My Unexpected Hero is a Man in Leggings
How Bryon Noem became the LGBTQ+ community’s most unlikely ally
Author Note
Grace Ann Hansen is an independent researcher, writer, and MBA graduate student in health informatics and artificial intelligence. She is also a published author, a professional musician, a gymnastics coach, and a queer transgender woman living in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Grace Ann Hansen at grace@graceannhansen.com.
I never thought I would say this. I never thought the words would leave my mouth, my keyboard, or even the deepest recesses of my neurodivergent brain. But here I am, a transgender woman in South Dakota, sitting at my desk at 11 p.m. on a Saturday, sipping coffee that has gone cold, and I am saying it:
My Unexpected Hero is a Man in Leggings
Bryon. The crop insurance agent from Bryant, South Dakota, population 456. The man who coached basketball at Hamlin High School. The quiet, unassuming First Gentleman who told reporters to just call him Bryon. That Bryon. He has done more for the visibility and normalization of gender nonconformity in conservative America than every Pride parade, every drag brunch, and every HRC gala combined. And he did it with two balloons, a crop top, and a Cash App account.
I want to be very clear: I am not making fun of Bryon for wearing women’s clothing. I am not mocking gender expression. I have spent the better part of the last decade fighting for the right to wear what I want, present how I want, and exist in public without being treated like a threat to national security.
Bryon Noem … proved something that every transgender person, every drag performer, every gender-nonconforming kid, and every queer person in a small town has been trying to tell the world for decades …
Bryon Noem, according to undenied reports published by the Daily Mail in March 2026, was apparently fighting that same fight. Privately. Under the pseudonym Jason Jackson. While paying $25,000 to online fetish models and asking one of them, and I quote the reporting here, whether he should put on leggings.
Yes. Leggings. The gateway garment.
I feel so seen.
The Man Behind the Curtain
Let me set the stage for those who may not have been following the Noem family cinematic universe.
Kristi Noem, Bryon’s wife of 34 years, made targeting transgender people the centerpiece of her political career. She signed South Dakota’s ban on transgender girls in school sports in 2022, making it the first such law enacted that year. She signed the Help Not Harm Act in 2023, banning gender-affirming care for trans minors. She issued executive orders referring to transgender women as males.
She terminated a $136,000 contract with The Transformation Project, a trans advocacy group that provided public health worker services to the South Dakota LGBTQ Community, on the same day a conservative outlet contacted her office about the funding. She then became Secretary of Homeland Security under President Trump, where she declared that DHS would only recognize two sexes, banned trans TSA officers from conducting pat-downs, killed a $58 million Coast Guard marketing contract because the firm had once blogged about reaching transgender audiences, and removed protections against intelligence-gathering based on LGBTQ+ status.
She once hid in her office to avoid meeting a trans child.
She ran national television advertisements about keeping trans girls out of sports.
She never once met with a single transgender person affected by her legislation. Not one.
And her husband was at home in Bryant, South Dakota, stuffing balloons into a crop top and posing in pink hot pants for bimbofication communities on the internet.
Bryon, you magnificent, gender-bending legend.
