Trans Pron

This post was getting picked up by those using search engines to find sexually explicit material.  This was not a useful outcome, so I have replaced it with a the same text using an old trick spelling from the AOL days.  Enjoy.

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One problem with pron, so they say, is that all of that highly constructed fantasy, full of stimulation so sensational that it is well over the top, can make people decide that reality just isn’t worth the effort.

Once you get the fantastic stuck in your head, how do you learn to engage the mundane and delicate? And if you don’t engage the realistic, how do you ever find the small and potent joys that it holds?

The problem isn’t really pron, rather it is letting pron substitute for actual, real relationships. A bit of fantasy never hurt anyone, but when fantasy becomes your only dream you become unable to find the satisfaction and nourishment that only reality can provide.

For transpeople who have felt forced into a closet, into a dark place where they can’t share or openly explore their own desires, pron can be the only lifeline. We want a vicarious experience of the world, dreams of a fantastical world where we are not only free to be beautiful but often we are forced into it.

For us, that fantasy world holds our hopes and dreams. It is the place where we can blossom, the place where our life can be perfect, where the expectations others place on us can be stripped off and we can be immersed in delight.

Every transperson has stories of transcendence in their head, models of how the world should be, of how we should be.

Too often, though, those fancy dreams get in the way of engaging reality. Our own idealized fantasy world blocks the path to the rewards of a messy, less perfect, and very rewarding real world.

Instead of opening to experience, finding where it can feed us, we end up raging against how unfair, oppressive and mundane the world is. We are always on the sharp end of the line between our imaginings and the reality that we are saddled with, always feeling trapped and cut.

We want to make our dreams come true, but because those dreams are detached from reality, corrupted by the requirement to be hidden from the world, we quickly understand that they are never, never, never going to happen.

And that is heartbreaking.

If we can’t change the world, no matter how much we yell and scream, then we have limited choices.

We can stay inside our own lucite bubble, keeping ourselves separate from the world but maintaining our dreams. This maintains delight, yes, but it also maintains irritation, leaving us separate and isolated, without community and connection.

Or we can dismantle our dreams, trying to find new dreams that somehow blend the ecstasy of our inner fantasies with the rewards of human vulnerability.

This is the hard path. It requires us to rip up the pretty pictures we have plastered over our own fears and stare at the gimcrack structures we hold underneath. It requires us to start feeling our feelings, engaging the handmade life instead of substituting the machine made red shoes of fantastic pron.

The path of engaging vulnerability requires us to not just change our clothes or our body. It requires us to change our mind.

Letting go of the delicious fantasies that kept us sane and hoping inside our dark closet is one of the hardest things that we can ever do. It is like a peeling off a shell, emerging naked and scared to face a terrifying world that shamed you into hiding in the first place.

Unless we let go of our tranny pron fantasies, though, we will always be trapped inside of them, always be apart from real hot and warm human relationships. No amount of raging will ever make those fantasies come true, even if it does let the real, profound pain of loneliness and disconnection come to the surface for a moment.

I know why we cling to our dreams. Once they have gone, we have nothing left.

When those dreams are corrupt, though, sensational but isolated and full of fear, they can easily block us from the messy necessity of human connection. Instead they lead us into dark corners, lead us into stuffing our feelings with shopping, drink, drugs and other props.

Holding our dreams up to the light, using the serenity prayer to scan them is the first step. Do we have the wisdom to determine what we need to be serene enough to release and what we have to be courageous enough to change in our own lives? Can we find a way to embody our possibilities rather than just retire into our own lurid imagination while complaining that the world should change to make our fantasies come true?

Many have found that the road to pron is a wayward road, able to take us farther and farther into indulgence and unreality, leading us away from healthy, nourishing human connection. pron can lead us into the purely sensational, but only as it leads us away from ourselves.

To me, claiming my dreams is really about claiming myself, not about distress over my life not being like a pron film, be that a sissy screener or a Kardashian series. When I lose touch with my own humanity, I end up empty and wanting numbness over connection, never a good thing.

Beating yourself up over not achieving a fantasy means you can’t embrace the beauty of reality. That just seems the waste of a perfectly good human life.

Changing your mind by changing your dreams and expectations is hard, but it makes the living worth the effort.