9781422271193

people prefer to describe themselves as transmasculine instead of FTM, because it describes the direction of their transition without implying that they identify as male. Though transmasculine is useful as an umbrella term, it is not without its flaws; some trans people who fit this definition do not identify with the term, because it conflates maleness with masculinity. As there is currently no better substitute for the term, this volume will use transmasculine instead of the narrower term FTM transgender to refer to all AFAB transgender people who transition away from the category of female and/or toward maleness or the masculine end of the gender spectrum. How many transmasculine people are there in the United States? Because of the different ways that AFAB trans people understand the term transmasculine and the sheer variety of gender labels in use, that number is difficult to measure. According to the 2015 US Transgender Survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality, the number of trans men in the United States was roughly equal to the number of trans women. Yet, of the more than half (57 percent) of the 27,715 respondents who were assigned female at birth, only 29 percent said that the term trans man best described them, while the other 28 percent said that they were best described by the labels nonbinary or genderqueer . Since respondents were not asked whether they use the label transmasculine , we do not know how many of the AFAB nonbinary respondents identify as such. The Evolution of Transmasculine Identities As our understanding of gender evolves, so too does the language we use to describe it. Language, by nature, is imperfect, and not everyone who falls under the transmasculine umbrella uses the same terms to describe themselves. In the next decade, some of the terms in this book may well fall out of favor as new

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Female-to-Male Transgender and Transmasculine Identities