors, such as Morty Diamond, to highlight personal reflections of transmasculine people—an illustration of how scholarly work can create an interwoven conversation across the social sciences and humanities. In other words, Heinz’s work highlights that scholarly work can engage with and across multiple academic disciplines and simultaneously push theoretical and empirical contributions in said disciplines.
In the first chapter, Heinz argues that discourses in the west create and inform transmasculine subjects who participate, cocreate, and, more recently, contest the image of a medicalized, pathologized person in need of medical assistance and treatment. The second chapter focuses on abnormality and normality within transmasculine discourses. Here, he argues that mainstream transmasculine discourse challenges the idea that transgenderism is abnormal. To accomplish this, however, mainstream discourse has propped up a transmasculine image most palatable and in agreement with cisnormative and heteronormative ideals. Heinz also illustrates alternative discourses created in social media sites, especially from transmasculine youth, that contest assimilating into heteronormative and cisnormative standards of gender and sexuality. Chapter 3 discusses the discourses that constitute the ways in which transmasculine people come to identify as (trans)masculine. Heinz highlights how discourses of self-actualization and the notions of a “true self” impact the ways in which transmasculine people come to identify as (trans)masculine. Chapter 4 centers on how transmasculine people come to define the “self” as “a man.” Here, he shows how hegemonic cisgender ideals of masculinity are embraced and challenged, the influence of consumerism and medical technologies on shaping possibilities for transmasculine people, and the tensions between transgender men’s acceptance of male privilege while simultaneously distancing themselves from said privilege.
Heinz concludes by arguing that the contradictions and tensions between mainstream transmasculine discourse that exemplifies heteronormative ideals and counter social media discourses are productive: these discourses allow for the space for “ambivalence and ambiguity” (p. 230). Entering Transmasculinity will have broad appeal for both scholars and people interested in the complexities of transmasculine identity and transgender lives more generally. Each chapter provides a glimpse into transmasculine discourse and the ways in which the Internet and social media sites provide platforms for transmasculine people. Additionally, Heinz is careful to not present transmasculine people as homogenous: some make sense of their identity through mainstream discourse, while others push back and question the discourses they encounter. There is much to applaud for Heinz’s massive interdisciplinary endeavor—and he is successful in that readers will be left wanting more.