Cis Men (As Far As We, Like, *Know*) With Inexplicably Transmasculine Energy

John Mulaney

The suits, obviously; the lacquer-bright little suits that look like they’ve been steam-rolled directly onto his body – they’re binder-tight suits, is what it is; also how he’s always talking about he he should be more gay than he is, and no one can quite figure out what that’s supposed to mean; plus he takes a wildly disproportionate amount of joy out of the thought of calling his wife his wife, as if he just narrowly escaped having to be a wife himself and can’t believe his luck; receives an extraordinary amount of public goodwill for putting on a suit and being competent, and I think we all have to admit there’s at least a little bit of there there, transmasculine-energy-wise, at least some of the time.

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The Apostle Paul

Fussy, a great organizer, prone to writing passive-aggressive letters, invented the conversion narrative and by extension the trans memoir, couch-surfer, big proponent of restorative justice and community-based accountability despite (because of?) constantly getting into fights with his friends; 2 Corinthians 12:7-9’s “And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness” is definitely a reference to periods.

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Danny DeVito as The Penguin in Batman

Ostentatious dresser, low center of gravity, assigned penguin at birth, a disproportionate grudge against all “firstborn sons” with uncomplicated inheritances from their fathers, scuttles, gleefully nonchalant about the glamour disparity between himself and his stylish transfeminine counterpart Catwoman.

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Harry Styles, obviously; the latest Rolling Stone cover is the ur-shirtless-post-top-surgery-beach-photo-shoot of all time. The fact that, as far as I know, he has never had top surgery somehow only magnifies the transmasculine resonance therein.

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Liz Lemon, confusingly.

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Ludwig Wittgenstein

For a number of reasons, of course, but chiefly because he looked like Peter Capaldi, who has an absolutely off-the-charts older-lesbian-living-in-Sedona look.

See also: publishing “one slim book” during your lifetime in a sublime act of ostentatious emotional withholding, insisting the future will misunderstand you, his father’s sideburns, his own tidy haircuts, the following remark from Bertrand Russell concerning W.: “I love him & feel he will solve the problems I am too old to solve ... He is the young man one hopes for.”