Stop comparing yourself to sexy boys online

How to reclaim your self-worth from the validation machine of the Internet

an iconic photoshoot for Eddie 0’s release 003 by James Emmerman full of sexy boys I may or may not have a hard time not comparing myselff to

I transitioned back in 2015. The same year The Washington Post adopted the singular they to its stylebook. The newspaper recommended trying to “write around the problem before using the singular they as a last resort,” but they did specifically permit the use of they for a “gender-non-conforming person.” It was a big deal. The Post (which has since sunk to a new journalistic low) was the first major publication in the US to admit we existed. Proof. My pronouns (at the time) were the topic of every dinner party I went to because nobody knew what the hell I was talking about.

I’d like to say that I transitioned before the Internet but that isn’t quite true. I transitioned in the mid-2010s when Instagram was a place you went to post photos of the sky and your new tattoos. There was no algorithm. Reddit wasn’t a thing. If you needed to see post-op photos or find reviews of whatever surgeon you were about to hand your anesthetized body over to, you logged onto Transbucket or watched some dude from the Midwest’s vlog on YouTube. You had to be careful on YouTube though not to fall into one of those detransition wormholes. If you had other questions, you went to Hudson's FTM Resource Guide.

The 90s and early 2000s were a representation desert for trans masculinity, even for white boys. All we had was Chaz Bono on one side and Buck Angel on the other. I had never heard about documentaries like The Aggressives or Shinjuku Boys until after I transitioned. A friend of a friend gave me a copy of OP, but I wasn’t even a guy like that then.

Those first few years of my transition were precarious and terrifying. Using the men’s room for the first time at that truck stop outside of Shasta County, sweating through my t-shirt, the key audibly trembling in my hand in the croaking summer heat. The chain-smoking older woman at the front desk at Lorpinzi’s gym who lectured about using the sauna looking the way I did. The way she scanned my body up and down. It’s just not appropriate for the other guests. Utter humiliation. I strapped my binder to my chest each morning like a bulletproof vest, armoring myself before I stepped outside. I began avoiding eye contact with strangers on the bus, in restaurants, even outside of my own home. I was afraid of opening up a conversation if I didn’t know where it would end.

That was my public life. But in private, something else was happening. In the rosebud glow of my bedroom, on the dark and sticky dance floor of the gay club, through the steam of the bathroom mirror, I was beginning to recognize myself. I started to believe I was someone worthy of being desired.