Phallic Vulnerability

theorizing a new discourse around trans women’s. those.

cw: frank discussion of transmisogyny, with examples.

Context: pink and purple, a part at the seam, the penis monologues

The depth of hatred bigots display towards transgender women is horrifying in ways that non-transgender women often struggle to grasp. Even still, after years of defending trans women, I occasionally encounter an allegation so sick that it makes me tear up and the transgender women who see it sigh wearily. These people define their entire lives around ruining the lives of innocent transgender women — and they hate no part more of her than her penis.

And so it is her penis that they seek to destroy.

This is a particularly pernicious avenue of attack because many people are very used to being scared of penises. We live in a society that mythologizes masculine penis-worship cults. Achilles is picked out from the women of Lycomedes’ court when he grasps his father’s ash-wood spear; the term vagina originates as a euphemism for scabbard, ie; that into which a sword is thrust. Men are taught to treat their penises like guns and swords; weapons charged by their ability to rape, wound, and invade. Those who have been subject to men (weaker men included) are taught that the phallus is a vector for harm through culture and experience.

Consider the violence of the verbs we use for the act of penetrating: ‘smash’, ‘crack’, ‘bang’, ‘hit’, (as well of course the lack of words denoting activity and agency for the act of getting penetrated). But these contexts are necessarily invoked to weaponize the penis because the penis is a body part, not a weapon. You know what else people use to do lots of horrible things to others? Hands! The hand is the implement of control, and yet we recognize that it can perform gentlenesses as well as violences.

Unfortunately as long as men keep being like that about their penises, I fear the uninformed are going to assume that a woman with a that would be the same way. Even a second’s thought makes it obvious how wrong this is. If a woman had such, as some women do, she would go about her life mostly normally, and hide it, of fear that people would consider her a sexual aggressor. But most people rarely give this that second thought, and so the cultural connotations of the penis continue to be used to persecute women.

THEREFORE. In the interest of protecting transgender women’s bodies, I propose a new discursive framework centered around the following proposition: the transgender woman’s penis is a marker of her vulnerability.

We can get there through anime.

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ANIME

That’s right. This is actually Weeaboo Womanhood III: Girls Who Have It.

Weeaboo Womanhood I and Weeaboo Womanhood II are Required Reading. This isn’t going to make any sense without them.

So: how do we see trans women, or at least, women with traits characteristic of trans women, in popular culture?

You can get there via the classic tall and beautiful neurotic and anorexic top: Rei Asaka, Grell Sutcliff, Jinshi, Symboli Rudolf, Saber¹. She is so beautiful, and so tortured. She is typically an object of desire — if a purer and more beautiful desire than many of the representations of twomen later on this list — rather than a protagonist, so it’s difficult to access her internality.

Also sometimes transgender happens because an editor insists that something be changed but the author doesn’t really want to change it so they write her like that anyway. Hiro Hidamarisketch, Kurako Koibuchi², Saber. This kind of thing is rare, though less than you might think.

But these two types of woman are not usually recognized as transgender³ women, but as ‘tall cold women with problems’ or ‘oh, a woman with a relatively normal relationship to femininity.’ or Saber. Phallic vulnerability isn’t really applicable here, except insofar as it fits with the tendencies of both categories to conceal their true intentions and have repressed sexualities.

Very well then. Let us discuss Girls Who Explicitly have That. Girls Who Explicitly Have That traditionally fall into three categories:

Tall, stacked, often racialized, and sexually aggressive, ex. Motoko Kusanagi, Poison⁴, certain Umamusume. This is the ‘third-gendered’ category, though she may be depicted as intersex. The intended eroticism for the Male Reader here is in either in being penetrated/having boundaries broken by a more sexually experienced woman or in conquering a woman with an attribute narratively associated with masculinity; consequently if she has it she very much has it a lot.

In her case, the phallus is a tool of domination. Just on a woman. And while there are certainly trans women with such relationships to thereof, and while they are very beautiful, they are beautiful despite the pressures which this archetype applies to them, not because of it. And her phallus is certainly not vulnerable. Except in the way that even those of cisgender men are (as much as they hate to admit it), by virtue of having bits that can be hit.

‘Trap’ girls. What a despicable thing to call her. You can tell these are girls because they are subject to misogyny and that particular flavor of sexual debasement that people feel free to direct at transgender women. Nobody is more ‘not like the other girls’ than the girl who claims to not be a girl at all. These are typically bottoms, in keeping with roles expected of women. Chihiro Fujisaki, the Mariya Shido type (though Mariya herself is obviously a top), Bridget, Saber. Clearly has internality but the role demands its suppression. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of trying to get through to an Astolfo cosplayer, the reason that Jax and Hato Genshiken are like that is obvious. The intended thrill for the Male Reader is in sexual subjugation via the demonstration of their own superior manhood, though some project into the ‘trap’ seeking abnegation (and of course Fujoshi enjoy reenacting out of toxic heterosexual dynamics, through the effeminacy of such ukes.)

The phallus here is a marker of abjection. It doesn’t really bring her any pleasure, or do much at all, but mark her as a transmisogynized subject to be predated upon for failing to perform masculinity. This is a kind of vulnerability, sure, but not one conducive to intimacy and relationship-building, just rough sex. Which is what some transgender women want, I suppose. This category is, I suspect, one of the main reasons newly-transitioned girls keep boying herselves — she associates sexual abjection and being desired with being the target of stronger men.

Of course in anime there are sometimes totally normal girls who just woke up one day and there was. such. But that isn’t based on anything in real life and doesn’t happen, except to about two or so percent of the population in a small portion of the southwestern Dominican Republic, where most people are not. And possibly in a few other such enclaves around the world, and for Saber one time. It’s just wish fulfillment.

So all three of these framings have obvious failures as well. While transgender women might want to make use of them for sexual reasons, the first demands she exist entirely in relation to her penis, the second is about erasing her internality for men, and the third ignores all the context of what being a woman with that is like in real life, and context is necessary for sex.

I think at least one way forward in is a distinct but related category: the girl who is ascribed a transness in fanart. To be horrifically reductive, I here draw a throughline that goes like this:

Wanting to draw girls = Romance

Romance + More girls = Harem Anime

Harem Anime - The Boy = Moeblobs5

Moeblobs + Somebody’s Special Interest = Cute Girls Doing Cute Things6

Cute Girls Doing Cute Things + We Need A Viewpoint Protagonisty Character But Not A Guy = A Girl Who Has Certain Traits That Make Her Disproportionately Likely For Fans To Read Her As Transgender.

Consider: Iroha Sakayori, Oguri Cap, Bocchi TheRock!!!, Kobayashi Dragonmaid, Jill VA11-hall-A, Homura Akemi, Nano Shinonome.

This kind of girl protagonist tends to have some kind of special interest, be isolated from her female peers, and consequently drawn to other girls and kind of neurotic about it. As a girl, her boundaries between close friendship and romance are thin. She’s also disproportionately likely to have black hair, since the Japanese understand correctly that blondes are Othered. She’s often thin, because she doesn’t take very good care of herself and flat-chestedness is relatable, and in emotional pain, because himedanshi are often in love with a girl and incapable of ever just telling her about it.

This kind of girl is not created to be sexually consumed (though wanting to create a sexually consumable anime girl is a perfectly fine reason to create one, as long as you aren’t weird or gross about it.). She is created instead for projection. Remember: fujoshi reenact dynamics via fictional men as a means of eroticizing the trauma of enforced heterosexuality and himedanshi are trying to erase and redeem themselves by projecting into girls. When this kind of girl is well-made, she has a lot in common with transgender.

Now the question is: why does this kind of girl have it? What are the fanartists picking up on?

Well, the himedanshi cares about girls’ internalities. If he didn’t, lesbian romance would hold no interest to him and he would just be looking at tasteless pornography or Gurren Lagann or Solo Leveling or whatever flavor of bland manslop is currently on the male menu. In all likelihood the himedanshi has been taught the fear of stronger men in very similar ways to the ways girls have. He understands correctly that “men who get in the way of yuri should die,” and possesses a nigh-on-pathological awareness of the implicit harm done to women by the centralization of heterosexual relationships.

And so the himedanshi, while often plagued by guilt and neuroticism, has a much more reasonable relationship to the penis than most men. A penis is, after all, a part of the body, and the body is made to feel.

This carries over into their depictions of intimacy. Of course people love to draw their faves pregnant and such, and of course this is not a mode exclusive to himedanshi (more on that later) but there’s a sizable minority of content where a girl has it and her arousal is visible and another girl touches her there and she blushes and goes very still. The himedanshi isn’t interested in establishing his masculine dominance and stroking his ego over the girl, though his self-insert character may take the lead, out of the desire to see a girl make a vulnerable face in intimacy⁷. It’s about girls feeling things together.

The girl can have that, and it can be touched gently, and she can be vulnerable. She can be girlish, even. She can make a feminine little noise, or even a feminine slightly-larger noise. Gender dysphoria happens when a girl is treated like a man, even by herself. But she is not a man. She can experience pleasure gently rather than forcing another body to provide it to her — and in fact a bit more easily than somebody with the other standard genital set. Her arousal and consequent emotional vulnerability are readily apparent. She doesn’t have to hate her body for the weapon that people think it is and the harm they think it could cause, because she isn’t causing any harm with it. She can give and take pleasure mutually. She can be loved.

Just because this method is characteristic of the himedanshi⁸ doesn’t mean that it’s somehow tainted or man-specific. The fact that men can, if they are thoughtful and respectful and intelligent, produce good art⁹ should not be in doubt at this point.

Look at post-himejoshi Inori (Rae Taylor, I’m In Love With The Villainess¹⁰), trying-not-to-be-a-girl¹¹ tsukumizu (Chito/Shijima Tsukishima, Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou/Shimeji Simulation) and so so much of manga kirara carat! Aki Hamazi, Izumo Ito, Rasuko Okuma… Once you’ve been exposed to Hidamari Sketch it’s impossible to unsee Ume Aoki’s fingerprints all over Madoka’s cast — not just their designs. Look! Yes, that means you, transgender woman reading this who understands all these references and barely leaves her room. Look! Cis women are making this kind of protagonist too, you know! The ones who do tend to be a bit alienated from their gender but that comes with the experience of being women attracted to women in a patriarchal world!

Lesbians care about girls’ internalities. Lesbians have been taught the fear of stronger men in very similar ways to the ways straight girls have. Lesbians understand correctly that “men who get in the way of yuri should die,” and possess a nigh-on-pathological awareness of the implicit harm done to women by the centralization of heterosexual relationships. I think that lesbians are very well-positioned for this particular discursive framework — which makes sense, since many lesbians are transgender women. And also because lesbians understand that giving head is something done with agency. (Though I’m saving more discussion of this for part II.)

Which isn’t to say that himedanshi are lesbians. Though some of them turn out to be, as they were actually girls all along. Just that alienation from one’s gender and being pathologically into women create certain commonalities, which result in frameworks of tenderness and empathy which can then be applied to the bodies of transgender women.

Well, why cite that protagonist type as coming from himedanshi, then? It’s just that the alienation is easier to see in himedanshi and himedanshi-derived works because they’re less good at hiding it. Sorry guys. You don’t mask it nearly as well as you think you do.

NEXT UP:

Phallic Vulnerability II: Implications

(gentlenesses and intimacies; head, hands, and strap)

1. tortured Baru Cormorant is of this type; though it is important that she is short and doesn’t have it. but what if she did. what, if she had it. oh my god. The Transgender Baru Cormorant. Imagine. to hide her body; to sell her very soul away to wear Falcrest’s masks. really incredible.

2. this is so obvious! kuragehime is about relationships between women — this linked interview mentions that Higashimura’s original plan was for her to be a non-trans girl

3. Ikeda’s Claude originates from the first archetype and is clearly a man. Good for him. Not relevant to this.

4. the transmisogyny behind this one is really exceptionally horrific. a game company wanted people to be able to beat up women in video games. but they thought americans might be weird about that. so they decided to give the women in question That because that would make it fine to perform violence on them. really beyond parody.

5. not ideal but the other direction it went from here is Isekai and that’s worse

6. and if you know this genre well enough you know there is always at least one implied to be gay. foreshadowing the next development:

7. SoraTori is a very clear version of this.

8. Elena Ferrante included, obviously.

9. yuri even

10. better than the story she’s ended up in. though that was exactly where she wanted to be. sometimes fandom really can be redemptive. for some. not everybody else though.

11. soooo many mangaka are like this. inio asano, oshimi shuzo, hisashi eguchi - just off the top of my head