Part 2: Building Your Trans Identity and Unpicking the Stitches To Those you Admire.
Part 2 of 3: The Men I Admire
I sat on the lip of the loading dock behind a punk bar out in the boonies. The sort of establishment that takes full advantage of the isolation to push the sound system to places that workplace health and safety fear to tread. The sweating, non-gendered punk god I came to watch scream into a microphone was sitting next to me. I leaned into their sweaty body, luxuriating in the huffing warmth of them, coquettishly nuzzling up like a diligent groupie should. I was content to just sit and marvel at them as they pulled at their vape and distracted themselves with the task of feeling the full force of their own post-show self-doubt.
Then from around the corner came one of the men I’d aspired to be.
Cigarette half rolled; he broke into a grin. Introductions all round. It’d been years since we’d had much to do with each other. Contact had faded long before I’d even considered transitioning. I explained to the non-gendered punk god that this guy right here, a co-worker, a big brother, a mentor had been one of my “models for being a man”, back when I thought it was something I’d wanted.
Because long before I knew I was trans, I knew something about me was “off”.
As a child, laying on the floor under the Christmas tree I flicked through the book “How To Hold a Crocodile: Hundreds of Fascinating Facts and Wisdom”. This book had everything. How to make a mummy, how to build a log cabin, how to get an audience with the pope. It had facts about tarantulas, playing the bagpipes and the marvels of the human body. Tucked away in a corner of a page was a diagram of three men, just outlines really, and the words Ectomorph, Mesomorph and Endomorph. In one figure I could instantly see the shape of my older brother and father. I could see their triangular torso’s, their narrow hips, their ideal frame for muscle and strength… and I could see how I wasn’t the same. I could see there on the page, rendered in a few small lines, my soft roundness, my narrow shoulders and wide hips.
That was the beginning of feeling like I would never be “a man”. I was seven.
In the decades that followed I sought out different men to model myself on. I quickly dispensed with the sort that would exploit and misuse. I’d no idea what I wanted to be, but I sure as fuck knew it wasn’t that. There’s been cavalcade of soft-boys, gentle dads and vibe-bros throughout my life. Very few of them would know how much they mean to me. Even less would know that this person I am now, this expression of my newly understood gender, wouldn’t have come into existence if it wasn’t for them. Without their kind and gentle nurturing to manhood, I’d never have realised it wasn’t something I wanted.
So, these are some of the men I admire. These are the ones who helped me be “me”.
Part 2: The Men
I admire that gloriously large man-child. Truth is he’s a responsible adult but loves to exude a disarming air of queer boyishness. Long-distance friendships mean less time spent, but when I do see him, I leap into his arms (quite literally as he’s a “massive cunt”) and croon into his ear, “come here ya enormous faggot!” To which he typically replies, hand to his chest in the very model of sincerity, “Aw, thank you ya monstrous tranny.” He’s the only cisgendered person I’ve ever allowed say that word to me. The only one… and even then, I’ll still occasionally wind up and slap him full across his meaty cheek, cackling like a scorned 1940’s movie starlet who had to resort to getting her hands dirty because she didn’t have a martini to lash in his face. Typically, we then proceed to catch up by saying awful things about each other to demonstrate the depth of love we share. I admire the enormity of him. He’s spent the last decade deliberately attaining mass. The sheer quantity of food consumed, the sheer amount of weights lifted, he’s quite literally the mass of 2-3 people. He’s the embodiment of the idea that “we are instruments, not ornaments”, curating the form to make him an unstoppable juggernaut on the sporting field. I admire the way he reshaped himself to be the person he wants to be, refusing to minimise himself for a world that was quite literally not built to accommodate him.
I admire the man who opened his home to me when my life fell apart. He too knew what it was like to suffer the bewildering confusion of abuse from someone you love, someone you trust. He’d lived the complexities of being trans and coming to terms with never truly feeling “safe” in the world. I admire the way he gathers people like me, the lost and lonesome, to ensure they have someplace to go. His house parties are growing to become things of legend. Not for the outrageous antics of the attendees, no, it’s all very relaxed and wholesome, but for the ratios of queerness and transness present. Sitting on the couch and looking around I’d so often be struck by the realisation: There are no cisgendered people here… A whole house of us, dozens and dozens of diverse bodies, diverse identities… and every single one of them understands this “thing” I feel. I admire this man for showing me how to live and exist in my community and I’m grateful for him making me feel safe in ways no one else could.
I admire the writer, father, and perpetual self-doubter. His warmth, his charm, the softness of the skin of his arm when I reach across the cafe table. Reaching out in those moments when the conversation strays into discussing the ways our queerness is diminished in the world. The gentle intimacy of our conversations struck me like a blow. I marvelled at his capacity for vulnerability with a someone who is essentially a stranger. If I was allowed, I’d plant kisses on his lips and hold him tight, telling him his softness, his kindness, his doubt, these are marvellous things for a man to be.
I’d signed up for roller derby before men were even allowed play in this country. Satisfied just to be adjacent to all these magnificent, unconventional women I fell in the refs and officials. For a time, it the only way to be involved and a damn sight easier than transing your gender in order to be on skates. When I learnt of a small local group of men playing derby, I didn’t even have to think about it. I knew that I wanted on that team, even more so when I met their captain. A full head shorter than me, heavily tattooed, rock-a-billy dad-vibes. I’ve nothing but fond memories of watching him parent his boys when they were at that unruly age. He would sigh and with gentle insistence ask his kids, “come on guys, is this what we want to be doing?” rather than simply resorting to yelling, or threatening, or intimidating his children like I’ve seen so many other men do. He’s the first man I ever saw “gentle parent” his kids in an era long before the term was even used. I admire him for his patience, his calm his willingness to wait for his request to be heard rather than just demanding immediate compliance under threat of consequence.
I admire that boy who was the first to ever put their hands on this body with desire. It’d be years until a girl would even see me undressed, but before then I had the simple magnificence of “teenage boy” desire. Moments of fumbled hands and mouths in the dark, kisses and silent ecstasy. He was so unashamedly queer and unphased at having the word “faggot” spat at him daily by all the other private school boys. I wish I’d been more like him back then. Part of me withered away under the weight of the schoolyard slurs, while he seemed to flourish. It took me years to reconnect with that part of myself, to admit my queerness. It was by keeping his example in my mind that i found it. Now decades later I’m blessed to see this boy become a magnificent man. I admire that he continues to exist without a single fuck to spare for how the world views him.
I kept getting “mental-health checks” from theatre-makers. I’d become embroiled in a writing process shepherded by a man with a reputation for being “difficult”. Despite the well-meaning nature of the inquiries, I was struck at how few understood him. It seemed that his brashness, his rants about the “erosion of excellence” were superficial signs of some flaw, but inside the room? Inside I was challenged, there was nothing to hide behind. We both fought and bickered and advocated for our ideas. Our voices sometimes raised, our tone sometimes sharp, but all things, politeness, decorum, civility, nothing was more important than the quality of the work. In those moments, when the lines blurred and neither of us were certain if we were talking about the emotions of characters or if we were talking about our own, I could see he examined himself just as ruthlessly as he did the writing. He’d spent decades dissecting the fundamental flaws of characters, of course he was dissecting his own. Of course, he was wrestling both with the long-dead ghost of an abusive father and the knowledge that life is just one long unresolved “Second Act”. You see, the tragedy of writers is the knowledge that no matter how many times you see it on film or on stage or on the page, no one in the real world ever achieves the story beat of Apotheosis. We just continue the internal struggle until we stop, or end. To spend time with someone who knows in his bones he may never achieve anything at all but still persevere is an inspiration. I admire this man for so many things, for his passion, for taking an interest in my career when no one else would. But mostly I admire him for his unwillingness to yield, or to stop, even when he knows there won’t be a reward at the end, only the certainty that he was true to himself.
My heart breaks whenever I think of my childhood friend moving away… But I still admire him for doing it. I miss him so dearly. I miss his all-grown-up laugh and smile and the shadow of that teenager, the one who would walk the streets with me at 2am, that sits behind it. It takes an enormous amount of courage to walk away from your entire life, to cut your tethered orbit to a town not because there isn’t anything there for you, but because there isn’t anything there for your newborn son. It must have been a terrible burden to realise that this cradle, this place and scant family you have left, will do nothing but harm him. How many are capable of packing up their life for the possibility that things might be better elsewhere? How many would just stay, thinking “oh it will be fine” all the way up to when it isn’t and then wonder why? I admire him for sacrificing his world for the possibility of a better one for his new family. Yes, it hurts, but I’m proud of him for doing it. I can’t wait to meet the man his son becomes.
Like my previous post about the women in my life, there’s not enough pages to describe how much I admire my brother. A mere 21 months between us, he protected me like a big brother should, even more so now that he knows it was actually a little sister, he had all along. There are not enough pages to describe how much I admire my father, still a bulwark against the creeping cynicism that’s claiming the rest of his generation. Not enough pages to describe the new chapter of honesty between us as I live as his only daughter and not his second son. Not enough pages to describe any of the work husbands or uproarious lovers, not enough pages to describe dear friends who I watch settle into glorious middle-age. Watch as they embrace dad jokes and the comfortable spread of their bodies.
Every one of you is magnificent and I admire you.
It’s clear that I love to make a “bullshit statement”. If you’ve read any of these screeds, you’ll see a pattern. Typically, I make some idiotic or outrageous claim. Then I double down, pushing it further into absurdity. Only then do I set about demonstrating the kernel of truth in it. After all, “artists use lies to tell the truth” and this screed is no different to the others… so something outrageous? How about…
Trans men are the “true men” in our world. They’re more “men” than cis men are.
They were not baptized in the waters of masculinity, merely anointed with them later in life. The culture of male dominance is fed from birth to those who are, or thought to be, cisgendered men (I’m including myself here). This steady stream of entitlement at best establishes awful behaviour as the path of least resistance and at worst forces men into an ever-shrinking box of limited identity. Trans men are blessed to take on the mantle of “being a man” without this infusion from infancy. They are blessed to form their identity when their minds and their spirits have existed long enough to have agency and empathy. They get to pick and choose what sort of man they are. Not so for little boys, too young to know that the groundwork is being laid for them to be exploiters, or to be emotionally stunted, or to be quite simply… shit human beings. I’ve always been fascinated by the curated masculinity of trans men. The picking and choosing, the weighing of values, the re-mixing that goes into building a gender identity from the untainted scraps mainstream culture has left them.
But do you may notice something about all the cis men I have described here?
Plenty of cisgendered men do this too. The difficulty with statements like “yes, all men” is that there are quite clearly men in this world, the soft, gentle dads who devote themselves to modelling compassion to their little ones, who don’t deserve to be painted with that brush. What about the immaculate-vibe bros who’d put a hand to a friend’s chest and say “dude?” when they’ve strayed into Incel territory? Or the company men who use their privilege to elevate women, hanging back without praise or recognition because they know it’s someone else’s turn?
These men exist and I admire them. They’ve done something akin to what I’ve done as a trans woman, something akin to what trans men must do every day. These men have turned their gaze inwards and asked, truly asked themselves: “is this the sort of man I wish to be?”
I’ll always admire any man who has the bravery to ask himself that question. No matter the answer, I can’t pretend that I don’t see some resonance, some similarity to my transition in them.
–S