I have deep philosophical conversations about gender and sexuality with the cis gay men in my life regularly. Not people I just know online. People I work with. People I went to school with. People involved in GSAs. People in my community. People occupying the same physical spaces as I am.
It is not wishful thinking or simply a fetish for me to say that I have more in common with these cis gay men than I do with anyone else. I know this to be a fact. They have told me this themselves.
“I never really was sold on the whole being a man thing.”
“I’m gay before I’m a man.”
“I don’t dislike my male body, but I’ve never been in love with the idea of being a man.”
“I suppose I’m attracted to masculinity, rather than body parts.”
“There are men with perfect Adonis bodies, and those are hot, but there’s also just… men. Of all bodies, all types. I like those too.”
“Don’t get me wrong, dick is nice, but there’s more to a man than that, you know?”
“It’s different, when a man likes a woman compared to when a man likes a man. We show it different. We express it different. We love them different.”
“I find myself uninterested in what straight men have to offer. There’s just something different about a gay man, how he acts, what he’s like.”
“I don’t really consider [sex with transgender people] like that. There’s something different about the way a trans man wants it than the way a woman wants it. The woman I have no interest in. The trans man, well… depends what he likes. Usually it’s what I like.”
All of these are word-for-word quotes from cis gay men describing their attraction to men. I want to be clear that not all of them considered themselves available to a transgender partner, at least not one pre-op, and yet still not only agreed that the way many gay trans men approach gender and sexuality was very similar to their own, but also agreed that because of this, gay transgender men had the right to be there, sharing space with them.
I am far more willing to listen to the men who have welcomed me into the fold, the men I personally know outside of the internet, off the computer, those I’ve hung out with and see daily at work and kiss and fuck, than some rando woman online who has never been involved in any of these communities and has no idea what she’s talking about. Don’t speak over the lived experiences of these cis gay men you claim to care so much about. Often times their relations to things are much different than what the internet would tell you.
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