Repro Masculinity

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“An intimate snapshot of trans masculinity, reproductive health and the care that keeps us alive”

Foreword by the Artist

The unforgiving San Antonio sun had just begun to leave its mark on my skin the morning I woke up to the news that Texas lawmakers had introduced SB 2880 — a bill that would enact criminal penalties for companies facilitating the online sale of abortion pills, and make it a felony for anyone who financially supports an out-of-state abortion. The irony of this news while I was visiting Texas was not lost on me; the whole reason I was there was to interview and photograph a trans guy about their abortion and salpingectomy as forms of gender-affirming care.

This art project was born out of pure necessity. Out of wanting to find affinity about the problems my trans and queer friends have been talking about, but were made to feel embarrassed, invalidated or categorically gaslighted whenever we’d bring them up. Problems that have been major sources of pain throughout our entire lives, but that landed like a rock in the bottomless pit of cisheteronormativity. At a moment when my friends and community members—many of whom are activists and organizers—are feeling sad, cynical, and outright tired, I wanted to give us nuanced stories about how it looks to live in our trans bodies and even provide a glimpse of a hopeful path forward. What impact might it have to include stories of masculinity in topics so frequently and automatically associated with cis femininity? Consequently, what could this reframing do to the way we build power outside the binaries we have been socially conditioned to live under and compulsively end up replicating in our social justice movements?

Another, more personal motivation for this project is my complicated obsession with masculinity and how to separate it from the toxicity it breeds in the context of white supremacy and capitalism—why I’m attracted to it, why I want to embody it, and what effect it’s had on my life. This questioning becomes especially prominent when I’m forced to reckon with the emotional and psychological consequences the patriarchal state has had on those I care about most. (Read: when I’m at my angriest). Though I’ve tried, my trans experience of masculinity and the assigned femininity of my body can’t be compartmentalized — nor do I really want them to — but what angers me the most about that is not that I can’t separate them, but that the state has violated my consent in my intimate experience of gender and found ways to use it against me and my people.

“My hope for this project is to bust all people who care deeply about bodily autonomy out of our silos, and offer some resonance for those of us who have borne the brunt of a medical and political system that has no regard for our well-being.”

My hope for this project is to bust all people who care deeply about bodily autonomy out of our silos, and offer some resonance for those of us who have borne the brunt of a medical and political system that has no regard for our well-being. For the record, I don’t dislike cis men, just the patriarchal state, and how relentlessly it controls my and my friends’ right to self-determination, dictates our existence, and infiltrates some of the most personal decisions we make about our bodies and how we move through the world.

The testimonies housed in this project speak to the in-between spaces for those of us who engage with masculinity within our birthing bodies, and move the conversation outside dominant narratives of pregnancy and abortion within the reproductive justice movement. From PCOS to atrophy, from birth control to HRT, and from IVF to hysterectomies, the full spectrum of experiences captured here highlights the complexities of our reproductive and gender journeys and offers a more comprehensive approach to how we can start to reframe our views of the kind of care we deserve. This is not meant to serve as medical advice, but as empirical evidence and a possible antidote to the systems of oppression during a time when attacks on our lives and humanity are never-ending.

Lastly, I would say this: whether you’re cis or trans, femme or masc — or like me, you’re all of it at once — I hope you find something in these pages you can relate to and that whatever you find is as healing to see as it was for me to create. Psychology experts often say that to find healing, we must first learn how to re-parent ourselves, but I don’t think that’s enough. To truly heal, we have to build the liberated world we want to live in by creating the kinds of connections that make us feel safe while collectively caring for our most vulnerable. We are living through traumatic times, but I hope these stories and images honor not only the people in them, but all of those who, despite the horrors, still chose authenticity, tenderness, and radical vulnerability.

For the soft boys, this is dedicated to all of you.