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The why doesn’t matter. He had accused me of being gay. Homophobia had reared its ugly head in my professional life before I even came out to myself. I shoved his comment away.
Then I taught middle school for a few years, got married, moved to Seattle, got divorced, kissed a woman for the first time, and realized Quinn was right (damn or Woohoo?).
Owning my identity as a butch dyke took my power back from that horrible interaction with him. Seattle was replete with gay and lesbian folks, but I barely knew trans men existed until I joined a drag king show seven years later. Not all drag kings are trans, but I finally met my first trans men friends there. Finally, I was on my way.
Nowadays, when my students enter my math classroom, they see my beard, balding head, dad bod, and testosterone-infused voice. I’m a pretty regular American guy. I was a Knicks fan, can change a tire, and yes, I am the roach eliminator in my home.
Still, my masculinity is distinct from that of my cisgender straight male colleagues. I’m a bit effeminate, and I sing songs about graphing lines. I talk about queer dating, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, sports, periods, coming out, and being a son who misses sounding like his mom.
I have a Bluey lunchbox, a few sparkly earrings, and shirts promoting LGBTQ+ rights & math galore. I dance like Rick Astley and was forced to wear frilly shirts when I was little. I was a girl who liked boys, a girl who liked girls, and now I’m a queer trans man with a femme lesbian wife.
I love sharing my experiences, strength, and hope about so many of life’s challenges with my kids.
Students need trans men like me in the classroom, as we know what it’s like to be treated like a girl – less capable, bad at science and sports, seen as only a sexual body by hormonal teenage boys. Having the voice of a man in the classroom gives me power to support girls from the other side of the aisle, whereas most teen boys want nothing to do with a butch dyke or her opinions about dating girls (besides, parents tend to panic when gay relationships are discussed in the classroom).
When I was a young woman at Rutgers, the Green Lantern security team could be called to walk us home at night due to the prevalence of on-campus assaults. Date-rape was finally being talked about openly, so I now have the tools to advise my high school students to bring a friend to a party, avoid the punch, don’t put your drink down, and never leave anyone behind. An education doesn’t matter if you are too traumatized to use it.
Conservatives are frightened by our influence on their children when we are open with them. But I can’t even get these kids to stay off their phones – how on earth could I ever recruit them to this fabulous life of rainbows, unicorns, family strife, and discrimination?
I left teaching for over two years to exercise extreme self-care, allowing testosterone to do its thing, and just prayed my voice would finally drop enough to stop betraying my masculinizing appearance on the phone and in public. It was bad enough I still had a female name and gender marker for over a year, thanks to the gatekeepers of our identities.
I returned to the classroom in a new school as Mr. Zsilavetz with a deeper voice and male chest. Instead of a tough butch dyke, I was now seen as a sensitive man; a feminist who got the boys to work, while teaching them how to treat girls with respect. I received wonderful compliments, like, “We’re so glad you’re here, Mr. Z. These boys need more positive male role models like you.”
What a strange new existence. Tough guy students responded quite positively to the newly minted Mr. Z. I was no longer insulted for my masculinity.
Being read as male brought moments of gender euphoria, but I quickly found being stealth was exhausting, terrifying, and shame-inducing. Besides, I really missed being visible to queer and trans kids. I knew there must be a better way.
I stayed home briefly with our two kids, and then my wife’s job transferred us to Atlanta, buying me time to figure out the man I wanted to be in the classroom. Many of us dream of moving 3,000 miles away from our previous lives so we can be invisibly trans, but I found I cannot roll that way.
I spent one year mentoring a student whom I was told may identify as trans, but I wasn’t allowed to tell the student that I was trans, too. Every time I ran into a former student and acted like I didn’t know them, I cried inside and at therapy. Those moments kept driving me forward, serving as the springboard for me to open Pride School Atlanta in 2016 (which was open until 2018).
Once I moved to Atlanta, I made sure to connect with the local trans community, especially those working with youth. I was invited to share my story with a local support group for trans youth and parents, and I was fortunate enough to spend the second part of the meeting sitting in with the teens and their facilitator. It was there I heard one girl say, “School is just too hard.”
She may never know that her simple sentence was the catalyst that got me out of my stealth comfort zone and back into the world as the new me. They needed a school, and I was willing to step up, knowing full well the financial stress it would put on my family and the energy it would take.
When I transitioned, my internet searches turned up only three openly trans educators across the entire nation. If I couldn’t find us, how could the thousands of budding trans youth who needed to know that they could find love, survive school, and have a career? This research solidified my resolve to remain on the front lines, which required a great deal of planning to protect my family physically, emotionally, and financially, especially in Georgia.
I try every day to be the teacher I needed when I was young, and I work hard to act as if I am not scared out of my wits while doing so. My students cannot hear the voices murmuring and screaming in my head – anti-trans policies and fear of violence storming around my mind, invisibly sabotaging me, trying to stop me from acting “too queer or trans.”
So I take my meds, go to therapy, and get back up to the board every day, knowing that if I save at least one young life in addition to my own by doing this work, then it will all have been worth it.
Maybe the voices holding me back will be quieter with my new job at an online public charter high school. I’m feeling pretty optimistic, considering the fewer variables at play without hallways and bathrooms.
I’m still a queer, slightly feminine-of-center, pudgy trans math teacher, but I’m standing taller by putting myself out there to you all and hoping it will give you the strength to do the same.
We’re not going backwards, we cannot be erased, and we are everywhere.
As a trans male teacher, I am uniquely poised to teach boys to respect women
I began my career as a math teacher right out of Rutgers. I was your stereotypical straight female, engaged to be married. Then Quinn, a junior boy, said this: “I’m sick of your sh*t, my mother’s sick of your sh*t, you’re a f**king dyke!”
The why doesn’t matter. He had accused me of being gay. Homophobia had reared its ugly head in my professional life before I even came out to myself. I shoved his comment away.
Then I taught middle school for a few years, got married, moved to Seattle, got divorced, kissed a woman for the first time, and realized Quinn was right (damn or Woohoo?).
Owning my identity as a butch dyke took my power back from that horrible interaction with him. Seattle was replete with gay and lesbian folks, but I barely knew trans men existed until I joined a drag king show seven years later. Not all drag kings are trans, but I finally met my first trans men friends there. Finally, I was on my way.
Nowadays, when my students enter my math classroom, they see my beard, balding head, dad bod, and testosterone-infused voice. I’m a pretty regular American guy. I was a Knicks fan, can change a tire, and yes, I am the roach eliminator in my home.
Still, my masculinity is distinct from that of my cisgender straight male colleagues. I’m a bit effeminate, and I sing songs about graphing lines. I talk about queer dating, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, sports, periods, coming out, and being a son who misses sounding like his mom.
I have a Bluey lunchbox, a few sparkly earrings, and shirts promoting LGBTQ+ rights & math galore. I dance like Rick Astley and was forced to wear frilly shirts when I was little. I was a girl who liked boys, a girl who liked girls, and now I’m a queer trans man with a femme lesbian wife.
I love sharing my experiences, strength, and hope about so many of life’s challenges with my kids.
Students need trans men like me in the classroom, as we know what it’s like to be treated like a girl – less capable, bad at science and sports, seen as only a sexual body by hormonal teenage boys. Having the voice of a man in the classroom gives me power to support girls from the other side of the aisle, whereas most teen boys want nothing to do with a butch dyke or her opinions about dating girls (besides, parents tend to panic when gay relationships are discussed in the classroom).
When I was a young woman at Rutgers, the Green Lantern security team could be called to walk us home at night due to the prevalence of on-campus assaults. Date-rape was finally being talked about openly, so I now have the tools to advise my high school students to bring a friend to a party, avoid the punch, don’t put your drink down, and never leave anyone behind. An education doesn’t matter if you are too traumatized to use it.
Conservatives are frightened by our influence on their children when we are open with them. But I can’t even get these kids to stay off their phones – how on earth could I ever recruit them to this fabulous life of rainbows, unicorns, family strife, and discrimination?
A Sudden Shift
My feelings of maleness had started to build in the early 2000s, but I didn’t have a name for it until 2006. That’s when I began my journey into becoming the man I was always supposed to be.I left teaching for over two years to exercise extreme self-care, allowing testosterone to do its thing, and just prayed my voice would finally drop enough to stop betraying my masculinizing appearance on the phone and in public. It was bad enough I still had a female name and gender marker for over a year, thanks to the gatekeepers of our identities.
I returned to the classroom in a new school as Mr. Zsilavetz with a deeper voice and male chest. Instead of a tough butch dyke, I was now seen as a sensitive man; a feminist who got the boys to work, while teaching them how to treat girls with respect. I received wonderful compliments, like, “We’re so glad you’re here, Mr. Z. These boys need more positive male role models like you.”
What a strange new existence. Tough guy students responded quite positively to the newly minted Mr. Z. I was no longer insulted for my masculinity.
Being read as male brought moments of gender euphoria, but I quickly found being stealth was exhausting, terrifying, and shame-inducing. Besides, I really missed being visible to queer and trans kids. I knew there must be a better way.
I stayed home briefly with our two kids, and then my wife’s job transferred us to Atlanta, buying me time to figure out the man I wanted to be in the classroom. Many of us dream of moving 3,000 miles away from our previous lives so we can be invisibly trans, but I found I cannot roll that way.
I spent one year mentoring a student whom I was told may identify as trans, but I wasn’t allowed to tell the student that I was trans, too. Every time I ran into a former student and acted like I didn’t know them, I cried inside and at therapy. Those moments kept driving me forward, serving as the springboard for me to open Pride School Atlanta in 2016 (which was open until 2018).
Once I moved to Atlanta, I made sure to connect with the local trans community, especially those working with youth. I was invited to share my story with a local support group for trans youth and parents, and I was fortunate enough to spend the second part of the meeting sitting in with the teens and their facilitator. It was there I heard one girl say, “School is just too hard.”
She may never know that her simple sentence was the catalyst that got me out of my stealth comfort zone and back into the world as the new me. They needed a school, and I was willing to step up, knowing full well the financial stress it would put on my family and the energy it would take.
When I transitioned, my internet searches turned up only three openly trans educators across the entire nation. If I couldn’t find us, how could the thousands of budding trans youth who needed to know that they could find love, survive school, and have a career? This research solidified my resolve to remain on the front lines, which required a great deal of planning to protect my family physically, emotionally, and financially, especially in Georgia.
Standing Tall
No teacher is the ideal role model for every student, though we all have something to offer when we show the kids our best authentic selves.I try every day to be the teacher I needed when I was young, and I work hard to act as if I am not scared out of my wits while doing so. My students cannot hear the voices murmuring and screaming in my head – anti-trans policies and fear of violence storming around my mind, invisibly sabotaging me, trying to stop me from acting “too queer or trans.”
So I take my meds, go to therapy, and get back up to the board every day, knowing that if I save at least one young life in addition to my own by doing this work, then it will all have been worth it.
Maybe the voices holding me back will be quieter with my new job at an online public charter high school. I’m feeling pretty optimistic, considering the fewer variables at play without hallways and bathrooms.
I’m still a queer, slightly feminine-of-center, pudgy trans math teacher, but I’m standing taller by putting myself out there to you all and hoping it will give you the strength to do the same.
We’re not going backwards, we cannot be erased, and we are everywhere.
WARNING! Cognitohazard Zone!