FOR ALL THE SELF-MADE MEN.
(slogan subject to change)
Welcome, dudes!
Welcome to the Trans Guy Archive! This is a collaborative history archive for all the self-made men in the LGBTQ+ community. We strive to make transmasculine history and culture freely and readily available.
In the fight for trans* justice and liberation, trans men/mascs have been largely ignored, both in society at large and within the LGBTQ+ community. Trans history largely skews in favor of trans women/femmes -- for better or for worse -- leaving many along the masculine spectrum feeling lost and alienated, even in their own community. This archive aims to serve as an informational and social space for all to learn about the beauty, vitality, and strength of trans men/masculine figures throughout the centuries. This is for all transsexual and transgender men, demiboys, butches, those who are "kinda guys", lesboys, transmascs, multigender, and anyone who falls along the masculine spectrum.
Trans guys have always been here, and we're not going anywhere.
As historians, it's important to try and not retroactively apply modern-day labels to historical figures. Terms like "transgender" or even "transsexual" are remarkably new phrases in the vast scheme of history, and people have used a wide variety of phrases to try and define their existence. For people who lived before the coining of these terms, this archive uses "trans" as a verb, rather than a noun/adjective. Regardless of how an individual may have identified, they are still trans-ing (transitioning) their gender to a more masculine state. The identities explored on this archive will largely not fit neatly into modern-day expectations of identity and gender. Everyone is invited to keep an open mind.
Furthermore, it is the goal of the Trans Guy Archive to present topics and theory that is oftentimes dense and hard to understand in an engaging and easier to understand context -- but without erasing the nuance present in topics by oversimplifying them. Too often, professional academics purposefully write in over-complicated ways that make higher education inaccessible to the average person who does not have an engaged background in historical subjects.
By using a blend of formal and informal language throughout the archive, the TGA hopes to ease the fear of studying complex topics and provide the average person a casual look into the workings of historians.
TLDR -- You have no excuse to say "I ain't reading all that" ;-)
On top of the archive, this space also aims to act as a sort of "one stop shop" for trans guys around the country and world to find educational and academic content about themselves, written by people just like them. In the Event Calendar, you may find a party in your city to make friends; in the Trans Guy Glossary, you can learn the definition of that word you've been seeing everywhere, and so on.
The primary focus of the TGA will continue to be a record of trans guy history, but given how difficult it is for trans guys to find community and information - even within the wider queer community - we thought it'd be a good idea to have a single, organized space for everything you wanted to know.