fetishisation of ftm’s/faab genderqueers and faab butches
A lot of time is spent talking about the fetishistation of some kinds of trans guys and faab gender variance. I want to talk about this and that will lead to generalizations so I want to start with making clear that while binary ided trans guys, faab genderqueers, and female ided faab butches are thrown into one big bucket they can have very different experiences, for a start, only some of them are men, Right moving on.
I have personal have only experienced the very edges of this, most of my partners are straight ided men, who wish I would stop mentioning the whole trans thing, and wear dresses more often. Which give me a different perspective I think than men and gq’s who have spent more time in queer women spaces and women and trans spaces.
My experience of these spaces is surprise that anyone wants to sleep with me when I am not in drag. I am yet to get laid out of the wonder of trans fetishisation, I don’t fit the ideal, some how the “radical superbutch” loving lesbians wander off when I start enthusing about the new McQueen collection. I’m not thin, I don’t pass, and I live as female.
I have on occasion passed well enough as “radical superbutch” to attract attention and while it switches one uncomfortable drag for another it is in marked contrast from the hetro world I mostly move in (I suspect that gay men want nothing to do with me, sexually).
One thing that marks my experience of sexuality is that I need to present a fake me to get laid, a more feminine, straighter, cis version of me, being hot and being seen as sexuality available means presenting as femme, and sometimes I am quite ok with if that is what I feel like, but I know (most) my partners have preferred it, and I know that there are times where I have sacrificed my mental health for that.
I am going to a sex positive blogger/twitter meet up tonight and while I quite like the idea of meeting potential partners, I can’t bear femme drag right now, so I am going in my pretty gayboy getup, which is fine and all, except that I wish I could work out how to signal interested in men and available without having to trip up my dysphoria.
A friend of mine said recently, “I don’t know what trans guys get out of butch femme communities, except for misgendering” Well, I have put up with plenty of misgendering in an attempt to get a little bit of love and companionship, I had one partner of then 18 months tell a friend of mine that he wasn’t really ready to date a trans guy, and he left me when I started T, to date a cis women. So if I will put up with that for love, for companionship, I cant imagine why a straight trans man would be any different, and I know how attractive fetishisation can be, when the alternative is a world that can’t imagine you as sexual.
Genderqueer 2 genderqueer's Blog 
This makes me sad, even as I understand the necessity. 😦 Yes, being fetishised can be an improvement over being completely unattractive to everyone, a non-consenssually non-sexual being. I also understand the problem of being attractive to the wrong people. It’s a big ball of nasty and if compromising myself is what I have to do to get affection, love, and sex when I need it then, yeah, I’d do it, too. I’d hate it but I’d do it.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I don’t think its a good space to be in, but at the same time people who live with ugly compromisers, what is one more?
Yes, that is what I was more or less saying. Not good but can be necessary.
An interviewer asked Joan Rivers once about her infamous plastic surgery, and said, “But we want to be loved for who we ARE, not what we look like, right?”
And Joan shrugged, sighed, and responded, “I just want to be loved.”
I refuse to take fetishization in a relationship. I experienced that hardcore in my pre-testosterone to early-testosterone life. I can no longer do it. It makes things way worse for me. I mean, I liked having a feminine queer woman’s interest in me–she was smart; we had a lot of cultural touchstones in common and she knew some of the right things to say to ‘reward’ my gender–but it fucked me up. Now, I will happily date queer women cis or trans who like men…but if the bulk of their experiences have been with pre or early transition trans men, I’m not interested.
I’m not sure if this comment helps, but I saw Lucy commented here, and I like commenting where she comments. 🙂
I’m sorry for the binary-slant of my comment. I probably should have said at the start I was only talking about my experiences.
I wish I had your strength and your confidence, I didn’t find your comment binarist, it seemed clear that you where talking about you experience.
You have put a problem into words that has been stuck in my head for months. I’m in a relationship with a cis guy right now and he really digs all the feminine stuff. I put on a girly look when I feel like it or for special occasions. While a few people picked up on after a while, the rest still sees me as some sort of asexual neutrum. I’d like to give you some awesome advice on how to get around the issue, but I don’t really have any.
Awkward when you’re asexual and seriously don’t mind being seen as non-sexual haha. To me it’s like a bonus >_>