For The Wrong Reason

As I was driving to the event last night — the one where the gay man in the next pew decided I was “in drag” — I was thinking about transwomen and attraction.

What we hate, I decided, is people who are attracted to us for the wrong reason.

And it really doesn’t matter if those people are attracted to a she-male, or a drag queen, or a man with a strong feminine side, the wrong reason is always the same.

We aren’t real happy at people who are attracted to us because we have — or had — a penis.

I do know that physical fact may be what seems to differentiate us from women born female, and therefore it may seem to be our selling point in the world. But I also know that almost nobody who likes their penis and is cocky enough to use it well, nobody like that wants to go through the trouble of appearing in the world as a woman.

I sure as heck know that I never was cocky enough to well use my penis. From my first time, which sure as heck seems like a lesbian experience now, having to be the cocky one seems impossible. I assure you that I see those parts for my pleasure, and not for use in pleasuring others. I would much, much, much rather use a strap-on to pleasure others than my own parts, and would satisfy partners more with a dildo.

This isn’t really comprehensible to most. On a radio show, a lesbian asked me “Why, if you want to have sex with women, would you ever want to get rid of your penis?” Straight women have wanted me to be a feminine man, androgynous in ways they like, and lesbian women want me to be butch, since I have the body and training for it, which has always seemed impossible to femme old me.

Straight men have a thing for she-males, imagining the pleasures of a woman with a dick, and gay men can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t be fascinated with cock.

We are a heterosexist society, dividing people by birth sex, and the males, well, they have the poles. This thinking continues. Heck, I remember a lesbian therapist who much preferred seeing transpeople born male as men with something extra rather than women.

Steven Whittle tells the story of meeting a transwoman he knew in a gay bar where she was working as a drag entertainer, and her asking him not to mention that she had had genital reconstruction, changing her penis to a neo-vagina.

“If the owner finds out, he’ll give me the chop again,” she said “He wants drag queens.”

Even if being a penised woman-like person seems to be our best selling point, our “unique selling proposition,” the one consultants would tell us to leverage, almost nobody who goes through the hell of exposing their own nature of a transwoman wants to be seen as the one with the dick, a man-in-a-dress. That feels demeaning and crappy to someone who is trying to scream out with every choice “I am not a man just because I was born with an outie, dammnit! Talk to my heart and not my birth genitals!”

But still, people are attracted to us because they want some kind of penised creature, a cocky creature we have never seen ourselves as being, expectations we have felt as so onerous that we work very hard to claim womanhood.

I hate people who are attracted to me for the wrong reason, just like TBB wasn’t real happy about that woman who was attracted to her in the bar. I hate people who are attracted to me for something I hate about myself.

Maybe that’s a mistake, and the consultants are right; just start there and eventually they will see your womanhood. Yeah, but they will see it quick when you aren’t as cocky as they desire in bed.

When you walk in the world, though, and people are attracted to you for the wrong reason, well, then, what attraction can you actually be open to, what attraction can you actually trust?