“I Don’t Know Where I Stand”: Black Trans Masculine Students’ Re/De/Constructions of Black Masculinity

Growing attention to Black men’s development and outcomes has encouraged scholars to further consider how the intersection of race and gender influence these students’ collegiate experiences (McGuire, Berhanu, Davis, & Harper, 2014; Pelzer, 2016). However, “it is one thing to study Black men’s gendered experiences (e.g., gendered racism) and it is another to study Black men as gendered persons” (McGuire et al., 2014, p. 257). Even less is known about the gendered and racialized realities of Black trans masculine students (Duran, 2018; Jourian, 2017). Through a secondary analysis of data utilizing quare theory (E. P. Johnson, 2005) and Blacktransfeminist thought (Green & Bey, 2017), we unveil how Black trans masculine collegians negotiate engagement with Black masculinity through their voices and presence within Black and queer spaces and in quaring and transing of Black masculinity. Our findings, dichotomized by much to be undone and much to be done, point to the ongoing simultaneity of needing to undo harmful and essentialized notions of Black masculinity and creating new possibilities and ways of doing Black masculinity. This study advances inquiry into the students’ desire to disengage Black masculinity from the oppressive forces of cisheteropatriarchy and misogynoir (Bailey, 2013), complicating characterizations of Black collegians. We call for the theoretical and practical subversion of essentialist notions of manhood, masculinity, Blackness, and their junctures from a decidedly Black center through the intersectional analytics of quare theory and Blacktransfeminist thought.