I had a lot to sit with after talking to Bearboi. It was so clear to me after talking with him and Jupiter that so few thin people have interrogated gender’s hold on how they view their bodies. And perhaps that is part of what allows gender to be as pervasive and as permeating as it is. How violent is it for people to determine that muscularity is required in order for one’s gender to be affirmed? It seemed like the consensus was that in order for one to be trans—at least a trans person who felt happy in their body—they would have to abandon fatness, not necessarily in word but in action. I started thinking: What about those of us who are fat and don’t care to be anything else? How do we create a space where a flat chest doesn’t have to mean thinness or muscularity? Or a space where one doesn’t have to be fixated on having a flat chest at all? Because, as I see it, a muscular chest is not flat. In fact, many men—cisgender and otherwise—refer to their muscular chests as “titties” often. So what is it about the excess fat tissue that doesn’t feel affirming? Is it the way it hangs? Is it that people know, consciously or unconsciously, the harm fat people experience? Or is it that one set of non-flat chests comes with a different social status than the other?
As I pondered over it some more, I spoke to Mars, who is a nonbinary intersex person with they/them pronouns.
Mars: “In my early to mid-20s I was seeing this white trans man. We’d been friends for a while but I’d not seen him in years. We started reconnecting and one night he took me out to a bar. I don’t know if it was a date but it felt like one. All my life my gender had been questioned by others and myself but never did I have the proper term for it. Years before meeting him I found out I was intersex by resources online. It kind of shattered me because I had thought I was just some defect but then finally there was a name to it. Yet in the world I still felt like an alien. On this ‘date’, as I was walking into the bar, he started referring to me as she/her and they/them. It was new and confusing but I didn’t stop him because something about it felt right. Maybe I was she/her. Maybe I was they/them. He doesn’t know it but that opened my mind a lot that night despite the confusion of our relationship and nature of his intentions.
“Being a fat, dark-skinned, intersex queer I often put my gender and myself on the back burner. In my mind I thought nobody cared about my existence and to some extent nobody did. It was like being the most invisible but visible person because people saw my height, my skin and my fatness before they saw anything else [which meant that I had] to shrink myself in order to protect myself from the violence those three things inspired. Being fat meant I couldn’t be nonbinary. Being dark-skinned meant I couldn’t be queer. Most bodies I saw didn’t look like mine in the world. I had to build my own space and my own lane. Experimenting with makeup and clothing, I became my own representation until I could find others like me.
“In Black queer/trans spaces, I am usually the only ‘obese’ person. And always the only [openly] intersex person. I’m given grace but never am I understood. I am usually simply just there to fill some quota so things look more progressive than they are. Thin trans folks usually don’t see my transness because I’m fat and dark-skinned. They also don’t see it because it doesn’t necessarily look trans. What does looking trans mean? I’ll never know, but I know it isn’t what I look like according to some. In a diagram, I’m usually never in the circle; I’m usually forced to be on an island to myself.
“More generally, anti-fatness shows up in mostly all spaces because fatness is what nobody aspires to be. It’s what people aspire to run away from. In trans spaces, being fat means being the fat one and that’s all you are exclusively. There’s a divide because while I share transness I am not the model trans person so I will never be seen.”
After speaking with Mars, I spoke to Henry—a transmasculine person with he/him pronouns—who echoed many of the same sentiments presented by others earlier on.
Henry: “My fatness has played a huge role in my understanding of my gender. My dysphoria was a huge part in discovering I was trans, but sometimes it was hard to separate if my discomfort was with my fatness or my gender/sex. Now that I’m secure, I can tell the difference but separating it when I didn’t have the language and understanding was hard. There were also no people for me to look toward and model myself after. Being transmasc and fat, I can’t think of anyone in the media that represents that. Seeing yourself in others helps with understanding and that didn’t exist.
“Perhaps the biggest difference I notice between me and thin folks is [in conversations about ‘types’]. Attraction is a real thing and I can’t get rid of it, but as a fat person, there are very few people that I’m not attracted to. Thin folks have conversations about identity and attraction, and it basically comes down to thinness.”
Jackson King, a trans man with he/him pronouns, was my follow-up to Henry. Unlike the others I had interviewed by this point, Jackson is not based in the United States. He is in London. His experiences, however, mirror those of the people mentioned above. He had this to say:
Jackson: “I first came out as a bisexual woman. During that time, I struggled with where to place myself on the butch/femme/androgynous woman spectrum. Of course, it turned out that I wasn’t a woman after all. But one of the things that made it hard for me place myself on that butch/femme/andro spectrum was my weight. As a fat ‘woman’ it often feels like androgyny (which was the thing I most identified with) is something denied to you. Androgyny is always viewed as something white, skinny and flat chested, of which I was none (I had a 38H chest). And then, in contrast, fat women must be feminine—in makeup, etc—to be celebrated and desirable. Even within fat positivity culture. And so I felt pushed into ‘butchness.’ I was Black. I was fat. I was masc in appearance. And it felt like that was the only space I ‘fitted.’ But it was something that never sat right with me. And it was a constant tension that eventually helped me realise I actually wasn’t a woman after all. Instead of being a butch woman, I was actually a very camp man. So in a way, perhaps I have my fatness to thank for helping me transition. My fatness and my Blackness prevented me slotting neatly into the queer woman spectrum I was presented with. And ultimately, in time, I realised I didn’t belong anywhere on a woman spectrum at all.”
Jackson continued by going into detail on understanding of desire and how it lives and shows up in trans spaces.
Jackson: “I think there’s a difference in perceived desire/ability [between thin trans people and fat trans people], for sure. I think another part of it for me is simply not seeing as many of us, or people who look like me. For much of my gender journey I’ve had to dig and search and work hard to unearth Black trans men who share a similar body type. Largely it feels lonely. For thin/muscular trans guys I imagine they can see themselves more reflected in Black trans culture, or in shared spaces. Whereas I constantly feel like I’m seeking people beyond Black trans culture who I can relate to in terms of fatness. In trans masc culture, the idea of being a gym bunny seems to be an unquestioned assumption. As in ‘surely you’re gonna go to the gym and get gains and masculinise yourself like that bro?’ It feels as present in Black trans masc culture as much as the dominant white trans culture.”
I asked Jackson a few more questions, one about his experiences with medical bias and the other being a follow-up to one of his answers; I wanted him to talk more about these hegemonic masculine ideals he had described. My responses, along with my questions, read as such:
I hear you. It’s as though the assumption is that anyone who is transmasculine in any way is always already committed to conforming to hegemonic masculinist ideals. So much so that many trans men and otherwise nonbinary masc folks feel that to be trans, they must be thin/muscular because that’s the only way to affirm their gender. Even though fat trans men/nonbinary folks do exist with “breasts” or a big chest, we are most always never part of the ideal. If I’m summarizing you correctly, can you speak more to that?
Do you have any experiences within the medical industry where your fatness played a huge role in how your gender was engaged? For example, a lot of fat Black trans men talk about how they were quoted rates twice as high as thin men for top surgery. I’m wondering if you have had, or know others who have, experiences like this?
Jackson: “Oh I absolutely agree. Without top surgery and how [testosterone] has started to redistribute my body fat, I struggled a lot. Not just because of standard ‘not being cisnormative’ dysphoria, but because where were the transmasc folks like me? If I saw them, they were never the type that were celebrated. I feel that the assumption of seeking hegemonic masc ideals just isn’t really even interrogated. Every specifically ‘transmasc’ space I’ve been in has embraced fatphobia, diet culture and gym culture as the norm. I’ve found it helpful to be in wider trans spaces (i.e. inclusive of trans women and nonbinary people) rather than specifically transmasc spaces for this reason. Not only have I found mainstream transmasc spaces very hegemonic in terms of [thinness], but also in terms of heterosexuality and gender expression too. It can sometimes feel like there’s a silent policing of each other’s masculinity.
“[As far as medical bias], luckily I sought out a top surgeon who I knew was less fatphobic than the rest. He operates on ppl up to a BMI of 40 (many stop at 30, or occasionally 35). He also listens to what you want and delivers it—which isn’t the case with all of them! Even with him though, he actively encouraged me to go on a fasting diet (the 5/2) and recommended it as he’d recently done that diet and had ‘success.’ I simply asked him if weight loss was a requirement for him to operate. When he said ‘no but,’ I was like okay then it’s not happening. But I am aware of trans people who have had extremely traumatic and abusive experiences with one of the most well-known, but also most fatphobic surgeons in the UK. It’s so bad that there are large trans folks who have paid £6 to 7k for top surgery with this surgeon, only for him to leave too much breast tissue behind. Resulting in them still having dysphoria after the operation. To which this surgeon’s response has been ‘well it’s realistic for a fat man’s chest’. Some folks have literally had to pay for the procedure to be done again, with a different surgeon. For ANOTHER £7k. It’s actually disgusting. And one of the more frustrating things is that a lot of the skinny transmasc folks who’ve had good results from this surgeon get very defensive when you point out how fatphobic and abusive this surgeon is. They say things like ‘well I didn’t find him inappropriate or rude’ or ‘I had a good experience with him’ or ‘he gives great results.’ The lack of solidarity from skinny trans folks can be very disappointing.”
After Jackson, I spoke with StoneyBertz, a nonbinary transmasculine person with they/he pronouns. Asking them the same questions I’d asked the others, StoneyBertz offered these thoughts:
StoneyBertz: “When I was younger I was referred to as a ‘tomboy,’ and then growing up I was like ‘oh okay, so I’m super gay,’ so clinging to ‘stud,’ as an identifier, was a thing for a long time—mainly because I didn’t know there was any other option that may have aligned with my psychology until that discovery. This is super interesting and something that I honestly think about often. I was assigned female at birth and have always been a fat person that comes from a fat family. A lot of my plans after high school were centered around losing weight and trying to join the military (which didn’t happen thank the lord). Being a masculine-presenting, dark-skinned fat person is interesting because although I do now identify as a nonbinary trans masculine person, I honestly think that was easier for me regarding transition than other folks mainly because the identity projected onto me was always framed with those factors in mind. Like, as a dark-skinned fat ‘woman’ it was cool or acceptable rather for me to be masculine and present that way. I often look at my thin light-skinned counterparts and see how they often get questioned more regarding how they identify because a different idea is projected onto them. The desire/ability politics came into play for me early on but having an understanding of those really changed how I moved after that.”
StoneyBertz is presenting something here that a few others have mentioned too. Mars talked about the difficulty of being fat and dark-skinned simultaneously, and Jackson spoke about the hardships of being unable to settle into womanhood and the general expectations of how a woman is “supposed” to perform. Dark-skinned women oftentimes have masculinity projected onto them, whereas they are masculinized in a sense, and therefore rejected access to femininity and, thus, desire. Light-skinned women, on the contrary, are expected to be feminine. Much of their social currency and Desire Capital is predicated on their ability to perform their gender in a way that is aligned with the social expectations of what femininity should and should not look like. StoneyBertz is speaking to this phenomenon here when they talk about the ways in which their gender performance, at the time, was policed in a different way than that of their light-skinned peers.
They continue by talking more about Desire/ability, specifically in trans spaces.
StoneyBertz: “[In trans spaces], I usually experience a major difference in access, a lot of which is aided by the other systems designed to oppress like the racist healthcare system in addition to what is expected in these spaces. When fat folks show up to be a part of an open mic of a conversation regarding self-love or the like, it is always an observation for me that discussions of fatphobia on its face is almost impossible. It’s almost as if being welcomed into those spaces is contingent on speaking only about shared trauma as opposed to other factors like colorism and fatphobia which also plague us. It just seems infinitely harder to get to the meat of things when this is the case in these spaces. I think [these differences] show up in how we talk about bodies in general. There are always campaigns for support for binders or gender affirming surgeries, but often I think we ignore the reality for fat folks. I had to go to a certain company for a binder that was big enough and comfortable for me. In order to have top surgery, my BMI has to be 35 or lower. We like to proselytize about embracing our different bodies and valuing everyone, but these conversations are based [on thin people unless they decide] to center or make room for fat folks rather. Even the way folks interact with you, they almost don’t expect you to care about yourself in the same way or have the same interest in how you present because they project this attitude that because you are fat that you are happy with [just being tolerated] in the space rather than centered there.”
Finally, I wrapped up my interviews with Micah A, a trans man with they/he pronouns.
Micah A: “I had never thought about fatness, my fat body specifically, in relation to transness. I knew that it was prevalent before transitioning and coming out as queer, but never thought about the ways it has shaped or directed my journey. I also believe as I change and navigate queer communities, the way my body is read and/or perceived changes based on desire individually but also as a community. Our desires usually aren’t our own. They’re shaped socially. I don’t think I had time to nurture or create a space for my fatness. I was too busy picking apart my body in other ways. And maybe that’s because the world didn’t pay attention to it. Or in my head, it was more about ‘passing’ and hiding away the most ethnic pieces of me, pointing more to my trans body and my very Black features. Also, being masculine-presenting my entire life shaped the ways in which the world saw me. Fatness attached to masculine bodies and/or men is perceived differently than fatness attached to feminine bodies and/or women.
“Being masculine-presenting allowed me to ‘escape’ fatphobia in ways that feminine presenting folks aren’t able to. And this doesn’t mean I don’t experience it, it’s just executed differently. I spent most of my life inside of lesbian spaces, and it wasn’t until I began to add cismen, specifically, into my space that I noticed the outward fatphobia. Gay men made it clear that they would not sleep with or date fat men, [and that became an example of the more forward fatphobia I would ha
ve to endure].
“It’s difficult finding trans community, Black trans community specifically. A few weeks ago, there was this conversation on twitter about white trans men using #TransmanThirstdae. A white trans man posted his pics and [the tweet] went viral, but the hashtag was made for Black trans men to have a space to exist and feel great in our skin. White trans men have enough space. His picture going viral, in ways that Black trans men have never experienced, highlighted our understanding and perceptions of beauty as we navigate transness. And I thought, ‘but what would this look like if we centered Black, dark-skinned, fat trans men? Would we show up in numbers how we did today? Are the Black trans men going viral on Twitter fat? They usually are light-skinned and skinny. Why do we continue to uphold and maintain this very restricted idea of beauty while already being marginalized?’”
None of the people who provided testimonials for this chapter had spoken to any other participant before answering my questions, and yet each of them provided similar responses to each other. That is not coincidental. Fat Black trans people are forced to move to and through gender in a way that makes most evident to me that gender itself is something worth interrogating more closely. In so many ways, fatness functions as a gender of its own. Fatness fails, and therefore disrupts, the foundation on which gender is built. This is why the request is made of fat trans people to lose weight before they can be affirmed in their gender, or why little fat Black boys are often misread as girls, or why fat Black women are often denied access to womanhood in a way that operates differently than the typical ungendering of Black subjects at large. But gender is birthed from violence, and therefore fatness operating as its own gender is not liberatory so much as it is forced. Fat people are situated in this extension of what is already a prison because fat bodies deviate from—or rather are already positioned outside of—the designated or assigned “look” of gender. This is to say that the attempt to broaden the normate template only further harms unDesirable people and reifies the very real violences of gender itself.1
Belly of the Beast Page 9