(Content Warning: Slur)

I am simultaneously attracted to masculinity and wish to exude that masculinity myself (because I know Levi will crack the joke when he reads this: no I am not masc4masc, cut it out). Before learning that I was trans, my attraction to fictional characters was solely in the realm of beautiful men (my first fictional crush was Legolas and I think that says enough). Yet I never imagined myself doing anything sexually explicit with him or any of the other pretty fictional men I loved, nor had I any desire to do chaste things such as kissing. By high school the only crushes I had on real people were on butch lesbians—yet I never dreamed of dating them, had no desire to see them naked, and balked at the thought of having sex with them. Those girls were undeniably masculine in dress and manner but nonetheless maintained an obvious womanhood that made them, in my mind, pretty.

Upon accepting I was trans, I lost interest in those same girls. My sexuality came on ruthlessly and all the filthy teenage thoughts came pouring in. It was all about men, masculinity, and me. I could finally imagine myself in these situations, want these situations for myself, want these men to touch me in ways I knew or saw them touch others. Yaoi and gay porn were my guilty pleasures as a girl. I was ashamed of it, I was a "fangirl", a third party encroaching on men doing male things to other men. With my gender and orientation properly aligned I craved and hungered shamelessly for what I knew was mine and was meant for me.

Now that I'm older, the intersection between my gender and my orientation is a lot less confused and a lot more tightly knit.

I am male but I am no man. I am a boy, a faggot, and I'm very happy to be. I love to exist in this social space between manhood and youthful adolescence, a gender position independent of my age and wholly removed from womanhood that is informed as much by my gender as it is by my sexuality. It is freeing and empowering to be both man and not as a binary trans guy, to have my masculinity and to love masculinity in others, to be a boy beneath men while being undeniably included with them.

I felt a strange sense of gender euphoria while writing this, lol. This felt very therapeutic, thanks for the question.

CW: slurs

hugely! before I figured out my gender stuff, and I was living as a girl, I was out as "pansexual" (something I'm not really) and exclusively dated girls or femme nonbinary ppl. although I was openly attracted to men + had crushes on boys my age, I couldn't and wouldn't do heterosexuality. and I tried to use the fact that I dated girls to align myself more with (straight) guys, trying to convince them I was just like them. in a way, my sexuality at the time was the closest I could get to expressing my gender.

however, in a way that is somewhat contradictory (because I feared/abhorred heterosexuality), being with girls always felt "straight" for me, and my attraction to men always felt "gay". eventually I realized this was because i didnt feel sexual attraction to girls, but it did feel normal for me to be in relationships with them.

might also be worth mentioning that I grew up in a household that was very hostile to gay men, but had none of that hostility toward gay women. so I internalized a lot of that in some painful ways, and I believe that kept me in a place where my way of expressing my masculinity was by being a butch-ish woman dating femmes.

anyway, I was nonbinary for a while, and that was tricky, and it opened a lot of doors, but it was also the time when I was performing femininity the most. that's something that I still havent quite figured the reasons for tbh

when I did start to transition to male, the fact that my attraction to men always felt very gay to me was a strong indicator that this was the right path. other things, like wanting a deeper voice, wanting body hair, wanting a change in sexual function, the fact that I always played boy's roles in drama class, etc. also helped confirm for myself that I was trans. and what happened was, the more male I felt, the more I wanted to date men exclusively (allowing also for nonbinary people who have a strong current of boy and/or fag in their gender).

I consider myself a gay-to-gay transitioner because of all this, and for me I think that no matter what, I need to be gay. I have some fleeting attraction to women, but I would be terrified to actually have sex with a woman at this point in my life, because it would feel too heterosexual and I would completely forget what to do.