Easy Come, Easy Go
On The Stubborn Resilience of Masculine Identity
Happy Wolf Moon!
This Full Moon holds a special place in my heart owing to its symbolic connections with much of the work done at Dark Twins related to the Initiatory symbolism of Zelda games.
The Wolf Moon makes me think of Wolf Link, the hero's early, bestial form in The Twilight Princess. This was the form Link took while Midna was an impish and mischievous creature.
The moon's transiting the sign of Gemini, of course, ties it to Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, as well as the Lovers card and the Aeon of Zain written of by Kenneth Grant.
Which means this Full Moon is right up Dark Twins’ alley!
It’s been a long time since I played it, but The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is all about transformations. As my memory serves (and it may be poorly), the earlier parts of the game are played with Link in wolf form, wherein he rides around with a shackle and a chain trailing from one of his front paws. Midna, the leader of the Twili (a dark race of beings from a world called The Twilight Realm), first appears as a small “impish” creature with a snaggle tooth and a strange helm that covers one of her demonic eyes.
Later in the game, she takes on the form of a voluptuous, mature woman.
Both are redheads, and “imp” Midna rides Link like a pony, so there is definite “Babalon” energy here (and no, I am not reducing Babalon to her red hair, Will).
I’ve written several posts here at Dark Twins addressing queer culture and the Left Hand Path, as well as transgender identity. Some of my comments have been a touch antagonistic, but of course those capable of reading between the lines have also seen that this has had a lot to do with my own struggle with my gender identity.
As such, in light of recent developments in this department of my personal life—and because I’ve already been so damn candid on this Stack already—I decided it would be a service to the trans community, the LHP community, and those trans members of the LHP community (whether in or out of the closet), for me to come clean about my experience of integrating my transgender identity.
I had simply lacked the frank and open discussion with transgender women who have embraced their new identities that was necessary for me to see more clearly what’s been going on with me. I had sought out community before, and I’d had a handful of negative experiences with some individual members of the trans community. I have learned that these were simply a string of unfortunate encounters and that, much like any other subset of the population (surprise, surprise): The transgender community is not a monolith. I bravely (if not quite so delicately) explored some aspects of this already in the post Am I Trans?
I’m just going to cut right to the chase and answer that question in the affirmative: Yes. I’m transgender. In what way?
That’s complicated.
I’ve decided that the best way to approach this would be to run through a brief “autobiography” of my “transgender” experiences.
Wind Chimes
By far and away, the two most prevalent “signs” of my transgender status over the years have been my severe emotionality and the fact that often times, my inner monologue speaks in a woman’s voice. I can add to this that my body language—especially when I’m feeling really good—is very “flowy” and “effeminate.” Now, most of these traits fall squarely in the category of gender as opposed to sex; that is, the deeming of these behaviors as “feminine” is largely culturally determined, although it’s probably impossible to completely separate nature and nurture here.
I note that I do know well enough not to walk around in public “flowing” the way I like to do in private, especially while dancing. I really kind of dance like a girl, too.
However, when I’m walking down the street in my baggy jeans, pub cap, and extra-large hoodie with a sigil of Vine on the front, I pull an intentional swagger and can look plenty masculine. Kinda “gangster,” I’ve been told.
The first time my mental voice came across abnormally was when I was about 8 years old. I was laying on my belly in the sun in the living room, reading a book. Suddenly, the voice in my head changed. And this is strange.
Yeah, it was “feminine.” And there was even an image to go along with it, one I recognized from the film, The Neverending Story. She looked a bit like The Childlike Empress. Her voice, however, was something else entirely.
I could discern words, mind you, I really could—but this voice reading my lines in my head sounded, if you’ll believe it, a bit like crystal wind chimes blowing in the breeze.
So there is a lot of “Rose” energy here, isn’t there?
In When They Talk Back, I introduced three “spirit guides,” two of whom were positive and wholesome for me, and one of whom was not. One of the good ones was a sylph, feminine in nature, and her primary color was pink. The other—Ilyas—was a red dragon.
I lost contact with Ilyas first. I remember, when he left, that there was a message attached: He said he wasn’t lowering his frequency to reach me anymore, that I had what I needed to raise mine to reach him. I have no problem interacting with Rose.
I think it’s pretty clear what went down: It was just Rose at first, and I wouldn’t listen to her. Ilyas came later.
So Rose was Ilyas.
I’ve suspected this for much longer than my readers likely think…but one thing I have long recognized is this: Successfully-transitioned transgender women are tough as nails, because getting to where they are is a steep, uphill battle (I should add to this statement, though, and mention that this is a journey that is never complete).
As such, men who bash them on the grounds of their not conforming to masculine gender norms and thus “not being tough enough” are deluded, and they also don’t know the first thing about either courage or resilience. They’re the weak ones.
Of course, as the above-linked post relates, Rose and Ilyas also started telling me that I wasn’t strictly “human,” and started saying instead that I’m an angel. I wasn’t quite as firm about this fact at that early date as I am now, but of course we are all angels in that same sense if you ask most Ceremonial magicians.
So there must be a reason they made it a point to be that specific. I grilled them on it, too, and they were adamant: “You’re…not like the others,” they said.
Of course, I did find my way eventually to a community of people who could handle that, and I wrote about them in the post Following The Fire Chapter Three: Don't Worry, I Already Had My Messianic Delusion.
That post helps explain even better than the identity of “angel” how I got so comfortable merging both masculine and feminine traits, but I’ll spell it out here, too: According to a good friend from those rooms, I’m not an “angel,” per se, but a “destroyer.”
What’s a destroyer? For details, you can read this post (it’s behind a paywall, and for good reason).
I have some odd physical quirks that Tilly had attributed to “destroyerhood” (“destroyers” are kind of like a DnD race here), but which I now know can be attributed to other conditions.
The reason I ended up cutting Tilly off and running like hell from the entire “otherkin” community of which we were a part was because she had begun to speak to me “as” Ilyas, or my own Higher Self (she was someone who claimed to be a medium channeling other entities).
This is funny, because my entire viewpoint on that has also recently changed. That, however, is a story for another post.
Anyway, to put it in more current parlance, what we’re talking about here is really more of a xenogender situation.
And I know that’s a controversial issue. I’m not even in any of the rooms where those conversations are happening, but I can smell the cortisol all the way from here. I know the issue does run the risk of fracturing the community. For that reason, I’m not going to press it here.
But I also refuse to back down from even mentioning it. I fought very hard to get as far as accepting that I am not strictly a “man” in terms of identity, and I’m not willing to have done all that work to stop short of my true lived reality—especially not when I write a Left Hand Path blog, are you kidding?
Lastly, I bring this up because it’s extremely relevant to the main reason I’m writing this post: To convey just what a tremendous obstacle it is for a man to give up his masculine identity. This is something that I think more people would respect if more people understood it.
Womanizer
This next entire string of signs is one I never got the chance to ask anyone about until very recently, and also never even thought to Google, and that’s because I never once got even close to considering socially transitioning…until fairly recently.
After the disappointment I related in the post None of Your Business, I had a very bad reaction in which I completely collapsed in on myself. Two core aspects of my identity were at odds: I was realizing I was transgender, and I’d known for most of my life that I walk the Left Hand Path. I could certainly compromise somewhat and hang out with queer occultists more generally, but no; there was definitely something both essential and indispensable about the Left Hand Path perspective and I could not afford to compromise on it. This meant that for a while, I was adrift at sea alone. I realized that most likely, no subculture of the kind I was looking for existed. If it did, it was hidden away somewhere very difficult to find, and probably for good reason. These are volatile ingredients.
I realized that, without being much of an “insider” to either community, I would just have to start envisioning and manifesting that community, and I would have to be a hardass about my standards.
This abided until I met Yuri in a Facebook group and we became friends. Yuri was transgender, could clearly see what my magic(k)al philosophy was about, and didn’t judge me.
The need to be understood by another in order to make this transition is impossible to overemphasize, and it was Yuri’s unique perspective and ability to hold space where I knew I would be understood that led to the cracking of my egg. One of the most important messages here where the Left Hand Path is concerned is that even on this path, rugged individualism isn’t going to be one’s best path to success. I’ve said it before: People need people.
Once I started talking about it at all, the floodgates came open and my brain immediately started connecting all sorts of dots and suddenly, my new friend Dana didn’t need to say shit to prompt me. In fact, there wasn’t a single coercive instant in the entire conversation. The conversation started with, “So why don’t you tell me about some of your transgender experiences?” And I needed that prompt: I would not have brought it up myself. It was just so awkward and I didn’t know how. I had already ruined so many other interactions with trans people that I didn’t want it to happen again.
But here’s what came of that conversation:
Point blank, to a large degree, I have a woman’s sexuality; and the place where this appeared first was in my porn viewing habits.
I noticed that I was generally far more interested in the woman’s pleasure than the man’s in any given scene, and I would swap scenes accordingly. I really didn’t like the stuff that involved smacking women around, choking them out, gagging them with one’s engorged member, etc. Frankly, a lot of the time, I was happiest watching a woman pleasure herself.
I always used to be so shy with girls. You couldn’t pay me to actually go talk to a girl I liked, and in the main, it was because I didn’t think they would like me at all.
However, I will say that from the very first time I ever touched a woman intimately…it’s like I just knew exactly what I was doing. I really get off on my partner’s pleasure. I have never met a woman I could’t satisfy immensely.
And while I’m sure there were individual occasions of fakery, I know that certain signs can’t be faked. Not like that.
Another aspect is what had been termed by my mother, “hypersexuality” (apartment living, what can I say?) because of how much I liked masturbating. I think a better word, more fitting with a woman’s sexuality, would be “multi-orgasmic.” I can just keep going. Sometimes I don’t even have a refractory period, but if I’m turned on enough, it will be short-lived if there is one.
It was only as I was telling Dana these things that I realized this could be explained in terms of physiology. I may fall into an intersex category. It certainly feels that way. I remember telling her that in some ways, it’s almost like my penis feels like it’s an oversized clitoris.
To be clear, that is not a comment about its size. It’s about how it feels. I don’t know how else to explain it, I guess that’s just how my nerves are wired.
It was these conversations that were most affirming of all, because these were real experiences that I had. As my readers are well aware, I have no trouble confronting authorities or people trying to tell me what to think, so we don’t need to be concerned about grooming here.
This is the real deal. I’m a bad motherfucker, if I want to be. But I’m also very womanly.
With that, I’d like to shift the discussion to the things that stood in the way of accepting this.
Obstacles
Androgyny was an important aspect of “destroyer” identity back when I was hanging out in those “astral” chat rooms with all the real-world wizards (watch, I probably know some of them by their human names now). Destroyers were very similar to the shapeshifting reptillians, except the idea was that they could spin their many-stranded DNA on the spot and write new sequences (so really, Tilly was adding layers of complexity to the concept of the shapeshifters; one might say she had “fleshed it out.”)
There was actually this big, long, running joke during the time period where Epsilon, my destroyer “father” and the current Shiva (at the time), was himself pregnant, carrying my mother’s child. My sister. I forget her name but it started with an “E,” because all destroyer names do. Besides, I had about a bazillion brothers and sisters. No joke.
I had long conversations with Epsilon and Tilly both about that, about Epsilon’s exquisite balance of “feminine” softness and sensitivity paired with the fact that he was one of the universe’s most unstoppable warriors, who could end entire worlds with his fury. And yet his highest aspiration was to love and care for Tilly, to protect her and the cosmic balance she watched over. The way he spoke about her would melt hearts.
I aspired to be like him in every way.
I suppose I still do.
Look, I can take care of myself out on the street, it’s not that; I can come out as trans and, if I really had to, could probably default to my masculine behaviors and body strength to deal with anyone who might harrass me.
Also, by the time I started opening up to the feminine side of my identity, I had seen plenty enough to realize that my magic(k) certainly had my back! It was just like all the texts say, but we don’t actually believe it until we experience it: If you’re doing your “True Will,” the universe will meet you more than halfway.
But it was still hard.
It did not help that at one point, I started coming out to V. This was not long before we moved to Texas, which may explain part of her reaction. Still, it was unexpected, and this fueled some of my reactions and helped keep me in the closet about it.
I had already worn her panties here and there (yep, I’m pretty sure I picked that one up while my aunt was having trouble keeping her desires to herself). Honestly, I kind of liked the snugness, and for me, that was more of a kink thing.
Then, sometime in early 2023, I launched Dark Twins and built a Facebook page for it, and I noticed that the algorithm was filling its News Feed with all kinds of LGBTQIA+ pages, kink pages, mental health and autism pages, the works. And I was here for it! That’s how I got all lit up about reformulating LHP ethics to make more room for us.
In the process, I made another friend who happened to make a video of themselves rollerblading in fishnets, and I just felt like giving that a try.
Veronica was living in Texas and visiting me once a month, and during one of her visits, I decided to test things out and wear a pair of fishnets I had bought. I also put on my Masonic kilt (which I enjoyed as antinomian to some extent—imagine a bunch of masculine Masons getting all red in the face because a trans woman is wearing their big, secret tartan!). I also put on V’s long, flowy sweater. She even gave me a pair of her reading glasses with see-through pink rims. She really seemed on-board.
However, all I had to do was hint at dressing like that outside of the home, and she flipped like a light switch. Suddenly, her response turned to revulsion and horror, kicking off a fight that lasted all afternoon and even continued after she left for Texas.
I could belabor the details of a heartbreaking conversation where she coldly and mercilessly attacked my masculinity by comparing me to her admins at work. Why do I bring this up?
It’s not to throw V under the bus. It’s to highlight how deep the obstacles are that men face when it comes to this stuff. Being rejected is one thing; that’s understandable. However, learning about a loved one’s new gender identity can be jarring enough to push people into pure viciousness, because gender norms run so deep that it’s only by transitioning that a person can even possibly understand just how deep it goes. You have no conception of how much of your lived experience is dictated by your gender until you decide to step outside of it.
Incidentally, this becomes a very strong argument for upholding many differences in sex as being biological in origin. This may mean that we can’t really just say, “We’re not doing gender essentialism anymore.” The social solution to this problem is going to have to be more nuanced than that.
The transitioning experience is visceral through and through, from the very beginning. It starts before you change a single physical thing about yourself.
As I know all too well, all it really takes to get on the wrong side of this socially (depending on where you are) is walking wrong. I mean having a “womanly” gait.
There’s something fundamental about this that I didn’t grasp until I actually started making visible moves in the direction of a new gender identity. Two years of internally accepting the nature of my gender (which I call “demiandrogynous”) and I still couldn’t let go of my rootedness in masculinity.
By far and away, the largest impact has been social. The most notable thing about it? The fact that for me, there really hasn’t been one at all (with one possible exception), not from my friends. All of them are either supportive or they’re keeping their mouths shut. Even so, I literally tremble at the thought of saying anything about being girly at all, and it’s because society just hasn’t made it safe.
To be clear, this isn’t even necessarily a concern for my physical safety; I can take care of myself. This is pure social stigma, which has a much bigger impact than we realize. Here’s Why Words Can Hurt As Much As Sticks And Stones at Psychology Today. We are social creatures, evolved to roam the earth in bands of about 100-150 members, and without our clan, we’ve evolved to be pretty helpless.
This still manages to be true in the year 2025.
Making the decision to transition is making the decision to risk falling through society’s cracks. It’s making the decision to face derision and scorn even when it’s not directed overtly at us. We can still feel stares and sneers, too. They cause physical pain. I feel this all the more as a person with Borderline Personality Disorder.
Here’s the thing: I don’t even have a desire to wear women’s clothes. Sometimes I like a nice, flowy robe or something. But my probing with Veronica had nothing to do with actually wanting to wear fishnets by her side. Mostly, I was testing the waters because she was asking me to make myself dependent on her in a strange state. Still, her reaction spoke volumes. She would have been willing to let me cross dress at home, but who the fuck does she even think she is to draw a boundary like that for me?
That’s all I needed to know. My reasons for going down there anyway, are…something I don’t need to explain to anyone.
Anyway, I just wanted to speak to the deep, paralyzing fear that runs through my veins even to think of verbally telling people, “I’m demiandrogynous,” even without changing a single thing about the way I dress or present myself.
Just the words raise the hackles of transphobic people.
If we can’t even accept that much, we have a long way to go when it comes to accepting men who fully transition. This is why xenogenders are contentious; people can’t even psychologically cope with a man in a fucking dress.
A great deal of what we leave behind in transitioning is habit. What kind of habit? Masculine habit. Even if we aren’t particularly “manly men” (I’m definitely not), into football and barbecue and beards and trucks, society pressures us to be “tough.” This is where physical threats do come into play.
What does a man do when he’s challenged to a fight by another man? It’s practically written into code: You throw down. You meet him halfway, and if you can, you fuck his shit up. You don’t let any man punk you. You let one do it, all the rest will follow suit.
What does a woman do if the same man does the same thing to her?
Now, I know this varies. I’ve known a woman who stood up to a man in exactly that situation. But that woman, I have to say, had some pretty “masc” traits and body language, too. Still, most likely, the woman is going to be more subservient. Again, these are norms. Women aren’t raised to meet physical challenges like that head-on, with such eagerness.
To accept transitioning really is to accept an inner woman’s identity that has been suppressed. This also means changing behaviors. Many of my unconscious behaviors—including the sense of self-entitlement that leads to so much of my impatience when dealing with people—stems from my masculinity. I enjoy untold benefits because of my ability to walk down the street looking like I mean serious business. People leave me alone, people tend to be swayed by my masculine presence, people just treat a man like a man.
Transitioning is scary because you know…you totally know, you can’t not know, even if it’s very unconscious…you know you’ll have to give up that privilege.
You know you will be treated the way you still habitually treat women.
To become a woman means leaving all of that behind. All of it.
Very few have the courage.
Those who do are warriors, even if they never lay a finger on anyone.
Sa Sekhem Sahu!
It’s been an interesting process, writing Dark Twins and reaching this point. Honestly, when I started Gogo Bordello’s World of Ruin on Substack, I was planning to use Gogo Bordello as my “initiatory mask” to play with the concept of gender, but then that damn Chinese balloon got shot down and I saw it as a call to go and start Dark Twins. My reaction the re-appearance of “Sarsha” was…also interesting and surprising to me, and very “masc.”
In the meantime, I had come up with another pen name: Dan de Lyons. As I look back, I can see that there’s a lot of room here for interpreting this as my clinging to some outmoded notions of what certain esoteric grades are traditionally “supposed” to look like; and one could also say that Dan de Lyons is the last masculine egoic holdout for my psyche. I think there’s a lot of truth to this.
Dan de Lyons—as a name and as a persona—represented where I was from. I wrote posts about my upbringing in Lyons. I was living in a house with two brothers who were each a different kind of gangbanger. That’s the mindset I’m coming from.
Gogo Bordello, by contrast, literally has the essence of forward movement built into their name, which highly suggests it’s a sign of where I’m headed.
I think all of that holds true enough. Still, while I can recognize the gendered assumptions that underpin my separation of the two personae (it was always obvious, even if unspoken), I don’t think that means I need to let Dan de Lyons go.
I’ve connected Dan de Lyons primarily to the demon King Vine in the past (see My Cousin Vine), and lions still tend to invoke strong “dudebro energy” when we see images of them or hear them referenced in speech.
Still, as I said in The Rainbow Flame, pride as a principle was important enough to name the entire queer movement after. It’s good enough for me.
Besides, I know one other very powerful lion:
The neter Sekhmet. Sekhmet is kind of like “the Egyptian Kali;” She breathes fire, and works with principles of alchemical healing through the modulation of that fire with water. She also likes her alcohol, and there’s a myth where she was sent to earth by her father Ra to destroy his enemies. She got a little overzealous in her bloothirst, and ran the risk of destroying all of humanity.
All of the other gods had to get her absolutely sloshed so she would pass the fuck out and stop.
Yeah. That reminds me of someone.