MM Omegaverse: The Coding of Transmasculine Identity

This was originally posted on Reddit under my username, u/queermachmir.

Note: You don’t have to like omegaverse, and you don't have to start reading it either. This is just my personal interaction and opinions on the omegaverse genre, and no trans person represents a monolith of trans people and their opinions. 

CWs: Discussion of dysphoria, transphobia, misogyny, brief mentions of sex and genitals

    Some people find that omegaverse (also known as alpha/beta/omega dynamics) as rather heteronormative. An alpha is typically masculine and butch, while the omegas are effeminate and small. Then, you have the expectations often set in the societies of omegaverse: alphas are 'take charge', dominant, bread winners, benefit from society, while omegas are oppressed under similar strategies of misogyny (and I'll argue maybe transphobia, but I'll get there), and sometimes it can be quite dystopian where you have sex slavery and all of that. There are some subversions of this reality, of course, but it isn't the normative way of looking at omegaverse. Betas, however, are usually entirely neutral: 'normal' people. Omegaverse also has weird science (bonding marks and pheromones, heats and ruts), that come from the shifter world and alien fucking. Not so much a focus in this discussion.

    Due to the assumptions of these tropes, some people argue omegaverse books are MF in disguise, especially when you bring in male pregnancy. "Men getting pregnant, weird self-lubricating holes, just sounds like a woman to me!" I argue that while heteronormativity can occur in writing omegaverse (just as much, or even more so, as it could happen anywhere in MM), omegaverse can also be an exploration of trans-masculine identity. While there are authors who don't write their omegas in any way demure, or with personalities that speak to socialization and expectations commonly experienced when identified as a female child, I will even be speaking to those types of omegas today who do fall within those stereotypes. I'll be tackling a bit of different trope assumptions for my arguments.

    Appearances of omegas tend to include being shorter, what is associated with the feminine, and some even push into baby-faced descriptions, the lack of body hair, and more. While every trans person is different, I know, and used to be, this type of trans-masculine person. I am short (I remember seeing a review saying that because a study said less than 1% of men weren't 5'4" or shorter, to write an MC that short was unrealistic and heteronormative), in fact I'm a whopping 5'2" on a good day. My body does look different from a cisgender man, where I've got more categorized "feminine" traits that are similar to ones I see described in books. I'm sure other trans-masculine individuals can also agree with how many jokes we have about looking twelve, because many of us are young-faced. All of this is more superficial, however. With HRT there are definitely changes (if you choose to pursue them), of growing body hair, deepening a voice, and the shifting of body fat stores. Omegas have penises (usually), and assholes that self-lubricate for omega-reasons. With that I bring up -- you should see some trans-dicks from HRT! The anatomy is clearly different where omega-men are classified cisgender, but I find it a funny similarity.

    What I think is more prevalent to this discussion is the expectations and socialization of omega men in typical omegaverse that we often associate with typical femininity: who is raised to be a keeper of the home, who is raised with gendered expectations around marriage, sex, and value, who is raised with an understanding in the world that sits with being oppressed on an axis of sex. Women do, misogyny does, absolutely. As a trans-masculine individual, I also hold and carry these experiences because I had no choice in being assigned female at birth, and therefore experienced those same realities. Omegas do too, and while their gender as men is never questioned (dark erotica withstanding), I find this a less "secret woman character!" and more a connection to the realities of being trans-masculine. Often we don't want to talk about the messiness of childhoods being interpreted as another gender, and the growing-pains dysphoria, but I think it exists in omegaverse too. Often we read stories of omegas who "don't wanna be the typical omega", and just as much one could say this is a story of breaking free of misogyny, do I think it could be wanting to subvert gender as hard as one can to free yourself from its shackle.

    The oppression of an omega in books varies wildly from author to author. Some of it is very sexual (sex slaves, breeding facilities), or draw from misogyny (marriage laws, passing of family lines, etcetera), and others I think align more closely to something experienced across different axes: prohibition from jobs, expectations that 'you can't do that because...', expected roles in sex, expectation of performing gender and the roles within either end of the spectrum, and more. Whether you're "not like other omegas" and you're hypermasculine, disparaging others for their lack of hardness, their perceived weakness for being feminine, or you're femme as hell and are seen as weaker because of it. This is an issue common in the transmasculine community, that transgender men (and masculine) feel the need to perform masculinity to the highest degree, the need for "passing", or they're traitors to their own gender identity. Sometimes, we even see transgender men/mascs turn on those in their community who don't mind wearing makeup or a skirt, because it attacks their sense of security in their own gender identity.

    Omegaverse also does explore gender roles on a more meta-level. I think if it makes you uncomfortable to see men in roles we typically prescribe to women, maybe its worth reflecting on why. Yes, I'm a feminist where I believe gender should be freer so "women's work" isn't even a thing, but we can also acknowledge current reality and see how these gender roles move and exist within society and not everyone wishes to escape them either. When they're oppressive it is a problem, but gender itself is not an evil. It just is. If the answer is "I came here to read men, and they're getting pregnant and acting all feminine", then I... think there's a lot to reflect on there.

    I'm a person who identifies as masculine-of-center, a non-binary man, who can get pregnant, has a hole that self-lubricates (hah!), who has experienced socialization that asks of me different roles than cisgender men, and yet none of that makes me some heteronormative, covert female. I thankfully don't have heats though HRT gives some killer hot flashes, can sometimes make you horny AF, and definitely makes you hungrier than you're used to. So often, I relate to omegas in omegaverse stories.

    This doesn't mean that there aren't any heteronormative depictions of omegaverse, and one thing that omegaverse hinges on is bioessentialism -- but queer authors have been tackling this too. There are stories of those omegas and alphas who transition, such as the ones by Tanya Chris, Amy Bellows, and other authors in the subgenre. Often these are books in which we see parallels to trans experiences in real life, and I think that is another amazing way that this subgenre opens up questions about gender, society, and the roles we take up in it.

    Now, you ask me, "why wouldn't I just read books about transgender men or nonbinary people?" My answer is: you should! Please do. I like reading books with transgender characters. And, I do think we find ourselves limited in this genre still. It's changing definitely, but I think you have issues like: cisgender authors afraid to write the 'wrong type' of trans character, dysphoria as a main/central conflict, and the transphobia within the MM community where if a vagina exists in a sex scene, then it is just considered covert MF. This can, and will, change as more people write and read transgender romance. I believe that there will be 'oopsies' and transphobic books sure, but there will also be some great ones. 

    So, I read omegaverse if I want to look at a world where I don't have to remind myself to check extensively something isn't being transphobic in the book from the author's mind itself, or that dysphoria and transphobia (which can be triggering) isn't a main conflict, where there is never a "I'm trans... so if you want to leave right now/so if you're not interested/so if you can't love me!", a dialogue that I have read over and over and over. Where my body is not seen as "vagina = woman", or doesn't exist at all, simply because they believe that all men are defined in the barriers of cisnormativity. Maybe I am that less-than-1% of men under 5'4", but dammit, that's not worth a DNF.