re: How Ben got his penis

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Why do you care how I came across a NY Times article? Stop being a gatekeeper, no one needs you to filter content.

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Ben arrived at college in 2009. There, he started calling himself a “queer lesbian,” a term he used in an attempt to reconcile his attraction to women with his interest in men’s bodies.

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met people who seemed to know who they were, who called themselves things like “gender-fluid” or used “ze”/“zir” pronouns. Ben did not feel that these words applied to him, but for the first time he had community and language to help him disentangle himself.

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The setup was the usual — sitting at the bar, dissecting sex and gender, putting the pieces together again. They had done this many times before, but this time something clicked, and suddenly Ben understood he was a man. He stood up from the bar and told his friends: “[Expletive]! I’m trans! I gotta go!”

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That night, he began the bureaucratic work of transition: texting his mother, posting a Facebook status, scheduling a doctor’s appointment to start testosterone.

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neither restroom felt safe.

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he pictured a more hostile group of drunken men and how they might react to the absence of his penis. Bathroom bills were on the rise, and every day for the rest of his life, taking a leak would mean managing risk.

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Having a penis would help him feel safe, even if he still had to sit down in a stall.

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There he began his life as a man, working at a hotel, wearing a uniform and smiling when Southern types called him “son.”

He walked past a guy using the urinal and quickly unzipped to sit on the toilet. The man kept his eyes to himself (the men’s room code), but as he left, he told the people waiting: “It’s going to be a while. That guy just sat down.

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