“Cis women, she supposed, rubbed against a frisson of danger every time they had sex. The risk, the thrill, that they might get pregnant—a single fuck to fuck up (or bless?) their lives…. Only now, with [her cowboy’s] HIV, had she found an analogue to a cis woman’s life changer. Her cowboy could fuck her and mark her forever.” 

Reese and her lover, the “cowboy,” turn the cowboy’s HIV into an elaborate roleplay, comparing his ability to make Reese HIV positive to the possibility that a cis straight woman might get pregnant while having sex. For Reese, this element of perceived “danger” is central to the sex that cis women have. As a result, Reese sees this HIV roleplay as a means of affirming her gender identity by bringing her closer to an experience that cis women have. 

“…after all his mental gymnastics, after all the lessons of transition and detransition, fatherhood remained the one affront to his gender that he still couldn’t stomach without a creeping sense of horror. To become a father by his own body, as his father was to him, and his father before him, and on and on, would sentence him to a lifetime of grappling with that horror.”

Ames has experienced fraught reactions to masculinity his entire life, resulting in his transition to being a woman before later detransitioning. During his detransition, Ames feels that he has come to terms with his masculinity and accepted his gender identity. However, the revelation that he will be a father terrifies Ames, who feels uncomfortable and alienated by the societal expectations typically foisted on those who identify as male and as fathers. 

“When Amy detransitioned herself, she promised never to let anyone see her as she had seen William that night. Never to pant for inclusion from trans women. Ames wanted no pity and rejected their disgust.” 

Detransition is stigmatized by Ames’s trans friends, who seem to see it as both a personal failure and a capitulation to the prejudices of conservatives. One night, prior to his detransition, Ames meets William, a man who has already detransitioned. Though William tries to hang out with Ames’s trans women friends, they mostly rebuff him.