Known as “the man with a pussy,” Buck Angel has become a cultural icon. He’s a successful porn star—who’s addressed audiences at Yale University. Angel does the talk-show circuit, but when he took Howard Stern up on a dare to ride the Simian Sex Machine, the joke was squarely on Stern.

Angel is redefining gender and educating us all on the fluidity of sexuality and gender identity politics—and it’s not about what’s between your legs. Angel is 100 percent guy. He identifies as a man, and has thought long and hard about what that means. Everyone’s journey is unique, but his is more unique than most. Here are some excerpts from  The Man Project. What he’s learned about gender, and what that means for all of us, may surprise you.

RW: When I pitched this piece to you, I mentioned that the majority of sex writers seem to be women. Why is this?

BA:  I don’t think a lot of  men care. I don’t think exploring sexuality is an important issue for them. If you think about it the world has been dominated by men. It still is dominated by men. Men don’t have to prove anything, but women do.
Women have to say” look my sexuality is this.”

RW: There’s data that suggests trans people (female to male) report a different inner sexual experience after the transition; from a biological side they want to “top” more. The way they view sex has changed.

BA: I’m doing a feature film on that specific topic: transmen and their partners and how the hormones have affected their sexuality. I believe 100 percent that the hormones are that powerful. Every guy I’ve interviewed has had the same experiences. Sometimes their sexuality changed. Where before they were just into women, now they are into women and men. Or now they’re just into men and identify as gay. Their sexual drive has changed. Their turn-ons and turn-offs have changed. That’s just hormones in your body and how that can literally change the way your mind thinks about sex.

RW: How did you experience the transition?

BA:  I think and act, interact totally different from how I did when I was female and had little testosterone in my body. Even though I was a very masculine female. But  I was much more sensitive, I cried easier. I looked at things differently my sexuality. My sex drive was intense for a woman. But I would say it is much more intense for me now. And the way I view things sexually has changed

RW: How so?

BA: Little things turn me on. I notice myself looking at her tits through her shirt and getting totally turned on by that for no reason. That would have never happened to me before the hormones. Sometimes I just think, I don’t know dirty thoughts. I wonder how that woman’s underwear smells after she’s been on that bicycle seat for an hour. I would have never done that before and that’s from testosterone.

RW: So I know that before you transitioned, you considered yourself a dyke. Coming from that community, what do you think of genderqueer as an identity, which seems to see gender as something that floats on a spectrum.

BA: Yeah, that is out there.  The problem that I have is that I think a lot of people are changing for the wrong reason meaning female to male transsexuals. Feeling masculine doesn’t make you a man.

RW: I’ve often wondered if some aspects of the genderqueer politics (rejecting the notion of two genders) could be seen as disrespectful to transpeople.

BA: My gender was a life or death situation for me. The fact that people are molding or unmolding their gender so easily takes away from the fact that it is a life threatening situation for us. If I am fighting to get out of this body because I believe I’m male what does that mean? That means gender exists. At the same time, I tell people instead of looking at someone as a gender, look at them as a person. People are so obsessed with gender. And with sexuality: are you gay are you straight are you bi.  I think people are attracted to people.

RW: I am curious how you experienced your inherent maleness.

BA: I’m a man. I do believe that is inherent. Though you have certain aspects of yourself that are  more masculine or feminine. I believe that I’ve always had a more masculine part. And I was pushed back from exploring that. Very masculine women are not accepted in society. The dykes and the hard core ones get pushed the hardest. People don’t like to see very masculine women or they don’t want to see very feminine men.

RW: Part of what we’re skating around is that it’s hard to define. So many parts of us are fluid. We all have masculine parts, but then there’s the part that makes you “you.” And there’s biology there. There’s psychology there…

BA: When someone asks me the question what does it mean to be a man, it’s really difficult to answer.

RW: As a philosophical question, I can’t answer what it means to be a woman.

BA: It’s a very weird question because it means something different for everyone. For me, it means my physical body is now in tune to my inner being. Now I can look at myself in the mirror, now I can take my clothes off, now I can interact with people and feel like they’re looking at me. To me, that’s what it means to be a man—that my outer body resembles a genetic male body.

RW: What have you learned about masculinity, living as a woman?

BA: To be honest with you, the best thing to happen to me as a man was to live as a woman. I wouldn’t have said that before, but now I feel it was a blessing in disguise: to have experienced life from a woman’s eyes in society. Now I am a much more sensitive man. I’m not embarrassed to talk about things that turn me on or that might be a little weird. I don’t think a lot of straight men feel comfortable talking about their sexuality—not so much their sexuality, but what turns them on and how they feel. I think there is a misconception of men. They are more emotional than society lets them be.

Why do you think transsexual male-to-female porn is the number two in the industry? Number one is gay. Who is the consumer of transsexual women’s porn? Straight men. It’s a way for them to suck cock or get fucked. They don’t have the tools or the freedom socially to say, “Hey, I’d like to suck a cock a little once in a while, and that’s okay.”