being a gay transgender man who is also not t4t makes for interesting dating experiences. i'm also masc4masc? (question mark because even though I do think I'm masculine, i am definitely still very faggy about it) so now on the outside I fear that I look like the worlds Gayest Kalvin Garrah (and IM NOT!!!!!!!! this is my irrational brain talking). gay male spaces are notoriously full of body shame so it can be hard feeling like you're worth being looked at if you don't look like a sleek toned Lad, but I do recognize a lot of my own success in dating simply comes from 1. Accepting Myself, 2. Accepting Rejection. contrary to the internets belief, but people have been HAPPILY having sex with trans people since, like, forever. a scarcity mindset will only have you sacrificing your own boundaries. anyway.
been seeing genital preference discourse bounce up again and recently saw an instragram video from Kat Blaque where she talks about rejection = protection, and that it's not worth for her as a Black trans woman to be in relationships trying to convince her partner that she is the "good" one. that it took her a lot of suffering to accept that a potential partner immediately not being attracted to her because she is trans is not a failure on her part. If you asked me 5 years ago if genital preferences were transphobic I probably would have said yes, now I would say "like man I think it depends". I think queer people tend to moralize our attraction to each other because we spent decades being oppressed for it, but then we swing too far to the other side and we get instances of harm and entitlement from queer people who think you should be grateful they even flirted with you because their attraction is "superior" to the straights. There's subtle ways these queer people (who often times have experienced relational harm) will pressure and coerce you. I've seen this happen a lot with femmes interacting with mascs, where femmes will flirt with mascs so hard and make the assumption that just because someone is masc that theyre femme fuck machines. Hello???what happened to hello how are you and consent?
anyway. my original point is that I have nothing against t4t, it works for a lot of people and i really find those relationships beautiful. but I also don't like the way t4t has been "sold" to me, as if it is a relationship type that is free from harm or abuse or coercion. i don't believe any relationship type is free from abuse or harm, and I think even well-intentioned "good" and minoritized people can cause catastrophic harm to others. I also don't think any version of love is inherently more special than another; I understand completely we have fought incredibly hard to love openly, but I am concerned for any glorification of a positive thing since that just ignores the nuances of relational harm, relationship negotiation, social context, etc and etc. (i.e, t4t is great because a trans person will understand me better! that surely will not create a perfect storm of vulnerabilities for an abusive person to take advantage of!)
the trans men who have been interested in me have all approached my relationship to transmasculinity in 2 ways: with racism or transphobia (usually a mix of both). The white transmascs who were into me assumed that because I am Mexican that I must automatically want to Top them and be their Fuck Machine, even though my page clearly states I'm a bottom. Some brown transmascs i've spoken to would frame our potential interest in each other as an opportunity for liberation. What are we being liberated from? we're both still brown transmascs in this world, the only difference is that we would be fucking each other now? I don't like feeling like my actions are tied to some moral destiny; that really freaks me out as someone who is autistic and doesn't intuitively understand the expectations set onto me. maybe i'm also too busy staying alive and trying to serve my community that I dont even have it in me to apply liberation theory to my romantic/sexual life (do I even want to?). also not to mention that many queer spaces today market themselves as "community liberatory spaces", but really its where people fuck each other full-time while doing activist gig-work of designing flyers for their university protest. sure, fine and dandy, but are we actually making a difference in the material needs of the people around us? not to discredit the genuine work that I see happening in my city, but I see far too many people posing as activists when they're only trying to chase more tail. like cmon.
my dating experience is limited because I am kind of crazy about who enters my private life and who touches my body. the amount of men i've ghosted over the past few months for not meeting my Qualifications is insane, but I genuinely think other queer people would benefit if they had stronger boundaries. The best sexual/romantic experiences I've had were with cis queer men who had never been intimate with a trans guy before. I felt they approached me with a curiosity and openness that other men had not, and because I am very granular about my boundaries and negotiations around consent, I end up helping these cis men realize that boundaries in intimacy are fucking awesome (because wow, who would have expected that queer cis men also have experienced relational harm!). my boundaries, however, are not 100% prevention for harm, and even in other conversations with men who passed my initial tests, there would be Hints of Weird Vibes that i did not see immediately and also Did Not Like At All (and I would promptly end the relationship there). you kind of have to accept that risk exposure is a part of the process.
anyway this is incredibly long. this is literally just me rambling and reflecting on my experience negotiating for casual sex from men, the trials and tribulations of being an openly transgender gay man on dating apps, and also trying to push aside the shame i've built for having a genital preference of my own. maybe it's based from transphobia (internalized or other), or maybe it's based from me simply liking this genital more, maybe it's because Freud was kind of a little bit right and all the men I am attracted to look like the men I grew up around. can you blame me for drooling over landscapers, skilled laborers, construction workers, and truckers when that's the only version of masculinity i was exposed to? i love that shit so Mexicanly, and as far as I can tell, there are no Trans Male landscapers because we all tend to work email-only jobs. If you don't smell like grass and oil I don't want you!!!!
anyway. all this to say that im still a trans faggot, but my relationship to my transness and faggotry has changed a lot over the years. I do not know where I will be 5 years from now by my god I hope I'm still a freak faggot pansy.
