Brother from Another Mother: FTM Peer Support Groups in the United States and the Making of Trans Worlds, 1980–2000

This paper examines the history of female-to-male trans resource sharing efforts, care, and community formation through the rise and subsequent fall of transmasculine peer support groups from the 1980s to the early 2000s. I will trace the proliferation of FTM communities to the organization of social and support groups across the United States, which served as one of the primary sites for FTM access to gender-affirming care and social community. Using records from FTM International (San Francisco, 1986), East Coast FTM Group (Boston, 1992), and some smaller urban FTM support groups, this paper will examine the support group as a site of both knowledge and affective exchange. These support groups gave way to FTM-specific subcultures and ways of understanding trans politics, community, and masculinity while forging local and national transmasculine kinship networks and affinities.