American Boys by photographer Soraya Zaman is the result of a three-year journey through the US states. Through essays and photographs, Zaman seeks to capture the experiences of 21 transgender individuals who undergo a female-to-male gender transformation. Zaman finds all the respective portrait objects via the social media Instagram, where it all started with the @americanboysproject account.

The term "gender" is a socially created social construct that follows a strict set of binary rules about how women and men should look, behave and so on. This binary ideology is perceived as toxic to the transsexual and non-binary environment represented in this book.

So-called gender genders (people who identify with their biological gender category) have a special responsibility to show openness and acceptance of a more fluid gender identity in society. Transsexualism has existed at all times. Evidence of this has been found in Greek myths, classical histories, Renaissance and cultural anthropology.

The photographs show people striving to look the way they really feel.

Zaman points out in the book's introduction that the American indigenous people have always recognized more than two genders. They are of the opinion that all people are born with both sexes – "two spirits". This idea should inspire the rest of the world.

masculine

The transgender i American Boys strikes me as vulnerable in their masculine appearances. Many are muscular and look like hard-headed and masculine men with beards and tattoos. In the nude portraits, on the other hand, I see their sore side, where scars from breast surgery and vagina from the past that a woman looks forward. Gabe (23) from New York says: "I saw girlhood as more of a costume and that I had been given this identity that I had to bring to school and that is what I would tell people."

The photographs show people striving to look the way they really feel. They undergo testosterone treatment to physically confirm their identity as a man.

It strikes me that these people are unfortunately the result of the socially created social construction and the categorization of gender. In this context, I can't help but draw in women who also go under the knife to fulfill a socially created ideal of what one should look like. It is dangerous and socially constructed – and on the border of comparable.

Dangerous categorization

In an ideal world, we would not have had to categorize sex with "woman" or "man" as is the norm now, where you fall outside these booths as "transsexual". The ideal would have been to have no concepts of gender. We had all just been "people".

The term "gender" had belonged to the history books and was not a proof of identity, since it is irrelevant; just like which religion you belong to (which, for example, is on my Turkish citizenship card) or whether you are married or unmarried, for that matter.

I'm excited about how long it's going to take before we understand that the terms "heterosexuality", "homosexuality" and so on are just "sexuality" and that "the syllables" are irrelevant and only create social divisions and confusion. Human sexuality is complex, and I believe that everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, is a mixture of everything.

This makes it no less disturbing that transsexualism is defined as a psychiatric diagnosis in Norway. Oslo University Hospital's website states: «In case of suspected transsexualism, your GP should refer you to the Local District Psychiatric Center (DPS), or to a private practice appointment specialist. There it will be implementedøa survey and assessment of the patient's psychosocial situation and functional levelå.» This tells me that there is something fundamentally wrong in our society.