Uncle Lou Turning Over: De-medicalising the Transmasculine Life

This chapter challenges what it means to be well as a transmasc person. In the eyes of a cis (non-trans) audience, the trans journey encompasses ‘the surgery’: a radical and sudden alteration of one’s appearance. In the trans community, a similar discussion of medicalisation places pressure, prominence, and authority on having access to those resources. The chapter explores the history of binary medical gender affirmation narratives and challenges the authority it has in defining a ‘good’ trans life. Through the eyes of trans activist Ben Alwin’s exchanges with the late Lou Sullivan and prominent outlets in the transmasculine community, we enter into the medicalisation of transmasc bodies from inside the community itself. Alwin, a non-operative trans man, was frequently rejected and discriminated against because of this non-conformity, hence placing authority on the cis gaze of binary gender expression and experiences of ‘being’ trans. The tension, Alwin argues, lies in satisfying our bodies’ needs, but also in how much of that conception is influenced by a narrow understanding of what it actually means to be and look ‘trans’ or ‘masculine’. Through archival examination, I find that the tension between the validity of ‘medical’ versus ‘social’ aspects of transmasculine wellness lies still in a de-institutionalisation of trans history and the bodies within it.