The Long Road to Manhood and the Case for Heroic Masculinity

[October 2025]

I knew I was a boy when I was four. Problem: I was growing up in the 1980s, when trans visibility was about as common as unicorn sightings. And not the cute Lisa Frank ones—more like the ominous medieval woodcut variety.

Puberty hit me early, like a freight train with no brakes. For most kids, puberty is awkward. For me, it was hell on earth with a laugh track. My body betrayed me with breasts and periods and hips, each one an exclamation mark screaming you are not who you know you are. And the world? Oh, it noticed. Suddenly, men who could have been my father’s age looked at me like I was meat on sale. Boys my own age started catcalling and groping me in middle school, like they’d seen it on TV and thought they were auditioning for the role of Street Harasser #1. Teachers ignored it, or worse, implied I should feel flattered. By the time I was twelve, I’d been ogled, whispered about, and leered at enough to know what misogyny felt like in my bones—even if I didn’t yet have the word for it.

People talk about “girlhood” with nostalgia. I don’t. Mine was a haunted house I couldn’t escape from, one that was sentient and trying to strangle me to death. And I didn’t yet have the words to explain why being shoved into the “female” box felt like slow suffocation. But I did know what it meant to be underestimated, talked over, dismissed. I knew what it meant to have your intelligence doubted, your interests mocked, your body policed.

The message was clear: whatever you did, you were wrong. Boys could stumble around, fart, fight, pick their noses, and be considered “just boys being boys.” I, on the other hand, was expected to be polished, pleasant, pliable. A decorative vase on someone else’s shelf. If I didn't shave my legs or my pits, I was "gross". If I didn't wear makeup, I was frumpy, and if I did wear makeup, I was a cheap slut.

It was exhausting. Misogyny wasn’t just background noise; it was surround sound. The church sermons about “submitting.” The commercials that told me beauty products were my destiny. The way even relatives would joke that my worth was tied to marriageability. Everyone seemed to have a stake in reminding me what I wasn’t allowed to be.

And beneath it all, a deeper horror: I didn’t even belong to the group they were targeting. I wasn’t a girl. I wasn't even a girl who was Not Like The Other Girls. I was a boy locked in the wrong body, sentenced to serve time under misogyny’s rule just because that’s what my birth certificate said.

And here’s where my story diverges from the “classic” trans man narrative people expect. I wasn’t a tomboy. I wasn’t a jock. To this day, I don't give a shit about sports. I was and am a nerd, full stop. My mother desperately wanted a little froo-froo doll she could parade in ruffles and bows, and she was deeply disappointed when I didn’t play the part. But my sense of being a boy, which started at age four, wasn’t just about rejecting dresses or makeup, it wasn't really about hobbies or societal scripts at all. I would have felt the same even in a perfectly egalitarian world where kids could wear what they wanted and like what they liked without judgment.

People sometimes assume I “became trans” because I felt like an ugly woman who couldn’t measure up to beauty standards. Wrong. I was disgusted by those standards, sure, and by the pressure to conform—but my transness has never been a cosmetic self-esteem project. It wasn’t that I thought I was a bad version of a woman. It was that I knew, in my marrow, I was a man. Always had been.

_____

​If misogyny was the wallpaper of my life, toxic men were the architects.

My father was the prototype. He was abusive in every category you can tick: physical, verbal, sexual. He drank like he was trying to drown us all, and when that wasn’t enough, he snorted cocaine until it literally dissolved the cartilage in his nose. He used to push it out of place with his finger, like a party trick from hell. Eventually he had to get a nose job. Imagine being so deep in your addiction that your face collapses. That was my dad: violent, unpredictable, hollowed out by substances and rage.

Living with him was like living with a storm that never passed. You tiptoed, you measured your breaths, you learned to be silent. You learned early what it means when masculinity curdles into monstrosity.

Then, years later, I married my ex-husband. Because trauma scripts love a sequel. When I met him in the 2000s, he was a centrist libertarian—annoying Randroid but manageable. I was liberal but hadn’t yet made the jump to socialist, so we could talk politics without immediately setting each other on fire.

But then, like a frog in the pot, he simmered under the growing influence of right-wing media until one day I looked over and realized he was cooked. The Tea Party years radicalized him. The politically incorrect jokes turned into rants, the rants into obsessions. By the time I left him, he had shaved his head, bought a gun, spent his nights posting on Stormfront, was a big fan of Alex Jones, and unleashed wild tirades about “the Jews” ruining the world. [And this was before I converted to Judaism. Imagine the cosmic irony of realizing your ex-husband was a Nazi-in-training when you’re destined to become Jewish.]

​Abusive, controlling, politically unhinged. He was a man who let toxic masculinity and extremist propaganda hollow him out until nothing remained but hate.

​By the time I came out as trans at 33, I’d been battered by decades of misogyny, by abusive men, by the suffocating weight of a gender that was never mine. Coming out wasn’t a gentle butterfly moment. It was claws in dirt, lungs burning, breaking through the coffin lid after years underground. It was resurrection, but bloody.

In queer spaces, trans men are often treated like we “level up” into immediate male privilege, as though decades of misogyny vanish the second we come out. TERFs love to claim we only transition to escape misogyny, especially if we have an abuse history.

But the reality is harsher: we still face misogyny when we're incorrectly read as female, or when we're clocked; those of us without the privilege of legal transition, especially in conservative areas, still face misogyny in situations where we can’t safely be out, or sometimes even when we are. 

The phrase “YWNBAM” (“You Will Never Be A Man”) has been hurled at me for over a decade, a favorite taunt of bigots and gatekeepers alike. I’ve had some cis gay men tell me I don’t belong in the gay community because of my “disgusting parts", I've heard jokes about "fish" and so on. I've been asked, in earnest, why I can't "just be a straight woman". [Uhhh because I tried that for 33 years. Straight women sometimes fantasize about watching two men go at it; in my fantasies I'm one of the guys doing gay stuff with male parts.]

In January 2025 on DeviantART, a creepy guy began messaging me, expressing interest in a relationship because he mistakenly perceived me as female. When I corrected him and told him I'm transmasc, his response was to tell me what a "beautiful woman" I was and that I just needed a "real man" to "make me feel like a real woman". To prove his worth, he sent me an unsolicited dick pic. Then weeks later, he engaged in some stalker-y behavior once I got together with someone else.

Fuck no, misogyny hasn’t disappeared from my life. It just runs parallel now with something new. What do I mean?

Well, I love queer community, but it’s not immune from bullshit. And one flavor of bullshit is this: the idea that manhood is inherently suspect. That masculinity is the problem. That trans men like me are traitors who defected to “the enemy camp.”

It stings worse when it comes from people who should know better.  I’ve had people act like my not being into women was some sort of moral failing, like I was betraying feminism by daring to love men. There’s a vibe in some LGBTQ+ spaces that “women are better” by default—and therefore, choosing manhood, living as a man, and loving men is a moral downgrade.

​Listen: I didn’t crawl out of a grave at 33 just to be told my manhood is defective. And I didn’t survive misogyny, abuse, and erasure just to be called trash for existing in the gender that’s always been mine.

_____

​Let’s be clear: masculinity isn’t the villain. The villain is toxic masculinity—the narrow, rigid script that strangles humanity out of men and anyone adjacent.

You know the lines:

• Boys don’t cry.

• Man up.

• Don’t be a pussy.

• Never show weakness.

• Dominate or be dominated.

It’s a script that leaves no room for tenderness, no room for authenticity. It turns men into caricatures, women into prey, and queer people into collateral damage. My father followed it until it destroyed him. My ex followed it until it radicalized him. The culture keeps handing that script to boys like it’s gospel, and then wonders why men are collapsing under the weight of it.

​The tragedy is that toxic masculinity hurts everyone. Men who buy into it lose themselves. Men who resist it get mocked or punished. Women and queer folks are crushed under its heel. It’s a poison that seeps into every crack of society.

​The antidote isn’t abolishing manhood. It’s redefining it. It’s heroic masculinity.

Heroic masculinity isn’t puffed chests and fragile egos. It isn’t dominance dressed up as strength. It’s about choosing courage without cruelty, strength without suppression, tenderness without apology.

It looks like Mister Rogers changing his shoes and telling millions of kids, “You are loved just the way you are.” It looks like Bob Ross whispering encouragement as he painted happy little trees, teaching that mistakes are just happy accidents. It looks like Captain America throwing away the rulebook to follow his conscience. Aragorn, leading with humility and healing hands before he ever picked up a crown. Martin Luther King Jr., marching unarmed into the teeth of state violence because justice demanded it.

It looks like David Bowie, bending gender and declaring strangeness sacred. T’Challa, a king who balances tradition and progress, wielding his power with honor and responsibility, and his actor Chadwick Boseman, carrying both representation and terminal illness with grace. Robin Williams, who poured joy into others while carrying his own pain. Terry Crews, muscles like mountains but still unashamed to talk about his own survival of assault. Jean-Luc Picard, steering the Enterprise with intellect and empathy, a captain who proves that leadership isn’t about brute force but about principle and vision. Patrick Stewart, who brought Picard to life and then turned around to fight domestic violence in the real world, using his voice and stature in service of others. Harvey Milk, whose bravery was simply living out loud. David Attenborough, whispering reverence for the planet instead of trying to conquer it. Keanu Reeves, who plays unstoppable assassins on screen but is known offscreen for kindness and humility. Desmond Tutu, laughing in the face of injustice, wielding joy like a weapon. Prince, strutting in lace and heels, showing masculinity can shimmer in purple.

And from the realm of fiction again: Uncle Iroh, the retired general who chooses tea, wisdom, and kindness over endless conquest, showing that true strength is restraint and compassion.  Jonathan Kent, the farmer who raised Superman with values of humility and care, proving that the mightiest hero was made not by his powers but by his father’s example. Oberyn Martell, fierce and sensual, a warrior and a lover whose masculinity embraced both tenderness and ferocity without shame.

I learned how to be a man from the example of my art teacher, who was warm and funny and never talked down to us, and saw nothing unmanly in making beautiful things. I learned how to be a man from my fourth grade teacher, who was fondly exasperated with all us kids like an 80s sitcom dad and recognized my dyslexia and dyscalculia and still believed I was smart and capable. I learned how to be a man from the gay best friends I had as a teenager and in my twenties and thirties. All ordinary people, but all of them made their corner of the world a better place for being in it. They were heroes to me, each in their own way.

_____

Heroic masculinity is like a fire, but not the wildfire that consumes. It’s the hearth: steady, warm, sustaining life in the cold. It’s a tree: roots deep enough to weather storms, branches wide enough to shelter others. It’s a bridge: not existing to be admired, but to connect two shores and carry others across. It’s a sword in its scabbard, powerful but patient. It’s an anchor holding steady in a storm. A waterfall when force is needed, a stream when gentleness is wiser. A constellation reminding you you’re not alone in the night. A conductor’s baton drawing harmony out of chaos. An open door, choosing welcome over barricade. A forge, where heat shapes raw metal into something purposeful.

For me, masculinity isn’t about performance. It’s about survival. It’s about resilience. It’s about choosing every day not to let toxic scripts define me.

When I cry, it doesn’t make me less of a man. It makes me human. When I protect fiercely, it isn’t control—it’s love. When I laugh, when I create, when I refuse to bow to anyone’s expectation of what a man “should” be, that’s my masculinity.

I reject the poison and embrace the antidote. My masculinity is forged from trauma, yes, but also from love. From the men I admire, from the partner I adore, from the vision of manhood that heals instead of harms.

The world doesn’t need fewer men. It needs better men. It needs heroic masculinity to drown out the toxic. It needs men who can wield a sword when necessary but know that the greater heroism is in laying it down.

I survived misogyny. I survived misandry. I survived toxic men and toxic scripts. And I still claim my manhood—not as a curse but as a banner. Because masculinity isn’t the problem. Cowardice masquerading as masculinity is the problem.

​And I’m not here for that script. I’m here for the rewrite.