Hate and Hyper Sexualization

I hope I never run out of things to write about where I get to the point that I start to psychoanalyze why something or someone is a fetish to someone else.

I’m not a therapist and I don’t always have scientific basis for everything that I write about but I think I do a sufficient job of always prefacing my writings with making it clear that I talk about things from my perspective and from my experience and my feelings.

Someone’s fetish (which is different than a kink) is a fetish for, well, God knows why. And that’s okay. I think there’s too much association with someone having a fetish with, well, shame. Ultimately I think it’s perfectly fine (and likely normal) to have something that makes you happy (or more) as long as the fetish doesn’t hurt anyone or anything in any sense.

There’s inherently nothing wrong with fetishizing a piece of clothing or eye color or what have you. If you think it’s hot to see your partner handcuffed, fabulous, have fun… as long as it’s consensual and everyone is having a good time.

I do think some fetishes can be, well, historically chronicled. This is not unlike writing a book titled “The Complete History of (insert fetish here)”. Of course, no book could ever encapsule the complete history of anything, but I digress.

By now, everyone reading this website knows that there is a… hm, Venn diagram of non-binary presentation and sexualization. There is an overlap for some. Whether you yourself wear something because it arouses you, or you are aroused by someone who is, or presents, as a gender that is different than the one they were assigned at birth.

Now, this is not to say that everyone has a sexual element when it comes to who they are. Nothing about my gender identity is arousing to me. I can think another t-girl is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous but there is not any sort of attraction, sexual or otherwise, that I feel towards them.

I am getting waaaay off track here so I’ll just say that YES some dudes are turned on by us and YES some of us are turned on by, well, us.

We all know that gender is a social construct and all the rules and norms and social expectations were at one pointed created by humans. There is no biological reason blue is for boys or eyeliner is for girls. Humans at some moment in history decided that men can’t wear leggings and that was that.

We also know that transgender people have always existed. We’re not some new fad that caught on in the late twentieth century or anything.

I roll my eyes when I hear people saying things like “well, we didn’t have any of them transgenders around when I was growing up“. Yes you did. You just didn’t know anyone who told you that they weren’t cis.

The internet gives marginalized communities a voice. Thanks to this horrible and cursed and wonderful tool, we can find countless others like ourselves. We are everywhere. And we always have been.

As time progressed, the world started to meet us. The world learned of our existence. We have always been here… often right in front of you.

But we weren’t always a secret to everyone.

History tells us that the unique can often be fetishized. It’s not unheard of for some dude to say they like girls with red hair or green eyes. They are not very common hair or eye colors, so, they can be a fetish for some, perhaps based on the inherent scarcity.

So it’s not a stretch to say that non-cisgender people are often fetishized, possibly in part to the seemingly minority of us.

But I think that if it weren’t for arbitrarily assigned gender norms we would ALL be non-cisgender. What I mean is that if nightgowns and leggings were never declared “for girls” we’d ALL be sleeping in a nightie.

I mean, if everyone had red hair, I think it would stop being so erotic to a lot of men. If everyone wore whatever they chose and if everyone felt safe publicly identifying as their gender/genders, then it’s possibly we would be less arousing to some.

Does that make sense? Nod your head if that makes sense.

Looking back over the last few decades, crossdressers and t-girls were often associated with, well, SEX. I mean the only reason a man would wear panties is because he was a pervert, right? It’s a stigma that, similar to cheap mascara, will never vanish.

This perception has lasted and lingered for time out of mind and will likely be around for the foreseeable future.

When did the fetishization of girls like us become, well, mainstream? When did the collective public decide that t-girls were all about sex?

I mean, we’re sexy AF but that’s neither here nor there.

It’s… bizarre that some of the earliest mainstream “reporting” on girls like us were in SHOCKING (I suppose we would now call them clickbait) articles similar to this.

This was almost a hundred years ago.

Strange that much of a history can be chronologized through tabloids, isn’t it?

Our origins, as far as many people were concerned, were deeply rooted in sex, whether it was a story of a man becoming a Las Vegas Showgirl or working in pornography or as an escort.

To be clear, I am not shaming sex work. Not at all.

But for a long time, it was one of the few opportunities a transgirl could make a living doing.

And why?

Because we are a fetish to some.

There’s money in exploiting, or catering to, someone’s sexual appetite.

It’s not uncommon for someone’s first introduction to the wonderful world of non-cisgender community to be in pornography. I mean, speaking for myself the first internet search results yielded to me almost thirty years ago showed very sexual material when I looked up “crossdresser”.

Looking back, me realizing that crossdressing seemed to be predominately sexual seems very naive to me. But this wasn’t sexual for me. I mean, I saw how “men dressing as a girl” was depicted in media… either for laughs, humiliation, or as kinky. But I knew that they were wrong. It wasn’t silly or shameful. It was beautiful.

It still is, of course.

But when I realized that for other crossdressers that yes, this was VERY sexual my heart broke a little. WAS this ONLY a sex thing? Was I really that naive?

Of course, the internet isn’t representative of anything but it took a long time for me to find crossdressing portrayed as something other than sexual. Honestly, that was/is the goal I had/have when I started and continued to blog about this side of me as well as this side of countless others like me.

But I do need to always acknowledge and accept that crossdressing is almost always associated as kinky or embarrassing.

Anyway, non-binary people have always existed and everyone needs to eat, therefore everyone needs to find a way to make money. It wasn’t, and it still isn’t, unusual for someone like us to turn to sex work or pornography.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. I am very pro sex work and although pornography isn’t my thing I don’t care what others watch… as long as everyone involved is consensual.

As porn went, well, more mainstream, transgender porn became a thing. For many people, pornography was someone’s first exposure to our community.

I believe that this is where the misconception and stereotype that this side of one is inherently sexual, and only sexual.

It’s not. But again, I do acknowledge that for some it is. And again, there’s nothing wrong with that.

I think when many of us have come out to someone, we either framed this side of us as a fetish (possibly because that’s how we understood ourselves at the time) or it was assumed that it was. Someone thinking that this side of us is a fetish is result of conditioning. I mean, if anyone had familiarity with crossdressing it was likely in the context of kink. If crossdressing (or whatever) is ONLY showed as kinky then it’s not surprising to assume it’s ALWAYS kinky.

We will probably live with this assumption for the rest of our lives. It might take generations for “boys wearing girl clothes” to be looked at as anything but a fetish.

Anyway.

I think this perception of crossdressing and… uh, transgendering as being sexual is a contributing factor in the hatred some have for us. For some, sex is dirty or whatever, so therefore anything that is perceived to be sexual is wrong. We are often called sick and perverted which is frustrating to say the least. This side of me? It’s beautiful.

It’s… odd (putting it mildly) to be at the overlap of hyper sexualization and hatred. It’s maddening for a part of me that makes me happy, that makes me whole, that is half of who I am, to be so inaccurately perceived.

Of course, I should (and mostly do) ignore what others think of me. And for the most part, I have no idea what someone thinks of me. I don’t ask them, after all. But when I see legislation that is being passed or proposed that impact our lives that are based on misconceptions and misunderstanding (either ignorantly or intentionally) I am reminded that hatred of us is often based on the sexualization of who we are.

Oh, one more thing. I mean, after all this has gone on much longer than I intended so we might as well keep it going, right?

Let’s add a little more alliteration to this, shall we? We’ve covered hate and hyper sexualization so let’s include hypocrisy to the mix.

I get emails and DMs from men who, putting it mildly, want to fuck me. If I get an… uh, invitation like this on Twitter I can, and sometimes do, peek at the sender’s profile. I can read a short bio about them and see some of the things they tweet about.

It’s not unusual for a “gentleman” like this to have something in his bio that reads I LOVE MY FAMILY AND MY WIFE AND GOD. And I wonder if his family and his wife and God would be thrilled that this dude is hitting up a t-girl for sex. I could be wrong but that doesn’t sound like someone who respects the sanctity of marriage vows or the Ten Commandments.

Of course, it’s possible he has an open marriage and his wife is 100000% aware that her man is trying to fuck me, so I will acknowledge that.

Sometimes the dude will post their support for a politician who is fighting for legislation that bans gender affirming care for adults. I find it hypocritical to support someone that is trying to pass a law that hurts the transgender community while at the same time DMing me, a member of the transgender community, about how badly you want to perform oral sex on me.

Wanting to fuck someone and wanting to take away their rights at the same time is… an interesting choice. But it also encapsulates the intersection of HATE and HYPER SEXUALIZATION perfectly.

Love, Hannah