"If you're about to ask whether I'm a man pretending to be a woman, from the inside it feels much more like I spent seventeen years pretending to be a man." 

"I actually wasn't sure what I'd say that was wrong, I'm just sure I'd say something."

She makes a noise that might, if her facial expression were not what it is, have been a laugh. "That's probably not wrong." 

"--I'm sorry, I don't want to hurt you, I'm just. Clueless. --I didn't work with the Feminine Boys Program. It seemed. Cruel." 

"Yeah, I know you personally don't want to hurt me personally, evangelicals just have a really shitty track record of dealing with queer people in a way that doesn't make me want to scream or cry or hit something. -- I'm pretty sure I shouldn't ask what the feminine boys program is but I am registering a desire to kidnap everyone in it and put them somewhere that doesn't hate them." 

He has several questions he wants to ask and then decides on reflection to ask none of them because then Raine will want to scream or cry or hit something and that's not very gentlemanly.

Instead he says, "there are a lot more canonically Jewish characters in movies now."

...Raine hugs him tighter. 

"Because they want to sell the movies overseas, and Gileadites will complain if a Gileadite character doesn't pray or quote the Bible, and atheists don't want to see people pray. But Gileadites don't know anything about Jews so they can just put a menorah in the background of one scene and no one will complain."

"Guess that's a way to do it. -- you can ask whatever it was you were going to ask, knowing there's something you want to say but having my brain make something up is probably worse than just hearing the actual thing." 

"--Um, so, my understanding of the issue is that people have various sorts of sexual identity malformations that happen probably because of trauma or poor gender role modeling in childhood. It's unclear to what extent it's caused by sex and porn addiction, versus both being caused by a failure to develop an appropriate sexual identity, but probably both play a role. And in secular countries they use dangerous drugs and surgeries to turn some of the people with this problem into a simulacrum of the opposite sex. And I'm inclined to just ignore all of this and treat you like a girl because that seems to be what you want and also it'd be really hard to treat you like you're a.man. But. That's what I believed."

"So my understanding of the issue is that sometimes brains will decide that they're a different gender than they're expected to be, and we don't know why they do that any more than we know why brains do any other things. It correlates at all with sex and porn use but mostly because people who transition and talk about it are disproportionately in places that accept queer people and those places also tend to be more okay with sex and porn use, surprise surprise, and it correlates with trauma because trans people are treated really badly in most places. And it's really really upsetting to be in a body that it feels like you shouldn't be in and feels wrong and feels like it isn't yours, and it's really upsetting to look in the mirror and see a face that feels like it doesn't belong to you, and so people take hormones -- which are not really that dangerous -- or get surgeries to approximate the bodies they want as well as they can. -- I'm not on estrogen but mostly because I'm androgynous already and I'm still debating whether I want it; I'm not planning on surgery but if I was really upset about having a dick, which I'm not but some people are, I would at least consider it." 

"...if the Gileadites are right about how gender works you could have female souls in male bodies, also. You... I don't know you very well but you don't seem like you have a male essence you were traumatized away from. You seem like you have a female essence and people hurt you about it and tried to get you to stop. --This would also explain why you like men, maybe." He thinks. "But not all people with SSA, I'm definitely a male soul in a male body and I am attracted to some people who are men both ways."

"I don't pretend to know anything about essences but that basically sounds like gender identity theory, yeah. And for me it's tied to liking men in ways I'm still figuring out but Marlo for instance is definitely a cis guy and he's just as gay as me, some people just are gay." 

"Oh, God made men and women to be equal but basically different, and men are to lovingly lead women, and women are supposed to be submissive and help them."

"......sure sounds like evangelicals." 

"I don't know. It's nice to think about having someone to protect and keep safe and love and make happy and sacrifice for and-- be to them like Christ for the Church."

"You personally can be protective of someone without making an entire society go 'uwu men are strong women are submissive men lead and women follow, separate but equal'." 

"I think the idea is that men want to have someone to protect and take care of and make happy, like, naturally, and society just recognizes that."

"Well someone should maybe let my Lev know that, because he seriously missed the memo." 

"He should take care of you."

"......he does. But it's not — you will lead and I will follow, it's we take care of each other because we care about each other." 

"Men are supposed to lead through serving. Like Christ and the Church-- the most famous thing Jesus did for the Church was get tortured to death, he washed the disciples' feet--"

"...ah. You're a sub. That makes sense." 

".............I don't know what that is but I hope it means that I don't have to try to convince you that you should break up with your Lev because you deserve better."

"Nope, it's a kink thing. Let me guess, you probably also really like the idea of your future wife owning you or ordering you around or causing you pain or not letting you orgasm."