Whipping Girl

IT STARTED AS A CONVERSATION with a friend. Okay, it was more of a rant. I was going off about that stupid, crass, recurring scene that I have seen in at least thirty-nine different mainstream movies by now. You know, the one where the guy falls for a girl who turns out not to be “all girl” genital-wise. And the audience always obediently identifies with the guy, empathically laughing at his embarrassment or groaning along with his disgust. And nobody ever thinks twice about the tranny—who she is or how she feels about the incident—because she is just a prop, like the banana peel that only exists for the silent film star to slip upon. And I ended my diatribe by lambasting all of those arrogant and ignorant people who only ever see trans women in terms of how we might affect their own sexual orientation.

My straight-male-identified friend, who had been listening patiently to my entire tirade, asked me: “Well, tell me, how would you feel if you became interested in a woman, but then discovered that she was a transsexual?”

Now, my friend knows that I am happily married and monogamous, so it was a given that this was largely a hypothetical question. Nevertheless, he seemed surprised when I replied that I would not be bothered one bit. And it’s not that I would merely “tolerate” a relationship with a trans woman. On the contrary, I would consider it an honor. Truth be told, over the last three years, about half of the women who have piqued my interest, who I would consider approaching if I were actively dating, just so happened to be trans women.

Now, as soon as I mentioned this, my friend said, “Oh, I had no idea that you had a ‘tranny fetish.’” So I sarcastically thanked him for insinuating that the only reason why a person might find someone like myself attractive is if they suffered from a sort of “sexual perversion.” After reprimanding him, I went on to say that there are a number of personality traits that I find attractive in women: passion, creativity, sense of humor, and self-confidence. And it has been my experience that trans women tend to have these qualities in full force. While some male “admirers” of trans women tend to fetishize us for our femininity or our imagined sexual submissiveness, I find trans women hot because we are anything but docile or demure. In order to survive as a trans woman, you must be, by definition, impervious, unflinching, and tenacious. In a culture in which femaleness and femininity are on the receiving end of a seemingly endless smear campaign, there is no act more brave—especially for someone assigned a male sex a birth—than embracing one’s femme self.

And unlike those male tranny-chasers who say that they like “T-girls” because we are supposedly “the best of both worlds,” I am attracted to trans women because we are all woman! My femaleness is so intense that it has overpowered the trillions of lameass Y chromosomes that sheepishly hide inside the cells of my body. And my femininity is so relentless that it has survived over thirty years of male socialization and twenty years of testosterone poisoning. Some kinky-identified thrill-seekers may envision trans women as androgyne fuck fantasies, but that’s only because they are too self-absorbed to appreciate how completely fucking female we are.

At this point in the conversation, my friend tried to play what he probably thought was his trump card. He asked me, “Well, what if you found out that the trans woman you were attracted to still had a penis?”

I laughed and replied that I am attracted to people, not to disembodied body parts. And I would be a selfish, ignorant, and unsatisfying lover if I believed that my partner’s genitals existed primarily for my pleasure rather than her own. All that you ever need to know about genitals is that they are made up of flesh, blood, and millions of tiny, restless nerve endings—anything else that you read into them is mere hallucination, a product of your own overactive imagination. To paraphrase that famous saying, the opposite of attraction is not repulsion, it’s indifference. Therefore, any person who would freak out over their female lover’s seemingly inconsistent genitals is probably a little more interested in penises than they’d ever care to admit. (And by the way, this also applies to those “womyn-born-womyn”-identified lesbians who seem to emulate stereotypical straight male attitudes when it comes to this particular issue.)

My friend, still seemingly perplexed, asked me, “So if it’s not about genitals, what is it about trans women’s bodies that you find most attractive?”

I paused for a second to consider the question. Then I replied that it is almost always their eyes. When I look into them, I see both endless strength and inconsolable sadness. I see someone who has overcome humiliation and abuses that would flatten the average person. I see a woman who was made to feel shame for her desires and yet had the courage to pursue them anyway. I see a woman who was forced against her will into boyhood, who held on to a dream that everybody in her life desperately tried to beat out of her, who refused to listen to the endless stream of people who told her that who she was and what she wanted was impossible.

When I look into trans women’s eyes, I see a profound appreciation for how fucking empowering it can be to be female, an appreciation that seems lost on many cissexual women who sadly take their female identities and anatomies for granted, or who perpetually seek to cast themselves as victims rather than instigators. In trans women’s eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognized as female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world. In a trans woman’s eyes, I see someone who understands that, in a culture that’s seemingly fueled on male homophobic hysteria, choosing to be female and openly expressing one’s femininity is not a sign of frivolousness, weakness, or passivity, it is a fucking badge of courage. Everybody loves to say that drag queens are “fabulous,” but nobody seems to get the fact that trans women are fucking badass!

It was at that point in the conversation that I realized that perhaps I find trans women attractive because I see a little bit of myself in them. In their eyes, I see a part of myself that nobody else ever seems to see, the part that those who haven’t had a trans female experience never seem to understand. And perhaps it’s narcissistic to be attracted to someone who reminds me a bit of myself. But after spending most of my life feeling ashamed of who I was and what I desired, I’d like to think that maybe my attraction to trans women is a sign that I am finally beginning to learn to love myself.