But not only is there a ton of variation there, it’s more complex to make the same kind of “transhet/fem gay” link between girls like that and straight male crossdressers, because those aren’t “communities” and the latter tends to be defined by secrecy.
But see the result: they end up arguing that a straight man who dresses as a woman in secret and holds onto male identity elsewhere, and a young trans lesbian who openly embraces social feminization in plain sight with no interest in male identity, have *the same gender psychology.*
You see how the typological conclusion “leads” all understanding of behavioral differences between trans women, as almost a forgone conclusion if we’re to pay attention to those differences at all?
It might actually be useful and interesting to explore why erotic cross dressing can provide relief for some sapphic trans women, and it’s not hard to see why that would be—erotization is a common psychological defense for processing shame and fear.
as a bi trans woman, I think there's something to be said about comphet and how friendships form. Like it was a bit of a cultural shock even knowing to expect it going from 'normatively we expect you are into women' before I came out to 'normatively we expect you are into men' after...
and I guess, when you are accepted more easily as a friend by cis dudes than by cis women if you are trans and sapphic, there's a lot of exposure to "femininity = shameful" even when it's not aimed directly at us, because men are more frequently overtly misogynistic.
so I get shame about liking women, shame about maybe sometimes liking men, shame about being too masculine, and shame about being too feminine, and both cis guys and women code switch between treating me as a guy or a woman in subtle and often weaponized ways to assert power or shame me -
to try to pressgang me into their group when it's convenient or exclude me when it's convenient.
annd yeah! If it weren't for not having much of a sex drive thanks to antidepressants and my own anxious hangups, I'd probably be a lot kinkier, just by default, from this kinda stuff. And I won't say being sometimes a bit sex repulsed isn't ALSO (sometimes) a product of that shame and anxiety.
>> for those whose inner sense of themselves is exclusively female, how TF else is it possible to experience one's developing sexuality other that what bastards like Bailey would pathologize as erotic cross dressing? 1/2
Also, subconsciously linking gender dysphoria to "erotic cross dressing" is a maladaptive defense mechanism to control, delay, and repress that dysphoria into discreet episodes while persisting in denial about being trans. 2/2
I seem to recall Serano saying something of the nature once. I think it was in one of her spoken word pieces and not sure if it was one in Whipping Girl or another she performed when I saw her workshop in 2009. Either way it was about channeling the shaming into sex.
But the specter of autogynephilia and all theories its proponents attach to it loom over the entire conversation, poisoning any effort to understand this by making it painful and humiliating for sapphic trans women to take ownership of any experiences that might cross into this territory.
I call this effect interpretive sabotage. It sabotages the ability of trans women to interpret our experiences because there’s already such an aggressive, motivated, and hostile set of interpretations being pushed onto us about those very experiences.
For real. I don’t know what it’s like for most trans people, but I am fortunate enough to have some internal feedback going on that occasionally drives home how real my own experience is. Without that idk if I would survive the narrative being shoved down my throat.
I first started feeling this from the “HSTS” angle: any desire of mine to explore the gay boy-trans girl overlap I directly see in my own life is already sabotaged with “whoa isn’t that basically HSTS?!” bsky.app/profile/godd...
This echoes for me somewhat from the detrans angle, the interpretive sabotage thing, albeit it is not of psychiatric origin per se. It feels difficult to explore and contextualise your feelings about your transition--
--when there's a spectre over you of "you're a delusional dabbler / transphobic grifter / damaged goods / etc." So you start thinking, hey I'm not sure I like being on T, maybe I shouldn't have, and the spectre immediately rears up, so much louder than you ever could be
I feel that far too much. When I came to regret having bottom surgery I immediately faced similar rhetoric which included pressure to stop HRT because of attitudes that any regret is automatically total regret and/or that all of transition was wrong for me.
It led to me going woodworked for several years, to stay out of sight and not attract attention to survive a hostile situation, rather than genuinely exploring who I am and like to be.
Reading the thread had me think that these guys have been so focused on trying to get easy wins to get desistance made standard they don't want to research into advanced stuff like orientation change, poly/mono, shifting expression, caretaking, pregnancy angst, partnership dynamics, etc.
I find it deeply funny in their desire to find some binary difference in trans femme folks, they won't even attempt a survey into 5 year, 10 year, 15, 20 etc changes in life, especially once someone hits a point they have spent more time transitioned than cis. Where that is an actual frontier
Sexology is just bad literature pretending to be science. If you read realist fiction and memoir by trans women you see the simple types of sexology are just crude reductions from the variations and habits of our lives, which our literature handles so much better.
Going back in time to smack my younger self over the head with this post.