Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Loving A Transwoman Doesn't Make You Gay

One of the memes that I hear that needs to die a quick and painful death is that if a cis man is dating or in love with a transwoman it makes him gay.  
 

Really?   News flash for the scientifically illiterate and the human rights challenged.  Just because a man likes transwomen doesn't make him gay. 

I've heard that BS line kicked around outside trans circles for decades and it needs to stop being pushed inside the trans community.

If you're a transwoman, you believe that line and repeat it, then by extension you are saying in your colonized minds that you believe our oppressors hype.

You have swallowed their bull feces that you are a 'man' despite the expense, time, counseling, hormone replacement therapy, document changes, SRS and everything else you have done or the drama you have endured to live your life on the feminine side of the gender fence and transition. 

A transwoman is a woman.  She is not a 'man' even if she has a neoclit between her legs. Y
ou cannot tell just by looking at a transwoman's outer shell whether she is pre-op, post-op or non-op

Gender is between your ears, not your legs. A cis man who rolls up on a transwoman is attracted to her because of her beauty, personality and other factors. 


And oh yeah, don't
automatically assume a transwoman has XY chromosomes.  There are a lot of chromosomal combinations besides XX or XY, and it is the height of scientific ignorance to suggest, nor do you have any clue about what combinations of chromosomes will pop up with a transwoman unless you run a chromosome test on her. 

B
ut back to the man in this romantic equation.  He isn't going to know what genitalia she has in her panties until they get to the point where they are intimate.  After that disclosure, what they do in the bedroom and what sexual gymnastics go on in that bedroom are nobody's business but theirs.       

The 'we all have XY chromosomes' meme is another one of the oppressors lies that I suspect is behind much of the violence we transwomen face that has deleterious consequences in our lives and feeds into some of the shame and guilt we beat ourselves up with.

Yes, it's been a fact for over 50 plus years that many of my trans sistahs have it going on in the beauty department, and have the class, elegance  and style to go with it.

We also work at perfecting our femininity.  Elements of you ciswomen may take it for granted and even reject gettin' your girl on, but we can't. In some cases it may even save our lives.   We don't mind mastering makeup application, learning how to effortlessly walk in heels, don't mind wearing hose to add additional polish to our wardrobes and taking the time and effort to figure out our personal sense of style and what works for us and what doesn't.

A
nother lie you can stop telling is that we transwomen have to 'deceive' a quality man to get him into bed with us much less date us. 

Note I said quality man, not a scrub

Brothers who are into transwomen know where to find us and willingly will succumb to our charms while the ones who aren't will let us know they prefer ciswomen (or cismen).   But just because you do like transwomen doesn't make you any less a man, and it's something we in trans world need to not only do some hard solid thinking about but zealously defend the manhood of our partners.  

As we transpeople fight to have our human rights respected and protected, we also at the same time need to be thinking about the ripple effects our human rights push has on the issues that play into our ability to live a quality life.  We really haven't done a lot of thinking about our romantic lives but have been more focused on transition and our human rights issues for good reason.   With the right wing attacks on our marriage rights, it's past time we did so.

In order for us to be able to have the romantic lives we dream about, we also need to create safe spaces for those men who love us to be out and proud about openly dating us.  If we're fortunate enough to have found 'The One", we want him to be able to marry us without having his masculinity called into question by society, his family and his homies.

The reality is we transwomen are part of the mosaic of human life and we're not going away.   If we got it going on, we're doing what we need to do to confidently project our femininity, and make ourselves look as feminine and alluring as possible, it's not our fault if we are turning men's heads in the process.


So no cisbrothers and cissisters, loving a transwoman doesn't make you gay.  It makes you human.







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