In April of 2010, myself and my ex were held up at gunpoint. A man was mugging us. I was held execution style on the ground. I hadn’t transitioned yet. But from behind, I definitely looked like a guy. I wore men’s clothes, I had short hair, and I was wearing a beanie. It was a really kind of strange, very scary, very long mugging—probably ten to fifteen minutes. The guy was really addled. He couldn’t really decide what he wanted. Obviously, money. But we didn’t have any, and he didn’t really go away when he realized that.
At some point, I think I realized I was probably going to die, because he was really freaking out. He was completely focused on me. He really disregarded her. And he wasn’t leaving. I had just sort of left my body. Eventually I realized I hadn’t spoken the entire time that we were being held up, and my ex had. She said that she didn’t have cash again, and I finally sort of parroted her. As soon as I spoke, he let us go and told us to run. And so we ran.
As time went on, there were other muggings in Oakland. One where a guy was shot, and then a very high-profile one: this man named Jinghong Kang, who was in town from Virginia for a Google interview, was murdered in a very similar case to what happened to us. The man who murdered Jinghong Kang and shot this other man was later arrested in a very dramatic citizen’s arrest. It was the same guy who had held us up.
It became clear that his MO was to rob couples and to shoot the men.
That’s why he let us go as soon as I spoke. Since I hadn’t started testosterone at that point, my voice hadn't changed.
We were released because I wasn’t yet a man.
Once I was able to escape, I kind of got into this place where I was like, What am I doing? I’m not happy. And there’s nothing to be scared of, because the worst thing possible just happened, and I survived it. So that started me on a whole journey to figure out what my gender really was... I felt almost woken up.
When I transitioned, I was like, Wow. I’m scary suddenly to people, especially to women. I became a threat. And I’ve felt much more of an edginess in the world, knowing that there’s all this dark matter that exists in relationship to masculinity.
I had this very toxic association with masculinity because of my father, who had abused me, and then, in a way, weirdly, this guy who let me go. But I realized I couldn’t navigate my life around the thought that Men are all negative, and I don’t want to be a man. I couldn’t live out my own gender based on people around me. I thought to myself, What I really need to do is find a way to be the kind of man that I know I can be. Almost as soon as that happened, I started seeing a lot of men who were positive and honest. My eyes opened up a lot more. It’s not that I have a Pollyannaish relationship with men now, but I do feel like I had a very uncomplicated dynamic with men and now it’s much more complicated and I see a lot more beauty there. We don’t see it as masculine when men are empathetic, and I think that’s a thing that’s worth examining in our selves.
For example, my barbershop… I always feel like it’s so tender and intimate to get my haircut now. Before, it was a haircut. Now, they’re shaving you, there’s a lot of touching. It’s just very gentle. And I see men be tender in a way that’s really shocking. The advice they give each other and the ways guys will open up to strangers about women and say almost uncomfortably vulnerable things in a way that I feel like in female spaces wouldn’t happen unless you are talking to your best friend.
I’m in a relationship now with a woman. It’s the first relationship I’ve been in since my transition, the first relationship I’ve really entered as a man. I’m really seeing how male tenderness can operate. And I don’t think there’s some essentialist way that men are and women are, but I do think that when people experience the world really differently there’s going to be a synergy to being with each other. Specifically in my case, I feel very much like non-verbal ways of interacting and tenderness have been way upped.
Being vulnerable as a man is very different. It’s kind of unexpected most of the time and being able to do that, it sort of creates a nice different alternative kind of space with women in my life.
Throughout my book, I keep asking, “What makes a man?” I think it’s about integrity. I was thirty when I transitioned; I had a whole life before that. So how can I, in this life, in this body, have a sense of consistency and integrity, with self-respect for my past? How can everything feel like it aligns all together? The longer I’m in the world, the longer I think I was born in the right body, it just was a transgender body. I wouldn’t perceive myself in ever having been wrong in who I was.
When you are in a position of privilege, you see yourself as an individual, whereas other people see you as part of a system. It’s your responsibility as a guy to realize you don’t live in a fair world, and it’s not an unfair request for you to be more cognizant of that, to be an ally to the women around you and not rely on women to make an effort to fit in your world. For example, if you’re on an empty street with a woman, you should probably give her more space.
The thing I was most afraid of was being a bad man, and I think I’m a good man. Before, I saw masculinity as this monolithic thing that potentially could be harmful, or as this thing that sort of happened to you or didn’t happen to you, sort of this force you had to work with. And now I see it as a really beautiful expression of self with just as much opportunity to make change, because there’s so much power in this world concentrated around men. It’s exciting to feel like instead of having to work against that, I can use that for positive change.
I think I’m the same person, but I think that being a man has brought out parts of my personality that are really great. And I guess I wouldn’t have thought I’d ever say that. I think I’m a better person being a man.
From the editors of Esquire
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