Why did I want to join this gay men’s chorus? Why do I still want to try and be part of it?
Because I like to sing.
Because, from the musical viewpoint of how they sound, I prefer choirs that are either solely of high voices or solely of low voices.
Because I want to use my “new” low voice to sing.
Because I was (& still am) hoping that singing in a low-voice chorus would be gender-affirming for me.
Because I was (& still am) hoping to make new friends, particularly friends on the masculine side of the gender spectrum who have a difference experience from my own and from my cis-het buddies. Why that? Maybe just curiosity. Or hope we could click in a way that is also different from my other friendships.
Because I wanted to be surrounded by masculinity in a queer space and a joyful way, hoping to find a safe, joyful haven of masculinity… and/or perhaps a new community that would complement the ones I already have.
Because in some way I am drawn to this world, I am curious to get to know it, to be part of it even if I’m not exactly like them. Why am I drawn to it — I don’t really know… maybe because I feel that, at least theoretically, I share something with gay men, i.e. a more masculine-leaning gender-identity along with an attraction to masculinity. My masculine gender-identity is inherently different from that of a gay man because I’m trans and he’s cis, but in the difference there’s also a similarity. And our attraction to masculinity will probably be different since “homosexual” automatically implies “allosexual” while I’m asexual, but I can feel strong aesthetic attraction which is almost always towards male bodies so in that sense I think there’s a similarity between how I and a gay man relate to a male body vs. how a straight man does.
At the first rehearsal on Sunday evening, right after warm-up, a woman who is one of the leaders of a non-profit working in DEI and partnering with this gay men’s chorus spoke to us all. Among other beautiful things (I almost cried several times), she referred to a warm-up exercise we had just done with scales and staggering the different voices and she said how beautiful we sounded, how beautiful our voices sounded in their having an underlying similarity but also being all different. And she reminded us how important it is to remember and maintain our individualities and even differences within our groups without letting these differences divide us, remembering the commonalities we share. Her words almost made me cry because they expressed what I feel, the hopes I had in joining this chorus: I know I’m not a cis gay man and that my experience is in so many ways different from theirs; but we also have some things in common, and maybe those commonalities are deeper and more important than our differences. Or is that just wishful thinking?
These thoughts and these questions are important to me, particularly today because this afternoon I’ll be leading an inclusive climbing event on diverse masculinity. So I think these themes of commonalities vs. differences are key for me to reflect on and bring to the surface of my consciousness today of all days. Similar ideas need to be applied to my event tonight: there will be different people showing up with diverse definitions and/or perceptions of masculinity: how do I bring it — us — all together maintaining a balance between individualities/differences and commonalities?
The Little Prince and the Fox 