“What are you, a boy?” I was asked hundreds of timed over the years on the streets of downtown Honolulu. Guys didn’t just ask me if I was a boy bc I was walking the same streets as mahus. Naturally they thought i might be a boy. But the bigger truth was that many guys hoped I was a boy. They weren’t trying to offend me, but in New York being asked “are you a boy or a girl was an insult.” Learning not to be offended came gradually as I grew accustomed to the more permissive rules regarding the gender one chose to express in Hawaii.
