My partner, a TS woman
I am in a relationship with a transsexual (TS) woman. This places me in a position of responsibility, because my girlfriend, like all her sisters, is in danger. TS women are abused, insulted, and disrespected; but worse, they are beaten, falsely arrested, harassed by authorities that should protect them and frequently murdered.
This means that men like me must stand up and be counted.
Although on the surface, things are getting better, the improvements are largely cosmetic and there are misconceptions still. Many of these confuse the public understanding of what TS women are, for they are all too often conflated with fetishistic transvestites like Bruce ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner, who claim to be ‘transgender’, or, on the other hand, with ‘gay men’. The former — a tiny minority — have so dominated the media that it has become commonplace to think of a TS as being a middle-aged man in a dress with a wife and children. Nothing could be further from the truth: true transsexuals (Blanchard HSTS) are never attracted to women, because their feminine sexuality is what makes them TS; and they are clearly not men.
Most of the trans-attracted men I know are not gay. Essentialist issues like the nature of genitalia do have validity; for example in the lesbian rejection of fetishistic transgenderists, neatly symbolised by the ‘Cotton Ceiling’ fiasco. But trans-attracted men are less concerned about this essentialism than about gender. This probably has to do with differences in male and female sexuality. Whatever, men like me do not see the presence of a penis on our lover as making her any less of a woman. Gender, not genitalia, makes the girl.
‘Gay’ may be acceptable as a term of inclusion, but not when social conservatives use it as a term of abuse or the regressive Left to enforce conformity to their notions, and both of these are commonplace.
LGB people cannot simply ‘claim’ trans-attracted men as part of LGB. We’re not. We do not accept a role or position within that umbrella because we are not part of it.
Trans-attracted men, whether it is liked or not by either right-wing social conservatives or ‘left-wing’ homonormative orientation police masquerading as ‘Queer Theorists’, are straight. That’s it, and we will not be lectured to by academic refugees from reality who tout their philosophising as if it were fact from the ivory towers of tenure that they occupy.
I don’t give two hoots what religionard or other ignorant conservatives think of me or call me; but the attempts from within the LGB community to call me something I am not are alienating, and while this does not damage me, it damages my partner, and others like her, by also alienating potentially supportive men and by driving love between men and women into the shadows.
Jelly’s first boat ride
Furthermore, we see through it; this claim is asserting that TS women are a category of gay man. That is pure essentialism. What we find attractive are gender markers, not sex ones. We find pretty faces, sexy smiles and nice legs hot and they turn us on. Lesbian feminists may bitch that TS women, in their pursuit of conventional feminine beauty and complete adoption of feminine gender, betray feminists who would like to see gender removed altogether; but since most ordinary women pursue exactly the same gendered path as TS women, it is unfair — and probably pointless — to single the latter out.
The essentialist claim that trans attracted men are not ‘straight’ is a deliberate attempt to bring such individuals under the control of gender-conforming mainstream gay culture and ultimately to erase their distinct identity altogether, in order that they may be put in their places amongst the rank and file of cloned homonormativity. Most such men would laugh this off, the notions of the LGB ‘community’ not being of any importance to us, but denying the legitimacy of their partners is a direct attack on the very existence of TS women. We, the straight partners and lovers of TS women, do not accept this attack, nor will we have any part of it.
This attempt to erase a group of individuals because they do not conform to essentialist notions neatly illustrates the iron-fisted totalitarianism of ‘identity politics’ which says that one may adopt any identity one likes, as long as the authority group approves of it; and, of course, the most despised ‘identity’ of all is that of straight white man.
It is not to be wondered at that this diseased mindset comes from the United States of America, the most rigidly conformist culture in the developed world. It demonstrates that ‘identity politics’ is nothing more than group coercion and the suppression of the individual. The relentless attempt to shoehorn people into ‘identities’ that someone else thinks they fit — regardless of their own desires — tells us all we need to know about ‘social liberty’ in that benighted place.
For far too long we have heard how TS women must change to accommodate society’s prejudices. Reparative therapies have been inflicted on them with the support of religiously-motivated quacks like Paul McHugh, and Ken Zucker tried to condition TS teenagers into gay boys, to set them up for a lifetime of miserable self-denial. Meanwhile the mainstream gay culture looked the other way or even abandoned TS women.
They are routinely beaten, harassed and killed, and, when heteronormative religion and culture is taking a break from abuse, they are erased and their lived experience colonised by fetishistic transvestites, those ghastly simulacra of women. And when Jim Fourrat denounced TS women as ‘crazy queens who would destroy the way gays lived their lives’, he articulated the underlying truth about ‘gay men’: that they are no more than women in denial, desperate to hang on to their tattered comfort-blanket of pretence.
As one true TS going under the name of ‘Androphile’ put it, ‘If gender transition was easier, we would see way less gay men and more androphilic {true} transsexuals. The frustrated desire of a gay man permeates his life. All gay men are effeminate but ALL gay men despise femininity. Now, you will turn around and say that you know effeminate gay men in relationships. Those are not relationships. Those are compromises to be less lonely. There is a difference between what people want and what people get. Effeminate gays (ALL GAYS are effeminate) would love to have a straight, alpha male penetrate them, but, because they can’t get him, they fool themselves into thinking that they’ll be content with another effeminate butch queen.’
The truth of this is born out in any visit to south-east Asia, where huge numbers of TS women are highly visible. Where transition is easy and TS women have a social space they can colonise, they are obvious.
The confection of lies and fantasy that is Western ‘gay culture’ is exactly what Fourrat was trying to protect, and he was right: the very existence of true TS women and straight men who love them undermines the whole concept of the ‘gay’ movement, which is, as another TS put it, all about ‘women pretending to be men in order to have sex with other women pretending to be men’. Why would someone do such a thing except for relentless social pressure to conform? And how bitter must it make a ‘gay man’, as he watches his married partner grow bald and fat and his ill-fitting suits wear out just as his own do, to see a beautiful TS woman living exactly as he would have wished to, if only, if only…?
At the same time as the ‘gay’ male movement was throwing TS women to any wolves it could find, the Western face of ‘transgender’ has been hijacked by fetishistic cross-dressing men like Bruce Jenner. These are not true transsexuals, but because they are loudmouthed male bullies who know how to manipulate the media, they have all but erased those who are, at least in the broader public consciousness. This has only served to drive true transsexuals in the West further underground and, consequentially, thousands of men who are attracted to them to seek their partners outside the West, where the vile duopoly of ‘gay men’ and fetishistic transvestites has not succeeded in erasing true transsexuals.
Within the rigidly homonormative Western ‘LGB’ culture of today, feminine men and masculine women are ostracised in favour of a bizarre narcissism where everyone loves a clone of themselves. Because this culture sees TS women and their lovers as something they are not, it expects them to sign up and be erased. At the same time, male autogynephilic transvestites, who remain heteronormative, heterosexual men under their dresses, deliberately shame trans attracted men for their desires, as if these horrors were attractive to us in any way at all.
We don’t want to be a part of that and we shall not; we will not be subsumed into the clone mentality of mainstream homonormative LGB culture, nor will we be shamed for loving the women we do by a group of 100kg linebackers in frocks swinging Vuitton handbags and sporting size 15 heels.
People will just have to accept true TS women and those of us who are attracted to them, as we are. That means it is up to us, the men who love and support them, to fight alongside our partners for recognition and fairness.
Transsexual women have a long history, going back to before the invention of writing, and persist in all cultures, everywhere. They are not going anywhere, nor are their lovers. Learn to live with us and stop trying to fit us into boxes of your invention, and we’ll get along just fine.
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