Frequently Asked Questions About My Gender Stuff

Frequently Asked Questions About My Gender Stuff
[June 2026]

I am out as trans on a need-to-know basis. I live in an area where people fly the Confederate flag openly, and I have already gotten antisemitism to my face. It is not really safe or wise to go around shouting "I'm gay and trans" from the rooftops, despite being somewhat visibly queer in my appearance. I am also old-school enough to believe personal business is just that: personal. I strongly dislike identity politics and find them divisive.

The reason I am up-front about who and what I am on this site, which I share with my partner Andy, is practical. If you are going to do any creative work involving queer themes or Jewish themes, you might as well disclose that you belong to that demographic. That way people do not accuse you of appropriation, and people who are here from those demographics know this is made by one of us, for us. Furthermore, back when I used to use social media and was trying to make friends online, I learned the hard way it was better to disclose stuff like being trans to ward off anyone who was transphobic.

In those days of using social media, as well as being necessarily out in group therapy settings in real life (since therapy is of no value if you are closeted and pretending to be someone you're not), I have gotten a number of questions which could be seen as ignorant and invasive. You might wonder why I am bothering to revisit them here when I am not on socials anymore and I do not really owe anyone an explanation about why I am the way I am. Truthfully, while this might be seen as a lost cause, I am hoping that sharing these might help open someone's mind. Not in a preachy "think like me or you are a bigot" way, but in a way that helps someone think about something from a different angle. So here are my answers to questions I have received both online and offline.

Q: Aren't trans men just confused lesbians?

A: No. I am a gay man, meaning I am attracted to men. While I have dated women in the past, that was not genuine attraction on my part. It was more not wanting to reject close friends who fell for me and make them feel bad. I was depressed and lonely enough to feel at the time like some companionship is better than no companionship. But I never identified as lesbian. In those days I identified as bisexual but leaning more towards men, and when I was 40 I decided to stop settling and just identified as gay. I also identify as queer, which is a topic for another time.

There are heterosexual trans men who have a lesbian history prior to coming out, but this does not make them confused lesbians.

There is also something called the "lesbian to gay trans man pipeline". Society puts pressure on masculine-presenting AFAB people to date women, and many gay trans men who formerly identified as female-attracted realized they were in a similar boat with loneliness. As well as finding straight male attention dysphoric, while attention from gay men was euphoric.

There are unfortunately some people in the trans community who believe all butch lesbians are really just trans men in denial. This pisses me off for a lot of reasons. The biggest of which is it implies that being trans is about clothing preferences. To me being trans is actually about body dysphoria. If you are AFAB and you have short hair and dress in a masculine way but you are fine with having tits and a vagina, you are not trans.

Q: Why can't you just be a masculine woman? It's fine to be a tomboy.

A: The thing is I was never actually a tomboy. When I was growing up, I did have femininity forced on me. My mom wanted a doll rather than a child, and in elementary school I was subjected to wearing stupid froo-froo dresses and had too much made of my hair. When I was a teenager we were poor so clothes became whatever was at the thrift shop or my mom's co-workers donating hand-me-downs. Then when I had my first job I was able to buy myself clothes and I had sort of a skater-goth aesthetic going. But importantly, I was never a stereotypical tomboy jock. I was a nerd, and in my goth days I looked more androgynous than male or female.

And after I came out as trans and began living as male, I found myself gravitating towards flamboyance: purples, pinks, floral prints, paisley prints, tie-dye. I cut that off for about a decade after an ex-friend dogpiled me online calling me a transtrender and they/them (when the ex-friend knows I am he/him exclusively) and tried to dress in a more conventionally masculine manner but it was not me. This past year, 2026, I have begun reclaiming color and patterns, and I wear funky jewelry and headscarves. To me and to the people closest to me who know what I am, I look like a swishy gay guy. So no, I cannot just be a masculine woman. I am not a woman, and my personal expression is not macho or butch. My gender identity is not about what clothes I wear, but is about a body and brain mismatch.

This mismatch runs deeper than aesthetics or social roles. It is a persistent sense that my physical form does not line up with the map in my head. Living in alignment with that internal map has brought a kind of peace I never found when I tried to force myself into the feminine expectations placed on me as a child and young adult. The relief shows up in how I carry myself, how I rest, how I exist in space. Trying to be the masculine woman people suggested would have meant continuing to ignore that fundamental discordance, and I had already spent decades doing exactly that with diminishing returns.

Q: Don't you just have that body/brain mismatch because you were abused?

A: I began saying I am a boy when I was four, before all of that (re: CSA) started. Additionally, a very large percentage of AFAB people are abuse survivors and pretty much none of them comes out of it saying "I want a beard and chest hair and a deep voice and a flat chest and a penis". I do not want to look like a guy as some form of protecting myself. I want to look like a guy because that is what I am, and that was what I wanted years before anything happened to me.

The timeline matters here. Childhood memories of declaring myself a boy predate any traumatic events. Those early statements were not cries for safety or rebellion. They were simple, matter-of-fact assertions from a small child who had not yet learned that such things required explanation or defense. Abuse survivors come in every gender and orientation. The specific desire for male secondary sex characteristics is not a common outcome of trauma. My drive toward maleness was consistent long before I had language for dysphoria and long before circumstances tested my resilience in other ways.

Q: You're just trying to escape patriarchy and how women are mistreated!

A: I assure you that if I had been born and raised on a matriarchal island I still would be dysphoric and think I was a boy. In fact, if you put me on a deserted island and I never had to care about preferred pronouns and whether I was perceived as male or female again, I would still want to have male biological characteristics. So it really has fuck-all to do with trying to escape patriarchy and level up in privilege.

Besides which, the trans experience in this country is such that transitioning to male comes with a whole set of challenges that outweigh any male privilege one might receive and only if someone is perceived correctly as male. Many trans men do not pass, and many trans men who do pass but end up having to disclose being AFAB are treated differently in a bad way once they disclose.

This is not a strategic move in a social hierarchy. Dysphoria persists regardless of the surrounding power structures. The desire for a male body remains even in complete isolation from cultural expectations about gender. The practical realities of medical transition, legal hurdles, social navigation, and the constant calculus of disclosure create stresses that balance out any perceived gains. My life has not become simpler or easier in the ways critics sometimes assume. It has become more dangerous in a conservative MAGA-dominated rural area. It has also become more authentic, which is a different kind of value entirely.

Q: Wouldn't it just be easier to be a straight woman?

A: I did that and it was dysphoria hell. I do not want a man lusting after me the way straight men lust after women. Is it true that I have had difficulties dating because of my transness? Yes, although I did eventually find a gay guy who accepts me the way I am. So while it might be easier on the surface to stuff myself back in the closet and pretend to be a girl and settle for a guy who sees and treats me like one, I refuse to do that for the sake of not being alone. My patience paid off. Once I let go of the idea that I needed to have anyone and was content being on my own, suddenly the Universe dropped the perfect guy into my lap.

The years of trying to live as a straight woman taught me the limits of endurance. Each attempt to fit that mold amplified the internal noise until it drowned out almost everything else. The relief of dropping that performance was immediate and profound. Dating as a trans gay man has its own complications, but they feel like ordinary human relationship challenges rather than the constant betrayal of self that came before. Finding Andy confirmed that authenticity attracts the right kind of connection when you stop forcing yourself into ill-fitting roles.

Q: Aren't you and Andy just het with extra steps?

A: Not just no, but fuck no. Straight guys do not say "oh my husband" when they come. The stuff Andy and I do in the bedroom is not stuff het couples do. Andy is not into my body in a het way. Andy calls me babyboi. Andy calls me a twink. We look like a bear-twink couple. Miss me with that shit.

Our relationship exists in its own category, shaped by our specific bodies, histories, and attractions. The dynamic is recognizably gay in its texture and mutual understanding. Attempts to reduce it to heterosexuality with extra steps ignore the daily realities of how we see each other and how we connect physically and emotionally. That framing erases the genuine queerness that defines our partnership.

Q: How does Andy really feel about being with a trans guy?

A: When we first became friends, he actually assumed I was a cis gay guy. He knew I was trans before we got together, and it was not a dealbreaker, nor was he any sort of creepy chaser. He sees me as his husband, not as some approximation of a woman. We have the kind of relationship where we can talk about this stuff honestly without it being a constant referendum on my validity. Andy is gay and accepts me exactly as I am and sees me as man enough for him, and that mutual comfort matters more than fitting into someone else's definition of what a gay relationship should look like. The fact that we look like a classic bear-twink pair to most people is just a bonus.

Q: Do you think being trans is a social contagion or a trend?

A: For some very online young people, especially the non-dysphoric non-binary crowd, I think social influence plays a big role, as well as for millennials and up who began coming out as non-binary during the pandemic when they had a lot of time at home to surf the Internet. That is why I draw such a hard line between them and those of us with long-standing, persistent dysphoria. My own sense of being a boy started at age four, in the 1980s when there was nothing for people like us to point at and say "this is me". It survived decades of trying to be a woman, poverty, abuse, and everything else life threw at me. That is not a trend. Trends fade. This did not. I do worry that the explosion of visibility has made it easier for confused kids to latch onto labels instead of digging into what is really going on with them. But that complexity does not erase the reality of people like me who have been this way since we could talk, and I think that we need to be honest about the difference in order to protect trans rights and the continued ability of trans people to access the care they need.

Q: Have you had "the surgery"? What about hormones?

A: Don't go around asking trans people this. Other people's genitals are not your business. Other people's medical information is generally not your business unless you are their doctor or you have the kind of personal relationship with them where they feel comfortable disclosing to you (like a partner, and most trans people disclose to partners without being asked).

Q: You were so pretty before you did this to yourself! Why is your self-esteem so low, why can't you just love yourself with the body G-d gave you?

A: In Judaism we have a concept called tikkun olam, meaning repair the world. In my case, part of this is repairing what went haywire with my biology inside my mother's womb, where I was born with a male brain and female biology (but also some bits and pieces of male biology like I am 5 foot 10, broad shoulders, take a size 14 US mens shoe, and have a naturally deep voice). That does not mean I am wrong or broken. It means that part of my journey in life is transfiguration. Incidentally, my journey of becoming trans helped me on the journey of converting to Judaism, because there were parallels and things that felt familiar.

It is true that in the past I struggled with eating disorders and a shitty self-image but that was due to dysphoria and not having the words for it. But I was not ugly in my female-facing days, and I am not trans because I feel like an ugly woman and think I can become a hot guy. I am trans because I have a body and brain mismatch and no amount of learning to love yourself can fix that. Indeed, I actually have decent self-esteem now because I am being who I am instead of hiding and suffocating.

The Jewish framing of repair has been helpful. Transition feels like participating in that larger work of fixing what is askew in creation. Living as male has allowed genuine self-regard to grow where before there was mostly disconnection and management of distress. I might have been pretty then, but I feel fabulous now.

Q: Isn't it just autism?

A: I am autistic, but me saying "I am a boy" starting in childhood never came from a place of "I am Not Like The Other Girls, ergo I must be a boy", that was never how my brain related to my maleness. I also have cishet female autistic friends.

There have been some reports that a disproportionately high number of trans people are on the autistic spectrum, but I do not think that trans people being autistic disproves their transness. A lot of cis gay people are also on the autistic spectrum (like my partner!) and the same TERFs (often lesbians) are not saying this means you are not gay.

Autism and transness can coexist without one causing the other. My early sense of being a boy was not a byproduct of social awkwardness or failure to perform femininity in expected ways. It was a core recognition that existed alongside my autism, not because of it. Many autistic people are cis and straight. Many gay people are autistic. The overlap does not invalidate the underlying orientation or identity in either case.

Q: You said you've felt like a boy since you were four? Are you one of those gr**mers who wants to trans kids?

A: Generally speaking, I do not think anyone under the age of 18 should be making irreversible life decisions, including medical.

I hit puberty fairly young and it was absolute hell for me, with my dysphoria. In the 80s and 90s, there was really no awareness of trans issues, but had it existed at the time, social transitioning and having family support would have helped. However, I would still retroactively impose "wait until you are 18 to do anything permanent" on myself, as much as I was uncomfortable. I feel that the backlash against trans people started when people in the community became vocal that kids should be allowed to transition. Again, socially I think it is fine. Medically, I think anything permanent should be the decision of adults. I never grew out of being trans and most true trans people do not, but it is still important to have safeguards in place. And allowing someone to explore gender presentation and names and pronouns can help dial dysphoria down from a dangerous suicidal level to "this sucks but it is manageable".

Unfortunately, maximalist positions are being pushed by the community and I think it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise, but I do not believe it is all of us. Most of the trans people I know over 40 who have been out for a decade or more agree with me on this.

One thing I firmly believe is that non-binary without dysphoria people do not need hormones or surgery and those resources should be saved for those of us who are actually trans (dysphoric). As I keep saying, I will respect your preferred name and pronouns (within reason, no neopronouns) out of common courtesy, but do not expect me to change my mind that you are really one of us.

My own childhood underscores the value of caution. The intensity of my feelings was real, yet I recognize now how much more devastating a wrong decision at that age could have been. Social support and the freedom to experiment with presentation could have eased the worst of it. Medical steps, however, require the maturity that only adulthood brings. Protecting dysphoric youth and their future as trans adults means balancing compassion with prudence rather than rushing into permanence.

Q: You Will Never Be A Real Man. Trans men aren't men.

A: Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.

So here's the thing: I do believe in a thing called common courtesy, and that it hurts no one to respect names and pronouns (within reason, neopronouns are garbage). If you think that using he/him pronouns for me "reinforces a delusion" as some have said, then yes you are being an asshole.

That being said, you do not have to agree with me on whether or not I am actually a man. You just need to not be an asshole to my face. My thing is I don't really give a shit if random strangers think I am a real man or not. I want the freedom to just live my life and be left alone in peace. That means I do not want you policing where I can go to the bathroom and things like that which affect my day-to-day life.

This distinction between private belief and public behavior feels crucial. Civility costs little and preserves dignity for everyone involved. I do not require universal agreement on the metaphysics of gender. I require space to exist without constant harassment over basic functions and to just be allowed to be myself. The live-and-let-live principle has room for disagreement as long as it does not spill into interference with daily life.

In closing, these questions have followed me through different phases of life. Answering them here is not about winning arguments or demanding conversion. It is about laying out the texture of one person's experience with as much honesty as I can manage. Being trans for me has been a long process of reconciliation between body and mind, complicated by external pressures and internal growth. My partnership with Andy, my Jewish practice, my creative work, all sit alongside this reality rather than in opposition to it. I hope some readers find something useful in these reflections, even if they ultimately reach different conclusions. The world is large enough for complexity, and personal truth does not have to be a battleground.