GHOST STORIES

Hooking up while trans at the latest frontier of misogyny

- DELILAH FRIEDLER

NOT LONG AGO, I was a gay boy, and like most gay boys, I met my lovers through Grindr. On the infamous queer dating app, which displays a grid of nearby users’ photos sorted by distance, I was initiated into the gay cult of masculinity and learned that misogyny thrives even in the absence of women. Many guys’ profiles said they were “masc4masc,” or plainly barked “NO FEMS.”

It was just like in the clubs, where dudes in bro-tanks and snapbacks flirted with other dudes in bro-tanks and snapbacks, nervously edging away from the swishy, squealing, feminine gays with whom they shared the dance floor. Masculinity was king, and manhood was our bulwark against embarrassment: We might be faggots, but at least we aren’t girls.

I shaped myself according to the messages I internalized, doing crunches in the gym and posing with a butch face to win the attention of big- biceped men, and they played their roles in turn, treating me with bullish impatience and demanding nudes in caveman English.

Eventually, I realized this wasn’t for me: I’m more of a girl than a boy. I discovered this as I gradually gained the courage to liberate my feminine instincts, which had been buried so long I forgot where I’d put them. Women— both trans and cis—taught me to honor softness and my emotional depths, which boys had long-degraded. As I grew my hair long and painted my nails, I became increasingly invisible to the gay men on Grindr. But I now attracted a separate crop of suitors, from a lesser-known stratum of the app: the hordes of straight, bi, and pansexual men who use Grindr to meet trans girls.