“Some men have vaginas”

“

He said he was a gay man

with a vagina and I, penis heavy

and light of foot, wondered

if gay meant the same to him

as it did to me, wondered

if man was in mind or body.

Because I wear my man, 

strip down bare to my man. 

In the mirror, there, I am. 

For me, man has merely been

a matter of circumstance,

not a journey or discovery.

I rarely had to fight for it,

rarely want to fight against it,

never wanted to shed skin

to reveal somebody else.

I never questioned it until 

he said, ‘Some men have vaginas.’

I understood it to be true

but it left me feeling nothing 

more than a tool, who knew

nothing about being a man

outside his own body.

” 

― Dean Atta, The Black Flamingo

My European (gender)queer ex-lover shared the link to this poem with me just over a year ago, on April 1, 2023, in response to my voicing to them my fears that nobody would like me or understand me (physically/sexually) anymore because of my body post-gender-affirming-surgery: straight men wouldn’t like me because I didn’t have tits anymore, and gay men wouldn’t like me because I didn’t have a penis. I was a “boy with a vagina” and would therefore be a “freak” forever. 

Last night, a few days after taking the plunge and making myself a Tinder account where I’m specifically presenting as “non-binary transmasc gay/pansexual” using “he/they” pronouns and seeking men, I finally had the courage to listen to Dean Atta’s poem “Some men have vaginas”.

I listened to it twice: and I saw myself in those words, I felt myself. And I also, once again, felt myself so utterly & profoundly seen as wholly myself by my European (gender)queer ex-lover. They had seen me wholly already last year, already two years ago — which is one of the reasons I loved them so much, and maybe also why they loved me. But I hadn’t seen myself or felt wholly comfortable with/in myself, and thus ready to approach that poem, until last night. 

How far I’ve come in this year… this is an actual, quantifiable measure of how far I’ve come!