What Do You Think About the Concept of Transmaxxing?
Open Discussion for our Premium Subscribers
Last week on Gender: A Wider Lens, Sascha Bailey introduced us to the concept of Transmaxxing. This idea seems to open up new pathways of thinking about the motivation behind some males’ desire to transition. Transmaxxing does not fit neatly into the HSTS (homosexual transsexuals) and AGP (autogynephiles, or men attracted to the idea of themselves as women) dichotomy that Ray Blanchard and Michael Bailey have discussed on this podcast before.
Through our work with parents of trans-identified boys and young men, the original HSTS and AGP dichotomy has seemed lacking for some time. For instance, there does seem to be an ROGD-style social contagion among boys, though, perhaps, not as common as with girls. But this idea of transitioning for “functional reasons” as Sascha described, definitely shed light on a whole other motivation growing out of the tech world.
As we started to dig into this, we found this recent Channel 4 documentary and wanted to share it with you, while giving you a place to discuss your thoughts on it.
Does this describe anyone you know? Does this make you more or less determined to protect female only spaces? Does this shed light on other issues in our modern culture? We have long said that some women and girls seek transition to “escape the male gaze.” What are the transmaxxers trying to escape? Can we (as society) offer alternatives—like embracing more variations of “manhood,” offering up better and more diverse male role models, pulling back on talk of toxic masculinity? What can we offer to parents, if their sons have latched onto this “solution”?
Please watch the clip and then share your thoughts in the comments!
Also, please note, that opening up discussion on this behavior, and wanting to understand it better, is not the same thing as endorsing it. Thanks!
I finally caught up with episode yesterday and have been thinking about it ever since. You see, I used to work in tech where I was kind of a bridge between the techies, all male, extremely eccentric coders and engineers and everyone else. I did a lot of explaining why a normal user might prefer to click a button rather than simply typing in a line of code then refreshing to see if their change posted. They'd shake their heads and mutter something about how easy it was to simply type in the code, but whatever, and begrudgingly code something for the dummies. Graham Linehan really captures some of this in the IT Crowd. Once in a while one of them would find a girlfriend usually a sort of girly techie, but they seemed to approach the whole relating to people thing in this touchingly technical way. One guy, asked me if I could help him figure out what to wear on a blind date, so I said I'd be happy to. Then he brought his entire wardrobe into the office!! He booked a conference room and we spent a whole lunch time putting together outfits and he, coded it all into a getting dressed app so that he could pick a color or a jacket and the app (we called them "engines" at the time) would spit out several combinations that would work and not clash and not pair socks with sandals! He was one of the sweet ones but there were also some guys who never cut their hair and had to be told to wash and would live in their office cubicle dong god-knows what. They were harder to deal with and could sometimes be dangerously anti social.
I think it's true that this sort of very narrowly focused technical approach to things is more typical of men. You see that sort of A+B = C thinking even in very articulate men who sometimes skirt over the complexity of issues, and to be honest, that can have its place. But tech guys and engineers have these personality traits in the extreme. So in that sense transmaxxing is for them a means to an end.
But here what I keep thinking. We have always had these eccentric individuals but over time societies evolved ways of integrating them. So for instance, (based on a relative) someone who would otherwise be living on his own and isolated might be encouraged to marry, (say by a priest) would be cajoled into dating a woman, and they'd start a family and an otherwise out there person becomes part of a family who love him and tolerate him and gives him a stake in things beyond his narrow focus.
It strikes me that we've lost both the institutions that integrate individuals and socialize them and the culture that makes them feel like they want to integrate and a generosity of spirit that behoves us to make a place for them. In an odd way Transmaxxing seems like a narrow and technical answer to the problem of integration - which is now posed as identity. I think there are some people who don't want to be integrated and who are just kind of disruptive. I'm not sure how people like that were dealt with and found a social niche in the past. I also wonder if our failure to integrate children strongly into manhood, womanhood, etc. has led to more such people. One thing I do know if that people at the extremes need firm boundaries for their own good and for the good of the people around them. I actually think most would just accept them. So no, you can't live in the office, and no, breast augmentation doesn't make you a woman and doesn't solve the problem of more women in IT (and maybe that's not a great thing to begin with). Framing things as "rights" is not just wrong (no one has the "right" to cross sex boundaries) tends to lend itself to this narrow way of thinking. I don't even know if it necessarily helps to ask why someone wants what they want. Maybe just "you might want it but you can't have it". And isn't it interesting that we find it to say "no".
Anyway, I find all this fascinating and it strikes me that a good place to start would be to understand how we integrated people in the past and why and how that changed. For instance, has there ever been a time when so many extremes were together? For instance, was there ever a monastery of men like this? is that why St.Benedict was such a hardass?
If transmaxxing can occur subconsciously, then I think the concept of transmaxxing might apply to my 28 year old son. Forgive the long post, but I think the background is helpful.
At the age of 18, in the last few months of high school, he started identifying as trans and pursuing cross-sex hormones. This occurred completely out of the blue, no history of interest in female activities, clothing, etc. However, it immediately followed the breakup of his then girlfriend, who cruelly dumped him after revealing another ongoing relationship. This was his first physical relationship with anyone. My husband and I speculated that, perhaps, the first stab at a sexual relationship felt like a failure. Instead of licking his wounds and starting over, he became her friend and she began coaching him in girlhood, buying him a purse and giving him fashion advice. Sadly, we wondered if this was his way of holding onto that relationship at any cost. As college approached, the anticipation of adult life was overshadowed (we think) by the obsession of reinventing himself. We tried to be understanding but did not support medicalization and, instead, told him to focus on becoming a functioning adult. I think there was a whole lot of Peter Pan syndrome going on that we had not previously recognized. He was an ADHD kid, homeschooled to compensate, extremely bright, top grades, had a few good friendships with other boys, and excelled in hobbies like robotics, airsoft, and computer science. All of this was tossed aside while he obsessed with transitioning. With little effort and only a couple of hours of 'therapy', he procured androgen blockers/cross-sex hormones (which we couldn't stop because of his age). It was at this point that the real self-destruction began. He quit college after less than a month, started self harming and attempted to take his own life. He found a transman with a boatload of mental health issues, including a super-manipulative personality, and a SJW family that was happy to take him in. He had a pulmonary embolism (side effect of estrogen) and, yet, the unscrupulous doctor kept him on hormones. The transman married him, we believe, not so much for love, but as a way to control his life. (She had already tried to get guardianship even though she was a year younger). He says they have an open marriage. One wonders if there is transmaxxing going on on both sides! He had such a promising future but, since then, has never really worked or pursued further education. A decade has now slipped away. He told me once that he thought he was asexual. He is comfortable with his transman spouse solely supporting the "family" (which includes some other autistic trans kids). He seems otherwise isolated and spends his days and nights on the internet, gaming and imbibing social media. There is no talk of him trying for a job, much less, a career. Recently, he has completely estranged himself from us, despite our efforts to maintain a relationship. He says we make him doubt himself. We used the preferred pronouns and his new name (his spouse helped him do the paperwork to change his first, middle, and last to match hers). This crushed me personally, but it was the cost of having any relationship at all. He once alluded to the fact that I, a woman, got to stay home instead of working a traditional full-time job. He does not remember the fact that I gave up a lucrative STEM job to homeschool him. No matter. He sees womanhood as an escape from growing up. It may also be an escape from sexuality itself. This latter idea would be one I would like to see explored more.