TRANSMISSION 25

JULY 7, 2025

Today I saw two red grapes bouncing at the bottom of an escalator just nearly escaping the teeth that threatened to crush them. Over and over, the folding metal stairs sliced in on themselves with the flesh of the other unlucky victims splattering the walkway. No doubt from the same dropped container. Poignant. Reminded me of us. Left behind yet gleefully being thrown into the air by the horrors of each day narrowly avoiding certain death. I laughed as I carefully stepped over them and wished them well in their fight to stay whole.

No video yet. I plan to post it later this week.

If you're in London, come see me perform on Friday, 11 July at the PieHouse Co-op. It's a fundraiser for Palestine and local people who need gender affirming care.

+++ "if you label me, you negate me" +++

I took myself to the Tate museum yesterday while I waited for my appointment at the sexual health clinic. There was a Leigh Bowery exhibit and I chuckled to myself knowing I came to see his show positive with the clap. So much queer London history and memories strewn about behind glass cases. A life of sweat and poor taste glorified in its flamboyant audacity by rich people looking to preserve its disgusting remnants long after the artist is dead. Sweat stained costumes on mannequins, personal letters and lewd diary entries laid out for the general public to consume. Is this the destiny queer artists aspire to?

I sat and diligently watched every film he made or participated in projected at various points around the gallery. I reveled in the nostalgia for queerness without the internet. This slower and more tangible connection to each other and ourselves. A dedication to the clubs and venues that served as the temples of worship for the freaks like me. No social media to keep us feeling like we were in competition with one another from across the world. No faking your allegiance to self expression when participation could mean having your party raided by the cops.

I was enthralled with Michael Clark. Something about him reflected something about me. He was a friend and collaborator of Bowery’s who is still alive. Something I was surprised to learn considering how many of the others featured in the photos and videos are dead. I cried at the end of the exhibition knowing AIDs took Bowery too. It never gets easier to process how people with the power to help our community sat by and did nothing. Now, gay men are (mostly) all on PREP and the number of HIV cases are down. Something that wiped out an entire generation of our elders doesn’t kill you anymore. The freedom has resulted in an epidemic of other STIs in our community because without the fear, gay men can’t be bothered to wear a condom. They always do with me but the VD still manage to slip through. The shot in my ass to cure it hurt like hell.

+++ Book Club +++

I went to the gift shop to pass the remaining time before my appointment and picked up the book A Short History of Trans Misogyny by Jules Gill-Peterson. I left the museum and walked around in the light rain reading every word carefully searching for some solace. It felt like a field guide written without me in mind - not that everything has to be. I wanted her to find a way to include trans men and to be fair, I’ve still got a lot more to read. But the conversation about misogyny is often one where trans mascs are either left out in an attempt to validate our masculinity or included as inherently culpable due to our proximity to maleness. Calling that out is also risky. Trans men are disproportionately scrutinized and bullied online due to unchecked infantilization or dismissal from people who see us as gender traitors or mirror images of their male oppressors- even if they don't outright call us that. It feels like the subject of trans masculine pain is untouchable territory. It makes me feel invisible in my own skin.

I read a great article by Noah Zazanis called On Hating Men (And Becoming One Anyway) and it helped even if it left me with more questions than answers.[1]

On Instagram, I asked for more reading suggestions and was sent a link to both Trans Reads [2] and an article by Kravitz Marshall called Transgender Men, the Patriarchy, and "Misdirected" Misogyny.[3] Although, honestly, I have not been able to dive into either of those yet this week.

[1] https://thenewinquiry.com/on-hating-men-and-becoming-one-anyway/?fbclid=PAQ0xDSwLY_gpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABp9ghtwpQazG-nONAGSTbEjnXoY30QJCBonHI9M7rp82Ol1NVmtca-pCt3aBn_aem_BJQV3ovAqnXk7bGxb76oUQ

[2] https://transreads.org/

[3] https://aninjusticemag.com/transgender-men-the-patriarchy-and-misdirected-misogyny-b3074da147ff

+++ Tea Time +++

I’ve only just started to turn my attention to reading about trans gender theory and trans masculine oppression so I will preface what I say in the next section of this email with that knowledge. However, before I go there, I have a few loose thoughts I need to get off my chest.

There are very important aspects of this conversation I want to hear more discourse about. And I don’t mean the kind where we cram complex gender theory and convoluted vocabulary around in a way that alienates the people it’s attempting to define. I mean the kind where we sit around, listen, and share our stories and do our best to collectively find words to comfort ourselves and feel less alone.

Too often, especially in white queer circles, we over intellectualize our experiences as a reflex to the white supremacy we were trained to uphold - denying ourselves the messy somatic healing we never learned to do. You don’t have to write a dissertation about your experiences to prove you have them and you’re not required to have a masters in gender theory to talk about the way you move in the world. But let me also say it’s painfully evident that white queer people, especially one’s like me raised with no connection to ancestral knowledge or respect of our elders, don’t even think to ask if someone has thought, felt or imagined solutions to whatever problem we feel we are uniquely experiencing for the first time. Young queers have become overly concerned with definitions and labels without considering their history or how choosing the language we use to define ourselves is an inherently queer act in and of itself.

White queers are at a disadvantage when it comes to being able to properly see the systems at play yet we are the loudest in the room and the most carceral. I've seen so many leftists taking on the tactics of the evangelical christian church in their attempts to control the cleansing of society from evil never questioning how their behavior feels like condemnation from behind a keyboard similar to the sign and a megaphone on a street corner. It ripples out beyond strict adherence to acceptable and unacceptable words into how we treat one another in our social circles. Oppressive and systemic abuse cycles begin in the white home where we learn that avoidance and banishment are the only solutions to misunderstanding and disagreements. A reflection of the capitalist corporations that, in our adulthood, will dangle the means of survival in front of us reflecting the conditional love modeled first by our parents.

I love going deep into the guts of what is happening to us as trans people but when the practice becomes governed by virtue signaling “culture guardians” repurposing purity culture tactics as a way to live a harm free life, the plot is lost. I can tell when someone is crafting an answer meant to prevent the inevitable “well actually” from the other queer in the corner that needs to touch grass. We gotta loosen up.

Too often in the queer community we mistake accountability with bullying and find ways to justify publicly humiliating and alienating anyone that makes us feel afraid. So many times we gum up the phone lines crying wolf over petty bullshit that reflects our own emotional ineptitude. We miss the chance to experience the joy of reconciliation or the embrace of forgiveness.

Now, more than ever, it’s important to be really sure that cutting someone out of your friend group and going behind their back to slander them to everyone you know in the name of social justice really is the only option left to deal with whatever wrong you’ve felt they’ve purposefully perpetrated. Make sure that’s the only solution left because if it isn’t, you’re just repeating the same behavior the society at large is doing to our community and refusing to kill the cop in your own mind.

Community looks like working through the hard shit of putting something back together after it breaks. People change. People grow. People learn. But they have to be given space to do that. Can you imagine if our community adopted the ideology of “What can I do to keep you IN my life?” Rather than, “One false move and I’ll banish you and talk shit so bad you have to leave town.” Sometimes repeated abuse has no recourse but disconnection and professional help but even then that shit can be done with love and a clear way that person can reenter the fold should they ever want to. It’s absolutely OK to set boundaries, ask for accountability, or simply not fuck with people but that can be done with love - not just fear and suspicion.

All of us need equal access to reconciliation, communication and time. We all need the space to apologize for and heal the wounds we will inevitably inflict on one another with words we don’t mean and actions we wish we could take back. So many of us have mental health issues and need a few extra chances to get it right. Some of us didn’t learn how to properly treat people and need to learn in the safety of friendships and new connections willing to be patient. There is no one right way to live and assuming there is and, even more so, villainizing anyone who doesn’t inherently have that knowledge of how to appropriately behave, is elitist. Not everyone learns basic ways of relating thanks to their shit parents. Some people are neurodivergent or deal with a mental illness caused by trauma that gets triggered in unexpected ways.

Many people are starting to realize we need to be more resilient to survive the onslaught of terror we are all facing and I hope that we can let the small shit go and stop violently excommunicating one another in the name of "protecting our peace."

++ Gross Observations +++

But I digress … I want to talk about some personal experiences of my trans masculinity I’ve been previously struggling to articulate. Here they are, imperfect and honest:

1. I have not known a time in my life where I have been free from the harm of misogyny and my proximity to maleness has only shifted the brand I receive and the insidious ways it shows up in my life. Now that I pass, if and when I am clocked, I am more often than not perceived as a trans woman. If I am perceived as a man, I have to sit on my hands while femmes I used to feel safe with project every stereotype of patriarchy onto me and leave me for dead emotionally as a way to process the pain they are experiencing under feminine oppression. An experience they forget I’ve had or assume I’m immune to now that I have facial hair and no tits.

2. The privilege of masculinity doesn’t apply to trans men the way it was sold to me prior to my transition. I was made to believe that misogyny and subsequently the patriarchy were like a loaded gun I was being handed along with my testosterone. It gave me the false impression that I am now an inherent threat to the community that used to safeguard me - no longer allowed to cry victim to this system. When I inevitably become one again, because being trans makes you a target for violence no matter your gender expression, I feel confused about where to run to for comfort and safety.

3. Having to go stealth is not always a choice for trans men. While it can be a privilege to move silently in the world as a man it is a burden to also hold the reality of who you are behind closed lips so you can get through the end of your shift at work. It’s hard when you want to be proud of who you are but strange when no one believes you have already been transitioning for 5 years or know what it's like to be a woman. It's bewildering to suggest your trans and have a co-worker laugh thinking it's a joke, unable to imagine how you didn't start out that way and no balls to suggest otherwise. The guys on your shift can’t conceptualize a transexual other than the ones they jerk off to in the employee bathroom on break. You’re trapped into a silence to stay alive, to avoid ridicule from your own community and because speaking up about your experience usually falls on closed ears. You add to that a lack of accepting community spaces or ones that turn you away and many t boys have no choice but to wander off into the shadows of society where they've been banished.

4. When a brand of feminism requires the hatred of men in order to define itself it makes it impossible for trans men to participate or feel safe to identify with being a man. When we eventually create spaces of our own, we get laughed at and bullied. Our attempts to find ways to access or perform non-toxic masculinity become the butt of jokes the community can make at our expense without consequence. Our music is mocked, our wrestling teams are chastised, our fashion is "adorable" and we are never allowed to grow up. Becoming a grown man means getting lumped in with the cis ones. The reflex from everyone in society to belittle cis men then impacts us too only we don’t have enough of a padding of privilege to take the blow like they can.

5. Just because trans men are not fetishized in the same way trans women so often are doesn’t mean we are safe from the DL chasers or people who seek to abuse us. Only we rarely have any sense of camaraderie between ourselves or anyone else in the community. Many of us suffer in silence and miss out on the valuable social networks women use to keep themselves safe against the threats lurking on the dating apps, bars, or street corners in their neighborhoods. Trans men are busy crossing the street so as not to freak women out as they walk home. I have learned the hard way that I am not inherently safe now that I pass but I have to move in the world as if I am a threat. This is even more true for Black and brown trans men who, especially if they are passing, face the systemic abuse inflicted on Black and brown cis men who are constantly mischaracterized as dangerous and face violence from police, incarceration or worse.

There is so much more to talk about but I’ll leave it here for now. I want to pick this back up next week after I’ve had a chance to read some more. This weekend I’ll be writing my next email to you from Paris. I look forward to spending some dedicated time writing while I’m there.

XO- Freak

P.S. What you read above is a portion of the full letter I email to my fans each week. If you want to see it, hop on my email list. To read previous letters, subscribe to my Substack.

In light of the loss of suicide prevention hotlines in the US, please take advantage of the community I started over on Discord. If you still need access, just text me. If you feel like you’re on the brink and can’t get a hold of anyone to talk to just shoot me a text. I am always happy to listen.

DARCHNERVE TEXT LINE: 323-657-3474

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DARCHNERVE TEXT LINE: 323-657-3474