I am a writer- and not just a blogger here, I mean write as a profession. Writing for a living is something lots of people dream about, but fewer are lucky enough to actually get to do it. It’s something I’ve worked very hard at, and I take it incredibly seriously. So, when I think about my identity, the first and most important thing that pops into my head is “writer”. That identity comes along with a constellation of words and phrases I associate with my own writer-ness, words like ambitious, logical, intellectually fearless, combative, bombastic, surprising. I don’t write to express myself, I write to be part of an intellectual conversation that existed before I was born and will go on long after I’m dead and buried. Writing is who I am. It’s my identity.

Now, between you and me, reader- I can also be a bit of a sexist. I don’t like it about myself, it’s something I’ve worked hard to curb and I am always trying to improve in my own attitudes- but it continues to be part of the way I view the world and I am sorry for that. I’m explaining this in order to soften the blow of what I am about to say, which is that when I picture someone who “writes to express themselves” I picture a female writer, and when I picture someone who is “ambitious, logical, intellectually fearless, combative, bombastic, surprising” I picture a male writer.

I’ve always looked up to male writers more than female ones. No, strike that. I’ve admired a great many writers, male and female, but when I think about the sort of writer I want to be, and the kind I’ve tried to model myself after, it’s never a woman I’m picturing. I think Margaret Atwood and Kurt Vonnegut are both great literary sci fi authors- but I want to be Kurt Vonnegut. I think Sarah Koenig and Ira Glass are both great NPR storytellers- but I want to be Ira.

Unlike many trans guys, I’ve never felt excited about being taken for a boy or man in childhood or in adulthood. It hasn’t happened often, but the couple times it has I remember feeling only mortal terror, not happiness. But, online and in my writing, it’s always been a source of pride that others mistake me for male when they don’t know my gender, and that almost all of the friends I’ve made online have been men who treated me like one of them. I’ve always lived my life online, through my writing, commenting, and chat persona, and many times I’ve joked that I wish I could just be uploaded into the web and become a disembodied intelligence- do away with having a body or a gender entirely. But now, I’m wondering if it might be a little more complex than that. If I were a disembodied writerly intelligence, I think I’d be a male one.