The phrase self-made man has a complicated and often problematic history that seems to date back to the first half of the nineteenth century, but the concept was later redefined by Frederick Douglass in Self-Made Men: “Properly speaking, there are in the world no such men as self-made men. That term implies an individual independence of the past and present which can never exist.” Nick and Jay are making themselves as boys and men, but they can’t do it without each other and without their communities. As trans boys, we make ourselves, but we don’t do it alone. None of us makes ourselves alone.
