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I'm a 35-year-old, straight, white male. Tonight, I was walking downtown in my city at about 8 PM and I thought I heard someone say something behind me. I turned to see a young Latino kid (my guess is he was 13-years-old). I asked him to repeat himself. He quietly said that I had a nice ass. Of course I'm not interested because I'm not gay and the kid is underage. I did not feel threatened. He wasn't aggressive and I'm significantly older than he is. I know from my friends who are men who are gay and just from my general experience that men who are gay are much more forward with each other when flirting. I still think about this in terms of my own experience though and know that I would never tell a random woman on the street that she has a nice ass. I know you wouldn't tell a woman that she should take a comment like that as a compliment. So what about me? Is this a situation in which the kid was in the wrong, but we should cut him some slack since he is so young and he didn't do anything threatening?

Always See Sensitively

Joe Newton

Sobbing Here And Making Errors

This week: It's Queer Issue time at the Stranger, check out the guy running against Paul Ryan, and Vice took a look at controversy at Evergreen.

From letter-writers: How do I not beat up transphobic assholes who stare down my kid? How do I stop the busboy from showing people pics of dicks in my mouth? What to do when my partner only likes hairy old gay men (and I'm a lesbian)? And are all men garbage? Plus this week's column and this week's podcast.

You know how this works: I respond. You have feelings. Sometimes you write me about those feelings. Sometimes I publish them. First up...

I’m a queer mother to a very liberal, accepting family but I’m freaking out a bit and I need your help.

My child, let’s call them Sweetie, is a 7-year-old (assigned male at birth) who has always loved sparkles, rainbows, high heels and all things femme. Sweetie has been insisting for about a year that they’re not a boy, and just last week told me and their siblings that they’re a girl.

This is not the problem. We all love Sweetie and accept them for who they are, want them to be happy and fully themselves, and will support them in all ways we can. We have always allowed the kids to wear whatever they like, and play with whichever toys they like. The grandparents are all on board with this and won’t have a problem if Sweetie turns out to be a girl in the long run.

The problem is that we live in a tiny village in very rural, conservative Britain. While not as bad as rural Texas, trans kids are not well understood here and we haven’t got any LGBT support groups within a couple of hours drive.

Sweetie is a sensitive, caring kid who won’t even stand up to their siblings in a fight. I’m really, really worried about how they’re going to cope with the unavoidable backlash they’re going to face from peers and, sadly, other adults in our community. We have already had a few incidents of kids calling Sweetie names for wearing a skirt and a lot of older adults pointing, staring and whispering.

I'm a 36-year-old homo in a large metropolitan city with a sizable gay community. I'm out, proud and being single. I'm also on the promiscuous side. Being that I'm a slut (a label I'm not afraid of) and that it's also 2017, there exists a number of photographs of me in a number of sexual positions. My face isn't clearly visible in any of them, but some photos show more of me than others, including tattoos.

I've sent these photos out over the gay hookup apps. Now, in my mild defense, I'm 36. I remember IRC chat rooms, which predate even AOL. When I used gay.com it took more than ten minutes to attach a photo to an email. I've sent and received dick pics thousands of times in 16 years.

So imagine my surprise when I was setting up work at my restaurant—where I've been employed for only three months—and I glance over and spot a busboy showing photos I recognize to a manager. I step closer and it's very obvious to me—having seen and sent this photo for over a year—that it's my mouth with a dick in it. I watch as he scrolls and it's a photo of me in a mask (my lower jaw visible) at IML, he scrolls again and it's me with another dick in my mouth.

My partner and I are in our early 30s and have been together for 6 years. I'm a cis-gendered female and my partner is FTM and began his transition last year. Up until that point, we had a fairly vanilla but satisfying and regular sex life. We both started to want kinkier sex, more variety, and some agreed-upon openness but had yet to really do the work to get there. The changes our relationship have gone through since his transition started though are so drastic I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around where to go from here.

My partner expressed interest in hooking up with men after starting T six months ago (something he had done when female-identified but hated). I was begrudgingly ok with this, not because I'm opposed to fun outside our relationship, but because he doesn't currently have any desire to have sex with me. I know I can pursue sex outside our relationship because we've always had an open-door policy, but I don't have any desire to be in a purely companionate relationship at age 30. The fact is, the only sex he seems interested in having is secretive, unprotected sex with old (60+), hairy, male strangers off Craigslist. I have nothing against old hairy men (although definitely not my cup of tea), but using protection and disclosure to each other were on our list of boundaries. He only admitted his behavior because his lies became too big for even him to keep track of.

He's noticeably less verbal and unable to identify his own emotions & intentions since starting T. He doesn't have any idea why he wants what he wants or if this is just a phase. Is it possible that T has permanently changed my partner's sexual orientation this much? My compassionate, emotive, ethical partner who was always so GGG and pro-safe sex seems to have turned into, well, just some gross dude. He identifies as pansexual but is really only pursuing the grandpa demographic which I clearly don't fit. I should also add that my partner has struggled to maintain his sobriety & has been dealing with depression since starting T. I feel utterly heartbroken and confused about who he has become.

Partner's Always Playing Around Sexually

I'm a 25-year-old straight cis-female trying to navigate the dumpster fire that is dating in this modern world. I've been single for over a year and have been trying meet dudes....because there are A LOT of single dudes in this city... and I've run the gamut (Tinder, Bumble, fucking Coffee Meets Bagel?! Will someone please just slap these developers for coming up with these inane, bullshit names for dating apps??). I've even tried the "old school method" of just trying to talk to someone at a bar or a show, which feels IMPOSSIBLE because no one can communicate to you as a woman unless it's through a tiny, fucking screen.

I'm a confident woman, I'm an opinionated and nasty woman, and I feel myself hardcore. I think I'm sexy, I think I'm smart, and I'm proud to have a badass job that I love and a circle of badass women to call my friends. I'm also a busy woman: I play guitar, I volunteer in my community, AND I work my ass off, so I don't have a ton of time to waste.

So WHAT THE FUCK, DAN? These dudes are garbage, I swear, ALL OF THEM ARE GARBAGE. And the most disturbing—a lot of them think I'm a call-girl (why??), so my conversations and interactions online yield not a lot more than some dude looking for a cheap hook up.