K-Pop Band BTS Helps Trans Man Break Free of Gender Expectations [Video]

My name is Kieren and I’m from Amarillo, Texas.

It was 2016 and I was around 29 years old, and  I’d been transitioning for about a year and a half

at the time. Before I came out, I  would see these images of trans men

on places like YouTube and they always  seemed so masculine. They had beards and they

had receding hairlines, and they were  very muscular and things like that.

I would go to these trans meetups and I would see  other trans men who looked like that. I felt like

I stuck out because I didn’t look like that. I  had people there who thought I was a trans woman,

and I felt like I had a hard time making friends  in the community because even though I was also

trans, I wasn’t finding a real connection with  the other trans men. It was something that made

me really uncomfortable, and I was always  thinking about like, “What do I need to do

to look more like a man so that  they understand that I’m a man?”

So at the time I was working at a coffee shop  and I would be working at a drive through

wearing headset all day, talking to customers  outside and I would get misgendered all the time,

getting called ma’am, and then they would come  up to the window and people would say like,

“Where’s the girl I was talking to?” Sometimes  I would correct them and tell them it was me

and other times I would just say like, “Oh,  she went away. She’s not here anymore.” I

definitely had times at work where I would  ask my boss, like, “Please don’t put me

on drive through because I just get  called ma’am all day and it bothers me.”

I noticed it like when I would leave a  grocery store and they would say, “Have a

nice day ma’am.” And I’m looking and thinking  about what I’m wearing and everything. What…

what about me are they looking at that  they see that ma’am is the correct choice?

It was really conflicting because before I  came out, there’s this battle of identity,

but now I’ve already come out  and started transitioning,

and here’s another battle of identity  that I didn’t expect to have to deal with.

And then I guess it was late 2017, I  was watching video clips from the AMAs,

the K-pop band BTS is on and I noticed  that they have very soft features.

I guess features that people might consider  feminine in some context. When you’re watching

a stage performance, you’re like, “Oh, this  is how they dress because they’re performing.”

And then when you get more into just watching  videos, I started watching videos of them.

I realize a lot of it is just like a personal  choice and there’s jewelry and earrings and lace

and maybe something that you wouldn’t normally see  on a male pop star in American Western media. It

didn’t feel like it took away from their masculine  identity. It didn’t feel like it was feminizing

them. It was just a different form of expression,  like maybe a softer form of expression.

It was something that I really attached to and  I was like, “Oh, I can also have this option.”

About, I guess, five months after I started  watching K-pop, I went out and got my ears pierced

again and I hadn’t worn earrings in probably  about 10 years. I started being, I guess, less

worried about the perspective of other people.  Like, how am I dressing? How am I behaving? How am

I speaking? And it was nice to see that there were  other options to where I didn’t have fit into this

trans box of what a trans man should be. I won’t  say that I never have days where I’m like, oh,

maybe I should talk a little bit more masculine or  something like that, but it’s definitely easier.

I still enjoy listening to BTS. They’re a regular  on my playlist. I definitely still, I guess you’d

say, take notes from them in being myself and  being comfortable in how I express myself.

I think it’s beneficial for trans people and  also for cisgender people to learn that there’s

so many different ways to express yourself.  I think people in general would be happier if

you weren’t worried about fitting into this box  and what the people around you expect you to be.