Can a lesbian who loves a trans man still call herself a lesbian? Against the backdrop of a traditional Sicilian American upbringing, Lynette D’Amico identified as a lesbian despite the expectation that life hinged on the man she married. As a teenager, she fled her St. Louis home in the dark of night to escape her fate. No boys allowed, until one day D’Amico’s life was completely upended when her lover and spouse of twenty years—P. Carl, the acclaimed author of Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition—told her he was a man.

Seemingly overnight, D’Amico no longer recognized her spouse in photos of past vacations or of the couple celebrating their legal gay marriage. In Men I Hate, she asks: What happens when the people we are closest to change? As D’Amico tries to engage more deeply with the man she is married to, she looks at all the men—historical figures, politicians, men in her family—in search of clear dividing lines between good men and bad, between the men she loves and the men she hates. These lines dissolve as she writes her way toward an understanding of the words marriage,husband, and home—and how we reconcile who we are with who we become.

Lynette D’Amico is an essayist and fiction writer. She is the author of the novella Road Trip and a recipient of a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.