Transmasculine and Transfeminine

 

This article is part of Season 3 of “LGBT by the Numbers,” a series that examines LGBT statistics in the United States and around the world.

Season 3 examines the results of the Gender Census, an annual online global survey of nonbinary people.

Nonbinary describes someone who has a gender identity that isn’t exclusively male or female.

This series examines how the popularity of various nonbinary identity terms has changed over the past 10 years.

We’re beginning with the most popular terms, before making our way to the less common ones.

Top of the Charts discussed the terms nonbinary, queer, trans, and transgender.

Additional Umbrella Terms discussed gender non-conforming, genderqueer, and enby.

If you're looking for a basic introduction to terms and concepts related to transgender and nonbinary identity, check out Gender Identity and Biological Sex.

 

 

 

Today, we will discuss two useful nonbinary identity terms, transmasculine and transfeminine.

I will define and discuss these terms, before examining how they have performed in the Gender Census over the years.

 

 

Transmasculine refers to transgender men, and nonbinary people who were assigned female at birth, but identify with a more masculine gender.

Transfeminine refers to transgender women, and nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth, but identify with a more feminine gender.

You also might encounter the abbreviated versions of these words, transmasc and transfem.

 

 

Transgender describes someone who identifies with a gender different than the one they were assigned at birth. 

Essentially, transmasculine refers to someone who is transgender in the masculine direction, and transfeminine refers to someone who is transgender in the feminine direction.

 

I consider these terms to be umbrella terms, because they describe multiple groups of people who have more specific identities.

 

  

Discussion

 

Some nonbinary people dislike these terms, because they indirectly reference someone’s gender assigned at birth, rather than their chosen gender.

These critics don’t want their gender to be understood based on its relationship to an assigned gender they don’t identify with.

They see these terms as a way to recreate the gender binary within the trans and nonbinary community, rather than simply accepting people based on the gender they have chosen for themselves.

These critics view being asked their birth gender as simply a way to invalidate their chosen gender.

 

 

But as a nonbinary person myself, I love these terms.

They allow transgender people to describe experiences that are common to binary trans people and similarly-situated nonbinary people.

It makes sense that transgender men, and nonbinary people who were also assigned female at birth, would have similar feelings, experiences, and challenges.

It makes sense that transgender women, and nonbinary people who were also assigned male at birth, would have similar feelings, experiences, and challenges.  

Therefore, it makes sense to have terms, like transmasculine and transfeminine, that describe these groups of people collectively.

That doesn’t mean nonbinary identities aren’t valid. It merely provides another way to discuss and group those identities.

I proudly identify as both nonbinary and transfeminine.

 

 

Likewise, it would be reasonable to sometimes discuss the feelings, experiences, and challenges of people who are nonbinary, regardless of their assigned gender at birth.

But having terms that group people in other ways doesn’t limit our ability to do so.

 

 

The terms transmasculine and transfeminine allow nonbinary people to feel included and seen during discussions of transgender topics. 

That may not happen if a discussion only uses terms that imply it might be intended for binary trans people, exclusively.

 

 

There is one more situation where these terms can be particularly useful.

Someone who doesn’t identify with their birth gender, but who doesn’t know whether they’re nonbinary or binary transgender, could use one of these terms, because they cover both categories.

This allows transmasculine and transfeminine to be potentially useful placeholders for people who know they don’t identify with their birth gender, but haven’t determined where they feel most comfortable on the gender spectrum.

The conceptual dividing line between identifying as nonbinary or binary transgender can sometimes be a narrow one. 

 

 

 

 

Examining the Data

 

Twice as many respondents identified as transmasculine (26.4%) than transfeminine (11.9%) in the 2024 Gender Census.

Considering how these terms are generally understood, this implies there are likely more nonbinary people who were assigned female at birth than assigned male at birth.

Transmasculine has consistently outperformed transfeminine in the Gender Census, by a large margin.

 

 

 

I created the graphs in this series using flourish, a website that allows users to create compelling visual aids. 

You can view larger versions of the graphs in this article by clicking on them. 

 

 

Only 0.8% of Gender Census respondents identified as both transmasculine and transfeminine.

Taking this into account, 37.4% of Gender Census participants identified as transmasculine, transfeminine, or both. 

That means 62.6% of respondents don't identify with either term, which suggests many nonbinary people either dislike, or simply don’t use, this framework.

 

 

But transmasculine and transfeminine, considered together (37.4%), would be the sixth most popular checkbox option, after transgender (38.8%), and before gender non-conforming (34.9%).

That indicates this framework is relatively popular compared to other ways of describing nonbinary identity. 

The results for the most popular identity terms from the 2024 Gender Census can be seen in the bar graph below. 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s worth noting that transmasculine and transfeminine do not rise and fall together in synchronicity in the same way we observed that trans and transgender do earlier in this series.

 

 

 

 

Transmasculine

 

Transmasculine first appeared as a checkbox option in 2016, when it received 14.2%.

Transmasculine generally grew in popularity, until it peaked at 29.4% in 2023.

Transmasculine fell to 26.4% in 2024.

 

 

 

Transmasculine has a range of 15.2%.

Transmasculine was the ninth most popular term in the Gender Census in 2023 and 2024.

Overall, the popularity of transmasculine has increased over the past nine years.

 

 

I use 20% as my benchmark for whether an identity term in the Gender Census is common enough to be notable.

Transmasculine passes that benchmark, and transfeminine does not.

But both terms are useful to know, and if you are going to learn one, you might as well learn both.

 

 

Transmasculine is one of only two terms initially chosen by fewer than 20% of respondents, as a checkbox, that was able to subsequently cross that threshold.

The other is enby, which we discussed in a previous article.

Transmasculine and enby are the only identity terms in the Gender Census that have risen from relative obscurity to become relatively common.

 

 

 

Transfeminine

 

Transfeminine first appeared as a checkbox in 2016, when it received 6.5%.

Transfeminine dropped to 3.9% in 2017, when it hit its minimum.

The term has generally risen in popularity since then.

Transfeminine saw its strongest performance last year, in 2024, when it received 11.9%.

That was the only year transfeminine has received more than 10%.

 

 

 

Overall, the popularity of transfeminine has increased over the past nine years.

Transfeminine’s range is 8%, although it’s worth noting less popular terms, like transfeminine, tend to have a smaller range than more popular terms, like those we have focused on thusfar.  

 

 

Only four checkbox identity terms increased in 2024, compared to their last appearance on the Gender Census, and transfeminine was one of them. 

Out of all the terms in the 2024 Gender Census, transfeminine increased the most since its last appearance.

Among the four terms that increased in 2024, transfeminine was the most popular term.

 

Transfeminine was the fourteenth most popular checkbox term in the 2024 Gender Census.

But there were only 21 checkboxes in last year’s survey.

Transfeminine was the eighth least popular checkbox last year.

Therefore, transfeminine was closer to the bottom, than the top, of the checkbox terms in 2024.

 

 

 

 Conclusion

 

You can see how transmasculine compares with similarly popular Gender Census identity terms in the graph below.

This graph shows how the sixth through eleventh most popular identity terms from 2024 performed over the past 10 years.

 

 

 

 

I discussed transmasculine and transfeminine in earlier articles about transgender and nonbinary identities.

Gender Identity and Biological Sex examined transgender, nonbinary, and intersex identities, and the pride flags for those identities. 

Nonbinary Nomenclature examined the results of the 2023 Gender Census.

 

 

 

That concludes our discussion of transmasculine and transfeminine.

In the next article, we’ll finally discuss the most common nonbinary identities that aren’t umbrella terms, genderfluid and agender.