The Fetishization of Trans Men in the Community
I remember seeing a post from presumably a trans radical feminist talking about the poor representation of trans women in porn compared to “TME porn.” Of course, we all know what these people mean when they say TME. It’s a term designed to put trans men/nonbinary people into the category of cis people, people who have systemic power over us, while having plausible deniability because “it means cis people too! I could totally be talking about just cis people!” But I would like to talk about trans men in porn, and the sexualization of trans men and the fetishes forced onto us.
For starters, the vast majority of transmasculine representation in porn is of white, skinny, fem/androgynous trans men. They are often pre/non op top surgery, and are almost always pre/non op bottom surgery. The vast majority of porn featuring trans men involves trans men having their vaginas penetrated by a penis. Even in porn where a trans man tops, the strap on is never realistic (can’t be having people imagining a trans man with a dick, of course, otherwise they wouldn’t be good little sex objects) and there is always some sort of focus on the trans man’s vagina at some point in the shoot. Same with anal, there will typically also be vaginal penetration at some point.
If you are a trans man who isn’t white, who isn’t skinny, who is more masculine than androgynous hairless twink with a flat chest, post op top surgery and especially post op bottom surgery, or don’t have any interest in having your vagina touched, you will not be represented in the vast majority of porn featuring trans men. This is also true for T4T porn of trans men. It’s not exclusively when trans men are with cis men or cis women.
I post in transmasculine porn subreddits. I am an exhibitionist, it’s a major kink of mine (among other things). I am someone who also doesn’t draw any focus on my vagina in my posts, I am anal only, and I definitely don’t fit the beauty standard for trans men. I am a fat, hairy, bearded trans man who can’t be easily put into the category of “hairy tomboy,” especially given that there’s not that focus on my vagina. This is mainly in transmasculine porn subreddits. I’ve said on my other account on here, but I’ve very much enjoyed posting in gay bear porn subreddits. They have all been very respectful, and any time I’ve experienced any transphobia, it’s been removed, and the vast majority of interaction that I’ve gotten from the other bears there have been positive, because those subreddits are specifically for people who look like me: fat, hairy, bearded, masculine men. Most people don’t care about what I have downstairs, especially seeing as I don’t use it to begin with. When I said that I was getting bottom surgery, I was celebrated for it.
But the majority of interaction that trans men get in transmasculine porn subreddits is content surrounding vaginal penetration. And that’s just the non-kink focused subreddits. When you get into subreddits surrounding trans men with kinks, it’s a whole nother thing.
One of my biggest issues is with the detrans/misgendering kink. I don’t necessarily have an issue with trans men who either use the kink to get money because they are doing sex work (you obviously have to do what you have to do, and we’ll talk about trans men who have to do sex work in a minute) or even trans men who actually have those kinks. However, there is no way to have a conversation about the way that trans men are fetishized without mentioning how many people have the detrans/misgendering kink for trans men. When you look at transmasculine porn subreddits that center kink, the vast majority of interaction is on posts where trans men market that they have a detrans/misgendering kink. It’s not only cis people who partake in this kink. Even outside of reddit, I can’t look at a lot of transfem sT4T domme’s NSFW accounts because the majority of their posts about trans men are detrans/misgendering content. “Fakeboy” content is a big part of the tumblr transmasculine kink scene. I am someone who is a sT4T male sub with a femdom kink, and I can’t relate to most other trans people who post about that kind of deal because a lot of it focuses on detrans/misgendering trans men, and the ones that don’t focus on trans men who use their vaginas during sex. If you find something without that, it’s a trans man who’s a top/dom, and that’s great and is their right, but that’s not me either.
I often find social media NSFW profiles that center around wanting to find transmasculine sexting partners specifically to misgender and detransition them. It’s marketed as a kink, but at some point it’s hard not to at least think that a lot of the non-trans men who post about this kink so frequently just genuinely want to detransition and misgender trans men, and are just calling it a kink. Even other trans people. I don’t really trust any non-trans man who has a misgendering/detrans kink for trans men, even if they’re also trans. Even in the trans community, we are expected to conform to femininity to make other people more comfortable, so forgive me for being distrustful.
The forced impregnation kink is another thing. I have my own kinks, but it’s another thing when it’s forced onto trans men who have no interest in it. Breeding is hot, but we have to be sensitive to the group of people who are both disproportionally affected by forced impregnation in order to detransition them, and the group who specifically has very complicated feelings surrounding pregnancy. I’ve talked about forced impregnation before, and I’ve had several, at least 100 trans men express on a post that I made some time ago that if they ended up pregnant and couldn’t abort, they’d commit suicide. Trans men who want to get pregnant, are pregnant, or who have been pregnant are valid and deserve the space to talk about their experiences, but we can’t erase those of us whom pregnancy is one of the worst things that they can think of happening to them. I had an ex girlfriend try to babytrap me, and she stopped when I said I was sterilized, but it’s still very disturbing to think about. This was the ex girlfriend who repeatedly raped and tried to kill me. The cis man who correctively raped me wore a condom when he did it.
At one point, I got a private message from another trans woman. She was only 18, I’m not that upset with her for saying this because she was young, but I had just had a hysterectomy, and she said that it was “sad that [I] got a hysterectomy,” presumably because she wanted to get me pregnant. I don’t really feel any type of way about pregnancy as somebody who definitely can’t get pregnant on account of not having reproductive organs, and I did/do have a breeding kink, but that message really upset me, because who says something like that? That a trans person’s gender affirming surgery is “sad” because you wanted to fetishize them pre op? It’s one thing for cis people to say inappropriate, transphobic shit like this, but other trans people should know better. It’s so much worse coming from another trans person.
The primary issue with people pushing the forced pregnancy kink onto trans men (besides that a lot of trans men are uncomfortable with that) is that pregnancy is often used as a form of control. Pregnancy leaves you physically dependent on the people around you, and having a child leaves you financially dependent on the people around you. The person that you are often dependent on is the person who impregnated you in the first place. This is something that often happens to cis women in abusive relationships, but it has different implications for trans men. Trans men who are forcibly impregnated by someone who wants them to detransition, and are dependent on that person, often do have to detransition. Pregnancy is often a dysphoric nightmare for trans men, and having to detransition and be dependent on a transandrophobe who impregnated you is a fucking nightmare for all of us I’m sure. When you think about that, the forced impregnation kink with trans men is a lot darker than you might have thought. And trans men can absolutely have that kink and that is their right, but forcing it onto trans men, even just sharing your fantasy to a nonconsenting trans men, is sexual harassment and a threat.
Back on trans men forced into sex work, a lot of them are forced into marketing off the detrans/misgendering kink for money. I’ve seen an account from a transmasculine sex worker, whose bio was something to the extent of “he/they unless you’re paying me, then you can use she. It doesn’t matter if I’m dysphoric about it.” I’ve seen a trans man make a series of photos that I was really into, but he misgendered himself in it. The description was “don’t misgender me please, this was a photo series for work by a paying client.” I’m sure a lot of trans men in sex work market off the detrans/misgendering kink wouldn’t do so if they would get enough money otherwise. Beyond that, I’m sure a lot more of them would get top surgery, and some of them aren’t even on T because they can’t transition because they rely on their pre-medical transition body to get money. When we talk about survival sex work in the trans community, the discussion is very focused on trans women. Which makes sense, trans women disproportionally are made to do survival sex work due to the inherent transmisogyny in our society. But trans men are also forced into survival sex work on account of being trans men, and that does need to be talked about. And trans men also have to degrade and misgender themselves for money. Trans men also have to use slurs and derogatory terms for money. And it doesn’t get easier because they have a vagina.
I also think it’s important to mention the amount of transandrophobic TRFs who post things with the effort to silence trans men on our own struggles and oppression, and then turn around and post that they want to fuck a “tboy” or a “boypussy.” I remember seeing a post on tumblr from a very notable transandrophobic TRF trans woman, that was something to the extent of “idk why TMEs hate me so much, I’m trying to bridge the rift between us in bed.” It had several reblogs. I happened to see it from checking a “transfeminist” account for transandrophobia, which I obviously found. I was so disgusted and uncomfortable that I never screenshotted it, I didn’t even talk about it for at least a week to anybody, because it just left me with a sinking feeling. This particular trans woman is a VERY big name among transandrophobes and TRFs. She’s posted horrible things about trans men, and she obviously fetishizes trans men from the things that she’s said to me and my transmasculine friends. It’s one thing for somebody to fetishize trans men when they don’t have multiple social media accounts dedicated to talking about how much they hate trans men, but she does. A lot of people say that all TRFs/transandrophobic trans women are T4T lesbians, or lesbians in general. This is not true. Many transandrophobic trans women are open to dating trans men or even exclusively date trans men. This is predatory behavior. A trans person exclusively dating trans men isn’t inherently predatory, that’s just called being T4T, but it’s different when the person doing it hates trans men and views trans men as sex objects.
I saw a screenshot from instagram, from presumably a transandrophobic trans woman. The post was parodying “nonbinary people don’t owe you androgyny,” “trans men don’t owe you masculinity,” ect. The bit about trans men was “trans men owe the dolls dinner dates.” Again, posted by somebody who does not believe that trans men should have the language or even ability to talk about our own struggles and oppression, believes that trans men need to shut up and take TRFs on dates. I saw a post several months ago from a TRF saying that a trans man who makes porn is a “model trans man” because he doesn’t talk about trans men’s issues and just does porn. Essentially that he was “a good tboy who knows when to shut up and suck dick.” They went on to call trans men who were upset and uncomfortable with this blatant fetishization and objectification of trans men out on their “dry pussies”. TRFs and other trans people who seek to silence trans men and then fetishize us are a real problem in the trans community. Being T4T isn’t inherently safer than dating cis people for trans men, especially with the state of the trans community and the ideas that trans people have about trans men. I’m obviously T4T but I have experienced violence and other forms of harassment from some of the trans people that I’ve dated. I’ve experienced even more from trans people I’ve encountered on the internet and in IRL trans spaces.
I also think we need to have a discussion about the way that trans men who are tops/doms are treated by the people that they have sex with. Trans men who top/dom are essentially seen as pleasure dispensers. They are expected to make their partner cum and then not receive anything in return. I was sexually abused by both of my subs/bottoms before I stopped topping/domming, and while one of them was of course the cis man who correctively raped me, one was my cis girlfriend from college who wouldn’t take my “no” for an answer when she tried to make me do sexual activities with her when I didn’t want to. I was a highly dysphoric detransed lesbian who detransitioned because of the transandrophobia I had experienced since coming out, and she would make me dysphoric on purpose to “brat” with me. If I ever raised my voice after telling her “no” several times, she would get sad, and I’d have to comfort her, and then she’d do it again. She’s a teacher now. Trans men who bottom/sub are expected to just be holes for people to stick their dicks in. People, and women especially, in the queer/trans community refer to us as being like “cis men who can make women cum” and “if cis men had empathy,” then we are treated with none of the care/tenderness that we provide to the women in our lives. Trans men are expected by the trans/queer community to give up our bodies and our safety for other people’s pleasure. We are expected to be good sex dolls and “protect” the trans/queer community while not being protected when we need it, are abused by the people within our community, and actively being silenced when we talk about our needs from the community and the oppression that we face. We’re human meat shields, whipping boys, scapegoats. We are expected to bear the sins of cishet men by people who don’t have the systemic/social power to oppress/discriminate against cishet men, we are punished for things that disproportionally affect us as trans men, we are silenced when we speak up about this injustice, and then we are expected to be the “protectors” of the trans/queer community, while benefitting from none of the protection that we are forced to provide to others that could not care less if we live or die. If we say that we need to prioritize trans men, we are called misogynists and “tMRAs,” by people who totally aren’t TERFs because they only hate trans men, and being a transmasculine exclusionary radical feminist isn’t really trans exclusionary because we’re not trans in the way that trans women are. Trans men have the highest risk of sexual abuse in the trans community at around 50%, and there are probably even more that don’t disclose. We are sexually abused by the people we date/have sex with, and then they turn around and say that trans men are “very well represented” in porn because they think all trans men are skinny white fem/androgynous twinks who let people fuck our pussies. That’s all they see us as.
This is more of a rant than an actual thinkpiece. I am uncomfortable with the way that trans men are treated sexually by the trans community. We are sexually assaulted and harassed and then that abuse is denied because we “have male privilege” or “have AFAB privilege.” The people who fetishize our bodies say that we shouldn’t have a right to speak up for ourselves. The people who consume fetishized porn of trans men are saying that we have “such good representation” in porn for us. “Trans men are not invisible, our struggles are invisible.”
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