(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.