“Catcalls,” an excerpt from Before They Were Men by Jacob Tobia

New York City was contrary to everything I’d been told.

As a queer person, you’re supposed to move to New York and finally feel free. It’s sold as an epicenter—arguably the epicenter—of liberation for queer and trans folks.

But there’s a reason Stonewall happened in New York. There’s a reason why New York City was one of the first places where the trannies and faggots and dykes and whores finally said “ENOUGH” and began punching back.

It’s because New York City is the single cruelest place I’ve ever lived. Because, when you’re weird and different and have to rely on public transportation because you don’t happen to be a multimillionaire with car service, daily life can feel something like a war zone. Or, perhaps, a post-conflict region.

Navigating New York City as a gender nonconforming person isn’t necessarily a battlefield. It’s not organized warfare, with clearly delineated fronts, places where fighting occurs contrasted against places that are safe. There are no stable boundaries of armistice or conflict. Trans women and gender nonconforming people have been murdered in the West Village and Harlem and Bed-Stuy and the Financial District alike. It’s a region that, after war, was left littered with land mines. The anger and brutality are buried, thinly veiled by a shallow layer of dirt, a lush field waiting to explode at any moment. As a trans person, you are just as likely to be accosted leaving your apartment as you are leaving a queer club as you are leaving a museum as you are leaving a deli as you are leaving your job. Everywhere is dangerous. Nowhere is safe. There isn’t a single place outdoors where you can truly let your guard down. Violence, slander, and cruelty are every bit as likely to explode at three p.m., in broad daylight, as they are at three a.m., deep underground, in the subterranean bowels of the city.

The moment you set foot outside your apartment, you simply pray that you won’t step on it. That it won’t be your foot that trips the wire. That your weight won’t trigger the switch.

That you won’t be blown to bits.

---

If there’s one thing I must give New York City credit for, it’s that she was up front about it.

It was a perfect, crisp, early-fall day. I’d just graduated college a few months earlier, moved to New York City with nothing lined up, and, by the grace of God, landed a big-girl job doing diversity consulting for capitalists, telling the likes of Bank of America and Goldman Sachs how to ensure they’re being trans inclusive as they foreclose on your house and plunder the earth.

It was far from a dream job. But it was a spark, an economic lifeline, a foothold in one of the most antagonistic metropolises in the world. With this start, maybe I could become somebody after all.

It would be dishonest to say that I was thinking this acerbically at the time. At the time, I was thrilled. Overnight, I’d become the most glamorous creature on planet Earth: a young, single lady in the Big Apple. The Archetypical New York Young Professional: Genderqueer Edition. Promise and passion and potential oozing from every pore, I woke up that morning in the confidence that this was my future. That I was the future. As I got dressed and did my makeup, I had “Welcome to New York” blaring on repeat. I was the cheesiest flavor of girl imaginable. A country gal who turned pop the moment she discovered a bold red lip. Delusion personified.

I was still trying to figure out what dressing professionally as a gender nonconforming person even looked like. I’d had a little bit of practice interning in Washington, D.C., the previous summer and at the United Nations a year or so before that. But my professional best was still a work in progress.

For my first day of work, I put on a chocolate brown, faux-silk sleeveless top, a maroon, calf-length pencil skirt, a brown leather suitcase, pearls, a corresponding matte maroon lip, and supple, navy-blue leather pumps. I looked impeccable. Main-character energy. Sex and the City. Emily in Paris. Jacob in New York.

I gave my eyeliner a final check in the mirror, sashayed down the stairs, and set out into the world. Golden early-autumn rays lapped at my feet as they click-clacked down the sidewalk. An oblivious trans gentrifier, blissfully unaware of the crushing economic realities confronting the New Yorkers whose neighborhood I was sauntering through, I whisked along Franklin Avenue and crossed over Atlantic, headed toward Fulton and the C train. My life was a storybook.

Here’s what I can accept: by its very nature, New York City must wreck you. You cannot move to Brooklyn and remain unscathed. You must be broken. The Metropolis commands it. You must be shaken to your very core by something. You must grapple and claw in order to earn the privilege of calling yourself a New Yorker.

What I struggle to accept is the immediacy with which it occurred. I would’ve at least liked to make it to my first day of work before being shattered. It would’ve been nice to get one day of full-time, salaried, adult employment under my twenty-two-year-old belt before being cut to the bone.

New York had different plans for me. More specifically, men did.

I vividly remember the location where it occurred. For someone who can barely remember what they ate for breakfast, this is no small feat. A common trait of PTSD is precise, meticulous memory.

Trauma commands it. It’s an evolutionary response. In the Paleolithic era, if you were almost eaten by a lion and narrowly escaped with your life, it was important for you to record the exact place so that you could avoid encountering that lion again. Give your brain enough cortisol, and it starts jotting down geographic coordinates on autopilot.

New York had different plans for me. More specifically, men did.

It was at the northeast corner of Fulton and Franklin in Bed-Stuy. On that corner, there’s a grungy Popeyes smooshed up against an equally grungy Dunkin’ Donuts smooshed up directly against the entrance to the subway, which is along Franklin about twenty feet north of the crosswalk. Across the street, a pedestrian bridge looms over Fulton. It has a sheet metal roof and tall, windowed sides that look out over the street, leading down to the S train shuttle to Prospect Park. In the midmorning, sun radiates down Fulton from the east.

As I approached the subway stairs, a man was resurfacing from underground. He looked at me as I approached, considered me for a split second, then hatefully made up his mind.

“Hey, FUCK you,” he declared, loudly enough for everyone to hear.

He didn’t even need to say faggot. The faggot was implied.

Then he spit on me.

My brain lit up, neurons firing throughout my body as I braced myself for whatever was coming next. I attempted the Herculean task of continuing to walk while simultaneously preparing myself for the fist or the knife that, statistically speaking, could be coming next. Fire ants in my blood, my body crawled with anxiety.

I descended the stairs, not hesitating, not pausing. With each step downward, I waited for the feeling of brute force against my back, for the wind to be knocked out of me, for the stairs to be suddenly rushing forward as I plummeted.

I was Orpheus and Eurydice both. If I wanted to save the burgeoning feminine spirit inside me, I couldn’t look back.

I had to walk forward in absolute faith. If I turned around and made eye contact with the man who’d spit on me, if I so much as acknowledged his existence, he could cast my brittle, fledgling womanhood into the underworld. If I let him know that I’d heard him, if I had the audacity to double back and face him, he would take it as a challenge. It would cement the fact that, yes, I was vulnerable. Yes, I was paying attention. Yes, he’d gotten to me.

When swimming with sharks, you can’t shed blood.

I left the spit on my skirt. Pausing to remove it was out of the question. I walked all the way down the stairs, through the turnstile, onto the platform, and into the train before I summoned the courage to wipe it off.

---

From then on, I lived in fear.

At night, as I drifted off to sleep, I’d imagine it. I’d imagine what the knife might feel like as it slid between my ribs. I’d imagine what it would feel like for my skull to crack open as it was bashed against the trash-strewn curb or the metal trimmings of the subway stairs. I’d imagine the cool metal barrel against my temple, the flash, the pop, what it would be like to bleed out, late at night, on the frozen sidewalk. I’d imagine what it’d feel like to be thrown into a trunk or be hurled, bound and almost dead, into the Hudson, filthy water rushing into defeated lungs. I imagined it all. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t seem to stop myself.

It’s what they wanted me to do. Each man who catcalled me in the street, each man who labeled me a faggot or a tranny or a fucking freak or a fucking bitch or a disgusting animal or a fucked-up motherfucker loudly enough for anyone within a hundred feet to hear, each man who shoved me or glared at me or spit at me or followed me wanted me to be reminded: I was asking for it. If I continued expressing my femininity and my womanhood on this unruly, masculine body, I would be next.

They wanted me to understand: We can kill you. We can rape you. We can do so with impunity. And it is coming. The desecration of your body is inevitable. If you insist on flying so close to the sun, we will melt down your wings, crash you back to earth, and shatter you onto the pavement. You have it coming, and soon.

They also wanted me to understand that I was alone. They’d loudly proclaim on the subway that I was a degenerate and someone should set me on fire. They’d say it loudly enough for the entire subway car or sidewalk or bus stop or park or CVS to hear: first, because they wanted to be sure that I’d heard them over my headphones (I always pretended I couldn’t) and, second, because they wanted to be sure I knew that everyone else had heard it, too. They wanted me to hear both the hideous words they said and the collective silence that came after. Because trust me: no one ever took those men to task. They’d yell, “FUCK YOU, FAGGOT,” as loudly as they could, snarling and hurling trash at me, and the rest of the world would turn away in shame.

Hundreds of people would watch it happen and avert their eyes.

No one ever stepped in. No one boldly intervened or asked, “The fuck did you just say to them?” No Wonder Woman swooped in with lycra and a cape, grabbed them by the collar, shoved them against the wall, and demanded that they apologize. Spider-Man never showed.

No one offered me comfort, either. They never walked over after witnessing my degradation. No one had the courage to break the unspoken fourth wall of New York public observation to ask, “Are you okay?” or to say, “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.” Everyone was a bystander. No one intervened. Not once.

And don’t get me started on the NYPD. As if they’d ever do anything to protect me. If given the chance, they were more likely to join in than help.

It became an accepted fact in my mind that unless I renounced my femininity, buried my high heels, and burned my dresses, I was going to have the living shit beaten out of me. I was going to be assaulted. I was going to be raped. I was going to be murdered. And as it was happening, no one was going to stop it. They were going to flee, terrified that the unchecked brutality of men would turn against them next.

Honestly, I look back on this part of my life with astonishment. Why did no one ever gift me pepper spray? Why did no one ever encourage me to buy a knife? Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve carried a gun.

Daily, I walked out into the world, into the threat of violence and death, with my head held high, like a fool. Convinced that martyr was the best I’d ever be.

Eventually, my head began to stoop. With enough pressure and heat, even a diamond will melt.

For my safety, I learned meekness. I learned to hide. I learned to conform on the train and bring what I really wanted to wear in a book bag. I commuted exclusively in sneakers, putting on my heels only when I was safely in a lobby. I learned to keep my hands in my pockets in order to conceal the nail polish. I wore long coats to cover up my skirts and dresses. Even in the brutal swamp heat of New York City summers, I often wore long coats. May through September, I would pour sweat and arrive home drenched.
But at least I arrived home.

---

After only ten months of living in New York City, I found myself lying in bed, contemplating how I was going to end my own life.

My death wish felt autonomic, closer to a flinch than a choice. Pavlovian, even. If you scare a dog every time they leave the house, the door itself will eventually become a source of fear. It felt like my gender was being trained by an invisible fence. Each time I attempted to step outside the unseen social boundaries of acceptable masculinity, I got a rough shock. The invisible line was always somewhere, lying in wait, binding up my existence in its ever-constricting radius. Eventually, I learned to just stay in the apartment.

The men who catcalled me knew that if they were consistent enough in their harassment, they could eventually succeed in changing my behavior. And they did. Expressing myself stopped being fun. Dresses were no longer tools of self-empowerment; they were sites of struggle. I couldn’t put on lipstick with joy or a sense of whimsy. I could only put it on in fear.

There’d be periods when the harassment wasn’t so bad, of course. I’d go a month or two without an incident, start to let my guard down and feel better. But then, inevitably, something horrific would happen and it’d start all over again.

Eventually, I decided that it would be better to take matters into my own hands. These men were going to kill me anyway. I was going to die because of who I was and how I dressed. I accepted that my gender itself was lethal, that existing in the world as a nonbinary person meant embracing death.

Murder was only a matter of time, and I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.

The men who catcalled me knew that if they were consistent enough in their harassment, they could eventually succeed in changing my behavior.

I didn’t want some horrible man’s hateful gaze to be the last thing I ever saw.

So I’d do it myself.

There was comfort in the fantasy. Control, even. It’s so pathetic to be murdered in a hate crime, I’d tell myself. Why bleed out on the sidewalk by someone else’s hand when you can elegantly throw yourself off a building? I’d lie in bed for hours, dreaming about it. I did extensive research on the best methods. The studies are out there if you know where to look. Pills are ineffective most of the time. Though razors are what you see most often in movies, the odds that you’ll actually bleed out aren’t as high as you’d think. Most people who try that way are discovered passed out in the tub and promptly committed to the psych ward. The internet is a terrifying place.

I am not sharing this with you for dramatic effect or to be grim. I do not enjoy talking about how authentically I wanted to die. Trans people wanting to die is a trope I’m exhausted by.

I am sharing this with you as a matter of fact. It was a fact that the violence I encountered from men on the street while living in New York City was so terrifying and psychologically destructive, it made me want to die. It was so pervasive and spiritually brutal, I sought to take matters into my own hands. It’s important for you to know this because it colors what comes next. It’s important for you to know how dark things got, lest you feel that what comes next is just me being pollyannaish, lest you think that what comes next was easy for me because I didn’t really have it that bad.

I had it that bad. After a year of living in New York City, men had taken all of my power. Men were in control of my happiness, not me. My life was no longer really my own.

The psychological terror was so intense, I prayed for someone to do it. Stop snarling at me and just bite. Stop screaming at me and just shove me onto the tracks. Get it over with. Brutalize my femininity. End this. End me. Just do it.

Please.

---

If I were to survive, I would have to find another way.

The turning point for me was, strangely enough, reality television. In 2015, I was featured on an episode of MTV’s documentary series True Life, a show I’d grown up watching. At a dark time in my life, it was a gargantuan opportunity. And to my knowledge, it was the first documentary to profile genderqueer or nonbinary people on national television. It felt thrilling to be even a fractional part of trans history. For the show, a crew followed me from New York back to North Carolina, where I was going to spend some time with my family and give the keynote speech for North Carolina Trans Pride.

As part of the project, the crew shot extensive interviews with my parents, including my dad who, at that point in our relationship, was still struggling to wrap his head around my gender. He still said nasty things to me about it sometimes and expressed in no uncertain terms that he wished I could just be “normal.” At that point in our relationship, he refused to be seen with me in public when I was wearing lipstick or a dress.

And then a television crew came knocking and he had to make a choice. One way or another, he was going to be portrayed—how did he want to be seen by the world and by the hundreds of thousands of people who still watched MTV in the mid-2010s? Did he want to be portrayed as the rejecting father, unwilling to try, abandoning his child because they happened to be different? Or did he want to be seen in a more complicated light? As a father who was trying? Failing, but trying nonetheless?

Miraculously, he chose the latter. He decided to participate. He sat down for extensive interviews with the documentary crew. He spoke openly and honestly. At one point, he crawled on all fours through the attic of our house to turn off a fan that was causing audio problems for the crew. He even came to hear my speech at NC Trans Pride—willingly, if reluctantly, interacting with me in a dress for the first time in public. Him agreeing to be seen in public with me in a dress was a significant breakthrough in our relationship. And after doing it on national television, he got a lot better at doing it in real life. But what I remember most is something he said during an interview with the crew.

If you’ve never had a documentary crew plumb the depths of your life, you may not know this, but reality television can actually be a beautiful process. When done correctly, participating in a documentary can be just the thing you need to synthesize how you’re feeling. Nothing gets people talking quite like a giant camera, an eager producer, and an assumed audience of millions.

At one point in the episode, my father told the producers something he’d never said to me in my entire life. He told them that he was scared for me. He understood that having a child with a male body who wears dresses makes them a target. He shared that he lost sleep worrying about whether I’d be hurt. He just wanted me to be safe. He just wanted his child, whom he loved more than anything in the world, to be okay.

I was shocked. All he’d ever expressed to me was anger, frustration, and resentment. He’d only ever told me that he wished I wouldn’t be so eccentric, that he hated how I dressed, that he wished this whole “trans phase” would end, that I’d knock it off with “that San Francisco faggot shit.” He’d expressed hatred of and loathing for my femininity, but he’d never told me why.

The “why” landed deep. At his core, in his heart of hearts, he didn’t hate his son’s femininity because he thought it was inherently disgusting so much as he hated it because it terrified him. Because he was horrified about what might happen to me. Because he, too, had nightmares about my mangled body in an alley, sequined skirt caked in blood.

After all those years, I realized that my father was not really bigoted.

He was simply afraid.

That’s when something clicked. If my father was afraid, and his fear had caused him to lash out at me for who I am, might that be true for other men? Might that be true for the men whose catcalls and harassment were making my life in New York a living hell?

The realization crashed on me like a wave, rolling through my mind.

All of a sudden, the path to freedom was clear.

The path to freedom was empathy.

Let me take a moment to pause and say that I know how neoliberal and annoying that sounds. Empathy is a watered-down buzzword these days. As a concept, it’s been hollowed out, cheapened, and mass-produced. It doesn’t pack the punch it used to. But it’s the only word I can come up with to describe what I know to be true.

The path to freedom was empathy.

When a dog aggressively barks at us, it’s scary because we think that barking signifies malice, aggression, and a desire to harm. Through empathy, we can see that most dogs bark at us simply because they’re afraid. They’re nervous. They don’t know us. We’re bigger than they are, and they feel a need to signify a boundary. They bark at us precisely because they see us as the ones with power and control. They bark at us because we are, in fact, more powerful than they are. No matter how scary or large the dog is, it is a fallible creature, a vulnerable being scared of the myriad ways the world can hurt it.

I couldn’t find my way back to a joyful, empowered life by hating the men who terrorized me. But I realized I didn’t have to. Through the vulnerability of my father and years of contemplation, I found another way. If I wanted my life to be mine again, all I needed to do was love these men. Care for them. Empathize with them, instead.

I pursue such empathy not because it is the right thing to do so much as because it is the only thing to do. I don’t empathize with the men who hurt me because I owe it to them; I empathize with the men who hurt me because I owe it to myself. Because I understand that it is only through empathy that I can set myself free.

Before I discovered empathy for the men who catcalled me, some man would scream, “FUCK YOU, TRANNY-ASS BITCH!” at me from across the street and it would send me reeling. I’d be ruined for days or weeks. My inner monologue would go something like this:

He hates me because of who I am, and I hate him. He hates me from the core of his being. He’s a monster who wants to kill me because he hates me so much.

So many men hate me. So many men want to kill me because they hate me. Most men are monsters. The world is filled to the brim with monsters like him.

How will I ever be happy? How will I ever feel safe? I am doomed to have hatred like that hurled at me for the rest of my life. There is no escape.

It was paralyzing. It was ruinous. It made me want to die.

But when I learned a new approach, one that focused on empathizing with the men who catcalled me, something real changed. Possibilities opened up. Prospects bloomed. Expectations shifted.

Now when a man screams, “THE FUCK IS THAT FAGGOT SHIT?” at me from across the street (something that, thankfully, happens a lot less now that I live in L.A. and drive), I work to fill my internal monologue with compassion, possibility, and a sense of futurity. Instead of spiraling dark, I push myself to be curious: probative, even. I steer my thoughts toward understanding that man not as a terrifying monster but as a fractured human being. And in the process, I get to save my own soul.

It goes something like:

Okay, first things first: Am I safe? Is he pursuing me? Am I being followed? Do I need to seek help? No? Okay. Good. Phew.

You poor man. You must be so broken to say something like that to me. How much pain must you be in in order to yell at a complete stranger like that? How much suffering must you endure each day, navigating the world with all that anger and sadness?

I wonder what happened to you? I wonder what your childhood was like? Did you ever feel loved by your father? Did your brother discover you with a Barbie once and beat you so badly, you couldn’t go to school the next day? Maybe it was your father who discovered you, wearing one of your mother’s dresses.

Maybe he screamed at you until his voice went hoarse. Maybe your mother caught you coloring a picture of a fairy and refused to look you in the eye for days afterward. Maybe your friends at school dragged you out by the dumpster and broke your nose because they caught you looking at one of their dicks in the locker room.

You poor man.

Maybe none of it happened directly to you; maybe you just witnessed it. Did you watch your father beat your brother when he explored gender differently? Did you watch your father beat your mother? Did he relent, or did he refuse to stop? Does me breaking the rules of my gender remind you of your mother breaking the rules that your father set for hers? Is that why you’re acting like this?

Or perhaps you were the bully. Perhaps you’re inundated with guilt. Your best friend tried to kiss you once and you smashed his head into a tree. You saw your little brother wearing a tutu and you threw him into a lake. And now you see someone like me breaking the rules of gender and have to contend with a culpability so powerful you cannot breathe. Are you crushed by the sight of me?

Or maybe it’s jealousy. Maybe you want freedom from the gender binary so badly, it makes your blood boil. Do you want to wear bright colors, exciting patterns, and flowing fabric, too? Do you want your internal femininity to be recognized, loved, and adored? Is seeing me a cruel reminder of all of the parts of yourself that you were forced to kill off in the name of creating your masculinity? Do you want to forget about the beautiful, gentle, feminine parts of your soul that were murdered long ago? Do you hate me for reminding you of them?

Or is it that you’re turned on and you hate yourself for it? Is that it? Do you want to fuck me? Am I your shameful kink? I wonder what would happen in a world where you could acknowledge your desire for me. Perhaps we could be lovers. Maybe then you could mess up my lipstick in the good way.

I wonder.

Whatever the case may be, I refuse to shut down. I refuse to harden. I refuse to make my heart icy in return or sever our connection as human beings.

I want to help you more badly than I know how to say. I understand your pain intimately, because your pain and mine are one and the same. It’s a pain that I’ve healed from, too. It’s a pain I know how to heal from. A pain that you also deserve to heal from. I could teach you the way, if only you’d let me. If only the world hadn’t pushed us so far apart.

I wonder what it would be like for us to be friends? What TV shows do you like? What music do you listen to? What would it be like for us to meet under different circumstances, as colleagues or as in-laws or at a Christmas party? What gift would you get me for Secret Santa? I would get you a cactus. It would be an apt metaphor.

I wish I could talk to you right now, in this moment. It would help me to know more about your struggles, to see you in 3D. Are you worried that you won’t be able to pay your rent this month? Are your parents healthy? When’s the last time you called them? Do you have children? What are their names? Are you miserable at your job? Are you looking for a new one? Are you barely scraping by? Are you okay?

I know I can’t actually talk to you right now. It isn’t safe, and that breaks my heart. Our separation, this cleft between us, rips me in two.

I look at you and all I see is a scared little boy in desperate need of a hug. I wish you would let me give you that hug.

I will settle for what I can do. At this moment, what’s within my power is how I frame this interaction and make meaning of it. Though I could view this moment as a degradation of my personhood, I will choose to see it, more accurately, as you learning. I will work to understand your words not as slander but as a begrudging embrace of the world I am dreaming into existence. A positive, albeit contradictory, sign pointing toward a better existence for trans people and men alike.

Because the fact that you lashed out at me means that you saw me. It means that you perceived me enough for it to mean something. It means that I entered your heart and unearthed pain you didn’t remember was there. It means that simply by wearing a piece of clothing and walking past you, I changed how you see gender by a millimeter or two. A smidge. An iota.

What power: to change hearts simply by existing. For a mere garment to serve as source and site of healing? For a mere outfit to alter someone’s perception of reality? Being catcalled by you does not mean that I am weak; it means that I am strong. It is not an affirmation of my vulnerability so much as it is a confirmation of my power.

For now, I will continue walking down this sidewalk, I will get where I’m going, and I will carry on with my life.

But one day, when I’ve been able to rest and heal a bit, I will write a book. In it, there will be a chapter about you. About how scared men like you made me feel, about how hard I worked to overcome that fear, and about how I learned to wish the best for you in spite of it all.

A message in a bottle, I will drop it into the proverbial ocean and pray that it makes its way to—

Ding! The subway doors open. It’s my stop. I’ve been on the train for thirty minutes, lost in empathic exploration, turning harassment into something more.

These days, street harassment no longer has the same effect on me. When a man catcalls me, I no longer internalize the slurs or the things he says. I no longer take it home with me. His words don’t ring in my mind with the same voracity, because I no longer see him as an enemy or as someone I hate.

Instead, I see him as a friend who is struggling. A friend who isn’t acting right because he’s scared, traumatized, and lonely.

I have yet to rid myself of the devastation entirely, but the texture has changed meaningfully enough. These days, I’m merely devastated differently: devastated that, in the moment of being catcalled, it is not safe for me to show this broken man the love he so clearly needs.

---

From the book BEFORE THEY WERE MEN: Essays on Manhood, Compassion, and What Went Wrong by Jacob Tobia. Copyright © 2025 by Jacob Tobia. Published by Harmony Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.