When 'Looking Like a Boy' Doesn't Yield The Results You Wanted.

A Screenshot of Rae Stizz from her video,“Men Flirting with Studs”

Yesterday, I came across a video called, “Stud Can’t Figure Out Why So Many Men Want to Holla At Her”.

Apparently, a masculine-presenting black lesbian made a Tiktok video complaining about an encounter she had with a man who was flirting with her on the street, and she was confused as to why the man was interested in her to begin with.

“Do I not look like a boy?” she asked, in her video.

“No, you don’t”, I said out loud while watching her video for the first time.

She then pulled back her hair to showcase her undercut, mentioning that she doesn’t know what more she can do to look like a boy, as if the haircut is what made her look like a man to begin with.

While I hope this woman doesn’t attempt to “do more”, her desire to be respected as a result of “looking like a boy” inspired me to share how her thought process can be a slippery slope into transgenderism, and what the real solution to her problem is.

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I initially came across this woman through a series of reactions to her original video. An older black man included her Tiktok clip in his Youtube video, where he made his own commentary in response to hers.

Because I’m so used to seeing male Youtubers make homophobic, misogynistic comments about lesbians, I braced myself for what derisive things this man might have to say, preparing to click off.

However, surprisingly, I agreed with all of his points!

In a nutshell, he said that she looks like a woman, and she is a woman, and because men are attracted to women, they’re going to be attracted to her.

She looks like a woman in her natural state. The fact that she doesn’t wear fake lashes and weave doesn’t mean she doesn’t look like a woman. Also, the way she dresses does not necessarily mean that she’s a lesbian.

There are women who dress just like her who are “not all the way there” (bisexual) or they may just be dressing that way because they want to ward off men after having a bad experience with them (sad but true).

He also said that what he does respect about studs, is that they’re not taking over men’s spaces in the way transwomen take over biological women’s spaces.

Bingo.

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Now, I don’t want to give this man too much credit, because he failed to address the most important issue at hand, which is the fact that this was woman was being sexually harassed by a man.

She said that when this guy asked for her number, she told him that she’s a lesbian, and he reacted by cursing her out.

This happens all the time to women when we say No to men, and it can be very scary, if not life-threatening. It’s risky to say No to men, but it’s a risk we must always take.

What concerns me is the fact that this woman thought that her “looking like a boy” was her free pass from being the object of the male gaze and sexual harassment, and that she was desperately trying to figure out what more she can do to pass as a boy.

This is the slippery slope.

No woman wants to experience sexual harassment, and some of us have been through so much trauma at the hands of men, that we go to extreme lengths, just to avoid it.

Many women will hide their bodies under weight gain, masculine clothing, or the effects of testosterone, in an attempt to make themselves less sexually appealing to men…only to feel dismayed when they realize that men quite frankly do not care.

There are things you can do to reduce the attention you receive. But as long as you are female, there are always going to be men who sexually desire you.

You have inherent desirability if you were born with a pussy.

Your femaleness is not something you can ever change, and very few women are able to conceal their biological sex, no matter what they do.

Some men even prefer the androgynous look.

So unfortunately, ‘looking like a boy’ is not a way to escape male attention. Sorry.

The other thing I found troublesome about this lesbian’s perspective is the fact that she felt entitled to respect because she “looks like a boy”…

As opposed to viewing herself (regardless of expression) as entitled to boundaries because ALL women are fundamentally worthy of respect as human beings.

This is where the sexist hierarchies can come into play, even amongst lesbians:

If you’re a woman who wears dresses, you should expect to be harassed, and you should not be surprised when men assume you are straight. Sexual objectification is the norm if you are a feminine woman.

This is a very harmful belief, and it’s also the reason why many women will try to look butch when masculine expression may not even be authentic to them.

They only dress masculine as an armor, as a way to garner respect from society, and/or within the lesbian community. For these women, masculinity is a mere performance.

In reality, there are just as many feminine lesbians as there are masculine lesbians, and bisexual women can also fall into either expression. While you can make educated guesses, you can’t tell what a woman’s sexual orientation is just by looking at her.

But when it comes to navigating sexual harassment from men, a woman’s sexuality doesn’t matter anyway—because women who are attracted to men will have their own preferences and boundaries, too.

When a woman is sexually harassed, her personhood and sexuality is erased in favor of what the harasser wants and feels entitled to from her. That is why it’s so demeaning.

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The belief that the more male-adjacent a woman is, the more respectable she is—is an easy pipeline to transgenderism.

The lesbian who made this video can easily decide that she wants to further masculinize herself to avoid situations like the one she just encountered. If she took action on her line of questioning, it would quickly lead her to medicalization.

The fact is that most modern “gender-affirming care” is sought out by young women.

According to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), adolescent girls are 2 to 7 times more likely to seek gender transition than boys.

For some women, going on T seems to be an easy way out of being preyed upon by men, day in and day out.

Most often, these women will discover that society still perceives them as female—and that the unique pains that come with existing as a woman and/or lesbian have not changed very much…they’ve just been piled upon.

The real problem is male sexual entitlement and violence, which are byproducts of patriarchy.

If we had a culture where men actually respected women, and if we lived in a world where women did not have to fear our boundaries being crossed—I vouch that we would see far fewer women trying to opt-out of womanhood.

It may even cease to be an issue altogether.

This is a culture that both men and women would have to consciously create. And we can only do that if we remain honest and present with ourselves.

Otherwise, we’re just going to keep shoving each other down as we climb to the top of a broken system, until it crumbles beneath our very feet.