#didn't even get into the nuances of transitioning but it honestly isn't even related. it just CAN be related. and was for me.

[jamesunderwater]

Hello!! I was just wondering if there is a difference between being transmasc and being a trans guy? I tried searching for it but other than knowing that there seems to be a difference, I couldn't really put my finger on what exactly makes them different from eachother - I thought maybe you might be able to help?? Is it to do with gender expression vs gender identity??

Hey! first, just wanna say that I appreciate you trying to find the answer yourself and then asking for clarification so genuinely.

I couldn't stop myself from giving a few caveats before answering your specific question, so bear with me.

Language around gender identity is tough because it really does mean different things to different people, so questions like "what does transmasc mean?" or "what does it mean to be a trans man?" (and so on) are essentially the same thing as asking, "why do you call yourself a woman?" -- every cis woman is gonna have a different answer to that.

Which is to say, definitely don’t take my answer or any other answers you find on things like this as definitions. If you meet someone who describes themselves as transmasc, what that means to them might be different to what I'm going to say here. And, this isn't me saying to ask every single trans person what the terms they use mean to them. The important information to have is: what is their name, what are their pronouns, and when do they want you to use that name/those pronouns (for safety reasons). But it isn't necessary to know what their gender identity is (especially not based on their pronouns), or what that identity specifically means for them. They might share it, or maybe it's part of some organic conversation that is happening, but in the same way that you don't need to know what being a woman means to a cis woman, you don't need to know what being transmasc (or whatever) means to a trans person.

Okay now that that is out of the way!

I'll also share what my experience of these terms is for some context, but in a more general sense... The terms "transmasc/transfemme" do, kind of, sometimes, indicate gender expression, but they are still also about gender identity, too. Because you wouldn't see a cis gay man who is effeminate describe himself as a transfemme person, and similarly a cis gay woman who presents more masculine might describe herself as masc (or a number of other terms), but wouldn't call herself transmasc.

Really it's more of a catch-all term to indicate that you're trans and what your assigned gender at birth (AGAB) is -- so transmasc, at base level, tells someone I was assigned female at birth (AFAB), and I present as a masculine person. What my actual gender identity is, though, this doesn't tell you at all, and that's where you can have a room full of people who all describe their gender differently, but the term "transmasc" could still be an appropriate term for all those people.

For me, transmasc vs. trans man has been a really important distinction. Because for a long time I just did not see myself as/feel like a man, but I wasn't simply nonbinary, and I definitely wasn't a woman. So the best way to describe myself was a "transmasc person."

I still really love that language and it's probably still the best way to describe me within the confines of binary terminology. But more recently I've settled into the fact that I do also see myself as a man. So, I'm okay now with referring to myself as a trans man. And the term transmasc is still 100% accurate -- it's just that now, it doesn't totally capture the experience I have of feeling like a man.

I hope any of that made sense. The more I tried to explain, the more difficult it became, which I guess is why you had a hard time getting a clear answer with your own research. If any other trans babes want to hop in here, please do. And thanks again for the question, anon, I hope I helped at least a bit!

[evegwood]

I was rereading your breakdown of the playlists and I was kind of intrigued by how you outright stated that David's insecurities are not related to his transness but to the power things - because, like, I don't think it's all meant to be a 1:1 metaphor, but specfic stories like that exist very much in conversation with more mundane issues people face so that distinction stood out to me? (cont.)

(cont.) Like, people such as David get detained in places that feel and work and look like the institutions in Inhibit IRL for various non-specfic reasons, and stories like this are a bit of a dialogue with these issues, especially one like this that goes into the mundane little miseries of it all. Would it be correct to say that that was your way of saying "I don't want people to reduce his character entirely to transness"? Thanks, love the comic!

Hey that's a good question! For sure there are real-world counterparts to a lot of the themes of Inhibit, but specifically when it comes to my queer characters I wanted the story to be completely neutral about their queerness. I do have a lot of thoughts on this so this might be long haha. Hopefully I cover everything I want to cover, I wrote this whole thing out and then hit ctrl+z to delete a line and Tumblr deleted the entire post without letting me ctrl+y because this is a working website that doesn't suck ass. I had to retype it all so I'm sorry if any of it is disconnected, I couldn't remember the exact order I said everything argh ANYWAY

When I started writing Inhibit I didn't realise I was trans, and then I came out as nonbinary, and then I started to transition, so I've had a whole spectrum of thinking "how should I handle transness in this comic?" over my time working on it. Pretty early on I decided that none of the characters would suffer because of being trans, they wouldn't have any anxiety about it, other characters wouldn't treat them differently etc; the story takes place in a world where superpowers are real, so it wouldn't be crazy for transness to also just be normal and accepted there lmao

However now I think that this is a pretty reductive way to represent the trans experience. Like it or not, being trans informs almost everything about you, and I didn't let my trans characters have that nuance. Vic being a white, seemingly cis* seemingly het** dude is pretty central to his character arc***, so actually examining queerness in this society would have been interesting. There was room to do that; something that is canon and just has never come up is that Urquhart sponsors their trans officers' HRT etc so they don't need to go through the NHS, meaning those officers are reliant on Urquhart long past their service. You're right: what would a conversation between the mundane and fantastical elements of Inhibit look like? I, 2023 Eve, would like to have that conversation! But this far into the story, I kinda missed the train on it.

* he uses any pronouns, he is shrug-gender ** he is bi *** spoilers wow he is privileged actually

I honestly think that I haven't done a good job at highlighting my trans characters, particularly for an audience that doesn't expect to see trans characters. I don't think I've done David and Masha justice as trans characters beyond little nods that readers could miss or not even understand, and there are some characters whose nonbinary/trans identities have just never been mentioned (Holly is nb, Jezza and Toby are trans - again just hasn't come up because of scenes and lines changing or being cut, there's so much that you can't fit into a story even when it's as long as this). So to finally answer your question, it isn't that I didn't want people to reduce David to his transness, because I don't think there's enough of his transness in the comic for that to even happen. I don't think anyone reads Inhibit and thinks oh yeah, David, you know, the trans one. It really was that at the time of writing the playlist breakdowns, I was firm that none of the Inhibit characters had anxiety or neuroses about being trans. Instead, all their neuroses were about their superpowers, because that's the fun angst.

Now looking back on Inhibit, there is actually an excruciating amount of evidence for the story kind of being a trans narrative ("oh god i can't control my own body oh god", "oh no people think my body should do this thing" etc). It's so interesting how creators have these themes that they continuously go back to in their work, even unintentionally, and mine is oops all trans. If I were to rewrite Inhibit from scratch now, I'd probably try to include more of that nuance and actually engage with those themes because I realise that they're there haha.

I hope all this answers your question? Kind of? A little? My ultimate conclusion is that I thought what I was doing was writing good trans characters, when ultimately I think I failed to write characters that are truly explicitly trans. On the other hand, maybe characters like David and Masha are the exact kind of trans rep that some people want and are looking for. Either way I'm actively working to write better trans characters in the future because trans people rule, and this was a really interesting question to reflect on, thank you!