Navigating racialised trans masculinity in fascist Britain

PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY Jasmine Engel-Malone

This Pride Month, we find ourselves teetering on a cliff’s edge. On 21st May 2026, the UK Minister for Women and Equalities published an updated Code of Practice for duties set out under the Equality Act 2010 – limiting the definitions of ‘gender’ to a person’s assigned biological sex at birth. With MPs now in a 40-day response period, urgent action is needed if trans people are to live any semblance of a fulfilling life not in exile. What’s more, this breaking point truly impacts us all – political commentator Toby Buckle offered an excellent diagnosis for Liberal Currents of the current situation, referring to “the end of trans rights in the UK” as “the start of democratic collapse”.

Indeed, the socio-political landscape is becoming increasingly inflamed, spurred on by a well-funded and vocal far-right movement. Through algorithmic manipulation to spread propaganda in the digital sphere and the monopolisation of a number of mainstream media outlets, the rich and powerful are using racism and Islamophobia to deflect from decades of political failure. 

The result of this narrative is all too apparent in the violence being inflicted on communities of colour. In the year following the August 2024 anti-immigrant riots across England and Northern Ireland, there was a 6% increase in racial and religious hate crimes, and a 19% increase in religious hate crimes targeted at Muslims, one of the highest levels recorded since records began in 2004. Even as I write this, Belfast is experiencing more racist attacks – migrant families are vacating their properties out of fear as homes and cars are set ablaze – once again as an opportunist form of collective punishment for the violent actions of one man. The UK government has not only failed to appropriately tackle the rise of the far-right, but, as a 2025 report by the Race Equality Foundation stated, “political leaders and legacy media have effectively legitimised and adopted the arguments, narratives and frames used by the far right, contributing to a toxic environment in which violence against minoritised ethnic people and communities is inevitable.” It’s little surprise that Tommy Robinson’s followers are now emboldened to fill central London’s streets with St George’s flags at Unite the Kingdom rallies while attendees mock Muslim women who wear niqabs and abayas.

Reflecting on multiple occasions of experiencing unease from public transport companions or passers-by on days when I seek comfort and expression in masculine clothing, I was struck by an uncertainty around whether my gender non-conformity or my Brownness was the root of this tension. Probably both, I told myself.

Reflecting on multiple occasions of experiencing unease from public transport companions or passers-by on days when I seek comfort and expression in masculine clothing, I was struck by an uncertainty around whether my gender non-conformity or my Brownness was the root of this tension. Probably both, I told myself. Certainly, as deliberate, ineffective and corrupt choices by multiple governments have contributed to rising food and energy costs, a healthcare system in crisis, and higher rates of unemployment and housing instability, the finger has been gleefully pointed at the trans community and at Black and Brown people. Brown men, especially, continue to be vilified and primarily presented as “terrorists” (Arab men) or sexual predators tied to “grooming gangs” (Pakistani and Indian men) – their dehumanisation deeply embedded in the way we talk about injustices, from the genocide in Gaza to the horrific conditions in asylum hotels.

It is well established that trans women of colour – especially Black women – are some of the most marginalised and threatened in society. Experiencing the intersection of transmisogyny and racism, they are loudly demonised in the media and disproportionately abused and murdered, often by the very men who desire or fetishise them. The normalisation of transphobic rhetoric in the UK – the widespread disinformation and fearmongering around children’s safety and puberty blockers – especially over the past five years, has created the conditions that validate this shift in policy under the Equality Act. 

With trans women so intensely under the microscope, their voices are rightly centred in the current trans rights movement, and their experiences are most commonly amplified via supportive media. However, the suspicion projected onto Black and Brown men or masculine people, combined with legislative and digital transphobia, puts them in a position that must not be minimised or ignored in our advocacy for trans liberation, and thus, freedom for us all from continued subjugation under what radical philosopher and queer transfeminist theorist Paul B. Preciado terms the “petrosexoracial regime”.

Within this dually oppressive environment, Black and Brown trans men are forced to navigate a space between the joy and ease of presenting and moving through the world as themselves and the discomfort and violence of being treated as a racialised man. While those with whom I spoke also acknowledged the privilege now afforded to them by the patriarchy – especially those more commonly passing as men – they also identified the impact on their transition of deeply rooted white-centric gendered beauty ideals and the impact of a highly racialised and demonised identity on their sense of self.

Sabah, a Pakistani psychotherapist and author of Supporting Trans People of Colour, shares that they never related to the trans masc desire for a beard, explaining that they already had one. In fact, they had already undergone a form of transition in removing all their facial and body hair in order to fit more into society’s (white) expectations of girlhood. Confronted by the reality of taking testosterone – and, therefore, being more hairy – they were tasked with unlearning their internalised racism.

“The thought of being hairy just made me feel so scared because I’d worked so hard not to be hairy. I thought that’s what would make me more “valuable, beautiful, good, lovable”, they say. “I realised that what I was desiring was a white masculinity, similar to when I was desiring a white femininity, because it was the only masculinity I saw that was valued and desired. I really had to decolonise my beauty standards. But, ultimately, I realised that I wasn’t transitioning from a woman to a man, but from a Brown woman to a Brown man.”

To be a safe woman is to be a white woman; to be a safe man is to be a white man. To be hairless, to be thin, to fall within a limited range of anatomical variation. This is nothing new, but it feels even more oppressive as both masculinity and femininity are increasingly policed, and with greater racist sentiment. Transphobia relies on this narrow lens, and enforces it in a way that harms everyone who falls outside of the norm. Many have spoken about how the hyper-surveillance of “women”’s spaces will also harm those women, Black women, especially, who do not fit normative ideals of “womanhood”. Those who have stronger brow bones, broader shoulders, larger noses; practically any feature predominantly associated with non-whiteness. Under the new definitions in the Equality Act 2010, trans men and mascs would be required to use the women’s toilets. A number of trans masc creators on social media have been positioning their chiselled torsos and stubbled chins at the camera and asking if this is who transphobes want in women’s bathrooms. For Brown and Black trans mascs, this poses the question: will the forced presence of these individuals – whether presenting as racialised men or a person whose features may be more gender nonconforming – make the everyday woman feel safer in public toilets?

“I often think about how I might be seen as ‘aggressive’ because of how I physically look, which is difficult because I’m not just a man, I’m also a Brown man. It’s hard sometimes to know whether I’m making a woman feel unsafe, or if she’s feeling unsafe because she’s being racist,” adds Sabah. “So I turn up my campiness or my femininity, especially with white women, to show that I’m not a threat, but I don’t like this part of myself because it means my worldview is still white-centred.”

Blackness, in particular, is stigmatised as inherently violent or threatening or dangerous. That’s not to say that other groups aren’t, but Blackness is a particular kind of spectre to the white imagination. Fatness is also seen as a threat in ways that thinness isn’

Jackson

Because men of colour are perceived as a threat, the experiences of Black trans men like Jackson speak volumes. Jackson, who is a Bajan-Jamaican writer, tells me about multiple occasions where people in cars have suddenly locked their doors as he walks by, including a South Asian man, and of times when white men have pulled their girlfriends closer on train station platforms.

“Blackness, in particular, is stigmatised as inherently violent or threatening or dangerous. That’s not to say that other groups aren’t, but Blackness is a particular kind of spectre to the white imagination. Fatness is also seen as a threat in ways that thinness isn’t,” he shares. “Transitioning into being a Black man in Britain, particularly a bigger man, I had quite an overnight awakening to the fact that nobody really prepared me for; to suddenly be the dangerous Black man walking down the street.”

Despite having reached a point of self-actualisation where they may have undergone significant struggle and recovery in transition, and faced rejection from family to live as their true selves, to emerge from the chrysalis as a racialised man pushes them into their own kind of closet.

Sabah tells me that he knows he’s passing more as a man because he experiences more physical harassment. He shares a piece of writing with me, recounting a journey on the Piccadilly Line to Acton Town, which ended in him being physically assaulted by a white man when Sabah challenged him on his Islamophobic commentary. Sabah had spent time watching this man interact with ease and friendliness with the other stranger, a white man with dreads, on the carriage, sharing his spliff and chattering lightly. But the tone switched when the man started referring to Hounslow East as “the birthplace of Al-Qaeda’ and making jokes about backpacks and beheading. His response to Sabah’s question, “How are you going to be saying stuff like that?” was immediate and aggressive. He tried to drag Sabah off the train with his left boot, calling him a “little prick”. The others on the train remained silent and looked away.

Experiencing racial physical violence is not unique to trans men of colour, of course, but the risk is compounded by the threat of being outed also as queer or trans. Even when being accepted into spaces previously inaccessible – such as more traditional Muslim spaces, in Sabah’s experience – the welcome is not always welcoming, “because a lot of these spaces are still quite segregated.” Trans men of colour do not always have the privilege that cis men do of being able to challenge these spaces or to disrupt them overtly without risking their own safety. Despite having reached a point of self-actualisation where they may have undergone significant struggle and recovery in transition, and faced rejection from family to live as their true selves, to emerge from the chrysalis as a racialised man pushes them into their own kind of closet.

Around men, I shrink myself because I’m scared of being found out as different. I’m constantly rehearsing my lines, observing this dance of masculinity, following the man before me, wondering what’s customisable. Do I risk being seen as other? It’s frightening. I don’t like the way that I feel such a fragility around my identity; I feel vulnerable.

Sabah

“Around men, I shrink myself because I’m scared of being found out as different. I’m constantly rehearsing my lines, observing this dance of masculinity, following the man before me, wondering what’s customisable,” they share. “Do I risk being seen as other? It’s frightening. I don’t like the way that I feel such a fragility around my identity; I feel vulnerable.”

While white male violence against trans women is a projection of cis men’s self-directed anger in rejection of their own desires, violence against trans men and mascs, especially of colour, is driven by a racist need to impose power dynamics; a triggered fragile masculinity and, perhaps in some cases, a misogynistic anger at feeling threatened by a being they perceive as a masculine/dykey woman or a man who does not conform to their ideals of masculinity. As queer theorist and author Jack Halberstam outlined in his 1998 book Female Masculinity, masculinities outside of white cisgender masculinity are culturally rejected and considered illegitimate. This seems to align with the experiences of Prince, a Persian drag artist and member of the London Trans+ Pride team who uses Prince instead of pronouns. Prince recalls facing “horrific and scary” homophobia on the day of Brighton Trans Pride when Prince challenged a group of cis men harassing a woman. It was a reaction that, to Prince, felt rooted in an insecurity around Prince’s queer presentation. This form of backlash is inherently more likely to harm gender nonconforming people of colour, who less commonly align with white-centric images of conventional or acceptable masculinity.

As social theorist Armani Beck explores in her chapter ‘Trans Men Navigating Male Privilege and the Complexities of Intersectional Identities’ in the 2025 book Interpreting Identity: Dimensions of Power, Presence, and Belonging, male privilege is not a zero-sum accomplishment. Through in-depth interviews conducted with trans men of colour in the United States, she demonstrates that while they gain gender-based advantages, they also gain “gender-based racialised disadvantages” due to the intersectional relationship between race, gender and gender expression. These may relate to “perceived safety, workplace mobility, stereotypes around family and sexuality, and discrepancies in representation”. 

This may also present in otherwise trans-inclusive contexts, such as while receiving gender-affirming healthcare. TransActual’s 2025 Report on Trans Lives found that more than a third of trans People of Colour reported experiencing racism in healthcare settings. Prince tells of fatphobia at the surgeon’s office, which stems from a white-centric view of masculine bodies. Sabah also shares their experience with an endocrinologist early in their transition, who insisted that their name, which means ‘Dawn’ in Arabic, was a woman’s name and not gender-neutral, despite not belonging to Sabah’s culture. He also questioned if Sabah was already taking testosterone because he was so hairy; a white-centric line of inquiry that triggered Sabah’s racialised insecurities. Within these contexts, challenges faced by trans men of colour are perhaps misunderstood, or even exacerbated, by the flattening of trans masc experiences, partly through an ongoing unwillingness to address internalised white supremacy within queer and trans communities.

Challenges faced by trans men of colour are perhaps misunderstood, or even exacerbated, by the flattening of trans masc experiences, partly through an ongoing unwillingness to address internalised white supremacy within queer and trans communities.

There is a widespread approach taken when discussing the experiences of trans mascs that positions them as “nonthreatening”, which can have a two-pronged impact. On the one hand, it can minimise the transphobia experienced by trans men, or be infantilising – especially in how transphobes have historically painted trans men as “brainwashed victims of the patriarchy”; misled women who simply need to be “welcomed back into womanhood”. On the other hand, countless accounts by white trans men describe an increase in social currency or camaraderie from other men post-transition. Neurologist Ben Barres, who transitioned aged 40 after already developing a prominent career as a research scientist, noted in a Nature commentary in 2006 that he only fully became aware of the barriers he had experienced from appearing as a woman in a male-dominated field after his transition. After delivering a talk, he overheard an audience member comment, “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister’s.” Of course, he had no sister.

However, both of these generalised perspectives rely on the maintenance of whiteness as a signifier of “goodness”, “safety” and “acceptance” – either the innocence and vulnerability assigned to white women or the respect offered to white men. Neither are Black or Brown women afforded this narrative (which partly contributes to well-recorded trends of medical racism), nor are men of colour placed on a pedestal by society. In fact, along with suspicion, they are far more likely to face unwanted objectification and fetishisation, especially from cis women. This has been Sabah’s experience since being more visible in the public eye: “…Which is something in common with the experiences of Black and Brown trans women,” they add.

As Jackson says, “the assumption that all trans men are infantilised shows the danger of a single narrative; the danger of a white narrative.”

When we centre whiteness in how we advocate for trans people within our spaces, we perpetuate the very structures and stereotypes that harm trans people more broadly. In 2020, I wrote an article for DIVA Magazine on ‘Addressing Racism in the LGBTQI Community’ and, six years later, it’s no less relevant. This is apparent in a range of cases, from ongoing reports by gay men of colour of sexual racism experienced on dating apps, associated with high psychological distress, to a lack of demonstrable solidarity with Palestinian liberation shown by organisations advocating for queer and trans rights. Indeed, white queer spaces continue to function as if they can make sustainable progress towards safety for trans people without addressing intersecting oppressions, without also challenging the hostile environment for queer migrants and refugees, for example, or while aligning themselves with politicians or organisations that directly harm People of the Global Majority. Not only is this strategically short-sighted, but it also can create a sense of betrayal within the community, wherein Black and Brown queer and trans people may feel that their well-being is considered disposable in the single-minded pursuit of LGBTQ+ assimilation into society.

Perceptions of Black and Brown trans men as, at best, overly-hardened – perceived as not requiring as much softness, care or support – and, at worst, aggressors, contribute to an unspoken hierarchy of marginalisation within queer spaces which plasters a narrow view of masculinity atop any deeper understandings of the insidious and structural impact of racialisation. Afro-Latinx drag artist and gogo dancer, Chiyo, shares experiences of being blacklisted from venues based on what he considers to be personal grievances and stereotypes based on his race and presentation, and racist interactions with white drag queens ripping his face off event posters while drunk.

Despite being 500+ days sober and never having any complaints of vandalism, violence, or unprofessionalism, I have been blacklisted from space after space because of the connotations people have with my personality. Connotations that come with being of colour and masculine.

Chiyo

“I complained to the producer of the event and the venue, but they faced no repercussions. While, despite being 500+ days sober and never having any complaints of vandalism, violence, or unprofessionalism, I have been blacklisted from space after space because of the connotations people have with my personality. Connotations that come with being of colour and masculine,” he explains. “Black and Brown trans men are vilified by the wider LGBTQ+ community too easily, and too consistently.”

In recent years, we seem to have reached a point of understanding around the need for solidarity with and support for trans women of colour, especially Black women. Still, too much of this reads more like a tick-box activity or a slogan shouted at an otherwise politically disengaged rave: “Black Trans Lives Matter!” The narrative favours flashy media moments, such as designer Conner Ives’ ‘Protect the Dolls’ t-shirt, which, although a fundraising channel, feeds somewhat into a passivity and a tendency to disempower trans women. As Shon Faye wrote in Glamour UK in October 2025 (I’m paraphrasing), if you gave the dolls work, love and opportunity to thrive, you’d find most could easily protect themselves. I agree with Chiyo, who says: “Trans women are hyper-visual and constantly attacked. I do not believe Trans men should ever crave this level of visibility.” And yet, there certainly is a visible gap in nuanced conversations around the realities of Black and Brown trans men and mascs. Perhaps this exists due to a lack of representation, with the majority of visible trans mascs being white and conventionally masculine in expression. Perhaps it just makes the bigger picture stickier, and requires more from us than a one-dimensional approach or messaging.

With injustices being inflicted on countries of the Global Majority, shifting levels of overt racism in the UK, and Reform UK rising as a very real threat in the run-up to the next general election, there is a need for a reckoning around the intersectionality of our advocacy and the importance of queer activism alongside racialised communities. There is especially a need for those who function under the racial categorisation of whiteness, and thus benefit from the protection that carries, to more intentionally “show up” – and to remember that one’s oppressions do not cancel out their ability to still act as an oppressor.

“I feel hypervisible as a Brown person and as a Muslim, but invisible as a trans person. I’ve passed as a cis man for the last five years, and it’s different having my race come first after so many years”, Sabah says. “I think religion is being demonised a lot as anti-LGBTQ, or Islam is demonised as sexist. It makes me really sad, because it means that people like me, who are queer and Muslim and trans, don’t have a place in either space.”

The impact of this dual oppression on Black and Brown trans mascs is visible and acute, especially within the context of global politics. This is especially notable when the burden of action often falls on the shoulders of those most impacted; when those processing communal grief are also those mobilising on the frontlines. Prince shares that recent months have marked a period of recovery from burnout following destabilising personal experiences. 

“The lead up to that is quite important, and it links in with being a trans person, having a brown body, and being disabled”, Prince says. “One of the things that is constantly on my mind is the state of my home. I’m Iranian, and I have this yearning to be able to go back home and experience what life is like with my people in my motherland. So, you know, there’s a lot of grief that comes with that.”

As such, for those navigating racialised gender deviance in an increasingly fascist and hostile Britain, community is far more than a buzzword. For Prince, queer, trans, Black and Brown-led radical spaces model safety; this is where Prince feels seen and heard without having to explain or defend. “Also at dinner with my loved ones, having a warm, nourishing meal that’s been made for me when I’m not feeling my best,” Prince adds. Chiyo resonates, referencing his own night called ‘The Immigrants of East London’ and Rhys’ Pieces events for biracial people to explore their nuanced identities. He says: “Through all the shit of the UK political system, and how it bleeds into the spaces that I navigate, there are these little pockets of hope within the community.” Sabah finds belonging at trans PoC sauna evenings – “where I’m amongst bodies like mine, and different bodies, and beautiful bodies” – and Bollywood movie nights run by their partner, where they can connect “with our culture without the pressure of who we feel like we should be.” While Jackson brings us back to the land, to nature and to the wisdom of our ancestors.

One of the things that is constantly on my mind is the state of my home. I’m Iranian, and I have this yearning to be able to go back home and experience what life is like with my people in my motherland. So, you know, there’s a lot of grief that comes with that.

Prince

“We’ve come from people who knew how to be in relationship and in community with the land, with the creatures and the spirits,” he shares. “To me, that is so important to return to as something that really sustains us when we’re forced to navigate these exploitative, extractive, violent systems that only know how to relate to the earth in ways that are greedy, selfish, shortsighted.”

I’m struck by the shared focus on spaces of collective connecting, being and becoming, reminding us that, ultimately, this is not a conversation that should be centring any one need or perspective – there is a need for collaborative solidarity that looks beyond individualism. Black and Brown trans mascs and men merely represent a demographic that is often forgotten; an experience that is simplified to serve the broader discourse. In this upcoming fight against fascism, there is an urgent need for us to set aside egos and to address the insidious role that we all can play through internalised white supremacy in creating a society in which Reform can be legitimised. And it is partly through having these open and vulnerable conversations that we can collectively address our biases, effectively organise to provide material support for those under attack, and co-create a safer and more liberated home for us all.

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