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Trans Attraction

CW: I touch on Transphobia/TERFs and I talk about sex a little bit.

I've been thinking a lot about my sexual and romantic attraction lately, which has been a sore subject for me a for a while. I kinda touched on this in the article I wrote about TERFs in the UK on my site in 2019 when I said that "I can't shake the feeling that my being attracted to women makes me less of a woman myself":

British Feminism Has A Transphobia Problem (December 2019)

I've struggled for a long time feeling gross, ashamed and dysphoric for even having attraction, especially sexual attraction, at all. I've found myself wishing I was asexual or that I could just "shut down" any kind of sexual thoughts or desires. The less time I spend thinking about it the better, I tend to consider it a distraction and a hindrance stopping me from concentrating on things that really matter. I'm starting to challenge this attitude.

Besides starting to come to terms with my bi(/pan?)sexuality (I've generally only considered myself a lesbian for a long time), I've realised something that I'm still trying to get to grips with. I don't know if this is a common thing among trans lesbians but I've found that there's something I find uniquely attractive about other trans women. I hope this doesn't make me a "chaser" (is it even possible to be a chaser when you yourself are trans? I dunno) because it's certainly not in a way that I'm fetishizing other trans women (at least I hope not?). When I look at other trans women I feel a kind of kinship, a shared experience that wouldn't exist between me and a cis woman. I guess I just like the thought of me and this potential other trans woman being able to connect, understand and support one another though our shared struggles with dysphoria and transphobia that only we can fully understand. When I try to imagine myself in a relationship with another trans women it feels very comfortable. Whereas when I try to imagine myself in a relationship with a cis woman, whilst still being somewhat comfortable with it, there are definite anxieties there, especially when it comes to anything intimate. While the thought of intimacy with another trans woman, while still nerve-wracking, is a lot more comfortable. (When it comes to my attraction to men, that's still something I'm very much figuring out, men are scary).

This isn't to say that I find all trans women attractive obviously but I do find myself kinda having crushes on a lot of fem trans women I see online. There's a kind of beauty I see in them specifically, the strength and bravery they display to persevere and insist upon their own identity as women, because I know how hard that is in the world we live in. Their bodies might not look completely the same as a cis woman's would, they might have a visible adam's apple or slightly broader shoulders than cis women typically do but, regardless of those things, or in fact maybe even because of them, to me they look incredibly feminine and gorgeous, just, ahhhh. Their trans-ness is beautiful to me.

Maybe I have unfairly pessimistic assumptions about cis lesbians due to all the TERF stuff I've seen online but I guess I just worry about them being TERFs, not fully perceiving me as a woman or at the very least not being able to understand me when dysphoria gets to me. Because of this, the thought of dating them is much more daunting than the thought of dating a fellow trans woman.

As I'm writing this I'm struggling to not feel like a weirdo for expressing why I find a lot of trans women so attractive. Is it wrong for me to feel this way? Should whether or not a woman is cis or trans not play a role in my attraction to them? Or maybe I'm just being too hard on myself and letting that shame and self-disgust of my sexuality kick in again? I dunno.

When I was writing just now about what I feel when I look at other trans woman, there was a little voice at the back of my mind saying: "Starshine, you're saying all these lovely things about these other trans women, but when you look in the mirror you don't think any of that stuff about yourself, you have at least one of those physical characteristics you described, maybe you need to concentrate on self-love before you start thinking about loving someone else?". I know, I know I should probably just go have therapy already and talk to somebody about this instead of writing it in a post nobody is going to read on some weird niche internet protocol. I should probably stop being so shy and reclusive and maybe actually go talk to other trans people, or talk to other people period before even thinking about relationships.

Maybe my hormones are just getting the better of me.