More than Man Enough

I first became aware of Buck Angel nearly two decades ago, while perusing videos on TitanMen.com (I’m a patron of the arts). Buck was featured in the 2005 video Cirque Noir (only watch at work if you’ve already turned in your two weeks’ notice), but the trailer is very discreet about what makes Buck stand out from his porn star brethren. I ultimately passed on the video because fisting, but the Cirque Noir trailer did pique my interest in this Buck Angel guy. That’s when learned Buck Angel is not like other men.

Buck Angel is “a man with a pussy.”

I’ll admit my interest in Buck Angel the porn star pretty much ended there (I like dick, OK?), but several years later, when director Dan Hunt’s 2013 documentary MR. ANGEL hit Prime, I decided to learn more about Buck Angel the man, for reasons I’ll elaborate on later.

Like the Cirque Noir trailer, the first few minutes of Mr. Angel are coy about what makes its subject unique. Scenes of Buck in the shower, shot from the shoulders up, touching up his bald pate with a razor are intercut with home movie footage of Buck as a little girl, let us know he’s trans, and Buck lets a Berlin cab driver (and audience) know that he’s in the sex industry, telling the driver that he prefers Berlin’s openness with sexuality (“[The U.S. is] very scared of naked people,” he laughs). It’s not until Buck arrives at his Berlin destination, the Venus Show, where a life-size poster of him nude adorns the wall of his booth, that the audience learns what made Buck unique among porn performers of that time.

Buck Angel’s beauty regimen.

At first, he seems surprised by the poster or, rather, that event organizers went with such a graphic image, but he’s happy with their choice as it confronts attendees at the Venus Show with his exceptional anatomy. “With pants on I just look like a dude.”

Buck Angel with his co-workers.

Just another day at the Venus Show.

It’s getting to know the Buck Angel with his pants on that is the primary focus of the documentary. Though there are many segments focusing on Buck Angel, porn performer, Mr. Angel is not a porn documentary. Instead, it shows audiences that while Buck may not have the genitals of a cis-gendered man, and his job isn’t a typical 9-5 office gig, he is, basically, just a dude, albeit one who must see a gynecologist.

Buck’s a pretty likable guy. Quick to laugh, thoughtful and, considering some of the shit he’s had to deal with, remarkably positive. I mean, these people might not like him but fuck them.

Bored now.

Yet even in the world of adult entertainment people can’t see the man for the pussy. A meeting Buck has with Lucas Entertainment founder Michael Lucas proves disheartening, the pouty-lipped porn star/mogul, who has made a video catering to fart fetishists, sees little market value in videos featuring a man with female genitalia. No cock, no sale.

“Just because I have a pussy does not make me not a man,” Buck says, later asserting, “I’m not an ‘it.’”

For the record, Buck says he decided against bottom surgery because penises created in the operating theater just aren’t up to snuff. Given that phalloplasty sounds like a grueling ordeal to go through only to wind up with dick that can’t even get hard without use of a prosthetic, it’s easy to see why he’s better off just using a strap-on.

Buck shows off his tattoos.

Still, it’s not easy for people to understand how someone can identify as one gender while having the parts of another. I certainly didn’t, which is what led me to watch this documentary initially. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite get the message my first watch.

Learning I was the Asshole from a Man with a Pussy

I don’t come out well in this story, but here goes. Way back in 2012, my husband and I were having lunch with some friends. At the table was a friend who came out as trans a year earlier. I’ll call him Frank. Frank was in town for the Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta, and he mentioned seeing Buck Angel, who was a featured guest at the conference that year. This is when I decided to make what I thought was good point: “But Buck Angel still has a vagina. Would ‘he’ even count as a trans man?”

Yes, I said that. Aloud.

Buck Angel is poised and ready to blow narrow minds.

It was a stupid comment. I know this now. It was uttered in ignorance, not malice. This probably doesn’t make it better, but I kind of meant it as a joke. Frank, however, didn’t take it that way. “Why should that even matter!?” he asked angrily, and a bit too loudly for my comfort. I, in turn, reacted like a Boomer comedian told his rape joke was offensive and tried to justify my wrong-headed observation (i.e., that unless a person got top and bottom surgery, they were merely transvestites), which only made Frank more indignant. I recall someone else at the table—not my husband, BTW—making a clumsy attempt to defend me, but all that did was draw fire until someone else mercifully changed the subject.

My ignorant comment was a teachable moment. If society is grappling with the concept of nonbinary identities now, they weren’t even acknowledged in 2012. We didn’t even know the word nonbinary existed. Even within the LGBTQ+ community there was a reluctance to embrace the “Ts.” Unfortunately, instead of explaining the dynamics of gender identity, Frank chose to dress me down for being a transphobe. The lesson I learned that day? Don’t talk to trans people.

I didn’t say much for the remainder of that lunch, and I was the first to announce our departure (my husband had to leave with me; I was his ride). Months later, when there was another get-together occasioned by Frank being in town, I declined to attend. In fact, a full year passed before I agreed to be in the same room as Frank, and while he didn’t appear to have any hard feelings—our previous interaction was never even brought up—I was still wary, and chose my words carefully in his presence, if I spoke at all.

MTF performer Wendy Williams and
FTM performer Buck Angel are about to
fuck with viewers’ minds in Buck Fever.

That humiliating lunch with Frank was very much on my mind when I decided to watch Mr. Angel the first time. Consequently, I was less interested in being educated than vindicated. And I thought I was. Early in the documentary, MTF porn performer Wendy Williams (not the beleaguered former talk show host) comments that even she was perplexed by Buck Angel. “I was doing all the things that make me mad,” she admits, like using the wrong pronouns. I took Wendy’s admission as absolution. I wasn’t the bad guy! Even other trans people questioned whether Buck Angel really “counted” as a man.

Except, that’s not what Wendy said. Wendy herself hasn’t had bottom surgery. It wasn’t until I rewatched the documentary for this review that I realized her shock had nothing to do with Buck’s identity. She just hadn’t seen “a man with a pussy” before watching one of Buck’s videos. Today there are entire websites dedicated to FTM performers; they were still an anomaly in the early 2010s. 

My repeat viewing of Mr. Angel made me reassess that cringey lunch in 2012. I had to face the fact that Frank might have been unfair, but he wasn’t wrong. I was the asshole.

It would be nice to say that I’ve since reached out to Frank with my belated understanding, but it’s too late for such tidy closure. Frank died of a heart attack in 2018.

Transitioning from Porn to Activism

If I had trouble wrapping my head around Buck’s gender identity, it was doubly so for his family. “It’s easier for me to deal with the transgender side than it is the porn side,” his sister Tracey says. “I almost feel it’s like you hit people once with being transgender, now you smack them again because you’re in porn.”

Buck Angel and his then-wife Elayne on Tyra Banks’ show.

His father Bill, whom Buck describes as a man’s man, had an especially hard time accepting Buck for who he is. Though Buck appears to have a good relationship with his parents at the time this documentary was shot, you can still see his father struggling to accept his son. Bill’s a good sport when they watch Buck being interviewed on Tyra, laughing when Buck tells Tyra Banks that he loves his vagina. But when Buck complains about the interview being on an episode focused on “sexual oddities,” Bill doesn’t understand the objection. “But you are…. ‘Oddity’ means you’re not with the norm.”

Selections from Buck’s 1980s modeling portfolio.

Angel-in-progress.

But while his family may not entirely understand Buck, they are grateful he’s still with them. He attempted suicide in his teens, which led to an extended stay in a psychiatric ward, during which his father never came to visit. As a young adult Buck found some success in the 1980s as a model, but the money from that also gave him the means to get drugs and alcohol. Addiction led to the end of the modeling career. Self-harm, homelessness and sex work quickly followed. His parents realized they were going to lose their daughter one way or another. Gaining a trans son was preferrable.

Buck’s mother Patty visits him during his recovery
from a hysterectomy.

“There are a lot of people like me,” Buck explains to his father. “I consider myself very normal. …I don’t want the world to go around thinking people like us aren’t normal.”

This is a hard sell now, and it was a hard sell then. Here’s a sampling from Buck’s inbox:

• You are one mixed-up individual. You need help, and bad.
• Well, I can’t really be nasty to you because you’re a girl, but people like you should be put to death.
• I hope you die of AIDS, you freak of society. You’re so arrogant and disgusting you have to change your sex trying to play God. I swear if I ever cross paths with you, I will have a gun and it’s going in your face.

Offsetting the hate mail are the messages from trans youth. Though many of them are asking for money to pay for their surgery, their messages also emphasize Buck’s position as a role model, something he embraces. He speaks on a panel at Yale (“It’s totally weird being here. I didn’t even fucking graduate high school.”) and posts videos about trans issues on his website, which he still does today.

Buck, his future ex-wife and their dogs relax at their home in Mexico.

The documentary itself serves as an extension of Buck Angel’s outreach. Buck may not be ordinary, but his day-to-day life appears perfectly normal, especially the scenes of him with his then-wife, body piercer Elayne, at their home in Mexico, where the couple moved after marrying in New Orleans. She seems wonderfully supportive (“That’s not a small cock, it’s a huge clit,” she helpfully explains to one middle-aged attendee at the Venus Show)—that is, until the cameras stopped rolling. A year after this documentary was released, Buck and Elayne divorced, very messily. Though she said in Mr. Angel that Buck was “the man of [her] dreams,” Elayne was suddenly a TERF in court, claiming their marriage wasn’t legal under Louisiana law because Buck never got bottom surgery, and therefore not a man, and not entitled to spousal support. The judge ruled against her.

Buck Angel, circa 2023.

Buck is still going strong. Now in his early 60s, he’s become a motivational speaker, hosts a podcast (saw that coming), and sells his own brand of sex toys. He’s still quick to laugh, still thoughtfully outspoken, and still just a dude.

Buck also sells merch, like this “Tranpa” mug.