Something I feel worth noting is that learning one’s body is capable of feeling (and by extension provide) pleasure without reliance in that, helps to erode the vulnerability you here speak of (at least within an intimate space). A lot of the preconceptions and hang ups one might have regarding sex pre transition remain as is unless challenged after all. Mind you this does not mean its role is magically deleted from the affair, but it does recontextualize it for the better.
I feel the overwhelming urge to squirt you with a squirt gun every time you call a woman’s penis “her there”
Also when a trans woman gets bottom surgery she doesn’t stop being trans *throws a slice of cheese at you* it’s still a beautiful part of her story of womanhood.
The idea that we stop being trans based on our surgical status would be laughable if it didn't grate on me so much, but it does strike me as a uniquely selfish perspective - the idea that someone's identity is tied directly to their sexual compatibility with you and your interest in their body leaves such an awful taste in my mouth.
"Trans can remove hers, once, but then she stops being trans"?
yes Halimede, please don't conflate transgender (a state of being) and transition (a process that many trangender people are not safely able to achieve and that can be pursued in very different ways amongst those of us who are)
Right? "Transness is what's in your pants 😡" and "Transness is what's in your pants 😜" aren't two sides of the same coin, they're the same side of the same coin.
Fetishization, "ironic" or not (and let's be real, there's no such thing as doing something ironically) inherently requires dehumanization of the subject.
Specifically desiring pre- and non-op trans women for our genitals and completely dismissing those of us who don't have the genitals she's interested in is in no way even remotely close to "wholly desiring" someone, let alone seeing us as full human beings, no matter how much lip service is paid to respecting us.
Wholly desiring your lover and all of her features =/= lusting after someone for one specific feature. We're more than what is or isn't in our pants.
of course you’re more than that. but someone sincerely preferring one feature you have doesn’t inherently deny your humanity.
it’s like how a guy can strongly prefer women with huge boobs yet still love and respect his partner more than he loves that feature, especially if she is insecure about having them or if they make her life difficult in some ways.
Absolutely, 100%. To me Halimede's focus on tran's women's penises wayyy crosses the line into fetishization (at the cost of disregarding the humanity of the woman in question, no matter how much she tries to intellectualize or philosophize it) but I also hit my head on the fact that that is an entirely subjective view on my part so like... you're not wrong. I really can't disagree on the big picture, my own feelings on the current circumstances aside.
Tragedy strikes as Halimede forsakes this parasocial transgender in particular for my desire of getting rid of. That thing. Damage done to community she swore to protect. Shame.
Then again I suppose the goal is to remove the whole trans label from me and others perception of me so. Perhaps the bird is over my head. Somehow
she’s just using the classical definition as a stylistic choice. it used to be, and in some countries still is, that being post-srs meant you were no longer considered trans, as transness implied intersex genitalia. that’s why srs stands for sex reassignment surgery. whether you agree with that definition or not is irrelevant to her points
Hmm, no, I can't say I agree, at least not completely.
If by "classical definition" you mean the one used by cis society to erase trans existence, then no, whether or not I agree with the definition is not irrelevant. If one is going to borrow a harmful definition imposed on us by western christian cisnormative society then one has a duty to show that this definition is wrong and that it is only being brought up to refute it. Just throwing it out there with no context, even if sarcastically or "ironically" (as above, there's no such thing as doing something ironically) just reinforces the notion. "Satire requires clarity of purpose..." and all that. Especially when there's no context anywhere in the essay to suggest that the throwaway joke was meant in response to government definitions of transness...
well, anyway, to address the bit everyone's taking exception to (a chaser can be charmingly wrong about things frombtime to time, as all people can), obviously a post-op girl is still trans, but I think if our societal environment were not so dangerously fraught at the moment it might be nice to have an intracommunal term for bepenised women which could stand in for "trans" in this sentence (and much of your work) for it to actually be true. Like the way "stone butch" describes a subset of a subset of a gender category, but isn't really a distict gender in itself (arguably maybe, someone who identifies with the term might disagree and I would be obliged to differ to their self description) but moreso a nuance of sexual role and bearing within the brauder gender of butch. Which is to say, it might be nice to have a term specifically for a woman with a penis, that doesn't make totalizing reference to her Gender Identity in an othering way, and also doesn't carry all the objectifying and fetishizing baggage of any of the anime/internet words that obviously do exist. But! we live in a society and such a term could not survive this society long before getting dragged into one or more of the afformentioned tar pits of association, so ce la vi. The well meaning chasers of the world are doomed to put their feet in their mouths trying to navigate a linguistic minefield/hellscape
I don't actually think there's a failure of imagination among the gays, just a (sub)cultural default driven by supply and demand.
Among gay men, people who prefer submissive narratives/roles/context significantly outnumber those who prefer to be dominant. So it's a statistically safe assumption that a guy who wants to suck your dick probably wants to suck it submissively.
The opposite dynamic is not unknown, and there ways of talking about it, but it's marked as an alternative to the normal case.
Genital homology mentioned 🔥💯🎉🎊👍
Something I feel worth noting is that learning one’s body is capable of feeling (and by extension provide) pleasure without reliance in that, helps to erode the vulnerability you here speak of (at least within an intimate space). A lot of the preconceptions and hang ups one might have regarding sex pre transition remain as is unless challenged after all. Mind you this does not mean its role is magically deleted from the affair, but it does recontextualize it for the better.
I feel the overwhelming urge to squirt you with a squirt gun every time you call a woman’s penis “her there”
Also when a trans woman gets bottom surgery she doesn’t stop being trans *throws a slice of cheese at you* it’s still a beautiful part of her story of womanhood.
The idea that we stop being trans based on our surgical status would be laughable if it didn't grate on me so much, but it does strike me as a uniquely selfish perspective - the idea that someone's identity is tied directly to their sexual compatibility with you and your interest in their body leaves such an awful taste in my mouth.
"Trans can remove hers, once, but then she stops being trans"?
yes Halimede, please don't conflate transgender (a state of being) and transition (a process that many trangender people are not safely able to achieve and that can be pursued in very different ways amongst those of us who are)
Right? "Transness is what's in your pants 😡" and "Transness is what's in your pants 😜" aren't two sides of the same coin, they're the same side of the same coin.
Fetishization, "ironic" or not (and let's be real, there's no such thing as doing something ironically) inherently requires dehumanization of the subject.
it’s not dehumanizing to wholly desire your lover as long as you love and respect her as a person first
Specifically desiring pre- and non-op trans women for our genitals and completely dismissing those of us who don't have the genitals she's interested in is in no way even remotely close to "wholly desiring" someone, let alone seeing us as full human beings, no matter how much lip service is paid to respecting us.
Wholly desiring your lover and all of her features =/= lusting after someone for one specific feature. We're more than what is or isn't in our pants.
of course you’re more than that. but someone sincerely preferring one feature you have doesn’t inherently deny your humanity.
it’s like how a guy can strongly prefer women with huge boobs yet still love and respect his partner more than he loves that feature, especially if she is insecure about having them or if they make her life difficult in some ways.
Absolutely, 100%. To me Halimede's focus on tran's women's penises wayyy crosses the line into fetishization (at the cost of disregarding the humanity of the woman in question, no matter how much she tries to intellectualize or philosophize it) but I also hit my head on the fact that that is an entirely subjective view on my part so like... you're not wrong. I really can't disagree on the big picture, my own feelings on the current circumstances aside.
Tragedy strikes as Halimede forsakes this parasocial transgender in particular for my desire of getting rid of. That thing. Damage done to community she swore to protect. Shame.
Then again I suppose the goal is to remove the whole trans label from me and others perception of me so. Perhaps the bird is over my head. Somehow
she’s just using the classical definition as a stylistic choice. it used to be, and in some countries still is, that being post-srs meant you were no longer considered trans, as transness implied intersex genitalia. that’s why srs stands for sex reassignment surgery. whether you agree with that definition or not is irrelevant to her points
Hmm, no, I can't say I agree, at least not completely.
If by "classical definition" you mean the one used by cis society to erase trans existence, then no, whether or not I agree with the definition is not irrelevant. If one is going to borrow a harmful definition imposed on us by western christian cisnormative society then one has a duty to show that this definition is wrong and that it is only being brought up to refute it. Just throwing it out there with no context, even if sarcastically or "ironically" (as above, there's no such thing as doing something ironically) just reinforces the notion. "Satire requires clarity of purpose..." and all that. Especially when there's no context anywhere in the essay to suggest that the throwaway joke was meant in response to government definitions of transness...
Basically all the advice you give here works perfectly fine for men.
🤭 oh my
well, anyway, to address the bit everyone's taking exception to (a chaser can be charmingly wrong about things frombtime to time, as all people can), obviously a post-op girl is still trans, but I think if our societal environment were not so dangerously fraught at the moment it might be nice to have an intracommunal term for bepenised women which could stand in for "trans" in this sentence (and much of your work) for it to actually be true. Like the way "stone butch" describes a subset of a subset of a gender category, but isn't really a distict gender in itself (arguably maybe, someone who identifies with the term might disagree and I would be obliged to differ to their self description) but moreso a nuance of sexual role and bearing within the brauder gender of butch. Which is to say, it might be nice to have a term specifically for a woman with a penis, that doesn't make totalizing reference to her Gender Identity in an othering way, and also doesn't carry all the objectifying and fetishizing baggage of any of the anime/internet words that obviously do exist. But! we live in a society and such a term could not survive this society long before getting dragged into one or more of the afformentioned tar pits of association, so ce la vi. The well meaning chasers of the world are doomed to put their feet in their mouths trying to navigate a linguistic minefield/hellscape
if for some reason one simply must refer to people by genital status, i think the terms are pre-op, post-op, and non-op
(and, as with "female", these are adjectives, not nouns)
Do gay men really believe that giving head is inherently submissive? Weird...
Straight men do too, it's wild. I don't get it.
That one does not surprise me.
I don't actually think there's a failure of imagination among the gays, just a (sub)cultural default driven by supply and demand.
Among gay men, people who prefer submissive narratives/roles/context significantly outnumber those who prefer to be dominant. So it's a statistically safe assumption that a guy who wants to suck your dick probably wants to suck it submissively.
The opposite dynamic is not unknown, and there ways of talking about it, but it's marked as an alternative to the normal case.