Zii Miller, a trans man in Florida who grew up in Europe, did not have to contend with either compulsory heterosexuality or purity culture. However, when he told his mother about being ace, she blamed America, believing that her son would be different if the family had stayed in France. There, Zii would have been exposed to so-called healthy, open sexuality, instead of America’s Puritan values and discomfort around bodies. American values, she thought, had caused him to be repressed. The United States had made her child weird.
