When Tuck Malloy transitioned into their nonbinary/transmasculine identity, they wanted to use their position as a sales lead and in-house educator at She Bop to help other people experiencing their own gender transitions and explorations.
“There were a lot of things I wanted more insight and community around,” says Malloy, “particularly in relation to the fact that a lot of those [gender-related] realizations for me came from sexual or sensual experiences.”
In addition to being a sex toy shop, She Bop also offers classes and workshops on a regular basis. So Malloy crafted a class called “Exploring Gender Identity” that centered on “exploring those questions of gender through our sensual experiences.” They built the class around two questions: “How can we heal in our bodies if bodies that are not cisgender are often places of trauma for people?” And: “How can we move towards our affirmations of gender, rather than just moving away, like ‘That’s not my gender’?”
