Hi, Luke.
Hi, how are you Jen?
Thanks for coming.
I'm great.
Oh cool me too.
I'm so happy to talk to you. And I would love for you to introduce yourself.
Say who you are.
I identify as a trans man.
How do you identify?
As a cis white able bodied bi woman.
Yes.
[Jen] Yeah. It's a lot of like sections.
That's good. I'm also white and able bodied.
Yeah. How do you identify your sexuality?
Sexuality? I believe in fluidity, like across the board.
I have dated many different types of people.
I'm just some very loving being.
So it's, you know, hard for me to just limit myself to one gender or stereotype of a person.
That's interesting because you are in a hetero relationship with a trans woman.
Your partner is trans.
Right. She's not here so I won't tell her entire story.
But she's very binary in her identity.
She's a, she identifies as a male to female binary trans woman.
She considers herself very straight.
But I still have femininity in me.
She still has her masculinity on occasion in her, too.
It's a very small part.
But, you know, she has admitted to it and we've talked about how all of our parts just kind of fit together, which is really cool.
So it's like my masculinity loves her femininity,
her masculinity loves my femininity and so on and so forth.
So it's like a puzzle piece and it's pretty cool.
That's like so beautiful.
That's like the only beautiful thing I've heard about like gender ever.
I feel like gender is so harmful, but that's such a beautiful way of talking about it.
Yeah.
And I'm super curious what masculinity means to you.
What does being a man mean to you?
Masculinity, femininity.
Those character traits are actually kind of how much you live up to those expected societal norms placed on us.
Right. So they're not it's not that simple.
Like your masculinity and your femininity isn't completely determined by
or your behaviors aren't completely determined by your biological, physiological or cultural.
It's not either or. It's a big modge podge of both.
So a man could have been exposed to a very masculine father figure
and then he kind of emulates that.
But then there's also the genetics part of it that he's also got these genes that make him bigger and stronger.
So that's the biological part of it.
So you're growing taller and then maybe you go into a more manual labor type of job,
which then kind of requires you to wear looser fitting clothing, which you know what I mean and there's that expression part of masculinity.
[Jen] Yeah.
And similarly, a male, a biologically born male might not have the genetics to be bigger,
might have more of a softer side because hormones absolutely play a role in it.
And I will, I mean I know this because I take testosterone. Right.
So I know 100 percent when I was presenting feminine.
I was trying to masculinize my body as much as I could.
I didn't realize it at the time.
According to like who was like your body ideal?
Oh, I would go into the gym. I actually had a boyfriend at the time and like, I was just
he was an ex Marine and I was probably more so emulating him.
And I didn't realize that.
He was like my best friend. We would play video games together and stuff.
And I didn't even really know what trans was at the time.
So I was constantly in the gym, constantly trying to achieve this masculine physique.
I was, I could do 500 sit ups in a row. I kid you not.
I was obsessed with it, but I never had a six pack until I took testosterone.
I don't now. I lost it. But I did.
And, you know, and that's absolutely correlating to my testosterone, the hormones that I'm taking.
You know, also just the way that I deal with emotions.
You know, I'm much, my sadness actually comes out more in anger.
I, but then luckily, nurturing from my family has taught me how to reserve myself.
My behaviors are learned, thing that I've learned through society and just how to, you know,
so I've learned how to deal with anger.
But it's definitely a different type of way to deal with sadness.
I don't feel sensitive anymore. I wish that I did. But I love that.
I do miss that. You know, that being able to feel deep, deep, deep emotions.
That's really interesting.
You talk a bit about going to the gym and like trying to achieve this six pack.
I've heard that for trans people it can be really challenging.
Like body image issues can be really challenging because you're trying to reach like an ideal that you're even further away from
because of the body you were born in.
So I would love to hear how that's-
And, you know, let's put it this way.
I, pre-T, I drove a pickup truck and I have two huge dogs. I love them to death.
But, you know, you know, and I was dating and I was dating the most femme women that I could date.
I was really trying to validate my masculinity and all these different ways that I couldn't without having, you know, before I had testosterone, the option of testosterone.
But then once I started coming out as trans and coming into my true self, you know, physiologically.
And I was looking in the mirror and I was starting to see who I was.
I became more confident in myself identity as carrying my masculinity with me.
That I didn't need these other external validations anymore.
So and then it even opened me up, you know, sexually, like, I
I ended up even, you know, messing around with a couple of my trans guy friends, like, you know, pre Victoria, of course, because
but, you know, it was more like I was confident in that I didn't need that validation.
I was like, you know, sexuality is fluid.
Like, I'm happy and hornier because I'm on testosterone.
[Jen] Yeah.
How does it feel to be a white guy?
Yeah. Oh, there's so much to that. I mean, the privilege is insane.
Even when I was identifying as a butch lesbian, I had more privilege, you know, in my industry,
I'm in advertising,
than, you know, I know any POC person ever did.
And then now you're adding masculinity on top of that identity.
And I was not choosing this. You know, it's.
You know, it is who I am, you know, but it's like to be,
to walk through life and be woke about that
and to know that, like, this is more of a privilege than I've ever had.
All I want to do is like truly help people.
Like, I really try to like, you know, speak up whenever anybody's being silenced, you know what I mean,
like if I'm not using my privilege to help others, like screw me.
I think it's you mentioned passing and passing is a really interesting concept, right?
Because a lot of people do it for safety reasons.
A lot of people do it because they want to.
But it's obviously not accessible to everybody. But you pass.
And I'm super I just also want to point that out that, like, not everybody can pass and everybody's gender identity is valid.
And also some people just can't afford hormones or like not medically able.
Their body is not able to take hormones.
It's also much harder for trans women to pass.
You know, it's much easier for us guys to
it's easier to bulk up than slim down, you know.
And they have so many other procedures they have to go through, like
I feel for them so much.
And so it's interesting because, like, there are people that live stealth and that's for a you know, if they can live stealth.
What, can you, what does that mean?
So stealth means that they're not out as trans.
They just are passing and walking through life stealth, nobody knows so.
And some people just do it because they just want to do it.
They don't feel any sort of a connection there.
They're like, I am not trans. I don't want to identify as trans, you know, and it's a super huge trigger to them.
But then also some people just obviously in certain areas of the country, or even the world,
like it's a huge danger to be out as trans.
So it's interesting. Like, I choose to be visible because I, for those who cannot be.
And also I've lived in, you know, L.A., I've lived in New York.
I'm living in bubbles.
And I'm very like I always have to remind myself, like Lucas, you're in a bubble.
Like it's not like this everywhere, you know?
And, you know, and it's not to say, though, that there are some hardships with being visible, even though I am passing,
like, you know, some people actually almost are overly nice to me, you know what I mean?
And I can tell and and they're like going out of their way to be like, hey.
And it's like, nice. But it almost feels like they're kind of babying me.
[Jen] You mean like because your're trans?
Yeah it's like I have like a problem.
Like they're just like, hey, hey, Lucas what's up? Hey, buddy.
[Jen] Oh, God.
You know. And it's like, hi.
You know, it happens in the office sometimes.
I'm rolling my eyes for all of the cis people right now.
and I don't want to be like, you know. Yeah, I totally am like
I appreciate I would take that any day over hate, any day, you know.
But it's like it's kind of like I want to work just
I want to have to have the bar as high as it is for anybody else.
Like, I don't want to be like the bar lower because oh poor guy or, you know, you're cis- you're trans, you know.
[Jen] Yeah.
So
I would just want to tell anybody out there struggling with it to just be yourself, you know,
because you're always gonna be more masculine or more feminine than someone
and you're always you be more less feminine and less masculine than somebody else.
So just be you because that's what really matters.
If you're living from your heart, it's the truth so.
That's such a great note to end on.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.