Questions for a Trans Guy (From a Trans Guy) with Ash Perez

Welcome to Let's Be Perfectly Queer Podcast, your go to LGBT Australian podcast for all things queer.

This week we sit down with writer, actor, comedian and creator Ash Perez, best known for their hit Buzzfeed videos, 2nd Try and their new series New Guy Tries. Together, we dive into the transgender experience from a trans-masculine perspective in a raw, funny, and deeply honest Q&A.

Ash opens up about the inspiration behind New Guy Tries, a show that follows them navigating everyday “firsts” after transitioning. Everything from gym culture to dating, while breaking down myths and stereotypes about being trans. 

Here’s what we cover in this episode:

• What it really feels like to step into the world as a “new guy”
• Hear all about the New Guy Tries series
• The awkward, funny, and sometimes emotional “first-time” moments in transition
• Feminism and feeling loss when transitioning
• Grief and transitioning
• Transitioning in the public eye

This is a heartfelt, affirming, and eye-opening conversation between two trans guys swapping stories, comparing notes, and celebrating the joy and messiness of transition. Whether you’re trans, questioning, or simply want to better understand the trans-masculine experience, this episode is packed with insights, laughs, and moments of recognition.
 

🎧 Grab your headphone discover why Ash’s New Guy Tries is more than just a show... and until next time, stay perfectly queer!

Archie & Katie 🌈

Here more from Ash Perez:

• On the Phone with Ash & Amanda
• New Guy Tries
• Tiktok
• Instagram
• New Guy Tries YouTube

Transcript

Podcast: Let's Be Perfectly Queer
 Episode Title: Questions for a Trans guy from a Trans guy
 Host(s): Archie
 Guest(s): Ash Perez

Archie: Welcome to Let's Be Perfectly Queer, a queer podcast, creating space to talk about all things queer. My name is Archie and I'm joined today by Ash Perez from second try. 

Intro

Archie: How you doing Ash? 

Ash Perez: I'm good. How are you, Archie? 

Archie: I'm very good. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for getting in touch. Really excited to have you on. And today's episode is Questions for a Trans Guy from a trans guy, and you came up with the great title for us.

Ash Perez: I love, it's, it's one of the secrets of, uh, being a writer that I also love, like the marketing side of it and coming up with titles and stuff like that. 

Archie: As soon as you said it, I was like, I could not come up with a better title. So thank you so much for doing that. You took half the job away from me. 

Ash Perez: Of course.

Ash Perez: Now we'll do the other part of it right now and do the interview. 

Archie: Exactly. So for those who don't know, you. Did you wanna tell us a bit about yourself? Second try and new guy tries. 

Ash Perez: Yes. I'll do it in that order. Uh, my name is Ash Perez. I am a trans guy living out in Los Angeles. I am a writer and author, and, uh, most recently I have a series on second try, which is the platform that the try guys made after they left buzzfeed.

Ash Perez: Um, a lot of new guy tries is actually also available on YouTube as well because it was important for us to make it available to the trans community. But if you would like to explicitly support the series, you can go to second try TV and sign up there. And we have two seasons of our show, new Guy tries, which is all about me exploring.

Ash Perez: My journey into becoming a man. 

Archie: Yeah. And we got to watch that. And I gotta say, it was amazing to watch your journey. I could relate to a lot of the things you were saying on the show as well, and it was really interesting to see someone like yourself be so open about it. I thought that was great. Oh, 

Ash Perez: thank you.

Archie: Oh, new guy tries. You've shared parts of your journey across two seasons so far. Mm-hmm. Uh, one focusing on manhood. Mm-hmm. And the other on Boyhood. So what inspired you to explore both of those themes? 

Ash Perez: So the first one about manhood, the first season, which was about manhood, was kind of just a default.

Ash Perez: Like I didn't know if there was gonna be another season. And it was really the biggest question on my mind. What does it mean to be a man? How can I become a man and do it without the biggest male role model in my life? 'cause my dad passed away before I transitioned. So did my grandfather. Both my grandfathers.

Ash Perez: And, uh, I have six aunts and no blood uncles. Wow. So it was very much like a very female dominated side of my house, of my family. And so I really didn't know where to start asking. Just the questions about manhood of like, should I shave when I'm getting a little bit of those like tiny gross hairs? At what point should I get a suit?

Ash Perez: What color suit, you know, the kinds of things that I think people maybe take for granted, especially, uh, cis guys about, uh, just going into that step of manhood or. That tend to happen for most guys at puberty, which is, you know, around 14 to 16. But for me it was happening when I was 32, 33. And so I didn't really know where to go and it just so happened that I was part of a group that's all about trying things that is made up of guys.

Ash Perez: So it felt like the perfect way. To kind of honestly make my reference onto the internet and into this gender. 

Archie: Yeah. That's awesome. And manhood and boyhood. Why did you decide that the second season was gonna be boyhood? 

Ash Perez: Yes. So first season was manhood by default. Second season was boyhood when we were just kind of like throwing around ideas.

Ash Perez: Me and my producer Nick. About what is it that we wanna say? What is it we wanna do? And we kind of kept landing. We just kind of went over ideas of things that I wanted to do, and one of them was forging, metal forging. I had watched this show Forged in Fire, and I was like, this is cool. Like I did find that post testosterone, a lot of my interests changed more than I thought.

Ash Perez: They would like things that I would never be interested in before, just like sports or. Metal forging. Even F1 I was kind of like more interested in and I don't know what that is. Maybe just social allowance for that. So we kind of pulled up a bunch of things that I would be interested in doing and we realized like Nick was like, oh, it's kind of all the classic like boys toys.

Ash Perez: So it was swords and guns and, uh, why am I blanking on the, 

Archie: the cars, the trucks? 

Ash Perez: Yes. Yes. Cars, you got it. Trucks was the only one that I wasn't naturally inclined to do. Uh, but it was about like my sibling, uh, was assigned male at birth and. Had a fascination with trucks that I never understood. So it felt like another place to explore, which is why I couldn't remember it.

Ash Perez: But yeah, it kind of just came about naturally and it honestly felt like the natural continuation of after kind of learning to define my manhood, then being like, oh, but there's such a big chunk that I didn't get to experience, which is boyhood. I think for a lot of queer and trans people, you know, they say that we have a second adolescence when we come out and I have so felt that, uh, first coming out as bisexual and then coming out as trans and.

Ash Perez: It was really cool to actually get to experience moments in that second adolescence. 

Archie: Yeah, and watching you from the first season to the second season, you seemed a lot more free and comfortable in your skin as well, which was really nice to see. Yeah. You could really see that almost there was like a weight lifted off your shoulders in the second season and you were almost giving permission to be fun and have that boyhood.

Archie: That's what it looked like for me on the outside. Did that feel like that at all? That you had that permission to. Have a second childhood. 

Ash Perez: Yeah. It's so interesting. I mean, I love your comments and observations as another trans man because it's like you so specifically understand what what I was going through.

Ash Perez: Oh, yeah. But I didn't realize how much the first season affected me until we got around to making the second season. Right before the first season, I went to my first, or might have been after, I can't remember. I went to a all trans male camp, like a summer camp called Camp Lost Boys. That's about like reclaiming your youth and then at the same time I was a camp counselor at a.

Ash Perez: Camp that was split gender for a grief camp for boys who had experienced loss of a parent or a sibling or a caretaker. And I was really afraid of not knowing how to interact with them because I had never been a boy their age. And in fact, boys that age terrified me. And I think that combined those two experiences combined with doing new guy tries.

Ash Perez: I call it my summer of boyhood, or my summer of manhood. It really was just like thrusting me into examining all these different parts of it. And I think by the end of the first season I just realized, oh, like even cis men don't really have a handle or understand their manhood in the way that I thought they would.

Ash Perez: And uh, it kind of gave me license to just be me again instead of. Trying to learn and jot down what it means to be a man because I learned it can mean so many things to so many people. 

Archie: It's very true. Everybody has a different opinion on what it is to be a man. So there's no like blueprint, even though it looks like everybody has it together.

Archie: Everybody's, you know, putting the pieces together. And I thought that was really good about the first season, is that you were able to share everybody's opinion on what it is to be a man. And everybody had a different take, which I thought was really refreshing. And also in that first season, you raised some good questions about manhood itself.

Archie: Has your idea of manhood evolved at all? It kind of sounds like it has, but has it evolved since the first season? 

Ash Perez: Oh yeah, almost entirely. I mean, I think it's so funny and in some ways I know that being trans isn't a choice because I don't know if I would have ever chosen to do this, um, not just because of the societal pressure, but because I had become so comfortable.

Ash Perez: In not femininity, but in feminism and in sisterhood. And I had found the lane of being a woman that actually I felt very comfortable in, and I felt so foreign and ostracized from masculinity and from maleness, and honestly like, frankly, very terrified of it. And so I came in with, I would say, a very myopic, limited idea of what manhood is and just a lot of fear.

Ash Perez: And it really doing this really evolved just my whole perspective on what manhood means and also what cis men need in order to explore their manhood. Like it wasn't just, it really, the whole thing kind of became a Trojan horse for cis guys to be able to talk about the thing that nobody asked them about, which is what it means to be a man.

Ash Perez: And it's such a complicated question for them in this world that is. That has so much variety for female presentation, but very, very little variety for male presentation. 

Archie: I didn't actually think about that, but it's so true that men are supposed to fit in this little box where women have different variations that they're allowed to take on, which is quite interesting and I'd never actually thought about it.

Archie: Yeah. You know, it is quite hard sometimes. Transitioning. You know, it is definitely hard and I understand if I could have been born a male, it'd be a lot cheaper, a lot less mental health, straight, everything, you know? And especially in those first few months, it's kind of like, am I passing? You've got all this stuff going on, you know, are they gonna accept me for me?

Archie: Yeah. So you transitioning in the public eye, that can't be easy. Did being part of a successful YouTube show and Buzzfeed show, did that influence your transition timeline? Because I was kind of interested, did that impact your timeline because of the show or any contractual stuff that you had involved?

Ash Perez: You know, it really wasn't anything to do with Buzzfeed. I left Buzzfeed in 2018 and I actually came out as bisexual in my show, unfortunately, Ashley, which I did at Buzzfeed, or you do you actually, before, unfortunately, Ashley. I actually felt a lot of freedom to bring like my whole self to what we were doing at Buzzfeed.

Ash Perez: Maybe a little too much, honestly, but it was more just a personal journey. I, I don't think it would've been an issue with Buzzfeed. It was honestly the kind of thing that was the impetus for my transition was my dad dying. I don't think I realized how attached to being daddy's girl I was and how much I didn't want to disappoint my dad, who ironically I think would've been very accepting of me.

Ash Perez: I have an a trans sibling and, uh, who's non-binary and my dad was accepting of them, but I think I just. I don't know that daddy's girl thing had like a, a hold on me. So yeah, I don't think it necessarily affected that timeline, but I think like a lot of trans people that I'm meeting now, people who have transitioned in the last five years kind of did it over the pandemic where there was this time where for once in our society, like.

Ash Perez: You couldn't go outside and didn't have to go outside and you didn't. I think I was really intimidated by the idea of changing in front of people so publicly, and I kind of got to do it at home by myself and then present. My new self as I knew myself, uh, to the world. 

Archie: Yeah. And I can definitely relate to the not wanting to transition while you have such a close knit relationship with your parents or disappointing them.

Archie: And it got to the point where I felt like, you know, I, I can just keep living inauthentically Yeah. Until my parents pass away. Then I was like, but I could be 40, 50. Why am I doing that to myself and not allowing myself to live authentically? Yeah. Uh, so I can relate to that part, but it's gotta be hard having that parental figure that you've lost.

Archie: Mm-hmm. And not seeing this authentic side of you. Do you ever feel grief in that of your dad not being able to see this side of you? 

Ash Perez: Yeah, I really do. I think. My dad and I in some ways could have bonded on a, we were already really close, but I think we could have bonded on a whole new level. Like I really grieve things like, oh, I feel like my dad would've gotten back in shape with me and like wanted to like go lift weights.

Ash Perez: Which is so funny because the whole trope of masculinity is like, do you even lift bro? But. I was on this push. Uh, my dad had some heart issues to like get him healthy and I found it very hard as a daughter and I'm like, oh, I wonder if we could have just like worked out together and that would've been fun.

Ash Perez: Uh, one thing that's interesting though is transitioning. I find myself looking more and more like my dad every. So that's a mind fuck of just like, I miss him and then here he is, you know, like reflected back in me. So there, there's a lot of grief that comes with it. And the first season of new guy tries ended up being a lot more of a reflection of grief than I thought it would be.

Ash Perez: It was kind of half my journey into manhood and half an exploration of what it meant to lose my dad And I, I think I, I honestly think grief is part of. Every queer person's story because whether it's your grief or your family's grief, uh, people are grooving the person you were or the person they thought you would become.

Ash Perez: There's a lot to that and, and we, it's some, it's a complicated feeling that we all have to kind of learn to deal with as part of our stories. 

Archie: Yeah, very true. And I found it interesting as well in one segment when you're talking about women and you use the word we. I don't personally feel comfortable associating that kind of we as women now as a trans man.

Archie: Yeah. But does that still feel true for you today? Can you still feel the, the we in the women? 

Ash Perez: Yeah. That was really interesting when, uh, you, you had kind of sent me some potential questions that we might be asking and I was like, oh, I didn't even really clock that in myself and. In terms of using the we, I don't know if that has to come with honestly me being like a sorority girl.

Ash Perez: Yeah. Where that like female literally sorority, the idea of being a family Yeah. To women is like imparted in me. It was so much a part of my identity. I think more what it is, is that I relate so much to the female struggle. When I think of we women, I don't. I'm really speaking, especially in that instance I was speaking about like the way that women are socialized and I was socialized as a woman, so like I, in that instance I relate as a we.

Ash Perez: The interesting thing is as more and more time has gone, you know, that season was only maybe a year and a half into my transition, possibly a little bit more, but like pretty early into my transition. And the further along I get into my transition, the more I don't know if I belong in fully female spaces because you know, the privilege of testosterone and being a trans guy is that it's a pretty strong hormone.

Ash Perez: And so, uh, even though in the beginning you might not be passing, you really do start to later and. I don't know. And I don't know if that's just the physicality or if I just came into my sense of self with my being comfortable with my own masculinity. That was like, oh, I don't need to be in these all female spaces that.

Ash Perez: Quite frankly felt safer to me before. 

Archie: Yeah. And I can relate to it in that sense as well, because that's the world you knew. Yeah. You know, you're in all female spaces. And then as you start to pass more, and I think for me as well, it's probably about the, the third year of transitioning was very comfortable in my masculinity and my presentation of this is how I want to present as myself as a trans man that you don't feel like you need to hold onto these spaces that you once kept as safety.

Ash Perez: That's a good way to put it. I, it very much is kind of like in the beginning, oh, I don't feel safe. I have no idea what space I'm gonna hold as a man. Um, and it's very much like, oh, as a trans man trying to be a man, it, it felt like a lot of imposter syndrome. And then as the years go on, it's like, oh, trans man, man.

Ash Perez: Like, now I'm just occupying space as myself, but as I have more safety and honestly. More acquaintance with all the different types of masculinity. I know that there's a space for me there, and so I don't have to go to a space that I know how to occupy of just women or even queer people. 'cause I've found recently in my journey that it's especially important.

Ash Perez: Not even just to be around queer people because all of my queer friends, I love them, but tend to be like lesbians. You know who I was part of that group before. And even still like there's a different affinity of like, I need trans male friends to talk about the specific struggles that trans men go through.

Ash Perez: You know? 

Archie: Oh yeah, a hundred percent. Get that. And sometimes, like I love the queer spaces, but sometimes being in queer spaces as a trans man who is dating a woman who, yeah, looks like you're in a heterosexual 

Ash Perez: relationship, yes. It can feel like you're in the wrong place. That is a mind fuck. I think even more than like being a bi woman who's in, like even if you're, if I was the bi woman in relationship with a man, whether cis or trans.

Ash Perez: There's kind of more of a cultural understanding of like, oh, you're a, you're a woman, so you understand what it means to be discounted, and B, like, yes, of course you're still part of this community. It's not that people don't accept trans people. Well, most queer people don't accept trans people. It's part of the community, but it is just like.

Ash Perez: Oh yeah. On the face you look like a heterosexual, cisgender man, which is crazy. I think that's been more of an identity fuck than anything else that I've gone through. You weren't expecting that? No. I was like, and now I really don't. You know, as a writer. Uh, you know, like projects like this that are explicitly about me being trans, it's very easy to see who I am and what my identity is and to understand all the backstory that comes with that.

Ash Perez: I recently have been recording and am going to release in the next year a romcom that I wrote that was about two women. And I've been in the sessions and people are like, oh, this is the author. And I can see for the first second that they're like, why is a straight man writing this? Like lesbian, this is weird.

Ash Perez: And it's like, oh my God, no, no, it's me. It really feels like such a mind. Fuck. 

Archie: Yeah, it's crazy. It's before I started transitioning, it wasn't anything that was on my mind. I had a lot of other things, what I needed to focus on, but yeah, that was one thing that I was not prepared for, for sure. 

Ash Perez: Yeah. You don.

Ash Perez: It's a, it's the double edge sword and it's nice. I mean, like there's the downside to the gender affirmation of like, one thing I realized after the, um, fires were going on down here, there was, uh, a lot of volunteering. So I went and volunteered at this place where we were like helping prep food for people.

Ash Perez: I kept having to lift things because they were like, can we get all the men over here? And I was like, I don't wanna lift stuff, I just wanna like chat with people in sort clothes. They kept being like, oh, you strong man, come here. And I was like, oh God, 

Archie: hey, at least they think you're a strong man. That's a compliment.

Ash Perez: That's what I'm saying. It's, it's gender affirming and also like, oh, bummer. 

Archie: In the second season. It was wonderful. Like I meant at the start, watching you have fun and rediscover and just be like a free young boy who's just enjoying life. And do you ever feel sad that you didn't experience that as a young child?

Ash Perez: Yes and no. Like of course I feel sad that I didn't get to experience my boyhood in real time. There's a lot of things, there's so many parts of my personality that I wonder what would have been if I had just been allowed to be myself from the beginning. But at the same time. I have so much empathy for so many different kinds of people because I have a lived experience of, of knowing what it feels like to not be understood, um, which is, you know, what the core of empathy is.

Ash Perez: And so. There were very much great moments of my girlhood that I enjoyed, like the fucking spice girls. I would never trade that to be seven years old and have girl power take over the world and to be a girl was amazing, you know? And I do wish, I honestly just wish. That there had been more flexibility that like little girls could have behaved however they wanted.

Ash Perez: And I think that's kind of what's happening now. Like there is more. I see, you know, at least in Los Angeles. Little boys who are in their dress phase and they're wearing princess dresses and they're out and like, and maybe it's a phase, maybe it's not. And like parents just don't really care 'cause they're just playing.

Ash Perez: So I think that freedom would have allowed me to be myself earlier where it was very much like, well, girls don't do that kind of stuff. Girls don't rough house, girls don't get dirty in that way. So I felt limited by that. 

Archie: I can totally relate as a twin as well, who I was not feminine at all growing up and she was, you know, loved the Barbie doll and I just, one of the action figures and the trucks and that kind of stuff, it was very hard because I felt torn from such a young age as like, why don't I want to play with the Barbie dolls?

Archie: Yeah. Why do I want the trucks and the transformers? And so it is quite interesting when you look back and things like, um, my dad was running around the house without a shirt on, so as a five yearold, I thought I could do the same thing. But you don't realize about gender as a kid. You don't. Yeah. You're just, you're just having fun and exploring and it's, it's society and our parents who force the gender roles onto us.

Archie: So it's quite interesting when. As a trans man and looking back and like, what could my journey been like had I been given the freedom to just explore? 

Ash Perez: Yes. And it's so the shirt thing is so exactly the perfect example of that because I remember exactly the age where it became socially inappropriate for me to not have my shirt anymore.

Ash Perez: And it was probably around like six because I couldn't be going to like actual, like kindergarten or like, you know, primary school not wearing a shirt. I think kids have a freedom because up until puberty, our bodies are essentially the same. Little kids are like little sticks that like, you know, their voices are the same.

Ash Perez: There's like not really any shape or reason or rhyme to them. And I was really confused by that, honestly, because everyone kept saying pretty sucked and that everyone hated puberty. So as I felt betrayed by my body, I was just like, this must just be what people are talking about. What I didn't realize until later is that.

Ash Perez: That ends at some point for people that post puberty and with the results actually being what you want, you get to be happy in your gender. For trans people that never ends, it just kind of gets worse. 

Archie: Yeah, that, that's exactly it. And I remember when, I think I was about five or six and. The, what hit me was when I was running around the house and we were having visitors over and my mom was like, put a shirt on, we've got visitors over.

Archie: I'm like, but dad's got no shirt on. Yeah. But, and then my mom said, but dad's a boy and you are not. And that was the first time I'd ever heard. And that was just like, who 

Ash Perez: just messes with you? 

Archie: Yeah. And then as a like, you know, five, 6-year-old, you're like, what do you mean? I thought I was exactly like that.

Archie: I thought we were the same. And then to be told I wasn't. Was quite confronting as a, as a young kid. 

Ash Perez: And it's so interesting too 'cause it's like you have your sister who's a twin and you should be exactly like your sister, but yet, you know you're different than her too. I don't, I'm curious, a question for you, a word that really tripped me up, and I don't know if you have the exact same equivalent in Australia or if it's the same, but like the word tomboy really had this space that.

Ash Perez: I knew I wasn't the right type of girl. And then at some point the, the phrase tomboy gets thrown out there with the implications still being that you're heterosexual. And it allowed me to play in this space that actually let me explore a lot more of the gender stuff that I wanted. Like, oh, tomboys don't have to wear dresses, tomboys don't want to, you know, do the typical girl stuff.

Ash Perez: They don't like pink. But it was confusing to me like that also typically goes away at a certain point. And then I was like. Am I just a lesbian? And then I did that and that still wasn't right, so I just kept going until I found the stop. 

Archie: Yeah, we had tomboy and I, and I was called a tomboy through the middle school years.

Archie: Yeah. So probably from, you know, year three to year six ish. And then once you go through puberty and you go into high school era. Then that label goes away and they're like, oh, that's the weird kid who might be a lesbian of Exactly, yes. And then you find out, everybody's been talking behind your back saying you're a lesbian and you don't even know what a lesbian is.

Archie: You know, you're just, you're just trying to live life. But yeah, I do feel like the tomboy gave you, well, definitely gave me the label to be able to do the, the boyish stuff like wrestle and karate and soccer and Yeah, exactly. You know, all those kind of things that many of the boys in town did. It was quite interesting that, you know, those labels, they're not really around as much anymore.

Archie: Mm-hmm. Because we have more labels to understand what's going on with kids these days that we don't need this tomboy label. Kind of like we're gonna put this person in a box and we're not gonna label them. We're just gonna say they're a tomboy 'cause they might be queer. Yeah. And we don't wanna put that actual label on them.

Archie: Yeah. Or they could just like some boyish stuff and that's okay. So it's quite interesting 'cause language does evolve and you know, even the language around trans people has evolved and so, and I think it's gonna continue to evolve as well. 

Ash Perez: Exactly. And you know what I'm realizing now, like. It should have been a like a.

Ash Perez: It was an Easter egg tomboy. It was in the phrase like, and the amount of people that I know that were tomboy that are now trans men's pretty big overlap. 

Archie: I, I've seen the same thing as well, and I've seen as well in the lesbian community, a lot of the, the masculine or the, the butch in quotation marks style of label of lesbians have actually transitioned as well.

Archie: So it's quite interesting to see. That there is like, you know, there's a, you gravitate towards those kind of masculine features because hey actually everything doesn't align and we just need it all to align and make sense. 

Ash Perez: Exactly. There's that continuum. And then what I think is so cool is like when people are allowed to land where they want, it's like, oh yeah, for me, I want it.

Ash Perez: 'cause I was dressing more butch and my friends were like, well, why isn't that enough? Like, you already wear what you want, you could cut your hair, who cares? And it's like, well, I don't wanna be a masculine woman and I want to be a feminine boy. And there absolutely are masked women who just want to be masked women.

Ash Perez: You know, like it doesn't, even though people land on the continuum, it doesn't erase that. Some people genuinely feel right in that. And I think so much of the disservice is that. We're just beginning to really have and understand the conversation of the difference between gender and sexuality. They were so tied up together that we didn't really know what that meant, you know?

Archie: Yeah. And it's gonna be interesting to see how it changes and evolves as well, because it, even in the last 10 years. I've had a lot of my friends who even like, are super masculine. It's like, Hey, actually I'm non-binary, which I think is amazing. Yeah. You know, because they're not allowing society to put a label on them anymore.

Archie: They're allowing their, well, who they are inside to come out, which I think is absolutely beautiful. And you know, some people it takes a little bit longer depending on the backgrounds of your family support and that kind of thing. You know, and what you were saying before is resonating with you, like you have short hair.

Archie: Like your masculine. Isn't that enough? I had that conversation with my mom, but mom, like, this is not who I am. 

Ash Perez: Yeah. I'm still not a boy. And you know, I was like, 

Archie: do you want me to be around or do you want me to be the presentation that you want me to be? And so then we had those kind of conversations, which is hard to have with your mom.

Archie: Yeah. But then she's been an amazing support, you know, she. Was here to look after me when I had my top surgery. That was just kind of annoying 'cause you know, moms and pandering. But it's great that, you know, my family have been so super supportive in the whole thing and you know, not everybody has that, but you have a trans sister.

Ash Perez: Yeah. 

Archie: As soon as you said that I was like, that's so fascinating. 

Ash Perez: I think what was so in and the more and more trans people I meet, there's actually like a quite a few who have trans siblings too. My sibling like came out, I don't know, like fi, I came out first as bisexual and that was a big deal and it was really hard for my family.

Ash Perez: And then by the time like five years later, my sibling came out as trans. My parents were on the love is love train and like very pro pride and all of that. And I was like, you're fucking welcome. Like classic older sibling. And there, the interesting thing is there wasn't that spark yet in me. Of like, oh, me too.

Ash Perez: Like a lot of people are like, why didn't you come out then? And I think I had felt enough of a change and a shift in my identity coming out as queer where I finally felt like it really was such a big boon to my mental health to have the queer community that I didn't, I felt okay at that point, you know?

Ash Perez: Later as I came out. The funny thing too is because my sibling's non-binary and not binary. I also, when I started coming out was like, maybe I'm non-binary. Maybe I'm, and then as I kind of went more into it, I was like, you know, I saw a gender specialist who was like, you know, I'm just asking an open-ended question.

Ash Perez: You say you identify like whatever pronouns. It very much seems to me like your trans mask. Is there a reason that you're not like allowing that in? And I just broke down and started crying and I realized, oh, it's 'cause I'm afraid to be. It's like that's a step too far, you know? Not just to say that, oh, I'm not a woman, I'm kind of both, or kind of neither.

Ash Perez: But to be like, no, I'm a man, is a very big jump. And the funny thing is now like I just love that gender expression can change every day. Like. I, I really didn't before. If somebody said she, it really, it really felt very misgendering to me and very, made me very dysphoric. And now I'm at a point where I'm like, oh, it's, I can see that somebody is recognizing the femininity in me, and I'm also okay with that because I love my femininity.

Ash Perez: But as we evolve it, it's a very kind of classic queer conundrum, at least in my life, that I've recognized that labels are very, very, very important in the beginning. And I totally respect that for people. But honestly, the more you get to know yourself, it's like, well, people can kind of say what they want, but I know who I am.

Archie: Yeah. And as a teacher sometimes, you know, when I first started my transition and I got misgendered, it was like a, like a knife to the chest. It was like it hurt, like physical pain. And now when someone does it and it's just a slip of the tongue or whatever it may be, yeah, it doesn't hurt as much. But what I've found quite interesting, and I'm not sure if you've even noticed the same thing, but.

Archie: Kids teach high school age, kids with an Asian background are more likely to misgender me than kids from a Caucasian background. 

Ash Perez: Oh yeah. I mean, especially if they're Filipino or any kind of, I don't know if this is other Pacific Island, uh, nations, but my mom's been misgendering, both of us our whole life.

Ash Perez: She misgenders my cats because in Tagalog there are no pronouns. So. On the other side of my family, the Cuban side, it was actually very difficult because you know, a spoon has a gender. So like every single object has a gender. And I think that's also what's, so if you look at the cultures that are struggling, actually, like with the concept of trans transness tends to be reflected in the language.

Ash Perez: So like that's one of the things that I didn't even realize that it's like, oh, my mom's literally not just misgender it, it's just because her, her brain doesn't think in pronouns. Like there is an absence of gender from the get go. So that's interesting that I'm sure it's that way with a lot of other Asian cultures, 

Archie: and I think that's kind of beautiful that there is that absence of gender and Asian cultures, you know?

Archie: Yeah. You almost have that freedom to not think about it a bit more. 

Ash Perez: Yeah. There's a very, I mean, language is, is. It's so important and I think the most important thing is whether you understand why or why not. Someone else wants to be called what they're called or whatever pronouns they wanna use. It's just to respect it.

Ash Perez: Because even if you don't understand it, they're telling you. And it's funny because people think this is such a foreign concept, but like the name Jack in the US is. Uh, nickname for the name John, which is insane to me. Like, how the fuck does, like Jack Kennedy, his name, you know, John F. Kennedy, and we're fine with that.

Ash Perez: People see all the time, people's, you know, birth name and it's like, actually I go by my middle name, and teachers are fine with that. It's for some reason. The gender of it all confuses people, but like people are just saying what they wanna be called and what their needs are. And like I'm sure there are plenty of cis people who do not like what their parents name them and go by something else when they get older.

Archie: Yeah, there was, there was someone I knew from high school who changed their name four times and legally and it took a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Because they like, no, I don't like that name. And I think sometimes someone brought it up that with. With people who are trans and why people don't like pronouns and names is because they feel like they're playing with the patriarchal powers.

Archie: You know, you're losing your cis male. Privilege or you are gaining male privilege. And so some people don't like that, and so it's kind of like an internalized transphobia of them not realizing that's what they're doing. 

Ash Perez: Yeah. 

Archie: Who knows if that's the case, but you could definitely see the links there somehow.

Ash Perez: Oh, totally. My, my current going theory on all of this is that I think people are afraid of something they don't understand or of something they want. And I'm not saying at all that cis people wanna be trans, but I think that a lot of cis people. Can see that there is a freedom in trans people. Once we get to the point of really accepting ourselves that cis people aren't allowed because they feel like they have to be a certain type of man or a certain type of woman.

Ash Perez: And it's kind of the thing, like when you're a kid of like, well, that's not fair. Why do they get to eat ice cream? And I don't. So no one should get to eat ice cream. It's like, no, you should have ice cream too. Like, you know, that's kind of the, that's I think as how simple it is. And you know, the more maybe academic way is like you either accept yourself or you have to annihilate the part of yourself that you don't accept.

Ash Perez: So I think the people who have the strongest reactions. They're struggling with some part of their gender identity, and again, not meaning that they're trans, but just meaning that some part of what they've been told about what it means to be a man or a woman doesn't align with them and it doesn't seem fair.

Ash Perez: And to them, I say. Just come over to our side and like do whatever you want in terms of gender. Like it's, you do whatever you want. Who cares? 

Archie: Yeah. There's cake and ice cream on this side, so come on over. 

Ash Perez: Yeah. Yes. And most of it is like lactose free. 'cause a lot of queer people are lactose free. 

Archie: Yeah. I'm lactose intolerant.

Archie: It's, it's, we do, it's a struggle. It's for sure the struggle. But So you've got another season, so the third season. Yeah. As we're wrapping up, what's that gonna be about? 

Ash Perez: Yeah, so interestingly enough, we have been greenlit for a third season, which I guess is kind of breaking news here. Let's be perfectly queer.

Ash Perez: We have been greenlit for a third season, and right now we're kind of trying to conceptualize what it is. I think I'm very drawn to the idea of re-exploring my femininity and the things about. My femininity that I might have rejected or revisiting things that I learned in femininity that didn't feel quite right, that I'm curious about Now that I am in the right body, can I embrace?

Ash Perez: Those sides of myself. So one of them would be, I did this video at Buzzfeed where I learned to dance in 30 days. That was a lot about like learning to be sexy and, 'cause I never felt sexy. I mean, I just never felt like I had a body, honestly, when I was a woman. I was like, I'm just a personality. And so I wanted to learn to embody myself.

Ash Perez: And now I am, I am kind of trying to figure out like what does it mean to be embodied as a man and also to feel sexy to myself, whatever that means. And I really wanna do drag as both, uh, drag king and a drag queen, like I hated, like, wearing heels and dresses and all that stuff. It honestly felt like I was bad at doing drag for most of my life.

Ash Perez: And now the idea of getting to a. Perform gender and take all the years of experience of my understanding of what gender and being socialized as a woman is to see how well I can perform that for entertainment is like really exciting to me. So yeah, there's a, there's a lot I think that I wanna explore.

Ash Perez: Also just things like that are kind of adjacent to that in terms of like, I think it's interesting, like I have to relearn my vocal register. Like I used to know which songs I could sing to in the car, and now I have no fucking clue and like my whole Taylor Swift Cannon is off and it's like, oh yeah.

Ash Perez: Those are things that it's like I want to. I don't know. I just want to reclaim that stuff. And a lot of that had to do with my femininity. You know, like Taylor Swift was so much an encapsulation of like what it felt like to be a girl who didn't feel like she fit in. 

Archie: Yeah. I love that. And it sounds like it's gonna be such a great season.

Archie: There's so many ideas that I'm sure a lot of trans people or even people who are questioning the agenda would feel watching. That would be such an experience, and to see you doing both the different drag kings and drag queens would be Yeah. So much fun. I understand. I could never wear heels. I was never a heels person.

Archie: And it always felt like you are wearing a costume. That's what it felt like to me. Yes. Yes. And so it'd be interesting 'cause you are going to be wearing a costume, but it's gonna be a performative costume and Exactly. Will that feel more comfortable? Is gonna be so interesting. 

Ash Perez: And will it, is it an advantage all this time that I spent essentially undercover as a woman?

Ash Perez: Yeah. 

Archie: You 

Ash Perez: know, of like, I just. I'm very, very fascinated by the idea of what drag, you know, that's been a, that's been part of the discussion of drag recently is can cis men or cis women do drag and or even straight men or straight women, and it's like, yes, because it's all performance of gender. So a straight cis woman can perform.

Ash Perez: Femininity because it's a performance. It might be very far from where she lands naturally on the spectrum, but I think that's just like the exact kind of thing that this show specifically allows us to tackle of, you know, and I hope to do it with more trans people. I hope to bring more trans guys and.

Ash Perez: Perhaps trans women on board or non-binary people to also see their perspective. I honestly, you know, a lot of people have asked and I'm like, oh, I also want them to have their own show though, because it's like everybody deserves to have their own perspective explored and seen. 

Archie: And I did like that in the second season that you had trans men and giving their opinion as well.

Archie: So it was kind of like, this is how I feel and this is how others feel. And it's okay that we don't all feel the same, but we can connect and also bond over those lived experiences as well. So it definitely sounds like this third season is gonna be really fun. I can't wait to see how you present in this third season.

Archie: Yeah. And what, what's gonna happen. So it's been really awesome watching your journey. Thank you so much for jumping on and getting in touch. And also thank you for letting everybody know that there is gonna be a third season. Woo. And you heard it here first. 

Ash Perez: Yeah. Breaking news, 

Archie: which is super exciting.

Archie: Congratulations on that. Well done. But is there anything you'd like to tell our listeners before we head off today? 

Ash Perez: I love you guys. Keep being yourself and if you want to listen to more of me in a podcast form, you can listen to my podcast on the phone with Ash and Amanda. It's me and my friend just shooting the shit and be on the lookout for more new guy tries, which is available on YouTube or second try.

Ash Perez: But thank you so much RJ for having me, and thank you for, again, it's so rare that like I get to have this conversation with another trans man instead of. Trying to like explain this to a cis person, uh, very well meaning cis person. So I appreciate also getting to share this space with you. 

Archie: Yeah. Thank you so much.

Archie: And it's like you don't have to overexplain No. If that makes sense. You can just, yeah. This is how it is. Oh yeah. I totally, I totally understand. I get it. Yes. But thank you so much, and. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. Find Ash and their awesome podcast. I'll put links in the show notes and I'll put links to all of the new guys tries and all of the second try links there as well.

Archie: So yeah, thank you for getting all the way through Ash. You've been an amazing guest. I've had a lot of fun chatting and it feels like even though we're on the opposite side of the worlds, we could connect on a lot of different things. It doesn't matter where about you come from in the world. We all can share experiences together, and I hope that we have been 

Ash Perez: perfectly queer.

Archie: Let's be perfectly queer. 

Ash Perez: Woohoo. Bye everyone.