Ides of Gender

PHOTOGRAPHY
Dec 10, 2025
11 min read

Updated: Dec 22, 2025

By Zach Oren

Ides of Gender is a photo series celebrating everyone under the trans umbrella – binary and non-binary. Since 2017, I set out to document the rich diversity within the trans community and have had the privilege of photographing over 700 folx in all 49 continental US states, as well as Hawai’i, Puerto Rico, and Washington D.C.

There’s an obsession with trans bodies that society often feels entitled to – objectified and scrutinized to the point of physical harm. Being cisgender, I had a responsibility to photograph each person honestly and with utmost integrity. From the very beginning, the series has been a collaborative exercise in trust – trusting that a complete stranger will show up and share their authentic self. Extracting their own truth and facing my camera intimately, I never had to take anyone’s photograph. It was generously given to me.

Since moving to the US, my pursuit of community and self-expression has been constant. Being on the road working on Ides of Gender for the past eight years, ended up – unexpectedly – validating my own queerness and intersectionality. I see myself in all of these portraits. I hope you see your own journey mirrored back within these lives.

Representation matters. Visibility matters.

One guy, we’re fuck-buddies, he was like, 'I'm straight. I'm straight!' So with me being nonbinary it was easy for him to say, Oh, you're female. It made it easy for him to be like, This is not gay. In the beginning it made me even more confused, but then I detached myself from that situation because that is not my problem. Me taking on that energy, it made me question myself even more, as far as, Am I putting myself in a box for this guy? Am I making myself more malleable to accommodate his feelings? That's where I found myself and found my identity, by those horrible experiences with guys that were like, 'I'm straight'. I found out who I was. It just so happens that the guys in my relationships, I was their first nonbinary person.

Josh, 29

Fargo, North Dakota

One concern I had as far as teaching was my boys of color. I’ve always prided myself on being able to connect with boys of color as a former boy of color, even though I was a very gay boy of color – Are my super-masculine, straight, Black boys still gonna get there with me? I’m happy to say that nothing has changed, it’s just as easy. I pride myself on being a teacher that can connect with a very wide range of kids. My positionality towards them has changed but the closeness and intimacy is still there.

I feel really lucky to be as aware of my impact on students. One of my students, it’s her first year in college this year, she was a gay boy and I remember her telling me, 'I think I’m trans'. I’m sure that my visibility helped her in that, her telling her mom and her telling her sister who I had in class. I referred her to my therapist, I talked to her about hormones and I think that was a very direct manifestation of my impact. I feel so grateful, her mom calls me, her older sister I had all four years. I dropped both of them off at college, did the whole dorm unpacking thing. I’m really in it, deep.

People always assume that my job is going to be really hard. They’ll always be like, 'Oh, you’re a teacher! You teach teenagers, you’re a trans woman, that’s gonna be rough going', but it’s the easiest thing. I look at my colleagues – straight cis women, straight cis men – they have it rough. I’m like, Your life is so brutal, every kid hates you. I could never wake up and be you. I wake up and I go to school and every girl is like, Oh my God, you look so ‘Bad’, yaz Qween! and boys are running to give me hugs. My life is really lit.

V, 28 Providence

Rhode Island

I found a clean and sober house and it was an all men’s house. The whole time I lived there I didn't tell anybody I was trans. Being in treatment with the men – when you transition, you don't get an FAQ of how to socialize and be male. I was moving through the world as a very scared little girl, an angry teenager, a mom, a wife, all these different things and I gotta figure out how to be a young man. It was really scary. I didn't trust the world and really didn't trust myself. I lived there, I got a job as a dishwasher at a restaurant. I was just working really hard on myself and fixing my life and slowly started getting stuff. Slowly started crossing stuff off the list. It was always in mind of, I'm doing this for my kid, I'm gonna get back in his life. I'm gonna fight, things will change.

My experience is not unique. The things that I'm fighting for, the things that I'm working towards are the same things that my elders have been fighting for their whole fucking life. I’m one piece of the puzzle, I don't think I'm particularly special or extraordinary. I was just supposed to go through those things so that I could do something with it.

I have faith that collective community healing is possible, that we can live and thrive and have our needs met. That we don't have to meet harm with harm, that we don't have to punish wrongdoing with more harm. That there are ways to transform our grief, our suffering. At the end of the day, I know in my heart that the solution is always love.

Lukas, 30

Nixon, Nevada

I had this interaction with all these boys recently – I was sitting at the pool in my dress, no makeup on, feeling exposed. All these hyper-masculine boys with sunglasses came up, sit around me. I noticed in my head, these unconscious negative thoughts towards the boys. Obviously these boys are a reflection of my own masculinity and my relationship to that. I couldn't get rid of the anxiety and show these boys love, and be kind and open to them. There's a blockage there, within me. It's something I can work on. It's not physical or tangible, it's mental and internal. It's constant work. Checking my thoughts every day. If I have these negative thoughts about my masculine-self – facing them and accepting that this is the body I came in with. This is part of my journey and I don't need to deny something that currently is. Accept the present moment.

Micah, 21

Manassas, Virginia

My friends, we used to go after work and sit in the pub, like a garden. The back of this hotel called The Palace Hotel. It was festive, people would play pool, they play music, have beers. January 12th, 2014, I had come to The Palace Hotel to meet a client of mine, sitting, minding my own business with my group of friends. This guy is sitting at a table with another friend of his, and they were very drunk. Called me over and says 'I want you to meet my friend, he works for the President's Office.' If somebody works for the President's Office in Zimbabwe, it implies they are likely secret-service. I said, 'Nice to meet you.' He says, 'And my friend wants me to tell you that he doesn't like what you're doing.' I said, 'What am I doing that your friend doesn't like?' He says, 'You know what you're doing. Give us 20 dollars to get another bottle and we'll allow you to leave.' I said, 'No.'

This is 2014, at that stage, besides the company that I had, I was also involved with the Sexual Rights Center (SRC), which is one of the strongest human-rights organizations in Zimbabwe, that advocates for the rights of LGBT and sex-workers. I was on the board. I said, 'I know my rights as a citizen and a human-rights defender, please may I see some identification?' He said, 'No, just go sit over there.' I make it back to my seat, then I can hear him on the phone. He asked to speak to the assistant chief of police, who turned-up to be his uncle. He says, 'I have this person here and they're dressed like a woman. They need to be made an example of.' I stood up because he was really drunk, so I thought, let me leave quietly. As I got up to leave, they followed me and they said, 'You can't leave, sit down.' About 45 minutes later, six police officers arrived with guns, they were in riot-gear. They go straight to him and he points them to me. They come to me, 'You're under arrest.' They're driving me through the streets of a city where everybody knows who I am. It's an open van and I'm standing. They're standing around me with guns.

I was all over the newspapers, I couldn't really leave my house. Because the modeling industry is so image-conscious and so public, my business suffered. They didn't want to be associated with me, my major contracts were canceled. I was bankrupt overnight. I took them to court and I sued them for 2.7 million dollars. On December 27th I filed for asylum and February 2nd it was granted. That's what brings me here, that's what I'm doing in the United States. I've been working at Casa Ruby since March, 2019. It's the biggest organization in the United States run by trans women of color. We offer services to homeless LGBTQ youth, Maryland Virgina and DC. Predominantly African-American and Latin-American.

In November of 2019, I wake up in the morning. I open the email from my lawyers back home that said I won my case. The judgment had been handed down in my favor, that's all it said. I didn't get the actual judgment, but they gave me a paragraph of what the judge had said. He castigated the police force, 'Trans people have rights.' The judge said he hopes that this case opens up the discussion and awarded me 450 thousand dollars. I still haven't seen the money yet. The country is in such a bad financial state, I don't think it even has the money to pay the gas bill. I can't go back to Zimbabwe, because I've been granted asylum.

Rikki, 55

Silver Spring, Maryland

Coming out, I don't think my dad shared it with his side of the family so it was really awkward to come to family reunions and stuff. I didn't see them that often, growing up we only got together for holidays. The dysphoria that would enshroud me, it would encapsulate me, it crippled me. You go to these family functions and you're not being seen for who you are or want to be. When I came out as trans, he did not know how to take that. Pronouns are super difficult for him. My mom used to get so mad when I would correct her doing the pronouns because she thought I was correcting her English. In Japanese they just refer to people by their names, they don't necessarily do the He/She stuff, it's not as gendered in that sense.

I'm still trying to find my role. Growing up in a Japanese culture, women are suppose to be very subservient. Do whatever the man says and serve them. Don't be seen, don't talk, you're in the shadow two steps behind. Dale (my partner) is helping me grow up as a boy I guess. It's really difficult at first to grown into it. How do you raise your voice? How do you stand up for yourself? How do you become a man I guess? It's something you have to work on every day. I'm grateful that I have someone to look up to, to mentor me. Whenever I fall back into those old habits of being submissive and shying away, I get told, 'What are you doing? Come over here!' and I get encouraged.

It's nice to have that support where you can find that energy within yourself. That goes for anything in life, when you need help to do something and you're not strong enough to do it yourself, you look for support until you can do it by yourself. I'm working on this. This past two years or so coming back on my feet because I went to rehab so I'm still working on myself. You have to practice.

Gabe, 25

Salvisa, Kentucky

I avoided drugs and alcohol growing up, and when I was 28 somebody dosed me with Ecstasy at a bar. Having issues with depression and the Aspergers, it was like a miracle drug. I started doing it every day and within a week I was using cocaine and ketamine as well. A few months after that I was competing in the Bootblack contest at IML and a friend of mine was, 'You gotta try this.' It was crystal.

For several years I was doing cocaine, crystal, ketamine and ecstasy every day, all day throughout the day. I tried moving to Baltimore to get clean – mistake! Cocaine was cheaper and stronger, started shooting it up. At the end of my addiction I was shooting close to $1,000 worth of cocaine a day. I was doing sex work, whatever I could do to get the money. I had this dog Harley, he was a Golden Retriever, I had him since he was eight weeks old. He moved cross-country with me twice, amazing dog. He was old and not doing well and I realized I was being selfish, so I just stopped. I was trying to save money to have him put down cuz he had cancer.

A friend of mine showed up at my doorstep, by that time in Baltimore I was squatting in this house, no utilities, it was 17 degrees in the winter in the house. She took me maybe 15 minutes from here to live with her. She paid to have Harley put down. We went straight to an NA meeting, I had just passed 60 days, I got a 60-day tag. Went to the vet, I had him cremated with my tag and I promised him I would never use drugs again. This January it's been 15 years.

Erik, 48

Boothwyn, Pennsylvania

There's pressure, even at a young age there's pressure. I've grown to, not accept it because I will never accept it, but I will grow to learn the ways of not dying at a young age. That sounds awful and it is awful. As much as I can, I avoid telling people that I'm trans unless I knew you from middle school and you don't know who I am. Unless you're my family or a significant other, it doesn't matter.

Sometimes I get remarks like, 'Are you a dyke?' I was coming home from a football game and a kid asked me that. After that my mom bough me a little alarm system. After quarantine I noticed people are more bold with what they want to say. Ever since then, I've been walking with my friends to my car so I don't walk alone.

I hope to be (on HRT) when I'm 16, but the thing I have to do is convince him, not even convince but prove. Prove that I can make one decision in my life that's not pointless. There's harm in waiting but thing is, I don't have power over that. I got a head start, I had precocious puberty. I got puberty when I was 12 before I knew I was queer. It made me over-feminize myself because what else could I possibly be. I went full-on to somebody I wasn't. I look back and I'm like, 'That's a damn shame!' It made me very depressed at a young age. It made me realize, I can't be like my friends, I can't be somebody I'm clearly not. I broke away from my friends after I realized, I'm done faking. I changed myself to who I wanted to be one day and I went to school like that, no reaction. I had long hair, I cut it all off. I started to wear my brother's clothing. I'm thankful that I had precocious puberty because it gave me a head start. Also, I'm not thankful because then I have to go through all this crap at a young age. I don't know if I'd rather be a trans guy in my teenage years or a trans guy when I'm over 18, I don't know. When I get to college I hope to see more people like me.

Mar, 15

Des Moines, Iowa

Bio: Zach Oren is an immigrant, queer photographer based in LA. He is a self-taught artist and loves taking portraits in natural light, where documentary meets editorial. Using his own intersectionality – queer, poz, feminist, Middle Eastern – his intent and (literal) focus is to highlight the immense and diverse beauty in underrepresented voices that are too often overlooked. Zach’s portraits have been exhibited all over the US and shown in several publications. Follow Zach at www.zachoren.com or Instagram: @idesofgender