In Defense of FTM

31 May, 2026

From Here to Queer: A Brief Retrospective

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, a growing queer political movement¹ propagated a grassroots framework of gender-nonconformity. Operating within queer theories of solvent gender identity, this new transgender system overtook transsexuality, thus disrupting the sex-based understanding of cross-gendered experience in favor of loosely connected semiotic categories.² Put another way, gender transgression overtook sex traversal.

Whereas transsexuals (whom we would now call binary trans people) moved linearly along the axis of physical sex by way of medical and social transition, transgender modes of thought deconstructed the axes of sex/gender altogether, which deemphasized transition as an animating force, and thereby sex incongruence as its activating component.

The degree of transition varied from one transsexual to another, most notably in regard to bottom surgery/SRS; dysphoria likewise ranged from low to high intensities.³ Across this gradient, all transsexuals participated in some modification of their primary/secondary sex characteristics, beginning with hormone replacement therapy at minimum.⁴

Prior to queer theory's entrance, gender dysphoria was understood as a mental/physical condition with transition being its treatment. Queer theory decoupled this therapeutic relationship, isolating transition from its clinical application and negating dysphoria as its catalyst.

A superficial scrape of any trans archive will provide material with this philosophy in mind. Consider this excerpt from a 1996 brochure on gender education:

Transgenderist: Person living as gender opposite to anatomical sex, i.e. person with penis living as a woman. Sexual orientation varies.

Transsexual: Person whose sexual identity is opposite to their assignment at birth. Not all TS folk undergo 'sex reassignment surgery' (SRS), for various reasons, including personal preference. Sexual orientation varies.

Transgender (TG) Community: A loose association of gender transgressors. Recently awakened, this community is growing fast across social, economic, political, and philosophical divisions. Its central ethic is unconditional acceptance of individual exercise of freedoms including gender and sexual identity and orientation.

Although these definitions are rather rudimentary, they point towards clear digressions in thought. Transgender identity is demarcated by behaviors and presentations that are opposed to anatomical sex, but does not necessarily seek to modify it or move to the opposite sex; transsexual is explicitly a cross-sex identity (therefore dysphoric); and the transgender community is defined by its gender non-conformity--not a shared condition like the transsexual community.

Later in the text, "transgender" is further defined:

A Transgender person is someone whose gender display at least sometimes runs contrary to what other people in the same culture would normally expect.

Based upon this broad definition, transgender is taken to include drag queens, femmes, butches, etc. Furthermore:

Many people who explore transgender behavior do not self-identify as transgender. Women wearing pants may not seem transgender today, but fifty years ago they were. Boys wearing "girls' clothes" may not call themselves "transgender", yet they enjoy playing in this way. Crossdressing is enjoyed by both males and females[...]

Historically, transgender didn't necessarily connote immutable gender/sex variance, or even an identity at all. Rather, it was a sociocultural indicator of gender non-conformity, of which transsexuals were a subset. Distinction between what we would now call "trans" and "cis" did not exist: gender-nonconforming cis people were equally "transgender" as transsexuals.⁵

Pathology versus Philosophy

One the earliest transgender theory texts, The Transgender Alternative was written in 1991 by Holly Boswell. Boswell's goal was to construct transgenderism as "a viable option between [the] crossdresser and transsexual person". This is a valid endeavor, and what modern thinkers might map onto nonbinary identities. But her philosophy betrays concerning prejudices against transsexuality (specifically MTF transsexuals, who are the subject of her critique):

Transsexual people must often deny their maleness altogether and become stereotypical, second class females (a sad fact) in order to assimilate into society. Occasionally these options may be appropriate, but most often I doubt how conducive these forms of socialization are to personal growth and happiness.

Boswell positions transsexuality as a compromise between the individual and society. She makes oblique references to the reality of dysphoria, but insists that its basis is cultural:

Transsexualism, while perfectly appropriate for some, may often be more of an overstated resolution—indeed, a form of escape. Trading one set of stereotypic gender restrictions for another is a denial of wholeness, unless one simply feels more centered in the gender of choice (given this culture), hence more able to strive for wholeness in that form.

Her disregard for transsexuality is plainly obvious. Later in the essay, she theorizes transgenderism--itself an extension of "the ancient tradition of androgyny"⁶--will lead to a utopian, non-gendered society that finally abandons notions of male and female altogether. Transsexuality is but a concession to cultural pressures--not an actual physical/mental condition--that would ideally be rendered obsolete.

Even more dismaying is her hazardous appraisal of transition:

If you believe yourself to be transsexual, are you losing as much ground as you are gaining? Are you unnecessarily sacrificing your preferred style of lovemaking, or your ability to procreate (especially if you're a lesbian)? Are you truly becoming yourself, with a long-term life-plan intact, or are you allowing yourself to be compromised by external expectations? Our high-tech culture promises a quick fix, but there are significant health risks. Your life is precious, and good health is crucial. The freedom to choose one's gender is a potent sword that cuts both ways. Be true to yourself.

Within this framework, transsexuality is posed as a form of sociocultural coercion at best, and a risk to personal health and well-being at worst. Although Boswell's argument sounds extreme, her finer points were internalized and proliferated throughout queer theory in subtle ways.

Transsexuals are an obstacle to queer theory's intangible gender. In response, theorists problematized transsexuality's criterion of identity, dysphoria, and transition as coercive and dangerous. Purified through a lens of liberating reclamation, these concepts were intellectually defanged and their appropriation permitted to anyone who is gender-divergent.

This redefinition of gender-transformative experience made way for a surge of new trans identities and presentations, dissolving transgender terminology's original transsexual context.⁷ As such, transsexual and transgender were collapsed into the same ontological "trans" banner. Although mobilized from different points of origin (one being biological/psychological and the other sociocultural), both denote gendered movement.

Transgender reconstructions of transsexuality were not wholly unwarranted: Much of early transsexual pathology was antagonistic towards transsexuals themselves, relying on harmful norms vis-a-vis sex, gender, race, and class. But despite its problematic applications, pathology still provides a valuable descriptive metric for disorders, as well as validation for disordered persons and justification for their treatment.

Of course, the pathological perspective rests on whether or not gender dysphoria qualifies as a disorder--and, furthermore, if it exists on a dualistic binary.

Gender dysphoria is the mismatch between gender identity and physical sex characteristics. It indisputably causes mental, emotional, and physical duress; its symptoms arise from a biological/psychological incongruence, and addressing this incongruence is the only effective treatment.⁸

According to the DSM-5-TR, gender dysphoria is:

A marked incongruence between one's experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months' duration, manifested by at least two [symptoms from a set of specified criteria]. [...] The condition is associated with clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

The World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases has two definitions of gender dysphoria, which they define as an "incongruence".

Gender incongruence of adolescence/adulthood:

Gender Incongruence of Adolescence and Adulthood is characterised by a marked and persistent incongruence between an individual's experienced gender and the assigned sex, which often leads to a desire to 'transition', in order to live and be accepted as a person of the experienced gender, through hormonal treatment, surgery or other health care services to make the individual's body align, as much as desired and to the extent possible, with the experienced gender. The diagnosis cannot be assigned prior to the onset of puberty. Gender variant behaviour and preferences alone are not a basis for assigning the diagnosis.

Gender incongruence of childhood:

Gender incongruence of childhood is characterised by a marked incongruence between an individual's experienced/expressed gender and the assigned sex in pre-pubertal children. It includes a strong desire to be a different gender than the assigned sex; a strong dislike on the child's part of his or her sexual anatomy or anticipated secondary sex characteristics and/or a strong desire for the primary and/or anticipated secondary sex characteristics that match the experienced gender; and make-believe or fantasy play, toys, games, or activities and playmates that are typical of the experienced gender rather than the assigned sex. The incongruence must have persisted for about 2 years. Gender variant behaviour and preferences alone are not a basis for assigning the diagnosis.

For transsexuals, gender dysphoria is an immutable physical/mental condition that is clinically significant and literally quantifiable; treatment consists of transitioning between male and female to become men/women.⁹ These binaries are not just philosophical anchor points, but material realities that inform clinical diagnosis, medical protocol, and legal reclassifications.

Transgender theorists argue that these metrics are too constrictive, and only serve to enforce preconceived notions of sex and gender as determined by medical institutions. Whilst this may be true historically, it fails to account for the constructive function of pathology and its beneficiaries. Additionally, transgender theory forgets that binary gender expressions are the exact solution for transsexual dysphoria: The goal of a transsexual's transition is not gender non-conformity, but integration into, and recognition as, the opposite sex.¹⁰

By removing transsexuality's pathological framework, transgender theory transforms objective experience into subjective philosophy: less clinically robust, and more susceptible to cultural/legal scrutiny.¹¹

In closing, consider this excerpt from Jamison Green's Becoming a Visible Man:

Transgender is a grassroots term, not a diagnosis like transvestite (a psychological condition) or transsexual (a medical condition). Transgender is a self-identity label for some and a useful political term for others. Many people who are either transsexual or gender-diverse despise the term transgender. Transgender does not mean people who want to change their sex. It is not a euphemism for transsexual, the way gender is often a euphemism for sex. Because the category is so new, broad, and subjective, we have no way of counting the number of transgender people in the world, either. To use transgender and transsexual interchangeably is to erase both individual experience and the very different social needs of these diverse categories.

Community, Culture, and History

Upon absorption into transgender theory, transsexuality was detached from the binary on which transsexuals themselves are situated. This loss of footing has disproportionately impacted the FTM community, its culture, and history.

Consider this figure from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's Standards of Care:

Recent studies suggest nonbinary people comprise roughly 25% to over 50% of the larger transgender population, with samples of youth reporting the highest percentage of nonbinary people [...] and in studies of both youth and adults, nonbinary people are more likely to have been assigned female at birth (AFAB). However, these findings should be interpreted with caution as there are likely a number of complex, sociocultural factors influencing the quality, representativeness, and accuracy of this data.

While the sociocultural leniency in conceptualizing these identities makes it hard to quantify reliable numbers, preliminary data shows that nonbinary identities are concentrated within AFAB populations. Consequently, the FTM community has taken on the brunt of this demographic upheaval--insofar as it is no longer considered "FTM", but rather "transmasculine".

FTM is short for "female-to-male": someone born female at birth who later transitions to become male. It does not mean "feminine-to-masculine". It is firmly situated in the context of transition, physical sex, and maleness/manhood. However, FTM has been de-sexed and emasculated by transgender theory--both literally and subliminally--to accommodate a growing gender-diverse AFAB population, which does not wholly align with men in the same way as FTMs.¹²

The earliest FTM group was FTM International. Spearheaded by Lou Sullivan, it came into existence in the 1980s. Trans groups had grown across the Western world during the second half of the twentieth century--spurred on by events such as Christine Jorgenson's public MTF transition, the publishing of The Transsexual Phenomenon by Harry S. Benjamin, and the Stonewall Riots--but most catered only to MTF transsexuals, or otherwise targeted transgender groups of gender-transgressors, such as those previously labeled "transvestites" and "crossdressers", as well as drag queens and butch queer women.

Seeing this lack, Sullivan created FTM International and its corresponding newsletter. Headquartered out of San Francisco, the newsletter reached hundreds of trans men and their allies across several continents. Sullivan was best known for his mail correspondence to group members, some of which has been archived online. A gay man himself, he also advocated on behalf of homosexual/bisexual transsexuals.¹³ After testing positive for HIV in 1986, he spent the remainder of his life advocating for FTM awareness and AIDS patients, most notably in a series of videotaped interviews with psychiatrist Dr. Ira Pauly. Tragically, he passed away in 1993.

Lou Sullivan photographed in 1982.

Lou Sullivan photographed hugging another person, taken in 1990 at an Educational Transvestite Channel luncheon.

Sullivan was an author in addition to a community organizer and activist. His most well-known work, Information for the Female-to-Male Crossdresser and Transsexual was first published in 1980,¹⁴ widely disseminated across trans groups and purchased via individual mail-in orders. It is one of the earliest known texts about FTMs, written by an FTM.

Within its pages is the first-of-its-kind primer on everything to do with FTM transsexuality, transition, culture, and history. Sullivan dedicated portions of his booklet to crossdressers and transvestites (whom perhaps would've been called "transgender" in its original sense in the 1990s, and nonbinary/transmasc today)--providing information for these groups when applicable, but nonetheless prioritizing transsexuals. He firmly emphasized the boundary between transsexuals and other gender-diverse people:

This strong daily identification with the physical form of the opposite sex is what transsexuality is all about. It is the hardest thing for non-transsexual people to understand. It is what urges transsexuals to the seemingly unbelievable act of surgically [and/or hormonally] adjusting their bodies to conform to their self-perception.

Sullivan also exercised a surprising amount of foresight including this political/philosophical clause--directly responding to the same critiques that would be levied but a few years later by theorists Boswell, et. al.:

It is helpful to remember that sex reassignment does not change the person inside the body. The female-to-male will wake up every morning as the same person he was before. What does change is his outer appearance to others. What does change is how other people act towards him. If liberationists feel it is wrong that a person needs to change their sexual status in order to live comfortably in this world, they need to point their finger not at the transsexual, but at our society, which sees fit to treat the two sexes so differently. The blame does not lie with the individuals who have become the victims of this disparity.

This clause is not to say that Sullivan regarded transsexuality as an exclusively sociocultural phenomenon. Rather, he argued that the interpretations of its physical manifestation are socially motivated, and political hostility toward transsexuals and transsexuality is misdirected. It is not transsexuality or transition that is problematic, but how people are treated differently pre- and post-transition--which is not the fault of transsexuals themselves.

On the whole, Sullivan defined transsexuality with a combination of social, biological, and psychological factors:

The two principal theories on the possible origin of transsexualism revolve around either a biological, inborn cause (genetic and/or endocrine) not necessarily inherited, or with purely psychological causes. The process of achieving a complete gender identity is a developmental progression, beginning with genetic foundations and ending with social learning. [...] It would be just as hazardous to accept a purely neuroanatomic or neuroendocrine basis of human sexual behavior as it would be to disregard biological findings as irrelevant in comparison to psychoanalytic or learning theories.

Another early FTM pioneer, photographer Loren Cameron, published a photobook entitled Body Alchemy in 1996, a decade after the release of Sullivan's booklet and five years after Boswell's essay.

For the longest time, transsexuals and especially transsexual men (female-to-males) have been virtually invisible to the dominant culture. Marginalized even within the gay and lesbian subculture, transsexuals have occupied no real space of our own. In the last decade or so, more and more transsexual people have been speaking out about our experiences. We are beginning to represent ourselves for the first time and to develop our own voice. Body Alchemy is the first photodocumentation of transsexual men from within our community.

Like Sullivan, Cameron acknowledges non-transsexuals (by now referred to as "transgender") and is inclusive toward them¹⁵--but still prioritizes binary FTM transsexuals, who compromise the majority of his work.

He recounts the first time he and other FTMs walked in San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade in 1994:

The first time transsexual men marched in the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade in 1994, I had an incredible day. Holding one end of a banner that read FTM TRANS PRIDE, I walked bare-chested with my head held high. It was a frightening experience: just a handful of us braved the hordes with literally hundreds of thousands of people scrutinizing us. We were all nervous, and I remember whispering repeatedly to my banner mate to slow his pace because I wanted to absorb it all and fix the moment in my mind forever. I wanted to watch people's reactions to us, and more than anything, I wanted to walk with dignity.

A photograph from the 1994 San Francisco Pride parade; Cameron is on the right, shirtless in red shorts.

One section of the book focuses on portraits of transsexual men; another features photos of post-operative penises and chests. Each photo is accompanied by a small piece of writing--either informative context inserted by Cameron, or short autobiographical blurbs provided by the subjects of his portraits themselves.

Loren Cameron; a self-portrait taken while injecting testosterone.

Matt Rice; photographed by Cameron.

Jeffrey Shevlowitz; photographed by Cameron.

Erik; photographed by Cameron.

"What was initially a crude documentation of my own personal journey gradually evolved into an impassioned mission. Impulsively, I began to photograph other transsexuals that I knew, feeling compelled to make images of their emotional and physical triumphs. I was fueled by my need to be validated and wanted, in turn, to validate them. I wanted the world to see us, I mean, really see us." -- Loren Cameron

"Many of my role models have been leathermen and perverts, so they understand that a young queer man is someone non-traditional. I think some people assume that transsexuals have this sexist stereotype about how they're supposed to act, and I've had men tell me that I don't have to be that way: 'You can be any way you want to be, and it doesn't make you less of a man.'" -- Matt Rice

"My father never had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony, nor did my uncle or my brother, so in a way, I'm the only man in my family in at least two generations who actually went through a Bar Mitzvah ceremony. For me, it was an affirmation of my heritage and of who I am now. Traditionally, a young boy says during the ceremony, 'Today I am a man.' I always felt that this would be the perfect experience for me, and even though I didn't actually stand up there on the Bema and say it, the feelings were certainly there." -- Jeffrey Shevlowitz

"I don't want to be misunderstood or seen as sexist because of what I look like. I like being a guy, and it has nothing to do with power. I just look like how I feel." -- Erik

"I feel better having my genitals on the outside of my body. That protrusion is important: it's symbolic of the expression of myself as a man in the world. Really, on a day-to-day basis, it doesn't make that much difference. [...] But in terms of presenting myself to a potential partner, having genitalia that look somewhat like they're supposed to helps me feel confident.

Although I am very conscious of being different, I feel sure of myself as a lover. In my fantasies, I might imagine having a larger penis, but in reality, it doesn't matter. My surgery is good enough. I have sexual function, and now I have a body that satisfies my needs: it reflects my own masculinity." -- Metoidioplasty Subject #2

"My attraction to men is very visceral. I enjoy them aesthetically, in terms of muscles, genitals and legs. I look at male bodies a lot, and maybe I look at myself in relation to them because of my own physical evolution as a transsexual man.

When I placed a personals ad for male sex partners, I was completely pre-operative (I had breasts and a vagina), but I looked male by all outward appearances. In the ad, I explained that I was female-to-male, and elaborated more completely to any phone respondents.

[...] One of them said that, after being with me, he realized that being sexual wasn't so much about bodies as about erotic energy between two people, and that to him, I was a man." -- David Harrison

"It took a few years for me to comfortably identify as a heterosexual man without qualifying it somehow. After all those years of living in the lesbian community and all that indoctrinated feminism of a certain type, it was really hard to confess my current sexual identity.

If you identify as a heterosexual man, you are automatically seen as sexist in some way. I mean, just looking at a beautiful woman can get you into trouble. When I've said, 'Now I understand things like prostitution and pornography because my sex drive has gone up,' I've received a lot of criticism. When I say, 'I like being a man in relation to a woman because I like feeling stronger,' I mean because I have more muscle mass now that I'm on testosterone. But I don't think any less of women for it!

Guys all over the world are apologizing for being men and are trying to create a sense of equality with women. Some say that this friction or war between the sexes is all a socialization thing and that if we could fix society then everything would be okay. But when you take hormones and change your biological sex, you realize it has to be more. There's something profoundly physical going on." -- Max Valerio

These are just a small selection of personal anecdotes from Body Alchemy.

Sargent Stephen Thorne; photographed by Loren Cameron.

Tony; photographed by Cameron.

Chris; photographed by Cameron.

Loren Cameron; a self-portrait.

The legacy of Cameron's autoethnography is a valuable resource for trans men in the modern world. Apart from rapid-pace social media algorithms, a revolving door of popular influencers and activists, and a multi-faceted gender ecosystem, Body Alchemy provides an intimate, thorough, and unapologetic view of binary trans male culture and community. Regrettably, Cameron committed suicide in 2022; he was sixty-three years old.

In an era where FTM transsexuality is often ignored, problematized, or papered over with a progressive gloss, firsthand accounts provided by men like Lou Sullivan and Loren Cameron act as lasting testimonies of FTM transsexuality. Thanks to their bravery and determination, trans men will always have stories and resources to draw strength and solidarity from.

Through these personal anecdotes, we can see that FTM transsexuality neither endorses nor rejects traditional masculinity or maleness. Rather, it embodies these concepts through the lens of female-to-male transition. Assimilating into the male sex through conscious gender transformation, transsexual men ultimately resolve their sex/gender incongruence by directly transforming its physical, mental, and social realities--crossing the boundaries of sex and gender to arrive at manhood on their own terms.

Exhibit FTM: Magazine

FTM self-documentation did not end with Cameron and Sullivan, but continued onward into the 21st century with authors like Jamison Green, Aaron Devor, Max Valerio, and others.¹⁶

By the century's second decade, things were shifting within the trans community. The term "transsexual" had been mostly phased out, replaced by "transgender" as an all-inclusive umbrella term that was meant to include transsexuals, non-transsexuals, and other gender non-conformists.

I was thirteen in 2011--the year I joined Tumblr, the infamous origin point of queer internet discourse, where I was first exposed to trans people and learned that transition was possible. After a brief stint of mistakenly thinking that I was a lesbian, I understood that I was trans upon realizing I had experienced gender dysphoria since I was young, and especially after puberty.¹⁷

I fumbled with alternative identities, but it didn't take long to settle on FTM. "Nonbinary" hadn't been widely popularized as an identity or concept yet, but labels like "transmasculine", "transfeminine", and others were already in use.¹⁸ These identities were largely separate from FTM and MTF, viewed in parallel to binary genders (hence "transgender" as a collective identifier) but not necessarily equivalent.

In 2014, I was outed to my mom and ex-step-mom (long stories on both fronts) at sixteen, after they were shown my Tumblr account. They were quicker on the uptake than I was--still struggling with my identity, and now the fact that people close to me knew it, too.

As a show of support, they ordered me a new trans publication called FTM Magazine. Launched in 2014 by Jason Robert Ballard and Leo Reichstetter, the magazine sought to showcase resources, advice, culture, and personal stories from the FTM community--your typical male culture stuff, only geared toward men who also happen to be trans.

They accepted content from transmasculine people, but their main audience was binary trans men; an interview with Ballard from 2017--three years after the magazine's debut--quotes him saying as much:

Although the magazine's target audience is binary transgender males, Ballard understands that it doesn't and can't represent all niches of the transgender community.

"I know that I would be stretching myself too thin to try to represent everybody," Ballard said. "So I'm hoping that people can come to me and talk to me and say, 'Hey, I want to start a nonbinary magazine.'"

I find it interesting that Ballard specified nonbinary people as distinct from his target audience of "transgender males"--i.e., FTM transsexuals. This distinction was drawn not out of animosity, but out of respect for the boundary that exists between binary trans men and the broader trans community.

By the mid-2010s, nonbinary communities were gaining traction and began to intersect with their binary counterparts. A decade later, the boundaries between these demographics have all but disappeared. There is effectively no discernment between the unique needs of binary trans people and nonbinary trans people anymore: In the same way transsexual and transgender were collapsed into one, binary and nonbinary have also been flattened into a one-dimensional conglomerate, when in actuality they exist on entirely different--yet parallel--planes of identity, culture, and sex.

FTM Magazine came into existence during the strange interim between these stages of binary/nonbinary subsumption. Ballard stepped down as CEO in 2018 (a year following his aforementioned interview), purportedly after backlash over the magazine's focus on binary trans men. A new CEO, Aidan Faiella, took over in his place.

I've been unable to corroborate this supposed conflict myself.¹⁹ Regardless of potential behind-the-scenes drama, the magazine underwent a visual overhaul between 2017 and 2018, wherein the tagline switched from "Female-to-Male Transculture Magazine" to "Transmasc Quarterly".

Consider these cover photos. The first two covers are from 2015, a year after the magazine launched; the last two are from 2017, after the apparent re-branding.

FTM Magazine: Fall 2015

FTM Magazine: Winter 2015

FTM Magazine: Summer 2017

FTM Magazine: Fall 2017

I have absolutely no qualms with effeminate trans men, alternative trans men, gay trans men, etc.²⁰ Nor do I believe that stereotypically masculine trans men are more valid than other trans men. The point of this comparison isn't to shine light on any of these individuals' gender presentation. It's about the tone of the publication itself--because there is a marked difference between the covers before 2017, and those that came after.

The 2015 covers are reminiscent of this Advocate article from 2014, entitled LOOK: Will This Magazine Become the GQ of Trans Men? The graphic design is bold, geometric, and utilitarian, belonging to more traditional print media. Content is less focused on transness itself, and more focused on where trans men intersect with mainstream society. This choice of design and ethos reflects the sentiments found in Sullivan and Cameron's works--an assimilative approach to masculinity and maleness within the context of FTM transsexuality. Although rooted in the unique experiences and history of FTM transsexuals, its subject matter parallels that of cisgender men.

The first iteration of FTM Magazine sought to replicate cis male media literally. Consider this quote from the Advocate article:

FTM: International Transculture Magazine, released in April, aims to fill a media niche where trans men don't often see themselves, Ballard tells The Advocate. "I was reading GQ waiting for a hair appointment and thought, 'This would be a great time in the trans movement to launch something like this for trans men," he recalls.

By comparison, the 2017 covers emphasize the FTM population's status as trans over their status as men.

The Summer 2017 cover features a pregnant trans man--which, on its own, I wouldn't have a problem with at all. Although it detours from the binary female-to-male narrative, pregnancy either pre- or post-transition is not an unheard of occurrence among trans men. In the late 2000s, Thomas Beatie made national headlines across America as "the pregnant man". I remember watching clips from his TV special as a child; at the time, I didn't entirely cognize the fact that he was trans, partly due to the matter-of-fact handling of his story, sex, and gender. Listening to him speak about his experience, he doesn't place much emphasis on his trans status at all, and glibly remarks that he's back to his "full maleness" since resuming testosterone and undergoing bottom surgery.

In 2008, he wrote an article for the Advocate at five months pregnant:

How does it feel to be a pregnant man? Incredible. Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant.

For Beatie, pregnancy neither invalidated nor defined his transsexuality. Whether or not other trans men who have been pregnant hold this same view is up to them, and no one's personal experience is more valid than another. The problem with depictions of trans male pregnancy is not the stories themselves, but how pregnancy is universalized across trans men as a whole through their retelling.

The same goes for the subject of the Summer 2017 cover's, Tanner Michael. Although I couldn't find the content of the article recounting his story, I managed to find this video from FTM Magazine's Facebook page. Michael recounts his identity, romantic relationship, and pregnancy--which, unlike Beatie's, was not planned!

The cover's tagline--"Reclaiming Our Bodies: Bodies capable of becoming pregnant, pregnancy, and being daddies"--is what I find problematic.²¹ Unlike Beatie's story, which framed pregnancy as a pragmatic personal choice, collective reclamation elevates pregnancy to a defining characteristic of all trans men, regardless of individual experience, identity, or preference. It turns female-to-male into female-and-male, regressing the linear trajectory of FTM transsexuality and anchoring trans men, as a category, back to the reproductive female body from which they explicitly transition to become male.

This pivot away from male embodiment to reclamation of the female is but one signal of FTM Magazine's shift in rhetoric. Another, more visual example, would be the Fall 2017 cover.

No longer structural or geometric, its design is bright and playful, functioning to draw attention to the model rather than display information. The subheading--"More colors, cats and peens"--is diminutive toward its subject matter, even compared to the Summer 2017 issue which included an article preview "New Prosthetics: Mind/body connections". In smaller font, another tagline reads: "#femaletomodel"--betraying another strange ambivalance toward FTM and its meaning.

The change in logo strikes me the same way as the overall graphic design, with its shift from bold-faced font to curvilinear script. Lastly, the photography is much less serious, more like a selfie from an influencer than a biographical photo akin to that of Cameron's documentary work, which was echoed in previous cover photos.

Altogether, the Fall 2017 cover is a precursor to later developments in trans discourse, which place the onus of identity not on gender, sex, or transition, but semantics and aesthetics.²² This reconfiguration would act as the final death knell to the bodily understanding of transsexuality, and lay the foundation for transgender's hegemonic assumption as the primary mode of gender identity.

FTM Magazine existed during a turbulent era for binary trans men. The later covers are not transsexual emulations of cis male culture, but attempts at creating a new look that is visibly queer. It discards the mapping of female-to-male in favor of female-to-transgender, equating trans men with the entire transmasculine label and thus situating them as a third alternative to male and female.

There's nothing invalid with either transsexuality or transgender identity on their own. But the establishment of transgender thought, both historically and into present day, has come at the expense of transsexuality, specifically binary FTM culture.

Looking back, I view FTM Magazine's story as a precursor to dynamics which have only compounded since its inception. I don't think Ballard was "wrong" in his vision for the publication. Neither do I assume ill-will from his replacement, Faiella, or the post-2017 contributors. FTM Magazine was a product of its time--but its lifespan betrays a deeper point of friction within trans discourse.

In the fall of 2018 FTM Magazine released its final physical issue; by 2020 they stopped publishing online; in 2025, the website went defunct.

To be honest, I only read the first couple of issues.²³ But I will never forget opening the magazine and seeing binary trans men that were fully transitioned, successful, proud, and confident. Seeing them made me realize that if they made it, I could make it. It made me believe, for the first time since I had realized I was trans, that everything would be okay.

Discretion isn't Discrimination

If FTM Magazine had been all-inclusive from the start--if there had been concessions on its masculinity, maleness, or manhood (which, by definition, nonbinary transmasculine identities entail²⁴)--it wouldn't have had the same effect on me.

The issue is not nonbinary identities themselves, nor their adjacency to binary gender. My grievances lie where nonbinary visibility has eclipsed binary representation--thereby occupying dominance in public awareness and sidelining FTM entirely.

FTM spaces have always been accommodating toward transmasculine people, and much of our history and culture is intertwined. Take Leslie Feinberg, a transgender theorist best known for writing Stone Butch Blues and Transgender Warriors.

Another transgender theorist, Judith Halberstam,²⁵ studied the convergence between FTM and butch gender identity. In her book Female Masculinity, she dedicates an entire essay to the subject, Transgender Butch: Butch/FTM Border Wars and the Masculine Continuum.

It is an elaboration of her earlier analysis of butch and transsexual masculinities, in which she had collapsed FTM and butch gender identities together by virtue of their gender-transgressive nature, discarding their material differences. Her argument concluded with the thesis, "There are no transsexuals. We are all transsexuals."

The essay caused FTMs and their allies to interpret Halberstam as "the lesbian feminist who wanted transsexuals to disappear within some postmodern proliferation of queer identities." In Transgender Butch, Halberstam seeks to clarify her position, rectifying past misunderstandings and misgivings.

At present, the moniker "FTM" names a radical shift in both identity and body base within the context of transsexuality that by comparison makes "butch" look like a stable signifier. But the shifts and accommodations made in most cross-gender identifications, whether aided by surgery or hormones or not, involve a great deal of instability and transitivity. Transgender butch conveys some of this movement.

Noting the butch histories shared among many trans men, Halberstam continues:

[...] when theorized from the perspective of the FTM, the stone butch becomes pre-FTM, a penultimate stage along the way to the comfort of transsexual transformation; however, when theorized from the perspective of the butch, the stone butch becomes a nonsurgical and nonhormonal version of transgender identification and does away with the necessity of sex reassignment surgery for some people.

Cautioning against static taxonomy, Halberstam focuses on the granular membrane between butch and FTM. Denouncing the simplified model of butch as a lesser form of masculinity than FTM transsexuality, she describes butchness as a transgender mode of gender--not entirely female or male, with its sociocultural transition parallel to the transsexual's physical one. As such, I believe her ideas can be transposed onto modern perceptions of nonbinary transmasculinity.²⁶

While her concept of butch (or nonbinary) incorporates gendered movement similar to transsexuality, it is enacted on a different register of culture, sex, identity. Halberstam thus maintains her original philosophy, while clarifying the separation between transgender and transsexual, which her previous work failed to define:

There are transsexuals, and we are not all transsexuals; gender is not fluid, and gender variance is not the same wherever we may find it. Specificity is all.

Transgender identities are therefore discernible from transsexual identities. To avoid categorizing one mode of gender as more immaterial/material over another, both were understood to traverse the physical, mental, and social planes of gender/sex. The degree of movement is where they diverge--transsexuality embodying linear transportation from female to male²⁷ where butch eschews definitive resolution:

There are real and physical differences between female-born men who take hormones, have surgery, and live as men and female-born butches who live some version of gender ambiguity.

Ironically enough, historical accounts of this debate argue against transsexuality as being more gender-deviant than transgender. Today, the inverse discourse is taking place, as transsexuals attempt to assert themselves separately from transgender frameworks.

Screened through social media and its algorithmic infrastructure, gender identity has been filtered of its material particulate, rendered according to semantics and aesthetics instead of its physical and social realities. Flattened to a one-dimensional polemic, transgender and transsexual are homogenized by their gender-transgressive nature. Given that the FTM community absorbed the largest influx of transgender identities, its transsexuality was consequently hollowed out and distorted to encompass nonbinary identities historically exterior to it--despite its binary foundations.²⁸

Since the late 2010s, the community has been remade into an all-inclusive canopy represented by nonbinary transmascs more often than FTM transsexuals. Once you become aware of this trend, it's impossible to unsee.

Consider these images, all pulled from different binder websites.

(Source: Spectrum Outfitters)

(Source: Spectrum Outfitters)

(Source: gc2b)

(Source: Wonababi)

(Source: Wivov)

Once marketed exclusively toward FTMs, chest binder companies now largely appeal to the nonbinary consumer base. Trans men are occasionally featured in marketing but do not share equal representation, effectively making nonbinary people the de facto face of chest binder users.

Binary trans men have become a minority in the products made for them. I am not arguing that nonbinary people don't deserve to be represented in such marketing; I simply find it troubling that they have all but replaced original FTM consumers.

This phenomenon echoes the same trend that befell FTM Magazine, which can be traced all the way back to early transgender theory, and accounts for the loss of culture that Sullivan, Cameron, and others fought to preserve.

There is ample evidence within semantic data as well, which shows that nonbinary representation and self-identification is slowly outpacing that of binary trans people, especially among those assigned female at birth.

Gender identity trends among U.S. undergraduate students from Spring 2021 to Spring 2025

Source: ACHA-NCHA III undergraduate reference group data reports, Spring 2021–Spring 2025. Question 67C: "Which term do you use to describe your gender identity?" Nonbinary aggregate includes non-binary, genderqueer, genderfluid, and agender responses.

% of U.S. adults who say their gender is different from their sex assigned at birth

Source: Pew Research Center, survey of U.S. adults conducted May 16–22, 2022.

Percentage of LGBTQ youth identifying as nonbinary, by sex assigned at birth

Source: The Trevor Project. "Diversity of Nonbinary Youth." 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, July 2021.

The ramifications of disproportionate nonbinary representation in trans media and merchandising are not only theoretical, but actively deprive FTM transsexuals of the means to their own gender embodiment. Through the homogenization of transgender/transsexual conceptions of masculine gender, FTM bodies are de-sexed and their cultural presence emasculated, pushing transsexual men further from their end goal of male integration.

In FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society, sociologist Aaron Devor (a trans man himself) tracks the sociocultural utility of masculinity, as employed by FTMs:

However, in everyday life, sexes are rarely directly displayed or discussed. Rather, genders and gender styles are the media of most social exchange. As such, genders and gender styles act as markers of sexes in that persons who seamlessly perform particular gender styles are attributed by others with being the corresponding genders and sexes. Thus, although the dominant gender schema ideology claims that gender styles and genders are the results of sexes, people functionally read gender styles, genders, and sexes in the reverse order. That is to say that in everyday life, we actually read gender on the basis of gender styles, not on the basis of sexes.

Rather than nullifying the importance of sex in comparison to gender (as transgender theory posits), Devor rests the legibility of sex itself on gender presentation. In other words, trans men rely on masculine gender presentations to communicate their being male.

This relationship between gender presentation and sex is particularly signifigant to FTM transsexuals, who, for various reasons, struggle to achieve full bodily integration into the male sex:

Although all participants were clear that they would have preferred to have been born as physically complete males, few participants ever achieved the maximum approximation of physical maleness which medical technology could supply. Rather, most participants understood themselves to have embarked on a multifaceted process of sex alteration which would, at minimum, take years to complete and which many participants freely acknowledged that, for a variety of reasons, they might never fully actualize.

Trans men, on the whole, report having had bottom surgery/SRS far less than their trans female counterparts.

Phalloplasty and metoidioplasty are the two primary genital reconstructive procedures for transgender male individuals, each with their own urinary, sexual, and aesthetic considerations. [...] As a whole, less than 5% of transgender men have had procedures to create a phallus. One survey distinguished between the surgical options, reporting that 3% of transgender men have had phalloplasty and 19% want it in the future, while 2% have had metoidioplasty and 25% want it in the future.

The lack of bottom surgery does not necessarily discredit someone's transsexuality, but merely points toward the immense financial, physical, and medical investment it requires. It is not the case that trans men do not want to be physically male, but that the barriers to maleness are much higher.

It should be noted, however, that FTM bottom surgery continues to advance, and many trans men find great satisfaction in their phalloplasty and metoidioplasty results; likewise, some trans men find that the masculinizing effects of testosterone (via the enlargement of the clitoris, which effectively becomes a micropenis in size and appearance, if not function) constitutes an adequate form of male genitalia alone.

Regardless of individual experience, all trans men must make some compromise with regard to their physical sex. In light of this dilemma, Devor goes on to illustrate how FTM transsexuals formulate their self-concept as men, independent of qualifying male anatomy:

Nevertheless, whatever their state of iatrogenic hermaphroditism, participants were nearly unanimous as to the authenticity of their manhood. Thus, although participants were fully mindful of the social requirement that if they were to be men then they had to have male bodies, their own lives belied that dictum. The reality of the limitations of what medical technology could do for participants' bodies left them as men whose ultimate claim to their manhood was founded more solidly on the basis of their social and psychological attributes than on their physical ones.

Trans men have been uniquely compromised by the changing landscape of gender identity, and are particularly vulnerable to its consequences. In an era where terminology that explicitly establishes trans men's association to men and maleness has been displaced by generalized umbrella terms like "trans", "transmasc", or "queer", it's important to assert FTM transsexuality as its own specific identity, label, and culture. After all, discretion isn't discrimination--the power of visibility lies in its clarity.

These Three Letters

I am nearly thirty now. All I have left to achieve in my transition is surgery; I went through the legal rigmarole ages ago and HRT has, for the most part, ran its course. I've been living as a man for six years; I've been living as a trans person for over a decade; I've been living as female-to-male my whole life.

I go to an LGBT clinic for HRT. One day I was discussing local options for top surgery. My PCP pulled up a surgeon's website and showed me their top surgery page.

It was titled something like "FTM Reconstructive Surgery." My PCP scoffed dismissively and said, "I hate that word, FTM—I wish people would stop using it."

I didn't react outwardly, but inside I felt extremely crestfallen. I can understand objections to exclusively labeling top surgery as FTM--but wanting to discard the label entirely? I love using the term FTM to describe myself, and seeing it used by others is likewise affirmative for me.

FTM succinctly encapsulates the entirety of my gender identity, life story, and transition. Book-ended by my birth sex and my true self, it reinforces the linear progression of my transition within an ever-expanding gender landscape, and carries decades of history specific to transsexual men. Within these three letters is the full continuum of my emotional struggle, social transformation, medical transition, material physicality, historical inheritance, and--ultimately--personal triumph.

Works Cited

American College Health Association. ACHA-NCHA III: Undergraduate Student Reference Group Data Reports. American College Health Association, 2021–2025, www.acha.org/ncha/data-results/survey-results/all-ncha-survey-reports/ncha-iiib-survey-reports/.

Beatie, Thomas. "Labor of Love." The Advocate, 26 Mar. 2008, www.advocate.com/news/2008/03/26/labor-love.

Boswell, Holly. "The Transgender Alternative." Chrysalis Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 2, Summer 1991, pp. 29–31.

Brown, Anna. "About 5% of Young Adults in the U.S. Say Their Gender Is Different from Their Sex Assigned at Birth." Pew Research Center, 7 June 2022, www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/07/about-5-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-say-their-gender-is-different-from-their-sex-assigned-at-birth/.

Cameron, Loren. Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits. Cleis Press, 1996, https://archive.org/details/body_alchemy/.

Coleman, E., et al. "Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8." International Journal of Transgender Health, vol. 23, no. S1, 2022, pp. S1–S259, https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644.

Devor, Aaron H. FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society. Indiana University Press, 1997.

American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 5th ed., text rev., 2022, https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787.

The Trevor Project. "Diversity of Nonbinary Youth." 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, 13 July 2021, www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/diversity-of-nonbinary-youth/.

Green, Jamison. Becoming a Visible Man. Vanderbilt University Press, 2004.

Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity. Duke University Press, 1998.

International Foundation for Gender Education and Nancy Nangeroni. Transgenderism. The History Project, 1996. Digital Transgender Archive, https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/downloads/bg257f36g.

Kellaway, Mitch. "LOOK: Will This Magazine Become the GQ of Trans Men?" The Advocate, 23 June 2014, https://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2014/06/23/look-will-magazine-become-gq-trans-men.

Lee, Yuri. "Magazine Co-Founder, Publisher Talks Transgender Issues." Pipe Dream, 30 Nov. 2017, https://www.bupipedream.com/news/magazine-co-founder-publisher-talks-transgender-issues/89366/.

Nolan, I.T., Kuhner, C.J., & Dy, G.W. (2019). Demographic and temporal trends in transgender identities and gender confirming surgery. Translational Andrology and Urology, 8(3), 184.

Sullivan, Lou. Information for the Female to Male Cross Dresser and Transsexual. 2nd ed., Ingersoll Gender Center, 1985, https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/g158bh442.

World Health Organization. International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. 11th ed., version 2026-01, 2026, https://icd.who.int/browse/latest-release/mms/en.

✘ Originally posted on — 5-26-2026
✘ Main site location — https://xavierhm.com/blog/in-defense-of-ftm

Footnotes

#2026 #autoethnography #critical-theory #data #ethnography #nonbinary #politics #research #trans #transgender #transsexuality