Tznius Part 3: Dignity in the Streets, Degeneracy in the Sheets

I am a spiritual Jew who covers my head in public, and I do it on purpose. I am not hiding. I am not ashamed. I am not trying to disappear into the background. If anything, I am doing the opposite. I am choosing to be seen in a way that actually means something.

When I put on a headscarf, I am reminding myself that I am part of something bigger than my own ego, my own impulses, my own day to day bullshit. In Jewish practice, covering the head is about awareness of G-d, about humility, about remembering that you are not the highest authority in your own life. It is a physical cue that your actions matter, that how you move through the world matters, that you are accountable. I like that. I need that. It keeps me from drifting into the kind of numb, disconnected existence that modern life practically trains you for.

And I do it as a flamboyant gay trans man, which is where people’s brains tend to short circuit.

They expect religious expression to look conservative in a very specific, narrow way. They expect queerness to look like rebellion without restraint. They expect trans men to either assimilate into a kind of stiff, macho masculinity or to have blue hair and look like a reject from a 00s emo band. I am none of those things. I am me. I will wear a beautiful headscarf and a Star of David and still talk like a sailor, laugh too loud, and write the filthiest erotica you have ever seen. Those things are not at war with each other in me.

People want them to be.

There is this idea floating around that modesty and sex positivity cannot coexist. That if you believe in modesty, you must be repressed, judgmental, probably miserable, probably projecting your own issues onto everyone else. And on the flip side, if you are openly sexual, if you create explicit art, if you enjoy kink or dirty humor or any of that, then you must not have boundaries, must not have discipline, must not have any kind of spiritual grounding.

That binary is lazy as hell.

First of all, Judaism is not nearly as prudish about sex as people assume, and you can see that right in the canon. The Song of Songs is straight up erotic poetry. It is bodies, longing, hunger, all of it. People have spent centuries trying to sanitize it or turn it into something safely metaphorical, but if you actually read it without flinching, it is horny as hell. That line about the “navel” with “flowing juices” was not some innocent compliment about a belly button. It is a wet pussy. The fact that a text like that made it into sacred scripture tells you something important. Desire is not outside holiness. It is part of how human beings experience it.

And it does not stop at poetry. The Talmud explicitly treats sexual satisfaction as a responsibility, not a bonus. There is a concept called onah, the obligation of a husband to sexually satisfy his wife. Not when he feels like it, not only if she asks nicely, but as a built in expectation of the relationship. Her pleasure matters. Her body is not an afterthought. That alone blows apart the idea that religious tradition automatically equals repression. And yeah, I am a trans man, not a woman, but the principle still lands. The core idea is mutuality, attention, and respect for your partner’s desire. Sex is not framed as dirty or shameful. It is framed as something that, done with care and intention, is part of a healthy and even holy life.

Modesty, as I live it, is not about pretending the body does not exist. It is not about fear of sex or disgust with desire. It is about context and intention. It is about deciding what is public and what is private, what is shared and what is reserved. It is about dignity, not denial.

Sex positivity, as I live it, is not about turning every space into a sexual space or performing desire for an audience. It is about honesty. It is about owning your desires without shame, exploring them in ways that are consensual and meaningful, and refusing to let anyone else define what your sexuality is allowed to look like.

I have written over three million words of erotic fiction. That is not a typo. Three million. I have spent years of my life exploring sex, power, intimacy, kink, vulnerability, humor, all of it, on the page. I have written explicit scenes that are messy, tender, rough, cathartic, ridiculous, sacred, profane, sometimes all at once. I am not ashamed of that work. I am proud of it. It is creative, it is honest, and it is mine.

I am a CSA and rape survivor, and what was done to me left real damage. I have stenosis of the cervix because of the scarring I carry in my body. That is physical evidence of what I lived through. Add dysphoria to that, the kind that hits in your gut and makes your own body feel like a trap, and sex became something I could not safely inhabit. Being touched in certain ways did not just feel wrong, it felt like being dragged back into something I never consented to in the first place. I could not relax. I could not stay present. I could not orgasm. So I made a choice. For about twelve years, I was celibate because it was the only way to protect myself.

But slowly, during that time, I started taking it back. In 2016, a few years after my divorce, I began writing erotica. Not for shock value, not to prove anything to anyone, but because it gave me a space where I controlled the terms. On the page, I decided what consent looked like, what pleasure looked like, what my body was allowed to feel. I rewrote the rules that had been forced on me. By 2022, I was writing explicitly about trans men with cis men, and trans men with other trans men, putting bodies like mine at the center of desire instead of at the margins. That was not just creative expression. That was personal liberation. It was how I got comfortable enough in my own skin that when Andy came into my life, I could actually let go and enjoy myself and him without shutting down and dissociating, without bracing for pain, without feeling gross and dirty.

Where sex finally felt like the blessing G-d intended it to be, a microcosm of "let there be light, and it was good".

That is sacred work to me. I do not care if that makes people uncomfortable. I do not care if they want to dismiss it as “just porn.” It is not reclamation. It is healing. It is me taking ownership of my body and my desire after both were taken from me. I will die on that hill.

I still write erotica once in awhile. I still enjoy going there, playing with fantasy and emotional intensity. I have also made house songs called “Bonus Hole Boyz” and “Serving Cunt,” which are exactly as unfiltered and over the top as they sound. They are loud, they are dirty, they are funny, and they come from a place of genuine joy in being who I am.

None of that cancels out the fact that I cover my head before I go out the door, and I dress modestly.
None of it cheapens my spirituality.
If anything, it deepens it.

Because what I am doing in both cases is choosing. I am not being dragged into modesty by fear or coercion. I am not being dragged into sexuality by pressure or insecurity. I am making conscious decisions about how I present myself and how I express myself, depending on the context.

When I am out in public, running errands, existing in shared space with other people, I carry myself with a certain level of reserve. Not because I think the human body is shameful, but because I believe public space should not automatically be sexualized. There is a difference between being comfortable in your body and treating every environment like a stage for sexual display. I do not think it is unreasonable to want a baseline of self respect and situational awareness in how people dress and act in everyday settings.

And yeah, sometimes that frustration comes out bluntly. I am fucking tired of seeing people with their tits hanging out and wearing short shorts at the dentist and the supermarket. That is not a theological statement. That is me being a human being who would like grocery shopping to feel like grocery shopping, not a softcore sideshow.

But that preference for modesty in public does not mean I think bodies are bad or sex is dirty or people who dress differently are inferior. It doesn't mean I'm the Taliban wanting women to hide under veils. It means I believe in boundaries. It means I believe that not everything needs to be shared with everyone, all the time.

It means I believe in consent, and I didn't consent to see your tiddies and so much skin, boo, and maybe you shouldn't be dressing like that in front of kids either.

Then I go home, sit down at my computer, and write something that would make a Victorian faint.

That is also me.

The through line is not repression versus expression. The through line is agency.

I get to decide how I show up in the world. I get to decide what parts of myself are visible in which spaces. I get to decide how I relate to my body, my desires, my spirituality. Nobody else gets to flatten that into a neat, digestible narrative.

There is also something very specifically trans about this, at least for me. I fought hard to claim my body as mine. I had to untangle years of dysphoria, trauma, other people’s expectations, and my own internal confusion to get to a place where I could say, with any confidence, I am who I am and I get to live on my terms.

So yeah, I am going to be protective of that.

Modesty becomes a way of saying, you do not get automatic access to me. You do not get to consume my body just because I exist in your line of sight. You do not get to define my worth based on how much I reveal. I set that boundary. I hold that line.

And at the same time, sex positivity becomes a way of saying, I am not going to let shame dictate how I experience pleasure, creativity, or connection. I am not going to pretend desire does not exist. I am not going to sanitize myself into something palatable for people who are uncomfortable with anything messy or explicit.

Both of those positions come from the same core place. Ownership.

People who are uncomfortable with that tend to pick one side and try to force me into it. If they are more conservative, they see the headscarf and assume I must secretly be ashamed of my sexuality, that my erotic work is a contradiction or a moral failing. If they are more progressive, they see the erotica and the songs and assume the headscarf must be ironic, performative, or some kind of internalized oppression.

They are all wrong.

I am not interested in fitting into their frameworks.

I am interested in living a life that feels aligned, honest, and grounded. For me, that includes a visible spiritual practice, a commitment to modesty as a chosen value, and a completely unapologetic embrace of my sexuality and creative expression.

I am not splitting myself into pieces to make other people comfortable. I am integrating all of it.

If that confuses people, good. Maybe they need to sit with that confusion for a minute instead of immediately trying to resolve it by shoving me into a box.

Because the truth is, human beings are not tidy. We are not consistent in the ways people want us to be consistent. We contain things that look contradictory on the surface and make perfect sense once you actually listen.

I cover my head because I believe in G-d and I want that awareness with me when I step outside. I believe in modesty because I value boundaries and dignity in public space. I write filthy, explicit erotica because I love exploring desire and connection without shame. I make ridiculous, dirty songs because they make me laugh and feel alive.

That is not hypocrisy.
That is a life that belongs to me.