Rocco

Rocco Kayiatos is an award-winning storyteller and community builder, with a professional background in media making and marketing. He released 4 solo albums under the moniker Katastrophe and is hailed as the first openly FTM musician to release an album. Kayiatos is also one of the founding editors of Original Plumbing Magazine, the first print magazine dedicated to trans male culture. He transitioned in 2000 and has been outspoken, making media and creating space for trans men since then. He is currently the founder and executive director of The Intentional Man Project and Camp Lost Boys which recently became a 501(c)3. Camp Lost boys is a traditional summer camp experience for men of transgender experience over the age of 18. He is also a writer, podcaster, and content creator for several companies including BuzzFeed, The Cut, Spring Hill, Headspace, Spotify, Grindr, and FOLX Health.

For more information about Camp Lost Boys, please go to www.camplostboys.org

For the Intentioanl Man Project visit www.theintentionalmanproject.org

You can purchase the best of Orginal Plumbing book at www.feministpress.org 

Rocco is also the author and editor of the Mindful Masculinity Workbook which you can find at AK Press dot org.

For more information about Rocco, please visit his website at roccokayiatos.com

Be sure to check out these sites to learn more about Rocco’s work:

• Learn more about Rocco and his executive marketing work at roccokayiatos.com

• Camp Lost Boys, a 501(c)3 www.camplostboys.org (founder and executive director)

• The Intentional Man Project www.theintentionalmanproject.org (founder and executive director)

• Original Plumbing Magazine (Founder and co-editor)

• Back issues of the zine at originalplumbingmagazine.com The best of ten years in book form at https://www.feministpress.org/books-n-z/original-plumbing) 

• Buy the Mindful Masculinity Workbook (author and editor) https://www.akpress.org/mindful-masculinity-workbook.html

Rocco Interview Transcript

Content Warning: [00:00:00] We want to give a content warning for this episode. There is talk about suicide and mental health issues. Remember you can go to our website, transmasculinepodcast. com for resources for crisis lines, including the Trevor project, trans lifeline, and suicide prevention, lifeline, transmasculinepodcast. com.

Intro: Hello everyone, welcome back. We're excited to be entering our fourth season of Stealth, a trans masculine podcast. I'm Jackal. And I'm Kai. We're your hosts for the Transmasculine Podcast. It's amazing to us that we are still going strong after two years and will be featuring our 50th episode this season.

Intro: Our show continues to focus on the stories of people who identify as transmasculine and who transitioned either socially or medically before or around the year 2000. We will continue to make efforts to [00:01:00] include stories from trans men of color and acknowledge the importance of representation from these voices.

Intro: The name of our show highlights two important facts that one for our generation, we were often told to hide our past and live an underground existence and that due to that, our stories are very often overlooked. We want our audience to know that we ourselves are a part of this generation of trans masculine identified people, and that we value the experiences inside our trans masculine community.

Intro: We want people to know that throughout our lives. Each of us has had to navigate issues of disclosure, which have impacted us in many ways. As humans, we are always changing and transitioning. As elder trans men, we assume many roles. We get married and divorced. We are caretakers. We are parents. We are professionals, academics, and advocates.

Intro: We push for human rights. and systemic change. We are exploring the various transitions that we undergo post transition. If you're new to our show, welcome. And if you're a listener from a previous season, thank you for your continued support. [00:02:00] You can find us on most social media platforms, including YouTube.

Intro: These are trying times, and we want to acknowledge that here in the States, And throughout the world, there are groups trying to remove protections in place for our trans and non binary communities. Safety is a real concern for us, particularly our trans and non binary BIPOC siblings. We offer links to health and safety resources on our website, transmasculinepodcast.

Intro: com. Please hold each other dear and stay in touch with us. We invite our listeners to remember that we are a living community. We are healthy. We are contributing. We have experienced loss and success. We are loved. And we welcome you to our stories.

Rocco Banter: So we banter, you know, and I wanted to tell you, Kai, that I am part of a Facebook group called DL Dudes, Download Dudes. And, uh, there was this interesting discussion the other day because somebody had posted like what DL dudes do or [00:03:00] don't do, you know, like they won't go on a date with you, quote unquote, you know, they'll just ask you to hang out kind of thing or whatever.

Rocco Banter: And, uh, And there was a large range of like, um, reactions to this. And one of the reactions was very much like, if you are not completely out, you're full of shame. And, you know, this is unhealthy and this and that one, I was like, you're on a group called DL dudes. If you feel this way, why are you here?

Rocco Banter: What's DL, Jackal? It means on the down low. It means that you don't, uh, you know, actually present as gay. You might hook up with other guys as a gay guy. And, uh, yeah. So it's basically guys who go out with guys, at least occasionally, but they don't tell anybody that they do it. And so it's called on the down low.

Rocco Banter: And, uh, yeah, so anyways, I wrote a response that [00:04:00] was like, you know, it's interesting because I'm a trans guy and we have this word in our community called stealth. And I don't think that it is necessarily a shame based activity, right? Like I think the guys who relate to themselves as stealth just relate to themselves as guys and don't have to have this, you know, don't.

Rocco Banter: You know, don't feel shame about it. Right. And I got, I got kind of attacked, you know, and I was like, wow, this is really interesting. You know, like how, how that. Plays out I guess and stuff. So I don't know. I was just sharing my Rambling thoughts about this connection between DL and stealth and whether it's shame based or not.

Rocco Banter: Mm hmm Ties back to the disclosure topic which is about our show right and stealth what that means And I think we've had guests that have talked about dating sex and relationships and identities and [00:05:00] from a cisgender standpoint my understanding of like cis guys Who are on the DL, who are on the download, they often don't, they'll have sex with men, it's usually about that, they'll have some sexual contact with, with other cis guys, they, they perhaps, presumably, and then they, they don't identify as queer or any kind of flavor of queer, right, so it might be married to women and heterosexual relationships, there's all these things, right, so it's just on a spectrum.

Rocco Banter: Yeah, and I actually work in a rural community with men who have sex with men and we, uh, I was told when I first started there that some people who are consumers who get tested, you know, at our, at our clinic. Don't like the queer banners, the queer flag or the, you know, the pride flag or the trans flag, because they don't identify as that.

Rocco Banter: So we have to be receptive and accommodating to everyone. It's interesting. Right. So I think in one way I'm thinking about sexual behavior, right. And, um, this level of, you know, we, we talk about stealth and people have [00:06:00] this. Idea that we're somehow being nefarious and untruthful because we're not disclosing our trans status, whatever that is, Ted, strangers, you know, and it reminds me a bit of that.

Rocco Banter: And some of that might be shame. Some of that might be safety, self preservation. It might be that, honestly, they just don't identify as queer and they just want to get their dick sucked. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Like this is, it's a really interesting mix because of course, you know, there's some people who live a stealth life who are ashamed of their trans status.

Rocco Banter: Of course, there are some, you know, DL guys who are ashamed of their attraction to other men, of course, but. For me personally, especially after listening to many of our guests, I don't think it's a given. I don't think that it has to equate with feeling shame, you know. Um, there is, and I, I like what [00:07:00] you say about like, I just don't identify as queer.

Rocco Banter: I just want to be with a guy today or whatever. Um, the one thing about behavior though that I think is really relatable, um, especially regarding HIV. Is the, the risk, because I do think, um, at least in my experiences, you know, 20 years ago that a lot of DL guys were, were, um, not having protected sex. They were having unprotected sex.

Rocco Banter: And in this way, a lot of black women were getting HIV. And it was a very big, um, there was a surge in the, in the number of, uh, HIV positive, uh, Black women in the late nineties, I believe, that was really, really Um, well, at least it was associated with, I can't speak exactly, but that it was [00:08:00] associated with being with guys who are on the down low, like so that they were in heterosexual marriages or they were in heterosexual relationships.

Rocco Banter: And, you know, in that way, it's like the guys that are having DL sex. For me, maybe similar to the trans guys that are having sex with men who were like, this is the best I can get, you know, this is what, you know, they want. So I'm going to have unprotected sex and then, you know, it increases our risk. So it's a very interesting kind of like mix and comparison of like how these two communities overlap.

Rocco Banter: Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I, I agree. It reminds me of the conversation about being closeted as queer. And so is that the same thing as on the download? Because I don't know, you know, like how we define that. But one of the things that I'm hearing and that I just got back from a conference on HIV and AIDS, and they were talking about inequities in the system, right.

Rocco Banter: And how there's a lack of [00:09:00] access, particularly for communities of color. For people who are like on the lower socioeconomic scale, you know, like to access care. So if you have a smaller pool of people of color who have less access to care. And they're having sex with each other, the transmission rate's going to be higher.

Rocco Banter: That's not because more people are on the down low or because they're being dishonest. It's because they have been barred from care because the system doesn't allow for it, right? It hasn't historically, there's inherent racism in the system. So I think the message that's come out of that is that people are irresponsible.

Rocco Banter: They're nefarious and particularly again, you're highlighting this black and brown folks have been told that they're irresponsible and shady. And so I think that that element of shadiness. You know, like Mm-Hmm. , like that just sounds almost racialized, you know? It's, it's, yeah, completely. Yeah. Yeah. So I, there, there are, there's data to support that white cisgender gay men have a lower prevalence and infection rate [00:10:00] because it's these inequities that are built in the system, which, yeah, so that's a very touchy subject that, you know, that within the HIV community, the harm reduction community, they're trying to de destigmatize the behavior and correct some of this misinformation that's come out for decades.

Rocco Banter: Got to stop on a little tangent there, but no, no, no, that I think that that's really important because it's like, I am, I am repeating a stereotype that I am not sure is true, but this was what I remember hearing within the community, within the black community, when, uh, black women's, uh, rates of HIV infection were increasing and the blame You know, systemic and all of those messages that you're talking about, you know, like who's nefarious, you know, who's being sneaky, like all of those things, um, were being attributed to black men, quote [00:11:00] unquote, on the down low, you know, I don't know if this is actual, you know, if this has any.

Rocco Banter: truth to it at all. Um, but what you say about like inequities, racialized inequities in the healthcare system, that is true. That is very true. And so I think that that's an important message to kind of re shape how we're thinking and how we're talking about these things. Because I really, I mean, like I was part of, I mean, I don't even live where most of these guys in the Facebook group live.

Rocco Banter: I was just curious to like, see what download guys were talking about or people who related. And then there was all this stuff about like, you know, if you're on the download, you have shame and you should be out and it's like, why are you here? Like why, you know, it's like eating your own attacking your own.

Rocco Banter: It's like, why are you, you know, like what, what does it have to be shame based? And I just have to say no. Yeah. And one of the, one of the workshops I went to was on women and HIV, and they were talking about AFAB persons, not any trans spectrum, [00:12:00] like a trans femme person. It was all about AFAB persons. They were using the word woman to describe cisgender women and, and the rate of infection, the rate, the rate of deaths is the highest among cisgender women.

Rocco Banter: Wow. And, and particularly around brown and black women. So black women, indigenous women, um, And so that that's something that's often not talked about and not addressed and often when reproductive care, uh, there's so much. Women in particular are vilified for being sexual beings, you know, within the medical community and not routinely tested for HIV, not routinely talked about reproductive rights and how can you have a child, I will say one of the things that came out that was very affirming during this conference, this conference was they talked about chest feeding versus breastfeeding.

Rocco Banter: They use chest feeding and they use breastfeeding. So they talked about that. Um, so anyway, but I think it all comes down to. Disclosure and your level of comfort or discomfort with sharing [00:13:00] personal information, your health information, and you're going to make decisions about risk, whether that's hooking up and not disclosing anything and not using protection, that's one end of the spectrum.

Rocco Banter: And then there's people who are going to disclose everything and use lots of, you know, there's a whole spectrum of that. Right. And, and I have to say that they're all okay. And if you have shame in your identity, like please seek out good therapy, you know, please take care of yourself. Like there's, I don't feel there's anything shameful about being you.

Rocco Banter: I just don't. Yep. And there's, and just, if you do have sex with men, if you're having sex with men, you prep is available to. Everyone, not just cisgender males, can get PrEP. So PrEP is something that's available. They also have PEP, which is the, you take it after you have, um, if you feel like you've been potentially, um, infected, or you took, you had a You didn't have [00:14:00] access to PrEP, you can use PEP the next day to help.

Rocco Banter: I can't remember what it's called, but it's post exposure prophylactic, I think is what PEP stands for. Um, you know, there's different, different, different levels of protection and the medical community hopefully will be able to help you with that. So anyway. And just to say it's, you know, specifically, this is accessible to cisgendered women as well.

Rocco Banter: Exactly. And trans folks. And trans folks. I mean, I think trans folks, we kind of, it's understood, but you know, like when, when you talk about the highest death rates are in the cisgendered women community and women of color community, I think that it's important to say like these, uh, prophylactics are available to cisgendered women.

Rocco Banter: Exactly. One of the things I'd like to get Mason back on the show for is to just talk about HIV and trans guys or trans non binary folks, you know, just body care. There's just no, there's not a lot of data on, on us and, and research being done on us and the risks. So anyway, we'll, we'll, we'll get there, but nice job, [00:15:00] Jekyll.

Rocco Banter: Thank you. And thank you for the conversation.

Rocco Bio & Tranniversary: Today's interview is with Rocco Caillatos. Rocco is an award winning storyteller and community builder with a professional background in media making and marketing. He released four solo albums under the moniker Catastrophe, that's spelled with a K, and is hailed as the first openly FTM musician to release an album.

Rocco Bio & Tranniversary: He's also one of the founding editors of Original Plumbing, the first magazine. He's also one of the founding editors of Original Plumbing, the first print magazine dedicated to transmasculine culture. He transitioned in the year 2000 and has been outspoken ever since, making media and creating space for trans men.

Rocco Bio & Tranniversary: He's currently the founder and executive director of The Intentional Man Project and Camp Lost Boys, which recently became a 501c3 non profit organization. Camp Lost Boys is a traditional summer camp for men of transgender experience over the age of 18. He's also a writer, podcaster, and content creator for several [00:16:00] companies, including Buzzfeed, the Cut, SpringHill, Headspace, Spotify, Grindr, and Folks Health.

Rocco Bio & Tranniversary: For more information about Camp Lost Boys, please go to camp lost boys.org for the Intentional Man project. Visit the intentional man project.org. You can purchase the best of original plumbing book@feministpress.org. Rocco is also the author and editor of the Mindful Masculinity Workbook, which you can find at akpress.

Rocco Bio & Tranniversary: org. For more information about Rocco, please visit his website at roccokiatos. com. That's R O C C O K A Y I A T O S dot com. Rocco's tranniversary is 2000, the same as Marty, Kyle, Curtis, and Zion. So go check out our website to see what momentous events happened in that year. We'll lead in this episode with music from our musical guru, Ed Varga, an orchestral version of City Nights by his band, Eddie and the Heartbeats.[00:17:00] 

Jackal: Hey, welcome to season four of Stealth, a Transmasculine Podcast. We're here with Rocco. How you doing today, Rocco? How are you doing today, Rocco?

Rocco: I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.

Jackal: No, thanks for being here. How do we know each other? I know I don't know you, but I think you have a Kai story.

Rocco: Yeah I was traveling to the Big Island and I'm pretty obsessed with connecting with other trans men or trans masc folks. I don't even know how I came across you, Kai, but there's not a ton of guys who are out on the Big Island. But anytime I go anywhere, I scan as best as I can to find other trans men.

Rocco: And I found Kai somehow and reached out and was like, Hey, I see you're on the Big Island. I do know it was in one of the Facebook groups for guys who transitioned a long time ago, and I was cruising in there and I saw that your [00:18:00] handle had where your location was. And then I randomly just reached out and then we're going to try and meet up and it didn't work out.

Rocco: And then we're going to try and meet up again and it didn't work out. 

Kai: Yes. Exactly. , that's my memory too. So I really love that we both have that same shared love of the Big Island. And it's really nice to meet you and to see you in person. I mean, virtually. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you.

Rocco: Yeah,

Jackal: Yeah, and I think it's funny just the whole almost collide and don't, almost collide and don't thing we need more connections and we try and then they don't work out. 

Kai: Yep. We're going to get to that at the end because

Jackal: Yeah, we are. We

Kai: a very important thing to make connections and that's what we're all about. So thank you.

Rocco: 100%.

Jackal: Rocco, how did you learn about transmasculine identities?

Rocco: Oh, man. You know, it wasn't until in the long arc of my own transness, I don't think I heard the term transmasculine until, I don't know, maybe relatively recently. I started my transition in the [00:19:00] common language. When I was researching to transition was 1999 ish, 2000, early 2000. And the majority of the language was F to M and trans man or transsexual man.

Rocco: And those are all identities that really aligned with, or those are all words that really aligned with my identity and transmasculine, maybe I heard that term like five or six years ago, really recently. 

Jackal: Yeah. We kind of use it as a blanket term to cover the past of F T M and things like that. So when did you learn about F T M identities and kind of the beginning of your own transition?

Rocco: well in some ways I think it's like useful to have this linguistic unpacking because transmasculine feels like distinctly not my identity because I don't identify as masculine or feminine because I kind of toggle between masculinity and femininity, but I identify very strongly as a man 

Rocco: [00:20:00] I'd heard about trans men first, so I knew that trans women existed. And, you know, all my life I have a very kind of traditional transsexual male narrative, in that I had a twin sister, she was very feminine and I was not. And it was really easy for me to see that we were having a very different experience of gender.

Rocco: I didn't understand that I wasn't a boy until really, like, Gravely until puberty hit and then that's when I was like, Oh, this is happening whether I wanted to or not. I struggled. I came out as gay at 14. I found out that trans men existed because I went on a tour with a nineties, all girl, mostly punk, mostly lesbian troop of writers and poets called sister spit.

Rocco: They were kind of big in the Bay Area,

Jackal: Oh yeah. Totally. 

Rocco: So they found me at a teen poetry slam, and at the time I was writing all this poetry about being a butch dyke. And and I won the poetry slam, and it [00:21:00] was the first Bay Area teen poetry slam. And one of the heads of Sister Spit, Cinny, Was like, we gotta get that kid in the van.

Rocco: And they had to wait until I turned 18. And then when I turned 19, 19 99, I went on the sister spit tour and the end of the tour was at the Michigan Women's Music Festival, which I was like a kid who grew up right outside of San Francisco, had no idea, didn't have gay friends, hung out with mostly straight boys, hung out with mostly dated, mostly straight women.

Rocco: And then on that tour I got this like deep dive into queer culture in a major way. And

Kai: you did. 

Rocco: It was like, throw me in the deep end. And I, you know, I swam, and I enjoyed it. But the piece that was interesting was like, I didn't know that trans people and gay people were at odds at that time.

Rocco: And there was Camp Trans across the way, and I was like, why are these people protesting this? Like, amazing festival, because, you know, it was blowing my mind that these things existed. And then that's where I saw [00:22:00] Trans Guy for the first time, and understood that there was this fracture between like, gay and lesbian people and trans people.

Rocco: And at the first sight of him, I was like, hell no. Because for me, I defined myself by like, rejecting it for a few months. And

Jackal: did that too.

Rocco: You did.

Jackal: Yeah, I did. Yeah, you're not alone in that.

Rocco: was scary, right? It's scary. So I was scared and I saw him and I was like fuck no and then can I curse on this

Kai: Oh, yeah. 

Rocco: Cool, cool.

Rocco: So yeah, I was like absolutely fucking not. Went home. Obsessed over him. Like really obsessed over him. The fact that he existed. Started deep diving. At that point there wasn't really Google wasn't available to us. So I was like typing everything into Ask Jeeves. Typing in female. How to change sex.

Rocco: Female. from female to male. So there was a lot of like search queries of like female to male, and that was kind of the only thing that really existed for us. And what I found was [00:23:00] just the smallest number of websites that helped. One was LiveJournal. There was a big community of FTM on LiveJournal. So that was where I got a lot of peer information.

Rocco: Another one was transbucket and another one was transter. com where you had to like apply for a login and then you got approved and you could see these sort of disembodied pictures of people's surgery results, which was, it was all scary. I was doing it late at night on a dial up connection. Like, you know, freaked out.

Jackal: Yeah.

Kai: I have a question. Did you ever find out who the trans guy at the Michigan's Women's Camp Trans was?

Rocco: I wish I could remember, I don't remember his name. I know that everyone was so angry too, so they were yelling. Sister Spit went over there to like, hold space for what was happening. And I was just like, you know, I was a deer in headlights and I was like, shocked that people could change their Like, changed their appearance to reflect who they were, so I was out of my body, [00:24:00] like, for a multitude of reasons.

Rocco: I wish I could remember, but then later I went back to Camp Trans as a camper several times but he was never there. He was much older. And, like, really deep into his transition. I remember he was from the South. I

Kai: Man of mystery. Whoever, if he's listening get in touch with us.

Jackal: Yeah, exactly.

Rocco: Yeah, were you at Camp Trans in 1999?

Jackal: Yeah,

Rocco: If so, there was only a handful of trans guys. And I think there were, , three trans . Male or trans masculine leaning people and the rest were mostly trans women So if you were there chances are you altered the course of my life. Thank you for in part saving my life.

Rocco: Whoever you were Yeah.

Jackal: that's a love story right there. So talking about the beginning of your transition, what was it like for you back then? What was your process?

Rocco: Yeah Like I said it was a lot of asking Jeeves and there were no real clinics and we were going by the Harry Benjamin standards of care [00:25:00] as Many of your guests have gone by and it was hard I was living in San Francisco, the dot com happened, so I got priced out, I moved to LA and this was 2000 and I had been just obsessing, and when I mean obsessing, I was spending hours and hours a day researching how to change my body and where I could get access to care, and even, it surprises people when I say that I was in San Francisco and I couldn't find care but then.

Rocco: I stayed in L. A. for six months, was working at the L. A. LGBT Center coffee shop, met so many trans women. They helped, but they were also like, what are you, basically, all the time. Because back then, that's what it was like. People did not know, I mean, arguably people still don't know trans men exist. But it was even more so 20 years ago.

Rocco: We make incremental change, and I like to help. make that change in some ways in some of the work that I've done because I felt so alone and there were no books. There were no visual cues [00:26:00] that we were that we existed. Right. And it's crazy to think that was only like 23 years ago, that 23 years ago, there was nothing.

Rocco: I found Loren Cameron's book. That was the, missing piece for me. I was like, I want to look exactly like him. , I read all the stories of the guys that are in that picture, and their portraits are in there, and then they have little bios. I read each one. That copy of that book I still have, obviously, and it's well worn.

Rocco: I will never sell it. It was, you know, it really, , changed the course of my life in a big way, and it was the only indication of visual markers of what we would look like and I shared it with my family, so my parents have a copy of that book, and my cousin checked it out at the library in Denver, and yeah, so it was the only thing that really existed to be able to pass to someone and say, like, this isn't a phase, it's, This is what I'll look like.

Rocco: And then I finally, I moved back to San Francisco so I could start my medical transition. 'cause they had just opened up a youth clinic called Dimensions and [00:27:00] it was part of the Castro Mission Health Clinic. And there I saw I wish I could remember her last name. Dr. Deborah is what we called her. And she was Dr.

Rocco: Dyke in a magazine for lesbians called On Our Backs.

Jackal: I remember that magazine. 

Rocco: Yeah, she's since passed on, but she was so incredible. She was very open about how we don't have information and We don't have any kind of idea of what the long term effects are, but here's what will happen.

Rocco: Here's what might not happen Let's experiment together. So it was the sort of open shaping of our journeys With being held by a care provider, but I will say that I had to go to therapy for six months in order, I had to see a therapist, I saw four different therapists before I found one who quote unquote believed me.

Rocco: One of them said, I think you're just a thuggish woman. I think you should just deal with that.

Jackal: I think you're a thuggish trans guy. I mean,

Rocco: Thank you.

Jackal: obvious.

Kai: I will say we don't learn that in school to call people thuggish women, just saying that.

Rocco: not. Yeah.[00:28:00] 

Jackal: Yeah, right.

Rocco: was like, I think you're just like masculine and like kind of hard which is funny because I was very hard pre transition, but once I got to relax into who I actually am. I'm I consider myself to be much softer and I love how soft I get to be which is why I say that I'm not masculine.

Rocco: masculine or feminine so that trans umbrella of trans masculine really doesn't sit with me because it feels like it forces me to be in this gelatinous state or fixed in some way to being, to representing masculinity all the time where I actually feel like the joy and the gift of being an embodied man and feeling so comfortable in my maleness is that I don't have to fix myself to any sort of gender expression.

Kai: Amen. That's beautiful and very relatable.

Jackal: Yeah, totally. I just think that it's amazing, how we each react to different words and those kinds of things. But the beauty of what you talk about, the fluidity of that, that softness. Like, I was, Hardcore [00:29:00] punk rock anarchist and femme as a AFAB person, but I was a badass, I would get into a fight at a drop of the hat

Rocco: Me too.

Jackal: I did not take shit. Some guy would say something to me, some sexist thing. I hit him with a beer bottle. I was a fucking nightmare. I was a nightmare. And now I'm just like this soft little Santa,

Rocco: yeah, I find the language piece is, really important because I find that our community spends so much time in fighting. And I'll use the word community broadly for LGBT, but even more specifically the trans community. It kills me that we cannibalize each other, and from my perspective. The majority of the cannibalizing happens as a result of a linguistic turf war. So we're angry that someone's taking up our space, but really there's so much space and we're just relegating ourselves to this small little corner. We're like a bucket of crabs in a bucket, right? Or crabs in a barrel where we're all waiting for the boil and we're like, pick [00:30:00] me first where it's like, why can't we all see that there's a huge ocean, and I really think that part of it is language, because for trans people specifically, or gender diverse people even more specifically there is this deep need to be seen, and to be able to proclaim who you are, and have that be communicated effectively. And when there's new language adopted broadly to describe a huge, diverse population of people with such differing... Identities that's where the harm happens, right? It's like no, that's not me I'm this and I've been this and now there's a new word and I'm not that and I just think if we could Separate that of like and also too. It's like I know this is not the question you asked Sorry, but there is like this piece of like There's gender identity of, like, us being in bodies and how we identify to how we're in this body.

Rocco: And then there's gender expression. And the two things are so conflated, so commonly conflated, that it harms each of us as trans [00:31:00] people or as gender diverse people. Because there's a lot more at stake than there is for cis people when cis people are talking about their gender identity. Right?

Kai: I do think we eat our own. And I think there is room for all of us. What we hear from the older, longer transition folks is that, we work so hard to carve out our maleness and our binary standing and that, this flexibility and fluidity diminishes who we are and our experience and all the work we did.

Kai: And I think that's changing, but some people hold so. So tightly to that, some of the older guys some younger guys too, they're very much like, I am male, I am this, I am that, and it's just very much in your lane, and we can sound really curmudgeony, when we do that.

Kai: You're leading us into this question . What were some of the things you were told back in the day, Rocco, about how to live your life as a trans guy.

Rocco: I'm thankful that because there was such a lack of visibility, it was wide open space. I really got to define for myself, and I think that because I had this [00:32:00] experience of one, growing up around, or coming of age around these, radical punk dykes who were a part of sister spit, and a lot of them ended up...

Rocco: Transitioning. I mean, I'll say that the person that I was on tour with, I was on tour with Lynn Breedlove from Tribate and Silas Howard from Tribate, and Silas didn't transition until much later than I did, but he was using interchangeably male and female pronouns, and he and I on that two month tour got father son haircuts together, so I got to be mentored by these people who were on their own journey to maleness in some ways, and it allowed for me to see different possibilities.

Rocco: And I think even my own father is sort of a very feminine ish man at times in this way that I didn't have. And he stayed home with me and my sister, which was uncommon in the 80s to have a stay at home dad. So I think my maleness was informed by men who weren't traditionally Masculine and butch women really shaped my relationship to maleness and [00:33:00] masculinity.

Rocco: And I think the other piece of not having what I call like a lighthouse until a little bit later, like James Green's book, Becoming a Visible Man was a missing piece for me that finally allowed for me to start feeling really comfortable defining myself as a man, because that book. If you are to read one book about being a trans man and what it means, actually, if you're to read one book about being a man, period, that book is so powerfully all encompassing and gentle and loving and compassionate, not just to trans men, but to the experience of being a man holistically that that book really allowed for me to find a deeper love.

Rocco: And then the final missing piece, I think, was I came from a background of being a man hater also, so I had to kind of undo bits and pieces of that, but it wasn't until I created Camp Lost Boys, which is a summer camp for men over the age of 18, trans men, and it was at that camp [00:34:00] where I was like, okay, I love all of these guys.

Rocco: Do I see them as men? Yes. How can I see these men? as men, love them, and not understand that it's okay to love men. And it was in that moment that I let go of , decades of manhating, and that was 2017, and now I'm in this era of just really feeling like Older guys, yes, we're disturbed by the language and the shift in the movement.

Rocco: And I think even for me sometimes like everything I said about language is important and I believe it. And then there is this other piece where I just feel like don't fucking ask me my pronouns. I didn't spend this much money because had to pay out of pocket. You know what I mean? So I spent that much money.

Rocco: I spent that much time waiting for hormones because it was from the time I made the decision at the clinic till the time I got my first injection was like nine months. I wasn't able to start my medical transition for nine months And I know that people have longer waiting periods than that now, which is a whole other fucked up problem.

Rocco: I didn't spend that much time hardship and [00:35:00] all of these bits and pieces of my life get disrupted in this way for people to ask me the same question that I was asked prior to my medical transition, and I feel that pain. I feel that pain, but I also feel the pain of, all of the trans community fighting to be seen and really wanting our community to see us, because if we can't be seen at home, quote unquote, where do we get to be seen in this way that really takes you away from your personhood and it's distracting from you being able to do or think about anything else. So I get it. I think that my primary mission now is to continue to put all of my energy, and I have a lot of energy, to put all of my energy into carving out this small space, just a corner of the world where trans men Get to love being men and get to love being men in community with other men and that we kind of start to heal this feeling of All men being bad and that we get to carve out a new relationship to being men and to being brothers with other men and that has [00:36:00] maybe a ripple effect in the larger community and then for Guys of our generation and older that they get to come to camp and have this experience of oh my god Everyone is male Now we just get to put our bags down and only talk about our experience as men.

Rocco: Because trans men have a really hard time taking up space,

Jackal: I think it's all about being validated. Right. And some of the guys that we've had on our show identify as transsexual men, and they have said similar to what Kai said about, you know, people who identify as.

Jackal: As FTM is that younger generations say that's an archaic term, you shouldn't use that term anymore. And really, it's like, who are you to say, what I call . If Everybody wants to be able to self identify, then don't tell the older generations how to identify, right? We really need to just both come closer together, so that there is a [00:37:00] bigger understanding 

Jackal: your self identity does not threaten my self identity. It does not. And I am happy that you are my trans brother. That's all. The other thing I wanted to say about it is Adam is one of our volunteers. And he, 40 ish, he's in his 40s, but he just recently transitioned a few years ago. And he is super binary.

Jackal: He identifies as a straight man. He never went through the lesbian phase because he never identified as a homosexual woman because he never identified as a woman. Right? So he really... identifies as a straight man. And we talk about these binary identities, like they're the past, like they're archaic. And , dude they still exist.

Rocco: Yeah, of course.

Jackal: we have more options now and there's more fluidity and thank God for that doesn't mean that the binaries don't exist. Baby trans people aren't coming out as binary now.

Jackal: All of the validity is there and we just need to accept one another.[00:38:00] 

Rocco: I agree. And I do think that there is less room for people to identify as binary even. So you say the word transsexual in 2000, it was the word tranny. Everyone was so upset about the word tranny. And it was like a really big thing. I personally, I hated the word. It felt derogatory and demeaning in some ways.

Rocco: But it wasn't my word. And so I had no stake in the game. So when Kate Bornstein was like, I'm a tranny, deal with it. I was like, okay, she's a tranny. That's her relationship to her identity. It has nothing to do with me. I wince every time I hear the word, but I'm sure that this younger generation too is like transsexual, which I love the word transsexual.

Rocco: I felt very comfortable and very at home as a transsexual man. for a long time. And then I felt like my transition is done, like my medical, my social transition, I'm done transitioning. So at this point, I'm a man who has had a trans experience, and there's a shitload of binary trans people. And the interesting piece too, and I know this is probably for a different podcast, but people don't really contest that there [00:39:00] are binary transwomen No one is upset or rattled by a trans woman saying resolutely, trans women are women.

Rocco: I am a woman, but when trans men in the trans space say, I'm a man, deal with it, everyone is like, absolutely not, I don't want to deal with it, because we all have to kind of unpack our really, rightly complicated relationship to men at large I think that can't happen without men, trans, and cis, having dedicated space to heal and collaborate with each other so they can feel what you describe, Jackal, of feeling comfortable with your own identity so that someone else's identity doesn't come and interrupt your conception of self.

Rocco: Because if you don't feel safe, then you're going to feel like you're under attack all the time. And so if you can't stand in your identity, like, I'm 43. I think that some of it comes with age. And I'm also 23 years into my transition. I think that also plays a factor. So at this stage [00:40:00] of my life, I love who I am.

Rocco: And I love being a man. And I love that I've had this trans experience. Sometimes I don't love having this trans experience, which is something. That the toxic positivity of having to be a trans person constantly saying that you're experiencing joy and that you love that you are a trans person. I'll say like point blank, there have been many years in my 23 years of being in this body that I have hated being trans and that I've resented my trans experience.

Rocco: And there are days that I still feel that way. And I think now I just have this more blended and integrated sense of all of it. Nothing is good. Nothing is bad. This is challenging. That was easy. bits And pieces like that where I just think people, if they don't have the space to feel okay with themselves, they're not going to feel okay when somebody else comes in and is like, you're not okay.

Rocco: And my hope for this younger generation of trans men or trans folks that are transitioning now is that they can see. role models and possibility that they can be men and that's okay. [00:41:00] And that's kind of why I like this podcast is because so many of the people that come onto this show are binary transsexual identified men who are living their lives.

Rocco: And just being comfortable as men, and I don't think that there's a lot of that afforded to this younger generation of people, I don't think that they get to see that, and that's why I say that I'm so grateful that I didn't see much, because I really got to carve my own path, but I will say, That having not seen much, it was a big motivator for me making my own journey public.

Rocco: As a performer, making a magazine, like all those things were sometimes taking, had I not been driven to make sure that the folks that came next didn't feel as isolated or without resources as I did. I think I probably would have lived a stealth life and just got married, lived in a small town,

Jackal: And this kind of brings me to the another question how did your social standings, race class identity, like you're a musician, all of these different things [00:42:00] impact your ability to transition or your desire to transition. How did that affect your journey?

Rocco: Well, , as I said, it was really difficult getting medical care, but once I did, it was easy because that was the beginning of more of a focus and emphasis on giving care to trans folks, grateful that I was in the Bay Area when they opened that youth clinic and I stayed there for the first four years of my transition and then I was living in San Francisco, moved to New York and now live in LA those are all places where it's not that difficult to get care. And I think that It was hard to come from a righteous, visually obvious queer identity and be read as male all the time. That was a difficult transition for me. I'd say the first three years was a lot of mourning and grieving the loss of being visibly queer.

Rocco: And then it was probably another, Three years of getting more comfortable with landing in where I was with my [00:43:00] transition I think it took a long time . I was being read as male maybe six months into my transition. I was read as male before I transitioned a lot of the time, Lots of like what's the man in the bathroom as a teenager?

Rocco: So people saw me as male before I saw myself as male in my transition. And I think that my dysphoria was pretty noisy for the first six years. I didn't have a lot of money and I don't come from money. So back then we had to pay for our surgeries out of pocket. And and that was hard. I think I had started taking T and then it wasn't like four years into taking T until I could afford to have top surgery.

Rocco: That was very difficult. I think I'll share one small, funny piece is that my mom came with me to get my top surgery the morning of. They were drawing on my chest. And I went to Dr. Brownstein because he was, like, one of two doctors that existed back then. Oh, no, it was him, Fischer, and Meltzer, I think, were the three. Yeah. I went to him, and , he's drawing on my chest, and my mom was [00:44:00] like, Oh, man, you're my beautiful boy, like you're such a beautiful, handsome young man, which was really sweet. And then she said, but you have the tits of an old woman.

Jackal: Oh, shit.

Rocco: Because by the time, you know, testosterone had deflated them, they were like hanging.

Rocco: I made jokes that by the time I was able to afford top surgery, I'd be able to just tuck them into my pants. So it was prohibited. But I think like. The bigger like social piece too was that there just wasn't a lot around. So I did my best to do more so that other people didn't feel alone. The majority of men I knew were 10, 20, 30 years older than me because there weren't a lot of young people transitioning in that era.

Rocco: Like they just, it wasn't, like I said, it was the first year. Youth clinic. It wasn't an option. It wasn't an option, most specifically because there was no indicator that it was an option. So you're fumbling around in the dark trying to find things. So I think historical time really played a huge factor in my transition.

Rocco: I think I would have probably [00:45:00] been a kid who was on puberty blockers and later, you know, trans, I think I would have been a good candidate for transitioning early on. And I don't, I think my parents would have supported that. But there was just no information. I can't imagine what it would be like to transition now it's kind of the opposite problem of so much information you don't know what to trust,

Ad: Jacqueline and I want to remind our listeners that we have a new member section. We want to thank those like Emery, Harold, Taylor, Matt, and Alex who have become members. Our member section offers bonus questions, features trans masculine pioneers no longer with us, and hilarious personal stories by our volunteer extraordinaire, Adam.

Ad: Here's another teaser. Anyway, the story I wanted to tell today is a pretty familiar one in the land of trans masc ridiculousness in that it centers on a misplaced dick. So, as I mentioned, part of my whole midlife trans epiphany involved blowing up my 13 year marriage, which in turn meant that I needed to sell my house, which I'm actually still in the process of doing.

Ad: And I have two kids, and my ex and I split custody of them, but point being, kids live here in this [00:46:00] house 50 percent of the time, and as such my house frequently looks like a tornado of glitter and crayons just ripped right through it. So, anytime the broker wants to bring prospective buyers by, I have to do a frenzied power clean of the house to make it look halfway presentable.

Ad: So, the other day, the broker calls and says he has some folks who want to see it, and I do the frenzied power clean and clear everyone out of the house. I come home a couple hours later after the showing, feeling extremely proud of myself for the manic level of cleaning efforts, and then notice that I manage to leave a giant, hyper realistic, quite veiny dick in the sink.

Ad: Yeah, so after having the requisite shame spiral of crippling embarrassment, I text the broker, I believe it was just a string of fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, with like a thousand apologies after, and then I chose that moment to out myself as trans to him, since that seemed like the logical thing to do.

Ad: He being a grown up who is extremely focused on making his commission, replied with something to the effect of lol, all good, I've seen worse, and said that he'd actually noticed it in time to [00:47:00] conceal it before the buyer saw it. Which, of course, made me wonder whether that meant he had picked it up and moved it somewhere and then moved it back?

Ad: Or maybe he just threw a towel over it or something? These are the questions that keep me up at night, wondering whether my broker has touched my dick. We also accept donations, and we want to thank Kida and Evan for their donations. The 4 a month. So go to transmasculine podcast.com and sign up now. We don't wanna be gatekeepers, so if you feel like you can't afford $4 a month, please reach out to us via email, transmasculine podcast@gmail.com.

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Kai: Yep. You mentioned stealth and how you could imagine how it might have been to be stealth. So what does stealth mean to you, Rocco?

Rocco: I think it's that you are a person who maybe let me [00:48:00] think really quick. It's hard because stealth is not like a straight line or an arrow. So I think that some of us, stealth. itself means that you are not disclosing your trans status. And there are ways of being stealth that are different than other ways.

Rocco: And I think that the whole point of transitioning for me wasn't. To get to an end point of being a person with a radical identity and kind of like waving a trans flag. The point of transition for me was that I had always felt male and I wanted to be a man. And so the end goal was to be a man who's mostly straight who, Is living a quiet life. Anyone who Googles me knows that wasn't my path. I'm not living a quiet life.

Rocco: I've been very public and for better and worse, there were a lot of eras, in my own individual life of feeling like there were a lot of divergent roads [00:49:00] that led me in this way where I was performing and then I was like, I'm going to quit. Performing under the name that I perform under so that I can move to North Carolina, put out records and that nobody knows me.

Rocco: And then I'm just going to be a guy and not have this transness attached to me anymore. And then instead of doing that, I actually started Original Plumbing Magazine with Amos Mack. So I had this fork where I was like, I'm going to be completely quiet and invisible.

Rocco: Or I'm going to start a big 10 year project highlighting trans male culture.

Kai: How did you come to that decision?

Rocco: Most recently I had one of those moments too, I left this job and I was like, I'm going to get a regular job or I'm going to put all of my energy into building Camp Lost Boys and the Intentional Man Project to support trans men long term.

Rocco: And I can think of four other moments like that where I had this split of , I'm gonna be stealth and comfortable, or I'm gonna stretch myself a little bit and provide resources for other people. And I think that I am hopelessly and forever in love with trans men, [00:50:00] like, so deeply.

Rocco: in love with trans men. That's a two hour conversation that I think that every time my brain wants one thing and my heart wants the other thing and my heart wins every time and my heart belongs to trans men and creating culture and space for trans men , 

Kai: it sounds like you haven't really lived a low disclosing lifestyle. You've thought about it,

Rocco: I have pockets, so like I started AA in 2006 and no one knew me and I went to meetings where I wouldn't be known. And I had this whole experience of just being a man in the rooms

Rocco: I loved it. It was so relaxing. And then I've worked jobs where no one knows me. And interestingly enough, a lot of people are not as culturally curious.

Rocco: People don't Google search people, even if they seem interesting. I've had these like little pockets of being stealth . You know, my neighborhood, I know my neighbors and they don't know I'm trans. And so there's my quiet life. And then I'm [00:51:00] sort of nichely known in this way that, if you're part of the trans community, or maybe, adjacent, and only if you're trans of a certain age, I'm more relevant.

Rocco: But because I had my visible moment in a different era, and we have cultural amnesia, I do get these, deep moments of being just a guy. And it's relaxing. And I think that I've come... To appreciate both and to love having this, the split track that I just was talking about. Actually, I just realized it's like these two divergent desires of just being and existing as male and then being someone who's really motivated to create change for trans men.

Kai: That's beautiful. I can really relate to one, in some ways, just being cis passing being married to a woman I get a lot of privilege out of that and it feels safer somehow. But when there's an absence of other trans guys.

Kai: Like living on the big island. That was torture to me. It was like, I need that connection trans [00:52:00] guys. So I really that strongly when you're talking about it. It's a great segue. Talk to us about Camp Lost Boys and your other work.

Kai: Why don't we jump into that?

Rocco: Yeah. I closed up original plumbing. Me and Amos stopped, we made a magazine for 10 years for listeners who don't know. It's called original plumbing. It was quarterly print magazine. It was by hook or by crook, very DIY. So we did our best for it to be quarterly. 

Kai: What was it like? Cause I remember photos and just beautiful depictions.

Rocco: Yeah, it was like a tiger beat for trans men, basically

Jackal: super, super. That's a great description. Oh my God.

Rocco: Because it wasn't focused on our transness either it was very focused on Each issue was theme-based.

Rocco: So we would focus more on the person's relationship to whatever the theme was. One theme was hair, obviously a very trans male theme. That was one of the early issues. One theme was like skate or was boarding, so it was like the board stiff issue. So it was like skateboarders, surf boarders, snowboarders.

Rocco: We interviewed professional skateboarders who were trans men, so it was a lot more focused on. The [00:53:00] person versus their transness, because it was a given that they were trans we started in publishing in mid 2009, and we started throwing parties at that time too we actually threw a benefit party that was so well attended, it was in San Francisco that it paid for the first magazine to be printed, but beyond paying for it, it gave us a huge indication that this community was emerging in a real way, and that there were so many people that wanted to be in space with each other.

Rocco: So we thought of it as both a print magazine, but also this cultural experience of trans men getting to take up space, which filled my cup the most, I think. It also led to us becoming more visible. I think now, without ego, I can see from, a much more divorced piece of myself, I can see that it impacted and kind of ushered in this cultural curiosity about trans men's existence.

Rocco: In part, like, the New York Times would write about us pretty regularly. We got a lot

Rocco: Of press without trying. No one had made such a beautiful art project that [00:54:00] was like a love letter to trans men. 

Jackal: A regular basis too. We talk about Lauren Cameron's book, which lots of people talk about, but it's a one off, right? Like, I think there were two of them but this was like a quarterly thing. For 10 years, you had an amazing impact on the community, for sure.

Jackal: And that idea of trans men, but not focusing on their transness, again, like what Loren Cameron really did for us, right? You guys did it in a different generation. It was beautiful.

Rocco: Thank you. And we focused really strongly on diversity and I think that what was easy For me and Amos, our partnership was really natural because he wanted to take pictures and be the visual guiding part. And for me, I was already in community organizing by way of having performed for 10 years.

Rocco: I had traveled the country multiple times over. I had actually traveled. I had toured as a musician in Europe extensively, so I had amassed this Rolodex of trans men from city to city that I would go [00:55:00] to year over year, I would play at colleges mostly, and I would see three kids who were trans identified, the next year it would be six, the next year it's twelve.

Rocco: I just kept seeing the community grow over and over again, and it allowed for me to be This sort of hub with a massive Rolodex, which allowed for us to be really strategic and focused on ensuring that we had a diversity of representation across all spectrums age, stage of transition, medical transition or not medical transition.

Rocco: Race, class, background, all of that was really focused, and I think it was the first time, and this predates Instagram, too, so it was this visual catalyst for us getting to explore the breadth of the trans masculine and male community it was really well timed, and beautifully executed, and it's in a ten year collection that was published in 2019 when we wrapped up that's on Feminist Press, it's called Original Plumbing, The Best of 10 years, I think I can't remember the name [00:56:00] of my own book, but

Jackal: You can't remember the name of my god, Rocco, you

Rocco: Well, I tried it that would be a that's part of it And then the other part of it is that like I don't stay stuck in what i've done in the past because i'm too focused On what needs to be done next?

Kai: What are you doing now? Yeah.

Rocco: Once original plumbing wrapped up, it also was timed with camp coming to be and camp was going to be a one off, but, we sold out in two weeks 

Jackal: for anybody who doesn't know the full name is camp lost boys, and I'm sure people have heard of it, but go ahead. It's sold out

Rocco: I'm very very calculated in doing the least amount of marketing because if I wanted to blow it up, I could, but I don't want it to blow up, I want it to sustain.

Rocco: And I want it to stay focused on the mission. And the mission is to support men who are binary in their transition. And it's a very small niche group of guys, but they need this space. And that's the space I feel called to create. And I think it's the gift of being [00:57:00] in my forties where I'm like, I don't have to make something for everyone and I think that's part of what got really difficult with with original plumbing was the more successful we got, the more the community was like, that doesn't reflect me. I hate that. I wish this was something else where it's like, it's just what it is. Yeah, it's just what it is because we, because unresourced people are so desperate for resources that if they see something come up and it's not for them exactly, it's tearing at their, the fiber of their being in this way that's like, that's not for me. It's for no one. And it's like, it's just for who it's for. 

Kai: I think it's back to, there's room for everyone. And when you aren't seeing representation, that's an invitation to go create it, and I probably sound like an asshole saying that, but I think there is so much room for us to do that.

Kai: If you find yourself not represented and it. I'm just going to label that we need to do a better job of representing the spectrum of our community, which is something that we've said since the beginning, we need to connect more with trans men of color and [00:58:00] really get more representation on the show.

Kai: That's a valid criticism. We're really working on it.

Jackal: Totally. I mean,

Kai: and I think that's important

Jackal: I just want to repeat that because we have gotten critiqued in a similar way as Original Plumbing that you're not doing a good enough job of reflecting me. , we're trying our best, right? And we're two white trans dudes, and so we have our connections. And we're reaching out as much as we can. this is my plea to everybody out there. If you have trans elder men of color that you would like to see us put on the show, please email us, send us their emails so that we can get in contact with them

Kai: and we need to do a better job. We're accountable for that.

Rocco: yeah, I'll speak to that a little bit. So as a white trans man, I've been, and like as a binary kind of perceived hyper masculine at times and perceived as like rigidly straight at other times. So I have all those things going for me that make things a little bit. easier for me. And I am very aware of all of the ways in [00:59:00] which I'm privileged both obvious and less obvious.

Rocco: And I stay aware of that in the way that I create anything, a magazine or a space. Camp Lost Boys, I am really focused on ensuring that we have at least 40 percent men of color in attendance. So there's 125 to 150 guys that come every time. I'm also really focused on ensuring that it is age diverse and that we get folks from out of the country and all of that is not like, you can't just turn it on and think that will sort itself.

Rocco: It doesn't sort itself. You have to be super deliberate and ensure that happens. In putting out the first OP issue, I was like, this needs to be super diverse, body diverse, racially diverse, and transition diverse and age diverse. And it was because I have had that lens with everything that I've created that is not like my individual music career, that I've managed to do that and to amass contacts in that way and to make community outside of just like a white trans masculine [01:00:00] community.

Rocco: And in part, I think it's just about doing the research too, so once I took it out of me telling my network, my individual network, that this existed it, went off the rails. And that was in that moment where I was like, I'm not going to promote this.

Rocco: This isn't going to be promoted. It's going to be word of mouth. I'm going to make sure that we have a good split. So I'm going to cap it. When there are too many young white trans guys, I'm going to cap the whole thing and ensure that I'm getting more older guys and doing outreach to more men of color, partnering with groups like. Black Trans Men Incorporated to ensure that they have a contingency of folks coming, making sure that I'm getting community leaders in different subsects of our community to be the people who are holding facilitated chats, that they're disseminating it to their network. So it takes a lot of work to ensure. That there is a diversity of representation and part of why that's important is because I want any 18 year old trans guy who comes to come look around and be like, Oh my God, there's a guy like me here. And I want any guy who's in his 60s or 70s to who comes who is like, [01:01:00] I'm not this sore thumb old guy there's 15 guys over the age of 60 here. I've never been with that many older trans guys. So I want that experience to be replicated for every single person, as much as I want to make sure that everyone with dietary restrictions is also getting the meal that they need. It's all this how do we make sure that everything is wholly represents the breadth of the community.

Kai: I really appreciate what you just shared with us and it's super helpful feedback . Shifting a little bit to this unapologetically gearing your camp last boys to binary trans men. To me, intellectually I'm a hundred percent with you and have space with that.

Kai: And I also historically some of the trans guys, transsexual men who transitioned back in the day. They embody, they embraced so much toxic masculinity and it was like the men to men transitioning male to male transitioning. I don't want to bag on the masculinity. We've talked about this quite a bit, but [01:02:00] I also, in that environment. I'm just wondering how you manage that, because I think in there's certain phases, you mentioned your own evolution, how you've morphed over time into embracing the fluidity of , your gender expression. And some of us earlier in transitions are so awkward and posture and 

Kai: there's a lot of performative masculinity. And then some of us grow into things. How do you reconcile all that in your camp?

Rocco: Yeah the whole thing, including the Umbrella nonprofit, the Intentional Man Project, which I'm going to be launching more in November the entire thing is focused on vulnerability, openness, and softness. And I think that's a missing piece for people to heal and the space is about healing and it's about being embodied. And it's about, like, I think it's all in how I set it up the night the director's speech that I give at the beginning of it, and even the language that I use on the website, if you look at the FAQs, there is even a question about , if a group of men are gathering, isn't that inherently toxic and the answer is no. Right? So it's not [01:03:00] toxic. It's not a bro culture. It's so collaborative. I think that being there, I realized that trans male culture and probably broadly trans masculine culture is like good boy culture. Because the vast majority of us are so desperate to be good and to be helpful that I see that at camp.

Rocco: And I think that I've seen people come and I've gotten feedback that they didn't know what to expect fully, but they had high hopes based off of what was laid out on the website and how it's spoken about on the website that they hoped that it would be the way that it was, but they had fears and so did their community had fears that it was going to be this toxic we are men kind of culture, but the facilitated chats are like how to get and maintain a healthy psyche how to take off your masks in the mask of masculinity. All of the programming is really focused on healthy masculinity and self love. And I think all that posturing can go away when people see this wide range and representation of men at any age and stage and [01:04:00] they get to have this experience of seeing that it's okay We also have guys who are in skirts and nail polish and they're fully welcome, too . There's this full scope and the emphasis and focus is on being vulnerable and connected with each other and if you are vulnerable, then those toxic traits disappear immediately because There's no space.

Rocco: I think I just say specifically, don't be an asshole. We don't have any rules here. You're all adults. Everyone takes care of themselves and each other. And we have icebreakers the first night that are like, if you are a posturing clown or toxic in any way. No way. I'm like, no one's cool at camp.

Rocco: This is camp. You can't both be at camp and be a cool guy. So you got to drop one and you can't leave. You're here now. So might as well enjoy the experience. So it's really focused on that healthy connectivity to self and to this brotherhood.

Kai: That's beautiful. I've been a part of a few retreats and smaller venues also where initially my impression is that we sort of [01:05:00] scan each other and size each other up and there's a little bit of policing that goes on and then once things ease up and we just sort of let our hair down and just share space with each other, it can be so incredibly beautiful.

Kai: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you sharing, your work and I've been looking at your camp last boy's website 

Rocco: there's gonna be one right, near you next year. So there's one in Labor Day weekend that will be right outside of Oregon. We became a non profit officially really recently and I am dedicating all of my energy to this as my full time thing now So there's gonna be a lot more expansion both virtually and in person.

Rocco: We have three camps next year I try to keep costs low. We also subsidize a lot of spaces like scholarships are available And if costs are prohibitive, I also try to move it around the country because I know that it's not just the cost of admission that's prohibitive to guys, but it's also, exactly and I, it's all payment plans, so if you're like, I can't afford 600 bucks, you can pay it over the span of 6 months, I ensure that each registration allows for [01:06:00] people to pay incrementally, because our community doesn't have a lot of money, and this experience is literally definitely life changing and has been communicated to me that it has saved a few guys lives.

Rocco: I'll share one last story about it. A guy came, he was probably in his early 30s, pretty early into his transition. He came alone. He was shaking, literally shaking when he came in. And I try to greet everyone as they come in. I think that's important because I want to make sure that all of the rough edges are smooth and that people know what the space is about.

Rocco: Knock on wood, six times. No conflict. Which is like, what? How do you gather 120 to 150 people with no conflict? Because trans men are desperate for this space and they want to be with each other. So they are protecting this space together. But this guy's shaking and he said, quietly whispered to me, If this doesn't work, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Rocco: And I said, what do you mean? And he said, I tried to take my own life and I didn't succeed. And so I decided to come here and I don't know what I'll do if this doesn't work. And it was like camp number [01:07:00] four at that point where I was like, I am so confident this will work. He left with three best friends who were all best men in his wedding.

Rocco: Two years later.

Kai: Wow. Wow, that just got me. Wow.

Jackal: That's.

Rocco: You gotta come. I really, can't stress it enough, guys. The biggest demographic that comes are guys between 35 to 56. So that is, the biggest, chunk. And then there's people younger and older. So when people are like, Eh, seems like it's for young guys. It is not. It's for my generation.

Rocco: I built this for men of my generation. So many guys who are stealth, and part of the reason we don't publish pictures or promote in any way is because I want it to appeal to guys who have fallen out of community, who are stealth, who are living their lives, who don't even realize that they're carrying the bags that they're carrying, because that's what happened for me that first camp.

Rocco: Thought I was building it for other people. It changed everything. It changed the course of my life. It changed how I relate to myself. I have a community of brothers. I didn't have any trans male friends at that point either in my life, like strong ones. I have nothing but trans men in my life now. And they're the most [01:08:00] beautiful, generous, collaborative, vulnerable, open people that I've ever had.

Rocco: So soft, so tender, so loving that , I can't stress it enough. You got to come to camp.

Jackal: Thank you so much. Hey, you've done some incredible things and you've had milestones and proud moments and so many things that you've offered the community. Tell us some of the challenges that you've overcome in your life post transition.

Rocco: Yeah. I thought you meant challenges that I've had in offering those things. That is a big challenge. I'll start with that one. In making myself public by offering goods and services, music, magazine, or camp the community has come for me in a way that feels so much more Destructive and dangerous to my mental health than anything else, so I'll share one story in 2004 when I was performing at a big music festival a woman who was playing right after me.

Rocco: I had an incredible show. It was amazing. It was called homoa gogo. It was an Olympia, Washington

Jackal: Oh, [01:09:00] I know. 

Rocco: Yeah, I got to play right before the headliner. I won't say who she is, but it was a huge show for me. It was right before my first album came out. I had the crowd. We were relating. I was talking about things like how difficult it was to survive as a queer or trans person.

Rocco: And it was a big moment culturally because no trans man had been on a stage to an audience of 5, 000 people saying that stuff. And I could feel what a big moment that was. And I was probably the first trans man that a lot of people saw because of that. And afterwards she played. And people were less engaged because it was such an emotional connection that I made with that crowd and she went backstage and talked to a few of my friends and was like, I don't think that he should be a part of a queer music festival.

Rocco: I don't get it. He's a typical straight guy saying shit that straight men say that doesn't have any place. In a queer music festival and my friend shared it with me anecdotally and it made me want to kill myself. I went home, I ruminated [01:10:00] for months on end, I tried to 5150 myself I felt so displaced. I couldn't really imagine where I would go because at the time there wasn't space for trans men online or otherwise and so I just thought okay I don't have a place. In normie culture, for many reasons outside of my transness, and I also don't have a place. in queer culture. So where do I go?

Rocco: Thankfully I didn't I didn't take my own life. Obviously I'm here, but that was probably one of the biggest moments. And then similarly with original plumbing, people were really mad that we didn't represent trans femmes enough. But it was a magazine for trans men, just to be clear. It was a magazine for trans male culture.

Rocco: It probably would have been for trans masculine culture if we started today, but that word didn't really exist back then. Yeah, people got really mad and they got progressively more and more upset that we didn't offer a window into the entire trans community. And people protested a show [01:11:00] and there was an online petition for us to shut it down.

Rocco: And that was another moment that the queer community came knocking and cannibalized. And I took a step back and I didn't know what to do. Major mental health moment for me. That was probably 2012. Thankfully it survived. The magazine survived. It was different after that. Both Amos and I were really scared post that moment.

Rocco: So when I work in marketing and when I see things straight people saying we're disgusting, it has no impact on me. When my own community comes and is like, you're fucked up. That's enough to make me really want to not survive, you know? And it's scary.

Jackal: It is scary. You know, we've been really lucky that we haven't gotten trolled. We haven't gotten really slammed except for this thing that we have fallen short on, which we admit but by the community, but really man, can we try to not eat our own like you have really, I mean, I just want to say this out loud, you have offered the community so much of yourself [01:12:00] and given back so much to the community, given our community, such a reflection and opportunity of growth, you are important. So anytime anybody says something negative to you and you have a bad moment and you start ruminating on that, remember, Jackal said,

Jackal: Rocco are important. No, it's important because it's sometimes we need that. Those are the other contradictory messages against the negativities that are coming in.

Jackal: Like, here's my positive messages that Jackal never met said.

Rocco: Well, we've met now. We've just spent an hour and some time together.

Jackal: Our virtual meeting. Yeah.

Rocco: I mean, that's a good, you make a great point. And I appreciate that reflection. I will take it and let it land. It's hard sometimes for me to let those things land. But I think that trans men, not unlike cis men, suffer in loneliness and isolation and mental health issues.

Rocco: And it's part of the reason that we see statistically trans men report attempting suicide at a higher rate [01:13:00] than any other part of the LGBTQ community. And I mean, T also, like we attempt to take our own lives more than any other part of the trans and non binary or gender diverse community. And that's an epidemic that does not get enough.

Rocco: Airtime or resources put to it, which is another reason that I am devoting my time and energy and love and full force into creating that space and resource for trans men because I think it's what you said earlier to Kai if you don't see something, then make it if you don't see yourself in something, make it.

Rocco: And so I think that's it. That's been my driver in general. And if you're a trans masculine person or trans femme, and you want to learn how to make a camp, I am literally making a playbook of how I made camp so that I can just hand it over and be like, make your own camp if you want. I will help support you.

Rocco: And that's kind of how we did with the magazine too. Like people would come and be like, this isn't for me. And I'd be like, I, it [01:14:00] is if you want it, but if you don't, and it doesn't speak to you, I will help you learn how to self publish and make a so for me, information gatekeeping is not a thing that I believe in either.

Rocco: So if I'm not making something for you, instead of. Getting angry at me, then come to me and I will literally take my time for free to help you make the thing that is for you and for others like you,

Kai: That's beautiful. So how do you keep going? What kind of support do you have, Rocco? You've talked about what a support you are to others and how do you keep yourself fully charged or keep them going? 

Rocco: I mean, I have a wife who is a social worker who is incredible. We've been married for 12 years. She's a huge support. And now I have this community of brothers that I met at camp. Years ago, and if we'd stayed in touch, we have a biweekly men's group where we gather virtually and connect with each other. That's an enormous support

Kai: beautiful. 

Rocco: I've had the same therapist since 2008. I love her. Yeah I just invest a lot in long term connections and relationships. [01:15:00] So I think as much as I'm driven. To build community for other people. I am also building that for myself in a more quiet way.

Rocco: That's like, separate from the things that I do and offer, but integrated too.

Jackal: nice. Nice.

Kai: So thinking forward, how do you imagine your life will play out in the next 10, 20 plus years?

Rocco: You know, it's a privilege to make it into my forties. I feel really grateful that I am here and alive. And I'll say for younger listeners too each decade gets incrementally a little less burdensome for me. I think that a lot of people say that too, is that I feel less self conscious. I feel more self love as each year goes by.

Rocco: But community is really important. So when I think of like an end state, I want to be living in a commune. Not with people, but I'd love to have some sort of sustainable land that I'm living with other Trans men, transmasculine people and their partners. But the [01:16:00] price of admission is that you must be partnered with a trans man or a transmasculine person.

Rocco: Because like I said, it's that good boy culture. I just want to be in a land full of gentle helpers. Yeah, that's the end state. But over the next ten years, I'll probably continue to, I hope to continue to... Build out this nonprofit and really provide a sustainable resource for trans men that doesn't go away because I think all of us maybe went to different conferences that were in existence in the early aughts or late 90s a true spirit gender odyssey those two were created by trans men trans masc folks for trans men and trans masc folks And then sort of opened up to a larger demographic to coming and then they imploded.

Rocco: And I think that's even what happened with OP in a little way. And I don't want that to happen with camp or with the intentional man project because I want to make sure that this community of trans men has a long sustaining place that they can find each other and they can find brotherhood and support and love for [01:17:00] their own experience.

Rocco: So I hope to continue to devote my energy to that wholly for The rest of my working life. Inevitably, I will if I look back now at what I've done.

Kai: I think if you build it, they will come in terms of the community that you're envisioning growing older. And I relate to that too, having shared residence with a brother. So I, yes, yeah.

Rocco: So I'll see you in the commune.

Jackal: Yeah. Hopefully Rocco. How would you like to be remembered?

Rocco: Oh man, as someone who is kind and generous and as a community organizer, I think, really, I'd like to be remembered as someone who, even if you didn't like me, I somehow facilitated you finding your people. I think that I want to be seen as a connector and a community member and I don't, I hate the word leader.

Rocco: Facilitator. As a community [01:18:00] facilitator.

Jackal: I see you as a leader.

Rocco: I appreciate that.

Jackal: I like that. I think that it's okay to be a leader just as it's okay to be binary.

Kai: We were asked to be on a podcast called Forged in Fire and it was about leadership in the LGBTQ community. And we were like, do you have the right people? We don't

Jackal: We were,

Kai: .And then I think that with it comes a risk of, people coming for you.

Jackal: Putting a target on your back for sure.

Kai: yeah, but it can be a really transformative experience.

Jackal: Yeah. It's funny I used to do a leadership development courses and one of the things that we talk about is that how people target leaders, because it's like they kind of say who are you to lead me kind of thing. But what it's kind of like the eating our own thing, when we come after leaders, we're showing other people who would like to take leadership that it's not safe to do and I think that's a really bad message.

Jackal: And so I want to say we need leadership and [01:19:00] it's okay that you don't follow every leader. And, Let's support the leaders that we want to support. Instead of tearing down the leaders that you don't like, support the leaders that you like. 

Rocco: If you come from a background of being a marginalized person in any way, shape, or form, especially if you have multiple marginalized identities, I think that there is often conflating leadership with dictatorship and seeing leaders as dangerous elements. Whereas, leaders who are truly, James Green is a great example of a trans man who is a leader.

Rocco: He holds quiet space and he does more than anyone to ensure that we have rights to bodily autonomy, et cetera. And he's not a dictator and often I have to soothe myself in these moments when I don't acknowledge myself as a leader, I actually occupy space more dangerously because I don't realize that I have power in places.

Rocco: I don't want power over people, but I know leaders are [01:20:00] persuasive and they engage and ignite people. I'm more and more coming to terms with being a leader, but you don't have to be a dictator to be a leader. In fact, if someone is dictating anything, that's not a leader you want to be engaged with.

Rocco: But if someone is just opening space for you, that's the type of leader that I look for. And that's the type of leader I hope I am is that I'm just creating a container for other people to feel supported.

Jackal: Completely. Completely. Thank you. So we're coming to the end of our first portion of our interviews. And so we want to ask Rocco, do you think we should have asked that we didn't ask any last words of wisdom that you would like to share?

Jackal: There's so much.

Rocco: I appreciate that. I know I'm long winded too.

Rocco: Oh, you know the question I love to ask people is in this type of space, who was the first trans man that you saw that enabled you to imagine a future? 

Jackal: Who would you [01:21:00] pick? What would be your answer?

Rocco: Loren Cameron,

Rocco: He was the most visible trans man for a generation of guys. His book of self portraits even if guys haven't seen it still influences. online trans male culture in such an enormous way. In part it's why all those hot shirtless pics of young trans guys get all the likes and the follows.

Rocco: He was the original hot shirtless pic. Yeah, he was a work of art. He was incredibly beautiful and He's the same height as me because he talks about it in the book where he says he's 5'3 And he had to get a suit custom made for him And I just thought But because I had seen him for so all these pictures and then got to that part where he said he was 5'3 I was like no way you could be a short dude and look like that.

Kai: yeah, he's larger than life, like bigger,

Rocco: Oh my god. Yeah.

Jackal: Seriously.

Rocco: And then I also like to mention there was a [01:22:00] guy in San Francisco who has gone on to do lots of work and he's a public gentleman. His name is Morty Diamond. He published books. Yeah. So Morty Diamond I lived in a house with him right as I was beginning my transition.

Rocco: And he was a couple years ahead of me, I think. And my age. So he was the first person my age. He gave me my first shot of testosterone that was not doctor approved in our dirty kitchen together. 

Kai: Don't try this at home.

Jackal: yeah, you put alcohol on the spot of your butt, but the kitchen doesn't have to be clean. Okay, guys,

Rocco: that's right. Your body should be clean, your environment, you know,

Kai: works should be cleaned, be safe, .

Rocco: Now I'm very clean, but but back then I was a wild drunk punk too. You know, 

Jackal: to that at all. Jesus.

Rocco: Look at us now, Jacko. Look at us

Jackal: I know, right? Jesus.

Rocco: Yeah.

Rocco: I'll say one, I'll say one quick thing about words of wisdom.

Rocco: I think it really is just it's so [01:23:00] basic and it's not trans specific, but I think particularly relevant to the conversation we've just had is community is an essential need for survival and it's not like a bonus. It's the whole point. Love and connection is the entire point. of this experience, not the trans experience of the human experience and trans people are kept so separate from themselves and each other that we have such a hard time accessing love because there's so much hurt that we have to clean out of the space to be able to connect with each other.

Rocco: And I just think like You're hurting, I'm hurting, we're all hurting, and every force outside of us is harming us and trying to keep us separate from each other. And I know it maybe even sounds Pollyanna, but we need each other. We need each other, and we need to love each other. Even if you don't like each other, important.

Rocco: To love each other have love for the experience, have an understanding of the [01:24:00] suffering. It doesn't need the same language, just to tie it back to that piece. You don't need to have the exact same name for who you are even if we look the same. It doesn't need to be threatening. All we need to remember is that we're all hurting and we all need to love each other and move more and more towards choosing love over harming one another.

Jackal: Thank you so much. And Rocco, thank you for being on our show. You are a really amazing person and an amazing guest. I'm so glad that we got an opportunity to interview you today.

Rocco: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Kai: thank you for bringing all of your wisdom and your words and your love to us and your connection. I'm with you a hundred percent. There's nothing like a connection to other trans guys, and you're adding so much to our little show, and it's one of the reasons why we keep going. 'cause that's what it's about.

Kai: You know? It's just a, it's our own, it's our own thing, and it's really special.

Jackal: It's our own loved gift. This is our own love [01:25:00] gift to the community.

Rocco: Yeah. I feel that. That's why I was so excited to be in conversation with both of you is that it's so I said it before the show, but I'll say it again on the show is that it's so important to highlight and contextualize our history because it's not that old. Trans masculine culture is not old. It's like only getting some recognition bit by bit year over year and to call back to guys 20 plus years ago, and ask them what it was like is such an important moment and message for us, as guys who have been around for a long time, to feel seen and heard, and there's a place and a space for us, but for younger guys to hear from us individually so I really appreciate the work you're both doing.

Jackal: Thank you

Kai: Thank you. Thank you.

Outro: And now it's time for Transponder. So today's Transponder question is, What are the similarities and differences between being DL and being stealth? You [01:26:00] can answer this question on our Instagram page, Transmasculine Podcast, or our ex feed at Podcast Stealth. We look forward to hearing from you. Lastly, this show would be nothing without our guests, who share their insight, expertise, and heartfelt stories.

Outro: We absolutely adore you and are forever grateful to you. Good job today, Jekyll. Good job to you, Kai. Thank you for listening to today's podcast. Stealth tries to capture stories of those who transitioned before the year 2000. We recognize that language has its limitations. The words we use to describe ourselves and our community evolve over time and will not represent everyone's experience.

Outro: We also want you to know that the health and well being of our community is our number one priority. In fact, we want to give a shout out to parents who are supporting their gender non conforming kids. Supporting your child in the development and expression of their identity is not child abuse. We support you and love you for supporting your kids.

Outro: We fully anticipate [01:27:00] that people and groups will express positivity and negativity in response to our stories. We're prepared to deal with this and as you know, thrilled to be one small part of our community. We offer links to health and safety resources on our website. We monitor our social media platforms, we respond to feedback from our audience, and we will be accountable when we screw up.

Outro: We want you to know that we are just two guys doing this in our spare time. As we enter Season 4, we are getting better, but we are still rookies, and... Still two old farts to boot. So we ask that you still be patient with us as we learn the ropes and find our way. The opinions expressed on our podcast are our own and those of our guests.

Outro: We do not represent any outside entity. Remember, if you're interested in sharing your story, we would love to hear from you. If you're interested in volunteering, please let us know. Your feedback and support are essential to our show's success. Help us get the word out about our podcast. Tell your friends, share on [01:28:00] social media, and rate us on your favorite streaming platform.

Outro: You can find us on Instagram, Transmaskingpodcast, on X, formerly Twitter, at Podcast Stealth, on YouTube, Stealth the Transmasking Podcast, and be sure to check out our website. Trans masculine podcast. com. Thank you for joining us until next time