When Rishav*, a journalist in their late twenties, first came out as trans masc more than a decade ago, they struggled with being sexually intimate with others. For a few years, as they jostled between conventional gender norms and their own evolving identity, desire felt like a labyrinth. Rishav thought they had to prove their masculinity in every aspect of their relationships—mirroring how cis men acted, behaved, and even felt. “I knew I was different but in what ways?,” they told me. “I didn’t know that.”
Rishav didn’t talk about this internal conflict with their partners, most of whom were cis women. They worried that they would come across as needy, vulnerable—not masculine enough. They told themselves that they were already asking too much of a partner, just by being trans. “It’s already enough of acceptance from her end,” Rishav recalled thinking, “Now if I seek more from this relationship, she will leave.”
In 2024, when Rishav briefly dated a queer person, they realised that naming their unease didn’t always diminish connection. “It was only that year when I realised it’s about a back and forth conversation,” Rishav said. “Intimacy grows, just like we do, it transitions, develops, sometimes just goes for a sleep.”
Rishav’s experience is hardly an aberration. When desire is built around rigid cultural norms that dictate how one performs their gender and what is considered attractive, finding a love that is equal, mutual, and safe is a challenge for most queer people in India. For trans persons, this struggle is compounded by the loneliness that often accompanies gender dysphoria and the constant fear of sexual rejection.
I have been out as a trans masculine person for over a decade now. During this time, it has become clear to me that our romantic lives are shadowed by an additional constraint: society’s imagination of what it means to be a man. We have been taught to think of men as tough and emotionally distant, as sexually virile and dominant. Their power is defined by their ability to provide, even impose, safety rather than seek it. These norms force trans masc persons to box ourselves into definitions we want to resist. Our romantic relationships are shaped—and strained—by these pressures.
Whether in queer or straight dating spaces, trans masc persons face exclusion, discrimination, and the threat of violence. These challenges become even more prominent for those of us who don’t fit heteronormative expectations. Often, gay or bisexual trans masc persons are written off as not truly trans by other people in the queer community.
Conditioned by the same cultural scripts as everyone else, some trans masc persons respond to these pressures by embodying masculine norms with an exaggerated—at times harmful—intensity.
“We’re constantly navigating what kind of masculinity is allowed to be loved. The world tells us that to be masculine, we must also be stoic, emotionally reserved, protective…not vulnerable,” said Gautam—a trans man in his late twenties, who founded the Love Restoration Project, a digital repository designed to restore hope in the queer community by highlighting the possibilities of love. “So many of us end up over-performing masculinity just to be taken seriously in relationships.”
Even in the rare instances where partners desire our vulnerability, they are unwilling to navigate it in its fullness. “Many people want our softness, our ability to hold space, our deep emotional range but they still treat us like side quests, not main characters,” Gautam told me. “I’ve had partners who praised my empathy but couldn’t handle my dysphoria. Who wanted my strength, but not my uncertainty.”
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IN OCTOBER 2022, I attended a national consultation on creating Safer Sex Resources for Trans* Masculine Persons at a hotel in Delhi. Organised by the Noida-based feminist and queer rights organisation YP Foundation, the day-long convening was among the few to centre trans masc persons in discussions of pleasure.
The consultation drew nearly 20 trans masc participants from urban and rural India, encompassing varied caste and religious communities. Some trans masc attendees were sharing space with other people who shared their identity for the first time.
Early on, in the first session, we tried to understand our desires—what felt good, what didn’t, and what still felt difficult to say out loud. Very quickly, we started talking about our romantic relationships. “Ek toh hum logo ko partner milna itna mushkil hota hai, ki agar koi mil jaye, hum unko bhagwan samjhne lagte hai” [To start with, it is so difficult for us to find a partner, that if we do, we start thinking of them as God], one young trans man quipped.
The room erupted into laughter. Then, the mirth faded into silence. Many attendees spoke about feeling unworthy of love because of their gender identity.
Within India, academic research on the lived realities of trans masculine persons is scarce. But a 2021 study published in the American Academy of Paediatrics shows the early impact of expectations around intimacy. The researchers interviewed 30 transmasculine and transfeminine adolescents to understand their experiences of romantic relationships. They found that the fears of transphobia and rejection often shaped how—and whether—these adolescents disclosed their gender identities in romantic contexts.
For many of us, these anxieties don’t end with adolescence. We carry them into our adult lives.
In early-2025 , while Gautam was reeling from a break-up, they channelled their pain into the Love Restoration Project, which they envisioned as a space of care for the queer community. “When I was in a relationship, I remember opening up about my dysphoria during intimacy, and instead of being met with care, I was met with discomfort. Silence. Distance,” Gautam told me. “That moment made me feel like my transness, my tenderness… was too much. Like there was no place for the kind of love I needed.”
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EVEN IN SPACES that engage with the sexualities of trans masc persons—whether academic or community-based—aspects such as our safety and consent are overlooked.
A 2022 Austrian study based on a cross sectional online-survey with 55 transgender men between ages of 18-47 demonstrated that trans men are more fearful of sexual relationships than cis men or cis women. “In comparison to the general population transgender men report less sexual self-esteem, less sexual satisfaction and less sexual motivation,” it noted.
The study linked this variance to the anxieties that trans masc persons—those attracted to men in particular—felt about their bodies. It found that trans men who had not undergone top surgery were more sexually anxious than those who hadn’t.
Trans masc persons in India are constantly worried about “passing” as men—both within and outside romantic relationships. Until a few years ago, community literature within the country often focused on how we could mould our appearance to be seen as men: tucking a shirt in a particular way to make our hips look narrower, or using socks to replicate the shape of a penis. This was not just about aesthetics but a necessity, given the dangers we face if we don’t present as masculine in straight spaces.
In 2023, the YP Foundation released a short documentary as a part of its study on safe sex and sexual pleasure for transmasculine persons. The project was led by Avali, a non-binary activist and development professional in their late twenties, currently working with the Bangkok-based Asia Pacific Transgender Network. “One of the biggest forms of discrimination and violence is the invisibilisation of our identities,” they said in the YP foundation video. “A lot of times, when we think of trans persons, we don’t think of trans men or masculine people.”
Such erasures motivated Avali to pursue work on masculinity and intimacy. Trans masc persons find it becomes extremely difficult to talk about their own pleasure, Avali pointed out. “There’s always a pressure, that you as a masculine person should [sexually] satisfy another person. I felt it was important to talk about it.”
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TRANS MASC PERSONS attracted to men, or uninterested in penetrative sex, are often marginalised within the queer community.
Around 2013, when I was coming out, I noticed that most conversations among trans men tended to be limited to girlfriends and surgeries. It was as though it was not possible for us to be attracted to men. I felt closeted even in queer spaces.
Reflecting on these erasures as a non-heteronormative trans masc person, I spoke to my partner Vihaan, an Ambedkarite queer feminist trans man and development sector professional in their late twenties. Vihaan said that people within the queer community often questioned their gender identity because they are a bisexual trans man.
Often, they also misgendered me. The queer people Vihaan engaged with as part of his work, referred to me as bhabhi, sister-in-law. I bristled at being invalidated because I had chosen to be with a trans man. Since I couldn’t confront the people who did this directly, my frustrations spilled into conversations with Vihaan sometimes—or as Vihaan put it, “created a lot of tension in our relationship.”
For the past three years, Vihaan has been hosting a podcast called Masculinitea: Kuch Mardani Gupshup, which focuses on trans masc persons. In a May 2022 episode, Paras—a teacher, sex educator, and activist who is gay non-binary and trans masc—recounted their experience of coming out as gay. Many trans men invalidated Paras’ identity, telling them that they were not a trans man, but a straight woman. “First, I got very depressed… but instead I educated myself on gender identity and sexuality,” Paras said. “And those who have hurt me, I taught them…that gender identity and sexual orientation are not the same thing.”
When Avali conducted interviews for the YP Foundation study, they observed that trans men who were attracted to women didn’t seem to know that gay or bi trans men could exist. “Being straight is seen as an inherent part of being trans,” Avali said. “Gay trans masc persons expressed a lack of belonging in trans communities.”
Many trans masc persons internalise pressures to conform to rigid societal norms of masculinity. They distance themselves from others in the queer community who defy these conventions to avoid being stigmatised.
“Heteronormativity doesn’t just influence how we love, it polices who we get to be when we’re in love. It teaches us that love must follow a binary script,” Gautam said. “One partner has to be the caretaker, the other the decision-maker. One has to give, the other to take. It leaves little room for fluidity, for mutual softness, for queer mess.”
People who choose to resist that script—whether they’re two masc-presenting people, or a trans person and cis partner—often get dismissed as invalid, confusing, or “not serious,” by heteronormative society as well as in queer communities, Gautam added. “That kind of erasure is brutal. It convinces us that our love stories aren’t real unless they look like something that could survive a Bollywood plot.”
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MAINSTREAM MEDIA NARRATIVES and legal frameworks tend to position medical transitions as the primary expression of trans masculinity. This idea—tied to straight, traditional notions of maleness—contributes to widespread misconceptions. It also causes trans masc persons to develop unrealistic expectations around what gender-affirming medical procedures can change for them.
The YP Foundation’s study indicates that trans masc persons face immense pressure to medically transition—both, from a society that expects them to pass as a man, and from within the queer community, where surgical interventions are often perceived as the most legitimate way of being trans. “If you do not feel like transitioning, or if you are not in a place in life where you feel safe or comfortable in doing so, it is completely alright,” the study noted, “The bottom line is that the decision to transition is completely yours, and no one should bully or force you to do so.”
To define trans masculinity by only the ability to pleasure a partner—almost invariably assumed to be a cis woman—in a penetrative way reduces intimacy to a single, specific aspect. It also centres the trans masc experience on the contentious question of being able to “pass,” and the things that would enable them to do so.
This social pressure is furthered by exclusionary policy such as the the Transgender Persons (Protection Of Rights) Act, 2019. If a trans person wants to identify as a man or a woman, the law makes medical interventions mandatory for trans persons to identify with their chosen gender.
“I am often told in trans community spaces that once we medically transition, get a beard and can pass as a man all our troubles are over,” said Vihaan.
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CONTRARY TO POPULAR perception, “passing” as a man does not shield trans masc persons from violent relationships. The harms they face take many forms—from verbal abuse and microaggressions to physical assault.
Transgender men are at higher risk of experiencing all forms of violence compared to cis women, a 2024 study published by JAMA Network, a medical journal found. The study was based on a cross-sectional survey conducted with 3,560 individuals in California, including 52 transgender men. The study observed that in 2024, experiences of intimate partner violence were reported most frequently by transgender men (47%) followed by transgender women (18%), and nonbinary individuals (16%) in the United States.
In India, while feminist movements have secured legal recognition of domestic violence against women, intimate partner violence against trans masculine persons remains overlooked.
A 2023 report by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties and the National Network of LBI (Lesbian, Bisexual, Intersex) Women and TransPersons highlighted the specific struggles of trans masc individuals. It revealed their experiences of forced marriages, sexual abuse, and violence. These included cases where cis women blackmailed, extorted, and attempted to sexually assault their trans masc partners.
The report includes a 27-year-old trans man’s account of the violence they endured from a long-term partner and her friend. “They took me to a place I didn’t know, tied me up and beat me horribly. This other woman then used scissors to cut my clothes and took a video of me naked asking, ‘Let me see what you have, you say you are a boy but let me see what you have.’”
In another testimonial, a 38-year-old trans man recounts meeting a woman who they said pretended to like them. “But then she scammed me. She tortured me a lot. She put two people behind me near [location], this was in 2014. There was a rape attempt on me. I escaped by scaring them, and making them run away.”
In 2024, Vihaan visited north Karnataka during an emergency. A trans man had ended his relationship with a trans feminine person who was part of a hijra gharana because of personal issues and interference from the gharana. “After the break up, the gharana members beat him, stripped him naked, and told him he was not a ‘real man’,” Vihaan said.
Such unequal power dynamics are common in trans men’s relationships with gharana-affiliated trans women, as well as with cis women, Vihaan noted.
On their podcast MasculiniTea, Vihaan frequently encounters stories of cis women leaving trans men to marry cis men. “Just two months ago, a trans man from Odisha called me, shattered. He had lived with a cis woman for six years,” Vihaan recalled. “A few months ago, he found that she was with another cis man and wanted to marry him.”
Structural inequities deepen imbalances. Trans people often face violence and strained relationships because many of us are forced to drop out of higher education due to dysphoria, or lack essential documents to enter college or get a job, Vihaan pointed out. These systemic barriers affect romantic relationships. “I know a trans man whose relationship ended for this very reason—his partner re-enrolled in college and pursued her education, while he couldn’t, because all his marksheets still carry his old name,” Vihaan said.
Sometimes, trans masc persons perpetuate violence and oppression to be accepted as men. “Trans men may refuse to do household work which is seen as women’s work. They may also force their partners to adhere to traditional and often patriarchal norms of being a wife,” Vihaan said.
Given the struggles of finding love and intimacy, the lack of affirmation, and the constant pressures of conforming to gender norms, it’s not uncommon for trans masc individuals to find themselves in toxic relationships where they remain trapped in the abuse. With few support spaces available, there are limited opportunities to process these experiences or even recognise them as harmful.
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A RECKONING WITH the sexual and romantic experiences of trans masc persons requires us to confront the deep, often invisible ways in which heteronormative and patriarchal ideas shape the intimate lives of queer people. Building a truly equal world—one in which trans masculine persons can experience genuine intimacy—demands a radical reimagining of how we understand gender, masculinity, vulnerability, and love.
If we, as trans masculine individuals, wish to live more fulfilling lives and cultivate deeper, more liberatory relationships, we must begin by claiming space for ourselves. Trans masc persons like Gautam, Avali, and Vihaan are pursuing this work—nurturing spaces where our identities are not merely defended, but fully affirmed in all their complexity.
“When we ask to be held, to be desired, to be chosen, we’re told we’re too much,” Gautam said. “But we’re not. Our masculinity doesn’t need to be hard to be whole.”
*name has been changed to protect privacy