You know, I have had to fight to "feel with" cis women and some other groups. For white cis & het men, it hasn't been such a struggle. I am among them, I experience belonging with them, and I understand how it feels to be seen as one of them and to live among them. I've always found them easier to relate to. When I lived as a woman, I found it hard to identify as a feminist, in fact, because so much of mainstream liberal feminism cast individual men as responsible for sexism rather than looking at the systemic forces of patriarchy & transphobia that create issues for all of us, cis men included. Even before I declared my manhood to the world, I found it easy to experience unity with men.

In one of my most recent books, I profile a lot of women and people of color. Some have taken offense to this, and asked why my book doesn't speak more to the perspective of white men. To which I have always answered: because I am a white man. My book and all my writing profiles a white man's perspective. It's the perspective I wear, and I understand it very well. Empathy is always a flawed attempt at a simulation of what somebody else feels. It's a tool that can point us in the right direction, or it can lead us astray. But with men like me, there isn't so much struggle to understand. All I have to do is live.