Becoming Villian #1

When gender transition threatens to turn you into a straight, white man

May 28, 2025

Before I left LA I saw a trans comedian who joked, “I realize it’s pretty unpopular to be a straight white man right now, but give me a minute to enjoy it. I just got here.”

You maybe thought I was going to talk about how trans people are villain #1 of the Trump White House, but no. I choose instead to talk about the Trump folks who tried to distract the country from the fact that it is they that are the villains, but sorry guys, we have noticed.

Since at least Trump administration 1.0, the stock of the average straight white man has fallen, and fast. You could argue that this avatar’s identity stock has plummeted so much that it has given rise to this new wave of rehetoric that we are now faced with, trying to prop it up again. The anti-DEI, anti-woke brigade wants desperately to make it cool to be an authoritarian white daddy again, while not realizing their premise is flawed.

For one, woke is now only a word that they use. And for two, you can’t make an enemy of more than 70% of the country’s diverse, non-white male population without becoming the evil outlier. If they haven’t fully succeeded yet in convincing the majority of us, I am confident that given time they will.

My last two essays have been about two fairly toxic, misguided white men (Trump and Kinkade) and how their worst behaviors are part of us too. With these shadow-centric themes simmering in my mind, and the constant flow of wild executive orders, I have been wondering what it has to do with me. Like a detective, I am always searching for clues on how we might be able to use this as a chance to heal, or at least to see things less catastrophically.

I’m at a stage where every step in the gender transition process is a concscious choice about whether I want to look more masculine. Questions like: do I want to take more testosterone? Do I want to get top surgery? Do I want to change my gender or name legally? Essentially, how important is it to me to pass as male?

One of the goodies I found in this shit basket is personal. I realized one barrier to fully embracing my gender transition is fearing what will happen if/when I identify as a white male myself.

I don’t want to come off as disingenuous or too pre-emptive in talking about this issues because I’m not presenting male and won’t be truly guy-passing for a while, if ever. I’ve been told that testosterone takes on a life of its own, whatever that means. Is that like a room of one’s own? Most of the time I operate in the world as a butch lesbian, which is fine for now.

But I’m at a stage where every step in the gender transition process is a conscious choice about whether I want to look more masculine. I have to get clear on questions like: do I want to take more testosterone? Do I want to get top surgery? Do I want to change my gender or name legally? Should I take voice lessons if my voice starts to change? Essentially, how important is it to me to pass as male?

This subject of male toxicity isn’t new for trans masc people. We talked briefly about it in my podcast episode with trans artist Eli Thorne a couple years ago, who shared his thoughts on cis straight guys and how they are raised to be rule followers.

Listen to that episode:

It’s probably because the rules most of us were taught as children reinforce white men as the top of the social food chain, by no fault of their own. What kid doesn’t like being told they are the best? But like with all validation and perks, it comes with golden handcuffs - same as fitting into the box for pretty little ladies. It means straight white guys are often stuck in a hell of their own creation like Robert the incel from Cat Person, eyeliner-wearing JD Vance, or anyone who is taking the gamble to join Trump’s team to get ahead forgetting that the house always wins (and the house is Trump.)

And for the record, I know plenty of awesome straight white guys who I would consider models for alternative, non-toxic forms of masculinity. A lot of sensitive, inside-kid, art dudes fall into this category, as any men who don’t think the world owes them anything - or at least more than other people because of their identity. As I write this I’m realizing that I haven’t talked to any of them on my podcast about their relationship to masculinity, or their relationship to femininity for that matter - and maybe that’s a blind spot. Sorry guys.

I also think that being self-obsessed and entitled is a very common combination of traits, unfortunately, but it’s benign when the beholder is just a cranky artist. The tricky part is when you give people with those narcissistic traits a bunch of power.

Anyway, all that is to say, between our social fabric crumbling because of a small subset of straight white guys trying to remove everyone else from positions of power, and most likely leftover shame from my past lives as a cis white guy who murdered and pillaged, it is easy to see why passing as a white dude feels fraught.

But also the interesting thing about going through a gender transition is to see first-hand how fluid and flimsy gender identity really is. What is a woman?, a rhetorical question from a certain subset of conservative YouTube celebrities and the name of a documentary that makes fun of trans people, actually has a socially-defined answer as well as a biological one. Gender is often in the eye of the chromosome defender, the stylist, the vitamin and hormone taker, the doctor, the person on the street, and so on. With every walk of life there is a perspective on what constitutes femininity and masculinity.

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So what is there to do? If being an empowered white guy is currently my shadow self, how do I integrate him into my life? How does one embrace big dick energy without being a dick?

One of the ideas that came up over the weekend while talking with some of my woo woo friends was, rather than performing one gender and then another, try to get to a place of neutrality by listening to your intuition.

I have quoted Jessica Lanyadoo before who has said on her podcast that intuition is neutral, which I love as an explanation. Being neutral means you’re free of judgement, free of fear or heavy emotion, and free of urgency. When you’re trying to discern between your loudest thoughts and your best thoughts, her advice goes that you should trust the ones with the least emotional energy or attachment around them.

Following neutral guidance from your intuition means you show up as yourself without having to please others. It may mean doing something that feels uncomfortable, but not because it makes you feel uncomfortable. Listening to neutral guidance may mean, as it did for me, that you realize your body doesn’t feel neutral, or match what you feel inside. That is how I first knew that my body didn’t fit who I was. It started with my boobs.

I have always had a nice enough rack. (I say this with a white, Western lens.) My 34 DDs (according to Lively), have always been perky, small enough to not hurt my back, and well into 30’s couldn’t hold a pencil underneath them. They looked like boobs are supposed to and, by all patriarchal standards, I should have been happy.

But as I got older and could hear my inner voice with more clarity, I realized that while these bubs were just fine, they weren’t fine for me. To hold space for them, I had to shift my sense of integrity. Even now, especially now, smushed into a sports bra, they feel discordant with how I want to walk through the world.

I talk a little about this with breast-pert Sarah Thornton:

Then I heard something on the binge-worthy podcast Telepathy Tapes. They were interviewing a sound and music therapist who works with autistic kids. and she was recounting how one of the non-verbal children had told her, through the practice of spelling, that she was there to help him make the frequency of his body match the frequency of his soul. (If this sounds out there, please listen to a few episodes of the show for context. It’s beyond wild.)

As I heard that explanation of what it would be for this young student to heal, and get more connected to his body, I got chills. He wants to get to neutral so his body and soul can match.

Neutral will be different for everyone which is why it’s so hard to tell people how to follow their intuition. And why it’s so hard to explain why you know you are gay, or trans, or really anything for certain. Only you know what neutral is for you.

So now what, as I follow the breadcrumbs, it turns out my soul holds the frequency of a straight white male? Send help. (Just kidding.)

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Becoming Villian #1

When gender transition threatens to turn you into a straight, white man

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