Unique Plumbing Journal Finds Its Viewers

As freelance photographers (Mr. Mac) and artists (Mr. Kayiatos), the two, who are also old friends, were unable to raise the $2,000 to print this first edition. So they did what a lot of people in the surprisingly cozy queer scene here do—hosted fundraisers at places like the venerable gay bar The Stud.

A long time ago (two years ago, that is), when trans man Thomas Beatie shocked daytime television viewers by revealing his pregnancy on-air, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, the late gender theorist, pointed out that the true meaning of Mr. Beatie's revelation was what it said about the seemingly pluralistic nature of human sexuality.

“The truth is that many people experience gender very differently and can use it in very individual and imaginative ways,” Ms. Sedgwick told me at the time. “It’s not necessarily about genital identity.”

Like the prefix trans itself, Original Plumbing taps into the rich material between the lines of traditionally defined gender roles. “People assume so much” about trans men, Mr. Mac said. For example, they assume that all trans men “had a prior identity as lesbians,” when in fact some identify as heterosexual, some as homosexual, and some as bisexual, while many simply refuse to submit to the labels that define identity and desire put in drawers.

On Monday, Mr. Mac returned to San Francisco from a trip to New York, where he spent a week photographing a series of portraits of trans men for the next issue of Original Plumbing, the publication of which will be celebrated on August 27 with a party at the Bell House in Brooklyn with a transman rapper named Black Cracker.

“The most important thing I found from my experience is that there is no set way to be a trans man,” Mr Mac said. “Identity is pretty fluid.”

As a young girl growing up outside of Philadelphia, Mr. Mac played with both racing cars and My Pretty Pony. Just two decades ago, in the days before Wikipedia, Craigslist and Google and a little $8 magazine called Original Plumbing, there was “not much information” about a young girl destined to become a young man. “There is now,” said Mr. Mac.