A few days ago, as I was researching for an article about mass incarceration, I made a simple Google search: "are transgender men usually housed in men's or women's prisons?". I thought I had phrased my question clearly, but somehow, every single result Google showed me – except for a Reddit thread – was about the prison placements of trans women. Even the deeply unwelcome Google AI summary exclusively mentioned trans women in its response, except in the very first sentence, when it stated that trans men may be housed in male prisons if they "retain male genitalia," indicating a blatant misunderstanding by the algorithm of the term "transgender man." It took some digging and some rephrasing, but I eventually did locate the data I was looking for. Though the amount of research on incarcerated trans women dwarfed the results I did find, information on incarcerated trans men clearly does exist. Amidst the chaos and protest surrounding the recent UK Supreme Court ruling – which ruled that the term "woman" in the Equality Act is based on biological sex alone, and has sparked countless protests across the country and endless online discourse – this Google incident got me thinking: Why are trans men consistently left out of the mainstream conversation?  

Transgender women are a uniquely vulnerable faction of the population, and one that has been subject to extreme hatred and vitriol in recent weeks (and for far longer). The recognition, visibility, humanization, and protection of trans women, especially when their right to exist is under legal threat, is vital. But they are not representative of the entire trans community, and as willing as cis people seem to be to either viciously attack or rally behind trans women, trans men are less likely to even be recognized. Last year, there were more than twice as many transgender women represented on TV than trans men, despite the fact that the proportion of trans women to men is roughly equal. Almost every report written by major news publications about transgender issues – which has become even more clear while doing research for this article – is focused on transgender women, with little or no explicit mention of trans men. Think about how often you have seen headlines or social media posts about trans women in sports, bathrooms, prisons, or children's schools. Most often, it's inflammatory nonsense. But why aren't trans men even mentioned?  

Even as seemingly millions of questions have arisen about how the Supreme Court ruling will impact transgender women – fittingly so, as they are the group that was explicitly targeted by For Women Scotland in their TERF-y campaign – almost no attention, at least from mainstream sources, has been paid to the ruling's potential impact on trans men. While it's been reported hundreds of times that the wording of the ruling allows for the exclusion of transgender women from single-sex women's spaces, it's hardly ever been mentioned that the ruling also may allow for the exclusion of trans men from sex-segregated services altogether, both male-only and female-only. Defining a “woman" by biological sex means that trans men can legally be barred from male-only spaces including hospital wards and changing rooms: "the provisions relating to single-sex services can only be interpreted by reference to biological sex". But the same ruling goes on to state that trans men can also be banned from female-only spaces if "reasonable objection is taken to their presence, for example, because the gender reassignment process has given them a masculine appearance." While trans men are technically protected from discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment, this protection is seemingly undermined by the Court's judgement that they may be barred from accessing any sex-based services, male or female, based on nothing but "reasonable objection" to their physical appearance. This detail, buried amongst pages of legal jargon, is a blatant threat to transgender men's rights to access vital facilities including bathrooms and hospital wards; and yet, virtually no one is talking about it.  

The single-sex space debate (or the bathroom debate, as it's more commonly called) is just one of many tired, transphobic arguments that exists to demonize trans women, but falls apart when confronted with the simple fact of trans men's existence. It's harder to paint all trans people as sexual deviants when they can't all be offensively portrayed as men in dresses, plotting to spy on innocent cisgender women as they use the bathroom. When the idea of trans people competing within their gender categories in sports can no longer be written off as an attempt to gain a biological advantage over competitors. When they can't all be painted as dangerous sex offenders who will attack cisgender women if placed in women's prisons, or as misogynists scheming to gain unfair access to female-only services or legal protections. To transphobes, who have a very specific, media-influenced, and incorrect idea of what a trans person is, a trans man is a conundrum: the exact opposite of everything they thought they knew, the negative example to prove their arguments wrong. A trans man's existence might force transphobes to reconsider their bigoted viewpoints, which may be partly why they'll never mention him in their angry Facebook posts.  

The only place that trans men seem to be mentioned as often, or even more often, than trans women is in conversations about transgender children. Then, endless "concern" is expressed over teenagers "mutilating" their bodies by removing their breasts or taking testosterone. Never mind the fact that transition regret is extremely rare, and research has shown a major positive impact on the wellbeing of transgender adolescents when provided with gender-affirming care. This discourse clearly does not come from a place of genuine concern, as the same trans men are forgotten about as soon as they grow chest hair and their voices begin to drop. When trans men are young enough to still be viewed as confused young girls who are corrupted by the evils of patriarchy by erasing their womanhood, they are useful tools for the TERF cause; as adults, living in (often) male-passing bodies and posing no real or imagined threat to cisgender people, they – and their needs – are ignored.  

While less harsh treatment from the media is arguably a good thing, an absence of recognition altogether is not. Like transgender women, trans men are disproportionately likely to be victims of violent crime, including sexual assault. Rates of mental illness, including suicidal ideation, are far higher among both transgender men and women than those of cisgender individuals. Additionally, in many countries including the U.S., transgender men face threats to their reproductive rights, which are often exacerbated by gender dysphoria and medical discrimination that can make seeking and acquiring reproductive healthcare especially difficult. It's hard to work toward solutions to trans men's issues when their existence is erased and their problems go unacknowledged by the media and culture.  

Amidst all the transphobic noise, it's important to show solidarity with transgender women, who have been targeted by TERF groups like For Women Scotland in their campaigns for this Supreme Court ruling. But no one's activism should start and end with only one group – not when others are also deeply impacted (I'm not even getting into the possible implications for intersex people, nonbinary people, or even cisgender people who don't strictly obey gender norms, all of which are crucial parts of the same conversation). Trans men are just as worthy of media representation, medical and political research, and most importantly, the right to exist, as everyone else. Our activism, media, and even our Google results should reflect that fact.