as small as a world and as large as alone

3:37pm May 22, 2014

anagrammaton:

like, if you’re attracted to cis women but not attracted to trans women, i definitely urge you to ask yourself why

trans women are a really really broad class and i can’t see any meaningful way that someone being part of that class necessarily tells you much about our bodies. is the difference something which is actually there (and there is not much there) or something which patriarchy has constructed?

because i think it’s an awfully huge coincidence if the entire class of people who you just happen to categorically not be attracted to are also an entire class of people who patriarchy just happens to take every opportunity to construct as disgusting and unfuckable

like that oppressive socialisation probably has something to do with that preference, and if you interrogate it you might find that the only reason you weren’t open to intimacy w trans women was because of it

if you do so then congratulations, you’ve successfully beaten up the little patriarchal cop in your head!

(Warning for recounting a conversation that involved transmisogyny/transphobia.)

I had a really, really weird conversation with someone once.

I had been to a meeting of trans people, and I mentioned to a friend later that a woman I met there was attractive.

She sounded disgusted and said “Sure, if you’re into that kind of thing, I guess.”

And I was going like “What does THAT KIND OF THING even mean?  She’s a woman?  She’s attractive?  Why is this different than being attracted to any other woman?”

But she seriously made it sound like there was something specific you had to be into, to find a trans woman attractive.  And I still haven’t figured out what that’s supposed to mean.

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