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Performing Gender

Playwright MJ Kaufman examines what happens when a trans man adopts the good and the bad of traditional American masculinity.

By DAN MEYER

MJ Kaufman (Eric McNatt)

Toxic masculinity. The buzzy term may have only permeated the zeitgeist in recent years, but the issue has existed since the dawn of Adam. MJ Kaufman, who wrote Masculinity Max, about a recently transitioned man, explores the pressure to exert male dominance, even when a person isn’t cisgender.

The play, which airs June 27 at 7PM ET on Playbill.com/PridePlays as part of the Pride Plays Festival primetime programming, begins with Max on a date with Sensitive Guy. Despite his insistence, sensitivity is not this date's defining characteristic. Instead, he diminishes Max's transition experience to "switching teams" and asks about Max's body in relation to sexual preferences—"Cuz you still got original plumbing right?" the date reasons for his questioning.

A ceremony of sorts that officially inducts Max as a man in the family follows this disaster of a romantic endeavor. The gesture—in which Max receives his very own Narwhal team hat—takes place ahead of the annual watching of a stereotypical masculine American tradition: the Super Bowl.

“I chose football because I think the rituals speak to a particular flavor of American masculinity,” says Kaufman.

In the beginning of the play, Max seems on the outside of that flavor. For example, while sitting in their loungers, the men in the room drink beer, curse at the TV, and asks questions of him like “What’s the right way to get a girl to go home with ya?” based on the fact that he was assigned female at birth. Max tries to explain the he never felt like a woman, but this falls on deaf ears.