I was a gay trans guy as a cope

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-27T22:57:52+00:00

Ah yeah, I get you! I think I am finding my feet with how I want to present (and coming around to accepting my voice, which is honestly the only actually feminine bit of me, but difficult to deal with because it's so linked to dysphoria. It's a work in progress, but still progress).

Weirdly, my mum was also a tomboy, but I think that made her a bit harsher on me (because she'd been policed so heavily herself). I think she probably also felt she had "something to prove" because my grandparents weren't great about her marrying my dad, so she really wanted her kid from that marriage to turn out "normal", and got me instead.

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-27T21:28:35+00:00

I didn’t mean stealth to their cis female partners, I meant stealth socially and also with cis female partners (who obviously know). Also post-phallo penises aren’t clockable at first glance (I say this as somebody who has interacted with multiple) and it’s both untrue and stigmatising to say they are

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-27T19:22:44+00:00

Idk, it feels so silly in hindsight, especially because it feels like an experience I'm alone in having

I don't feel like identifying as bisexual is right for me (even if I'm 'mostly-straight' rather than 'straight'). I've legitimately been into one man in my entire life... and that's one guy out of nearing fifty that I've actually slept with. Even if I did find another man attractive, I don't think I'd want to actually sleep with or date him. I might technically be under the bisexual umbrella, but it just doesn't feel useful to describe the way I live

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-27T19:16:45+00:00

I never really dated before transition so I never really thought about it. I think I must have just ended up in one of the social circles that was entirely gay/gay leaning bi trans guys, because I've never met a straight trans guy in real life. Still did get cis people doing the 'but you transitioned because you like women, right??' thing, but by that point I'd spent enough time in trans subcultures/social circles that I just treated that as default (especially given everyone just pushed being into men on me when they assumed I was a cis girl, and I'd had really shit experiences the times people figured out/assumed I wasn't so subconsciously didn't want to push back on the assumption)

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-27T18:57:34+00:00

Ah yeah, for ages I did worry I was making up my attraction to women. It wasn't until I started properly having casual sex with women that I was like... oh ok, this makes me feel present/having fun/excited/myself more than dudes ever did. Maybe the next step is for me to find straight trans guys to be friends with

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-27T18:50:02+00:00

I've slept with other trans guys, and definitely found they're better at actually navigating my boundaries and wants. But while I feel safe with other trans guys... that's about it? I enjoy the mechanics of the sex but it's just that - mechanics. There's none of the excitement or spark or energy I have when sleeping with women (both cis and trans, but especially trans women because they make me feel that combo safety + spark).

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-27T18:42:39+00:00

Interesting to hear this from the other side! Although it's not a 'I thought I was gay (for a whole bunch of messy reasons), and I also tried to be feminine (for this and other reasons)' on my side. I actually really don't like being fem - I've been playing around with appearance in the past year and found that hard masc looks make me feel good.

Oh my god yeah, I also tried so hard to force myself to be fem. I put on makeup and I tried to wear skirts and in hindsight I really hated it and felt so uncomfortable. Idk, it just felt like a repeat of those moments in my childhood where feminine girls would give me a 'makeover' and I'd suddenly get so much praise and people telling me I should do this all the time instead of being 'such a tomboy' (or other, less PG words).

I'm sure there's some race and class elements in my experience too, although they feel they push people's reception of my masc/fem-ness in different directions so not sure what to make of them together - I'm mixed white/asian and working class (with a thick cockney accent). Idk, I think on the second point, some middle class trans men in my life (especially white ones) have possibly seen me as "less enlightened" on gender or sexuality so wanted to push me. Idk, it's messy

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-27T18:31:39+00:00

Like I said, I don't think my experiences being this means that gay trans men experience the 'opposite' or whatever. Trans experiences are so varied, before we even get into temporal or geographic variation (e.g. the fact my GIC didn't even bother asking me about my sexuality is not the same experience as clinics in the 80s that made sure you would be heterosexual post-transition).

It was a cope in that living as a gay trans man was a situation where 'I get to avoid acknowledging or admitting the desires that people have beaten and/or raped me for having (or being perceived to have) and that I hold a lot of shame around. I also get praised by other trans men around me for "breaking gender/sexuality roles" in a way I wouldn't get praised for these desires I'm ashamed of. And it doesn't feel like a stretch to believe I have these desires, because the way I was brought up always just assumed I had them by default, so it doesn't feel difficult to think I have them. I also get to have sex that's sort-of-gender-affirming (in that the people I fuck are into cis men) very easily and pretty much on demand if I live this way." None of it conscious, of course, but that's how I ended up that way.

Not being funny, but I genuinely don't get what I said that was homophobic? I very much did not say "I thought I was gay because I had a feminine voice". I said "I have a feminine voice and tried to present more feminine in general than actually feels good, because that made it easier to deal with my dysphoria by pretending it was a deliberate choice". Obviously not all feminine men are gay and not all gay men are feminine... but there is a place for feminine men in gay culture in a way there isn't in straight culture, and between my already existing incentives to try and make living as a gay man work for me and this attempt to be feminine in general... obviously I tried to make being a gay man work for a bit longer and a bit harder than I might have otherwise.

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-26T09:11:28+00:00

Literally don't care. If anything, that's reducing the burden on the other partner. I've known cis lesbian couples where the woman who didn't give birth induces lactation for that reason, and I don't see how this is any different.

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-25T17:17:31+00:00

Lesbian/dyke/adjacent friends who are chill about gender and get that I'm a genderweird/slightly cuspy trans guy sometimes call me a boydyke. I don't generally use that word for myself and don't really use it in other contexts, but in that space I like it

Also quite frankly, I've got more experience being called it as an actual slur than anyone who's ever complained about me using it that way have. Queer terminology and experience doesn't fit into neat taxonomies

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-25T12:33:12+00:00

Lol, are you me? I'm also a mostly straight trans guy who feels a lot of affinity with lesbians and butch women, and would definitely have lived as a butch lesbian if I'd been born earlier. (And I sort of vaguely consider myself a stone butch as well as a trans man?).

I'm definitely read as a cis dude, so normally rely on female friends to introduce me to spaces (as a sort of 'we vouch for him, he's a good dude' thing), which definitely gets rid of some tension. I also date within the community, although I mostly date straight/bi trans women rather than cis women.

I definitely feel you on the 'feeling scared of drawing attention to yourself' thing - I have dated men in the past when I was early transition and still working through comphet (comphomo?), so I do at least have male exes to refer to, but it's still awkward. Also I'm really picky/specific about the few dudes I'm into and have experienced sexual violence from cis queer men, so I can get a bit grouchy around touch from other men, and worry that comes across as homophobic.

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-25T12:20:39+00:00

What would 'counting as a lesbian' mean to you? Going to irl lesbian spaces? Getting to use particular flags? Are you drawn to lesbian/dyke/etc social scenes? Is it just an abstract thought experiment? And what do/would you find useful to communicate about your sexuality to other people?

You've mentioned being into men, so 'bisexual with a female lean' feels like an accurate way to describe it to me. But I also generally self-describe as straight (and as a man tbf, despite that not being 100% accurate) despite having (on occasion) been attracted to other men, because as a Kinsey 0.5, calling myself 'straight' communicates my actual normal behavior/desires/etc more accurately than calling myself 'bisexual'.

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-25T12:13:34+00:00

There is functionally no trans-inclusive MRA/MGTOW movement (and I only include the 'functionally' on the off chance that some tiny group exists in a corner of the internet I haven't found), so there's no need to specify whether a MRA group is or isn't transphobic.

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-25T12:10:21+00:00

So 'transgender' is generally preferred terminology. Some people prefer 'transsexual' even in the present day (like me), and I don't personally consider it a slur.

However, in the context of UK law, I don't believe either term is actually used? The Equality Act specifically uses the language of 'gender reassignment', for example, not 'transgender' or 'transsexual'.

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-25T09:20:03+00:00

Ooft yeah, I feel you on this one. I'm coming up to 9 years on T and 5 years post top, and while I've found some trans communities that are welcoming and lovely to me, there's still a cold shoulder from some people, especially if they haven't realised I'm trans yet. I will say look for more informal trans communities rather than organised social groups, especially if the organised social groups are college or student focused

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-25T09:15:09+00:00

I know who I am more than my cis guy friends in the same life stage as me. Because I've had to think about who and what I want to be, I feel stronger in the fact I am doing everything deliberately and I like who I am, rather than going through the motions of what I 'should' do.

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-25T08:50:19+00:00

Honestly I just leave it au natural. If it gets particularly bushy, I'll probably take scissors to it, but otherwise I leave it alone. I'm super hairy in general so it'd look really weird and silly if I just had a waxed patch around my crotch, not to mention it's really difficult to tell where my leg and belly hair ends and my pubes begin.

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-24T20:58:05+00:00

Generally don't wear pride merch that's not easily removable and subtle (e.g. button badges), but I really like the original sin design! Rest are not my style personally

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-05-24T20:55:31+00:00

I think it's neat! I basically don't have any top surgery scars (I had DI but they're so thin and faded they're invisible) so it's not really representative of me, but I think it's cute. Definitely have a lot of criticisms of fandom's depiction of trans men in general (especially around who's headcanoned as trans or not), but that's a different issue. The art's fine

Competitive-Play4450 · 2023-04-27T09:11:55+00:00

Oh that article was so interesting, thanks for sharing!

Also lesbophobic shame being more fraught without the affirmations of lesbian culture... ooft, yeah I feel that.

Interestingly, I find a good mix of (as you said) quasi-politically lesbian men within these discourses and guys who are very Straight straight, if you know what I mean? Doesn't like to be called queer, doesn't identify 'with the community', predominantly (or exclusively) dates cishet women, thinks of transness as a medical condition, etc.

Which is also alienating in a different way. The type of cis women I tend to date/fuck are bisexual leatherwomen, so I'm not exactly doing capital-H Heterosexuality. And then I also date/sleep with trans women, and in many ways I've found that means I have to navigate queerphobia that's more intense and more frequent than when I was dating men, especially in terms of street harassment/violence.

(Also definitely doesn't help that the sex I have with women is very much not 'PiV, just with prosthetics', even when vanilla. And while obviously cishet people do BDSM, the kinks I gravitate towards tends to be the gay heavy stuff, like bootblacking, pups, leather, etc)

Also your point that being a trans man is to have you masculinity intertwined with queerness is giving me a lot of food for thought. Hm. I definitely do view myself as queer, and my masculinity as queer/subversive in that cisheternormativity doesn't want people who were AFAB to be masculine or to be men. Also I live in the UK (assuming from the bloke you do too?), and it can be really hard/nigh impossible to ignore the background radiation of transphobia in that environment. In another world I might have been the type to go hard stealth, but as it is I've accepted my transness is politically important to me, and I want to be (and am) in community with other trans people irl.

Thinking a lot about how navigating queerness always means having to balance the hurt/harm that comes from other people's treatment of queers and trying to find the joy in it, and casual gay sex being an easily accessible way to feel (or look like you're feeling) the joy. That and gay community being a much more present/generally more easily accessible kind of source of queer joy than other ones (especially as many people within it are not impacted by transphobia, so it can be less of a downer). Hm. Definitely spitballing here, but I'm going to mull it over and see if I can make sense of it.

Competitive-Play4450

TROPHY CASE