Whipping Girl

I NEVER FULLY APPRECIATED what it meant to be sexualized when I was male-bodied. Back then, I would sometimes overhear men shouting lewd comments at women, or deliberately turning their heads to ogle women as they walked by. At the time, I assumed that the men who committed such acts were simply expressing a form of sexual interest, albeit in a rude and adolescent manner. While other men may have experienced a similar attraction to the woman in question, I thought, most were apparently respectful enough not to vocalize such thoughts publicly. In this sense, catcalls reminded me of those bad teen sex comedies—undoubtedly crude and obnoxious, but relatively harmless. In retrospect, I now realize that this interpretation was largely enabled by the fact that I had not been on the receiving end of such acts before.

My perspective changed radically almost immediately after I began hormone therapy. In fact, one of the first indications I had that others were beginning to gender me as female was the occasional sexual innuendo that I received from strange men as I walked down city streets. My previous assumption—that such comments were expressions of sexual desire—suddenly seemed unlikely to me. At the time (only two months into my transition), I barely even looked like a woman and had no figure whatsoever. Nor did the comments have anything to do with my being dressed in a particularly feminine or revealing fashion, as I was still dressing in boy-mode, wearing flannel shirts over T-shirts over sports bras to hide the fact that I was developing breasts. In addition, many of these comments were unarguably mean-spirited and insulting, and no attempt was made to disguise them as flirting. I was clearly being overtly sexualized by these strangers, and not because I was deemed attractive, but simply because I appeared to be a woman. And the purpose of such blatantly vulgar remarks was not to express attraction or potentially garner my interest, but rather to exert a modicum of control over me: to make me feel uncomfortable, intimidated, angry, or fearful, to force me to look away or to cross the street to avoid their harassment.

These days, I recognize the huge difference between sexual desire and sexualization. Sexual desirability is something that we all hope to have to some extent. When other people express their sexual desire for us, it can be extremely empowering, so long as such expressions are reserved for the appropriate time and place—i.e., from the right person and when we have signaled our openness or willingness to reciprocate. Sexualization, on the other hand, has the opposite effect: Rather than empowering the person, it’s used to leverage power over them. This can be seen all the time in the media, where women often appear not as fully formed human beings with their own thoughts, feelings, and opinions, but as purely sexual objects used to sell cars, beer, and other commodities. Some might naively argue that these women have power—specifically, the power to lure men—but it’s a power that only serves heterosexual male interests. After all, how much power is there in being a carrot on a stick dangled in front of someone? Such depictions exist in sharp contrast to media expressions of sexuality that center on real-life women’s sexual desires and perspectives, such as The Vagina Monologues or a Margaret Cho show.

The fact that sexualization is an attempt to dehumanize and disempower women is even more evident in remarks we get on the street, which invariably occur when women are presumed vulnerable (when we are alone or outnumbered) and often go unchallenged solely because the men who make such comments are physically stronger than the women they harass. Perhaps it’s only one in fifty or one in a hundred men who stoop to the level of catcalls (or worse), but over time they take their toll and achieve their intended effect: They make us feel like we are targets. Indeed, the sexualization that occurs in both media imagery and public harassment reinforces a power dynamic between the sexes in which men are invariably viewed as predators and women as prey. This predator/prey mind-set makes it virtually impossible for us to imagine that a woman has the potential to be a sexual aggressor (evident in the common disbelief about, and inability to articulate, instances of woman-on-woman sexual violence or female fetishism) or that a man can be a sexual object (as seen by the tendency for people to view young boys who are seduced by adult women as being “lucky,” as opposed to being victims of statutory rape).¹ In fact, the only instances in which adult men seem to have the potential to become sexual objects is when they are sexualized or coerced into sexual acts by male aggressors.

Understanding this predator/prey dichotomy is crucial for us to make sense of the way transsexual women are sexualized in our society. Even though many people insist that trans women remain male despite our transitions, we are hardly ever sexualized as “men.” Sure, there have been a handful of movies that depict fictional MTF transsexuals violently preying on women, but such characters are almost always portrayed as “deviant” or “deranged” males rather than as actual trans women. For example, the characters in the movies Dressed to Kill (1980) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991) neither live as nor physically transition to female, and their supposed transsexuality is treated simply as a psychosis that drives them to commit violence. In the vast majority of cases, however, the sexualization of trans women casts us in the role of sexual object rather than sexual aggressor. For example, the tranny sex and porn industries, which primarily cater to straight-identified men, overwhelmingly feature trans women as their sexual objects. In contrast, trans men are not objectified by straight-identified men to nearly the same extent; trans male porn (what little of it there is) attracts a predominantly gay male and queer female audience.²

In my own experience, I have found that the way I’m sexualized as a trans woman is similar to how I’m sexualized when I’m presumed to be a cissexual woman (i.e., I’m sexually objectified rather than seen as an aggressor). Invariably, though, the former is more invasive and debasing. For example, when I am assumed to be cissexual, the sexualizing comments I receive almost always come from random strangers in public. However, if I meet a man in a more social situation (e.g., at a party or a bar), he rarely stoops to blatantly crass, sexualizing comments, even when he is flirting with me. However, in social settings where I am known to be transsexual (e.g., at events where I perform spoken word poetry), men do often blatantly sexualize me: I have had men immediately engage me in conversations about how much they enjoy “she-male” porn, flat-out tell me “I’m turned on by ‘girls like you,’” and explicitly describe the sex acts they have had with other trans women in the past. And numerous times I have received unsolicited emails, presumably from men who found my website during a search using the keyword “transsexual,” in which they describe their sexual fantasies about trans women in gory detail, or ask me graphic questions about my body and sexual activities. These emails are always centered on my transsexual femaleness; I do not receive similar emails from people who presume that I am a cissexual female.

Some might suggest that the reason why I experience more hardcore sexualization as a trans woman has to do with the fact that transsexuals are rather rare, thus leading others to view us as exotic. While rareness may contribute to this phenomenon, I don’t believe that it’s a sufficient explanation. After all, there are plenty of types of women who are relatively rare, but they are not all sexualized in the same manner that trans women are. Perhaps a better explanation lies in the responses I receive when I make it clear to these men that I am troubled by the explicit nature of their comments. While it’s a given that any “respectable” woman would be offended if a strange man immediately began sharing his sexual thoughts and fantasies with her (in fact, many catcallers seem to enjoy provoking these very feelings of insult or embarrassment in the women they harass), I find that the men who sexualize me as a trans woman are often dumbfounded and angered by my unwillingness to engage them on a sexually explicit level. I have even had a man accuse me of misleading him, as if the only legitimate reason for me to be out as a transsexual was to signal my sexual availability or to solicit sexual attention from men. This assumption—that I am somehow “asking for it”—is eerily similar to the attitudes some men have toward women who they believe are dressed or behaving in a sexually provocative fashion.

Once again, this sort of thinking stems directly from the predator/prey power dynamic, where a woman can never truly be seen as a sexual aggressor, only a sexual object. Thus, women who do take sexual initiative are not considered to be preying on men per se, but rather opening themselves up to or inviting male sexual aggression. Of course, what constitutes “inviting” male sexualization is typically defined by male presumptions. For example, women who are raped by men are often mischaracterized as instigating their own sexual violation by virtue of the clothing they wore, their past sexual histories, or their willingness to meet privately with a man. In fact, any action carried out by a woman that can be misconstrued as enabling others to view her as a sexual object is presumed to invite male sexual advances. In this context, I would argue that trans women are hypersexualized in our culture because we are viewed as enabling our own sexual objectification (by virtue of the fact that we physically transition from male to female) in much the same way that a woman who wears a low-cut dress is presumed to facilitate her own objectification.

The idea that trans women deliberately transform ourselves into women to invite male sexualization and sexual advances is perhaps the most popular assumption made about trans women. According to this myth, trans women do not “prey” on men so much as we “lure” them, by turning ourselves into sexual objects that no red-blooded man can resist. Framing the matter this way not only relieves men of any responsibility for their own sexual actions, but also prevents them from being cast in the role of sexual object or prey—an inherently subordinate position. Further, this tactic insinuates that trans women’s physical transitions are centered on the desires of men, in much the same way that people presume that women who wear highly feminine or revealing outfits do so not for themselves, but in order to attract male attention. This point is crucial: If trans women were seen as changing our sex primarily because we wanted to be female (as is generally the case), then MTF transitioning would become both a self-empowering act and one that potentially empowers femaleness itself. However, the assumption that we change our sex in order to attract men essentially sexualizes our motives for transitioning, a move that disempowers trans women and femaleness while reinforcing the idea that heterosexual male desire is central. This sexualization of trans women’s motives not only belittles our own female identities, but also implies that women as a whole have no value beyond their ability to be sexualized by men.

This tendency to focus on heterosexual male desire also dominates mainstream discourse on the MTF transitioning process itself. For instance, in the media, it seems that the most commonly described effect of MTF hormone therapy is that it causes trans women to develop breasts or “curves.” While this is certainly true, trans women themselves do not always see this specific change as the most important result of hormone therapy. Most of us tend to cite the more psychological and emotional effects of estrogen, or the fact that it facilitates our being perceived by others as female in a more general way, as being the primary positive outcome of hormone therapy. Similarly, most people assume that trans women undergo bottom surgery not because we want to have a clitoris and vagina, or that we wish to align our physical bodies with our own subconscious self-image, but instead because we wish to be penetrated by a man. Of course, many trans women (like their cissexual counterparts) are attracted to men and wish to have sex with them, but it’s demeaning to suggest that any woman’s physical femaleness (whether trans or cis) exists only to experience male penetration.

Of course, attempts to focus on male desire when considering MTF transsexuality are undermined by the fact that many trans women are either lesbian or bisexual. This inconsistency is often downplayed in the media, which tends to either make trans women who have female partners invisible or asexualize them. For example, the media may depict their relationships as entirely platonic, or holdovers from a marriage that has ceased being heterosexual. Indeed, as a dyke-identified trans woman, the most common question I’m asked when I do trans outreach presentations is, “Why did you change your sex if you are attracted to women?” Essentially, what these people are asking me is why on earth would I choose to be a woman if not to attract and appease the desires of heterosexual men? Similar questions surround the existence of trans women who choose not to undergo bottom surgery or who are not interested in cultivating a highly feminine image. In all of these cases, public confusion stems from the implicit assumption that we transition in order to become the objects of heterosexual male desire. If people were to assume instead that we transition primarily for ourselves (as is indeed the case), then it would become easy to understand why some trans women might not want to put on makeup, dresses, and heels every day, or why they would choose not to undergo an expensive form of genital surgery that could potentially result in a loss of sensation or other medical complications.

The popular assumption that trans women deliberately transform ourselves into sexual objects also explains why we are so frequently depicted in the media as sex workers.³ The fact that trans female sex workers have reached the status of “stock characters” is of particular interest, as such depictions are at complete odds with other cissexual presumptions about transsexuality. Media representations of trans people that do not involve sex work typically go out of their way to stress the fact that transsexuality is an extraordinarily rare phenomenon, and to promote the idea that transsexuals are sexually undesirable. So it is unclear why, being as rare and undesirable as we supposedly are, we seem to make up such a significant percentage of sex workers on TV and in the movies. This inconsistency implicitly suggests that trans women must somehow specifically seek out jobs as sex workers, presumably because we so desperately wish to be sexually objectified by men.

In fact, many trans women are sex workers, but generally not because they wish to be sexual objects. Like their cissexual counterparts, many trans women turn to such work because few other viable economic options are available to them. For example, in San Francisco, perhaps the most trans-friendly city in the nation, approximately 75 percent of transgender people cannot find full-time work, 57 percent have experienced employment discrimination on the job, and 96 percent live below the city’s median income.⁴ In other words, any realistic portrayal of transgender sex workers would necessarily have to address the issue of poverty that comes at the hands of anti-trans prejudice. This, of course, rarely happens on TV or in movies, where depictions of trans female sex workers are almost always brief and superfluous. Thus, media stereotypes of trans female sex workers not only promote the misconception that trans women transition so they can be sexualized, but they also deny the cissexual prejudice that drives many actual trans women into sex work in the first place.

While there has been extensive feminist analysis examining the ways in which women are sexualized in the media, such work has typically ignored media depictions of trans women. In fact, some feminists even seem to accept at face value media stereotypes of trans women as hyperfeminine and wishing to be sexualized—a rather illogical position given their own critiques of how images of women and other sexual minorities are typically distorted and mischaracterized by a predominantly straight-male-centric media. However, it’s a mistake for cissexual women to view depictions of trans women as having little to do with themselves, as they are so obviously meant to dismiss both transsexuality and femaleness. After all, in a world where women are regularly reduced to objects of male desire, it’s no accident that trans women—the only people in our society who actively choose to become women and who actively fight for their right to be recognized as female—are almost universally depicted in a purely sexualized manner.

Unfortunately, the narrow context of the predator/prey power dynamic has shaped not only media and pop culture depictions of trans women, but psychiatric depictions as well. The long-standing assumption that only men can be sexual aggressors (arising from phallocentric models of libido formation that have been forwarded by many influential psychoanalysts) has led psychiatrists to define a long list of “paraphilias” and “perversions” that regularly “afflict” men, but which are described as “rare” or “nonexistent” in women. In reality, many of these practices do occur in women and have been described by researchers in other fields, but have been overlooked or hand-waved away in psychiatry because they are presumed to require a “male agent” (i.e., a legitimate sexual aggressor). ⁵ Similarly, in psychiatric discourses regarding transsexuality—in which trans women are labeled and conceptualized as “male transsexuals” and trans men as “female transsexuals”—the tendency has been to play down FTM spectrum gender and sexual diversity, while focusing heavily on MTF spectrum transgenderism, due in part to the latter group’s presumed “male agency.”⁶ However, it is not simply that MTF spectrum trans people are studied more because they are (or used to be) male. Because psychiatrists who buy into the predator/prey dichotomy tend to view expressions of femininity as serving the sole purpose of attracting and appeasing male sexual desire, and view the desire to be female as synonymous with the desire to be sexually objectified, they have consistently tried to frame MTF transgenderism as being driven primarily or exclusively by sexual impulses.

This psychiatric sexualization of MTF transgenderism is most evident in the historic tendency to divvy up all MTF spectrum trans people into two classes: transvestites and transsexuals. While the transvestite/transsexual dichotomy fails to account for the broad spectrum of MTF transgenderism, it has predominated because it mirrors the predator/prey dichotomy that many psychiatrists implicitly buy into. Until very recently, to be considered a MTF transsexual, one had to express a desire to be female, be sexually attracted to men, be feminine in gender expression, wish to have a vagina rather than a penis, and appear unquestionably female post-transition. In other words, psychiatrists required transsexual women to be willing and able to become desirable sexual objects in the eyes of heterosexual men. For many decades, those MTF spectrum trans people who failed to meet any one of these criteria (i.e., who were unwilling to meet all of the prerequisites of a sexual object) were denied their requests to physically transition and were often presumed to be “merely” transvestites.

Unlike MTF transsexuals, who were typically perceived as sexual objects, transvestites were viewed as men, and thus sexual aggressors. Their desire to dress as women was viewed not as a self-empowering or even neutral act of gender expression, but rather as a fetish for wearing feminine clothing. This sexualization of feminine gender expression has been codified in the psychiatric diagnosis transvestic fetishism, which is so vaguely written as to suggest that all heterosexual men who crossdress are driven by this “sexual paraphilia.”⁷ The bizarre assumptions built into the transvestic fetishism diagnosis—especially its specific exclusion of nonheterosexual men who crossdress—suggest that it has been created for the sole purpose of reinforcing the predator/prey dichotomy. In a sense, Transvestic Fetishism misconstrues feminine gender expression in heterosexual males as a somewhat “normal” (albeit misdirected) example of male sexual aggressors who sexually objectify femininity. Homosexual males are presumably exempt because women are not their sexual object choice (as that would undermine the labeling of their crossdressing as a fetish) and/or their expressions of femininity are presumed to primarily facilitate their own sexual objectification by other men.

Over the years, the MTF transsexual/transvestite dichotomy has increasingly been called into question, as it has become apparent that many (but certainly not all) self-identified male crossdressers eventually come to see themselves as transsexuals and choose to physically transition to female.⁸ This occurs despite the fact that they often remain primarily attracted to women and/or that their gender expression may not be viewed by others as sufficiently feminine. Now, if we were to attempt to account for this phenomenon in the simplest way and with the least number of assumptions, we might suggest that some crossdressers (like their transsexual female counterparts) also have a female subconscious sex. However, in a world where women are regularly assumed to be “naturally” feminine and attracted to men, MTF spectrum trans people who do not meet those expectations may have a more difficult time considering the possibility that becoming female and living as a woman is a realistic option for them. So they may initially gravitate toward a crossdresser identity because it seems to be the only viable alternative for them. This was most certainly true in my case. For me, it was only after I fully explored crossdressing (eventually finding it to be insufficient to ease my gender dissonance), and had the opportunity to meet several trans women who did not fit the classic transsexual archetype, that I realized that it was actually possible for me to physically transition and live as a somewhat nonconforming woman with regard to gender and sexuality.

While a subconscious sex that is independent of sexual orientation and gender expression (as I have previously described in chapter 6, “Intrinsic Inclinations”) may be the simplest and soundest model to explain why some male crossdressers eventually come to see themselves as trans women, it has not sat well with certain psychiatrists. This is presumably because the existence of nonheterosexual and nonfeminine trans women entirely undermines the predator/prey logic that these researchers take as a given. In the late 1980s, in an apparent attempt to reconcile this issue, psychologist Ray Blanchard put forward a different (and more confounding) model to explain MTF transgenderism.⁹ His theory creates a new dichotomy between what he calls autogynephilic and homosexual transsexuals, which recapitulates the predator/prey dichotomy. While Blanchard’s controversial theory is built upon a number of incorrect and unfounded assumptions, and there are many methodological flaws in the data he offers to support it, it has garnered some acceptance in the psychiatric literature and gained mainstream attention with the publication of psychologist J. Michael Bailey’s book The Man Who Would Be Queen.¹⁰

According to Blanchard’s model, “homosexual” transsexuals are trans women who are feminine and exclusively attracted to men (the confusing nomenclature arises from Blanchard’s and other psychiatrists’ practice of viewing trans women as “males”). They fulfill the requirements for the role of sexual object by virtue of their willingness to accommodate heterosexual male desire: “Homosexual gender dysphorics are directly aroused by the objective features of the male physique, especially the sight and feel of male genitalia.”¹¹ The implication here (stated even more explicitly in Bailey’s book) is that “homosexual” transsexuals are feminine gay men who transition to female because that’s the only way they can attract heterosexual men.¹²

Blanchard goes on to claim that all “nonhomosexual” MTF transsexuals suffer from autogynephilia, a paraphilia that Blanchard invented to support his contention that “all gender-dysphoric males [sic] who are not sexually aroused by men ... are instead sexually aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women.”¹³ Thus, autogynephilics fulfill the requirements for being sexual aggressors: They are assumed to be “males” who sexually objectify femaleness and femininity. From Blanchard’s perspective, the only problem is that their “normal” heterosexual sex drive is misdirected toward themselves (i.e., they are attracted to the images of themselves as women, rather than, or in addition to, images of other women). Autogynephilia, like transvestic fetishism before it, exempts those who are deemed “homosexual,” as they would necessarily undermine the predator/prey dichotomy upon which these theories are built. So instead of assuming that there is a unified basis for transsexuality (i.e., a subconscious sex that is at odds with one’s physical sex), Blanchard proposes two separate causes of MTF transsexuality in order to accommodate his sexualization of MTF gender identity and expression.¹⁴

Blanchard has argued that his model is simpler than other psychiatric theories of MTF transgenderism because it subsumes male crossdressers and “nonhomosexual” trans women into one category: “Transvestites, on this view, would be understood as autogynephiles whose only—or most prominent—symptom is sexual arousal in association with crossdressing and who have not (or not yet) become gender dysphoric.”¹⁵ This is problematic, however, as some crossdressers and trans women say they have never experienced sexual arousal in the manner Blanchard describes. Perhaps even more common in the MTF community are people who describe being sexually aroused by their own cross-gender expression during their early stages of gender experimentation, but who over time experience a reduction or a complete loss of arousal in response to such feminine self-expressions.¹⁶ This is particularly true for many trans women, for whom previous sexual fantasies related to wearing women’s clothes or having a female body may become rather banal or pointless after one has physically transitioned to female and lived as a woman day in and day out. This fact is a serious blow to Blanchard’s model, as it suggests that sexual arousal is not what drives these trans women to change their sex, and that the temporary sexual phase they experienced when they were crossdressing was more related to their overcoming the highly sexualizing cultural symbolism commonly associated with femaleness and femininity. Blanchard tries to get around this caveat by claiming that autogynephilia is not only a paraphilia, but a sexual orientation, and that trans women who no longer experience sexual arousal in response to images of themselves as women have formed a sort of “pair-bond” with their female selves.¹⁷ (Perhaps he sees this as analogous to how long-term married couples may stay together despite a reduction in their sexual interest in one another.)

Blanchard’s categorization of autogynephilia as a sexual orientation reveals a startling naiveté regarding his understanding of human sexuality. In focusing exclusively on “sexual object choice,” he neglects to consider the role that our own bodies play both in our sexual fantasies and in our realities. Our sexual experiences, whether masturbatory or with partners, typically involve various combinations of sexual attraction and desire for others, as well as sexual sensations and responses to mental, visual, tactile, and other stimuli that arise from our own physically sexed bodies. Since cissexuals are able to take their own physically sexed bodies for granted, they often focus exclusively on that aspect of sexuality which they cannot take for granted—namely, their potential sexual partners. In contrast, pre- and non-transition trans people are unable to take their own physical sex for granted, and thus their sexual fantasies often revolve around physically becoming or being their preferred sex. Every trans person I’ve spoke with about this—whether MTF or FTM spectrum, homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual—has said that their sexual fantasies almost always involve (on some level) their being in the appropriately sexed body.

When one takes this necessary difference in trans and cis perspectives into consideration, it becomes obvious that Blanchard’s “autogynephiles,” who have fantasies that center on thoughts of their own physical femaleness rather than on the “physique of the partner,” are not significantly different from cissexual women who sometimes have fantasies of being fondled or penetrated by faceless men, or cissexual men who imagine receiving blow jobs from faceless women. In fact, given the prominence of the penis in straight male porn, men’s locker room conversations, and public restroom stall artistry, one could easily make the case that male heterosexuality is driven to a large extent by autophallophilia—being aroused by the image or thought of oneself as having a penis. Of course, it is unlikely that Blanchard would even consider this possibility, both because it places trans people and cissexuals on equal footing and because it implies that a man can sexually objectify his own male body, an act that is fundamentally incompatible with predator/prey logic. In fact, the restrictive nature of the predator/prey dichotomy ensures that only MTF spectrum trans people can ever be accused of sexually objectifying their own preferred gender. Cissexual women may be aroused by wearing sexy feminine articles of clothing and FTM spectrum trans folks may be turned on by the thought of having a penis, but because these groups are considered female (in the eyes of many psychiatrists, at any rate), they are not deemed to be legitimate sexual aggressors. And while cissexual men are regularly characterized as sexual aggressors, any sexually charged feelings they may have related to their own maleness or masculinity will be ignored because of our societal reluctance to consider men as sexual objects.

Many people, both within and outside the field of psychiatry, seem so compulsively driven to sexualize MTF gender identities and expressions that they fail to ask a far more relevant and pressing question: How does the ubiquitous and assumed predator/prey dichotomy shape the way MTF spectrum trans people come to view themselves? Given the immense amount of research (much of it carried out by psychologists) into how representations of women in the media and popular culture strongly influence girls’ and women’s sexualities, behaviors, and body images, it is remarkable that few (if any) in the field have attempted to apply such work to the MTF community. After all, despite being socialized male, those of us on the MTF spectrum have been exposed to many of the same explicitly sexualizing cultural messages about womanhood and femininity as those socialized female, and we are just as susceptible of constructing our own sexualities and self-images around those very same cultural ideals.

I would argue that MTF spectrum trans sexualities make far more sense once we recognize them as being on the receiving end of cultural messages that sexualize femaleness and femininity, rather than being the perpetrators of such sexualization themselves. Those who fit the so-called “true” transsexual archetype (i.e., Blanchard’s “homosexual” group) typically identify as female from an early age and transition relatively early in life. Because they identify as female for much of their lives, they are likely to absorb much of the same cultural encouragement that non-trans heterosexual girls do, such as becoming focused on being conventionally attractive and attracting boys. On the other hand, MTF spectrum trans people who become aware of their cross-gender desires after they have already consciously accepted the fact that they are “boys” (i.e., Blanchard’s “autogynephilics”) tend to have greater difficulty reconciling their female or feminine inclinations with societal messages that insist that men and women are “opposite” sexes, and that girls are inferior to boys. Rather than feeling entitled to call themselves female or to act outwardly feminine, they often develop intense feelings of shame and self-loathing regarding their cross-gender inclinations. To cope, they may develop sexual thoughts and fantasies that associate their desire to be female/feminine with subordination, humiliation, and sexual objectification. If anything, these fantasies share more in common with the exhibitionistic, submissive, and rape fantasies experienced by many women rather than the sexually aggressive and objectifying fantasies commonly associated with men.

Because the relentless sexualization of MTF spectrum trans people has become one of the most common tactics used to delegitimize our gender identities and expressions, many in our community have tried to disavow their sexual predilections. I believe that this approach is inadequate because it fosters a continuing shame regarding our sex and fantasy lives, and because it leaves a void which is too easily filled by the ideas of so-called experts (like Blanchard and Bailey) who are all too eager to put their own cissexist, oppositionally sexist, and traditionally sexist spins on our sexual thoughts and behaviors. Personally, I prefer to be open about my sexual history while also placing it in the appropriate political context. After all, if society is going to insist that all MTF spectrum trans people are “perverts” and “sexual deviants,” then they should be made to answer for the fact that it is their misogynistic, predator/prey-obsessed, oppositionally sexist gender prejudices and practices that make it inevitable that we will be judged this way in the first place.