MEET TODAY’S GUEST
Bryony Bae
Bryony has been exploring gender and crossdressing for over 25 years, since the early days of forums like Birchplace and TVChix. For a long time she associated her feminine presentation with kink, a way of explaining away something she'd been taught to see as transgressive. It took years, and an honest conversation with a friend, to realise that framing had quietly buried the actual joy underneath it.
She identifies as genderfluid, mostly comfortable presenting masculine but no longer willing to use that as a mask. Bryony is not a persona she puts on, she is who she is all the time, whether fully glammed or sitting bare faced without a wig. Her community, built largely through Instagram, calls her Bryony regardless of how she's presenting that day.
Her most memorable moment dressed was a weekend at Sparkle, surrounded by people from the community, an "I've found my people" moment, 25 years in the making.
Before we begin, a word of gratitude.
To Bryony: thank you for the depth here. Your point about kink being a way of explaining away what feels taboo, and how that quietly buried the actual joy of presenting authentically, is something a lot of readers will recognise in themselves even if they've never had the words for it. And the Ford Cortina line made me laugh out loud.
To our readers: this one goes deeper than most. Bryony has spent 25 years interrogating not just her presentation but the assumptions everyone else brings to it, the surgery question, the "taking her out" language, the expectation that every journey moves in some established order. Sit with her line about saying yes to yourself. That one stays with you.
This is just the beginning and I am grateful you are here for it.
Michelle Sapphire
