Concise account of aspects of the transmasculine experience, including the degree of transphobia in the UK (which almost seems mild compares to 2025), why they chose to hide their transness for many years, and the importance of finding joy in being trans.

Although it’s different to my experience, there was a lot of resonance. It’s a short, quick read that I finished in one go.

A passage that I was especially struck by:

I do find transness beguiling. I was one thing, and now I am something else. Is that not a kind of magic? I am the person I always wanted to be. How can that be anything than joyful?

I don’t actually care whether or not I was born this way. I’ve seen myself as either a boy or a man for as long as I can remember, and so I assume that whatever it is that makes me transgender has been with me from the start, or close to it. Whether I came out of the womb like this, however, or whether I absorbed it as I was growing up is irrelevant. It’s infantilising to be talked about in a way that, at best, implies that you’re afflicted with something. This is by no means a view universally held amongst trans people, but to me, to plead for acceptance on the basis that I was ‘born this way’ misses the point. It suggests that I believe I’m in the wrong, that I would change if I could, that if only I hadn’t had the gross misfortune to be born trans, I would gladly throw myself at the feet of cisnormativity and assimilate.

I would not change it if I could. I have no interest in being straight. Heterosexuality holds no wonders for me. And, increasingly, I have no desire to be cis either. It would make life easier, perhaps, but I’ve come to like it here at the intersection of trans and gay. This is where the world feels most vivid to me.

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