#heterosexual (cisgender) male desire

[traitimdoithay]

me: damn why does the yugioh anime suck with how it handles all the female characters

shounen genre:

me: ah, of course

[wilcze-kudly]

Hey so can we like stop with the "Zutara is for the girls and Kataang is for the boys" thing. It's silly and it's breakdancing just on the edge of gender essentialism.

The assumption that there is something inherent to Zutara that appeals predominantly to women and Kataang that appeals predominantly to men is dishonest because every ship can have appeal to all genders.

The discussion of the "female gaze" in Zutara and the "male gaze" in Kataang is also redundant. I enjoy dissecting the concept of "the gaze", however it is important to note that the "female gaze" doesn't have a set definition or grouping of conventions it adheres to. Lisa French,  Dean of RMIT University’s School of Media and Communication says:

“The female gaze is not homogeneous, singular or monolithic, and it will necessarily take many forms... The aesthetic approaches, experiences and films of women directors are as diverse as their individual life situations and the cultures in which they live. The "female' gaze” is not intended here'to denote a singular concept. There' are many gazes."

Now excuse me as I put on my pretentious humanistics student hat.

Kataang's appeal to women and the female gaze

Before I start, I want to note that the female gaze is still a developing concept

There are very few female film directors and writers, and most of them are white. The wants and desires of women of colour, the demographic Katara falls into, are still wildly underepresented. Additionally, the concept of the female gaze had many facets, due to it being more focused on emotional connections rather than physical appearance as the male gaze usually is. Which means that multiple male archetypes fall into the category of "for the female gaze".

The "female gaze" can be best described as a response to the "male gaze", which was first introduced by Laura Mulvey in her paper: "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" , however the term "male gaze" itself was not used in the paper.

Mulvey brought up the concept of the female character and form as the passive, objectified subject to the active voyeuristic male gaze, which the audience is encouraged to identify, usually through the male character.

To quote her:

"In a world ordered by sexual imbalance', pleasure' in looking has been split between active'/male' and passive/female'. The determining male gaze' projects its fantasy onto the female' figure', which is styled accordingly."

Mulvey also brings up the concept of scopopfillia (the term being introduced by Freud), the concept of deriving sexual gratification from both looking and being looked at. This concept has strong overtones of voyeurism, exhibitionism and narcissism, placing forth the idea that these overtones are what keeps the male viewer invested. That he is able to project onto the male character, therefore being also able to possess the passive female love interest.

However, it's important to note that Mulvey's essay is very much a product of its times, focused on the white, heterosexual and cisgender cinema of her time. She also drew a lot of inspiration from Freud's questionable work, including ye ole penis envy. Mulvey's paper was groundbreaking at the time, but we can't ignore how it reinforces the gender binary and of course doesn't touch on the way POC, particularly women of colour are represented in film.

In her paper, Mulvey fails to consider anyone who isn't a white, cis, heterosexual man or woman. With how underrepresented voices of minorities already are both in media and everyday life, this is something that we need to remember and strive to correct.

Additionally Mulvey often falls into gender essentialism, which I previously mentioned at the beginning of this post. Funny how that keeps coming up

"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" started a very interesting and important conversation, and I will still be drawing from certain parts of it, however huge swathes of this text have already become near archaic, as our culture and relationship with media evolves at an incredible pace.

And as filmaking evolves, so does our definition of the male and female gaze. So let's see what contemporary filmakers say of it.

In 2016, in her speech during the Toronto International Film Festival , producer of the TV series Transparent, Jill Soloway says:

“Numero uno, I think the Female Gaze is a way of “feeling seeing”. It could be thought of as a subjective camera that attempts to get inside the protagonist, especially when the protagonist is not a Chismale. It uses the frame to share and evoke a feeling of being in feeling, rather than seeing – the characters. I take the camera and I say, hey, audience, I’m not just showing you this thing, I want you to really feel with me.

[Chismale is Soloway's nickname for cis males btw]

So the term "female gaze" is a bit of a misnomer, since it aims to focus on capturing the feelings of characters of all genders. It's becoming more of a new way of telling stories in film, rather than a way to cater to what white, cisgender, heterosexual women might find attractive in a man.

Now, Aang is the decided protagonist of the show, however, Atla having somewhat of an ensemble cast leads to the perspective shifting between different characters.

In the first episode of atla, we very much see Katara's perspective of Aang. She sees him trapped in the iceberg, and we immediately see her altruism and headstrong nature. After she frees Aang, we are very much first subjected to Katara's first impressions of him, as we are introduced to his character. We only see a sliver of Aang's perspective of her, Katara being the first thing he sees upon waking up.

We see that she is intrigued and curious of him, and very excited about his presence. She is endeared and amused by his antics. She is rediscovering her childish side with his help. She is confiding in him about her own trauma surrounding the Fire Nation's genocide of the Southern Waterbenders. She is willing to go against her family and tribe ans leave them behind to go to the Northern Water Tribe with Aang. We also see her determination to save him when he is captured.

As the show moves on and the plot kicks into gear, we do shift more into Aang's perspective. We see his physical attraction to her, and while we don't see Katara's attraction quite as blatantly, there are hints of her interest in his appearance.

This is where we get deeper into the concept of Aang and Katara's mutual interest and attraction for one another. While her perspective is more subtle than most would like, Katara is not purely an object of Aang's desire, no more than he is purely an object of her desire.

When analysing this aspect of Katara and Aang's relationship, I couldn't help but be reminded of how Célene Sciamma's Portrait of a lady on fire (in my personal opinion, one of the best studies of the female gaze ever created) builds up its romance, and how it places a strong emphasis on the mutuality of the female gaze.

Portrait of a lady on fire's cinematography is very important to the film. We see the world through the perspective of our protagonist, a painter named Marianne. We also see her love interest, Héloïse, the woman whom she is hired to paint a portrait of, through Marianne's lense.

We see Marianne analyse Héloïse's appearance, her beauty. We look purely through Marianne's eyes at Héloïse for a good part of the movie, but then, something unexpected happens. Héloïse looks back. At Marianne, therefore, in some way, also at the audience. While Marianne was studying Héloïse, Héloïse was studying Marianne.

We never shift into Héloïse's perspective, but we see and understand that she is looking back at us. Not only through her words, when she for example comments on Marianne's mannerisms or behaviours, but also hugely through cinematography and acting of the two amazing leads. (Noémie Merlant as Marianne and Adèle Haenel as Héloïse. They truly went above and beyond with their performances.)

This is a huge aspect of the female gaze's implementation in the film. The camera focuses on facial expressions, eyes and body language, seeking to convey the characters' emotions and feelings. There's a focus on intense, longing and reciprocated eye contact (I have dubbed this the Female Gays Gaze.). The characters stand, sit or lay facing each other, and the camera rarely frames one of them as taller than the other, which would cause a sense of power imbalance.

The best way to describe this method of flimaking is wanting the audience to see the characters, rather than to simply look at them. Sciamma wants us to empathise, wants us to feel what they are feeling, rather than view them from a distance. They are to be people, characters, rather than objects.

Avatar, of course, doesn't display the stunning and thoughtful cinematography of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and Katara and Aang's relationship, while incredibly important, is only a part of the story rather than the focus of it.

However, the 'Kataang moments' we are privy to often follow a similar convention to the ones between Marianne and Héloïse that I mentioned prior.

Theres a lot of shots of Katara and Aang facing each other, close ups on their faces, particularly eyes, as they gaze at one another.

Katara and Aang are often posited as on equal grounds, the camera not framing either of them as much taller and therefore more powerful or important than the other. Aang is actually physically shorter than Katara, which flies in the face in usual conventions of the male fantasy. (I will get to Aang under the male gaze later in this essay)

And even in scenes when Aang is physically shown as above Katara, particularly when he's in the Avatar state, Katara is the one to pull him down, maintaining their relationships as equals.

Despite most of the show being portrayed through Aang's eyes, Katara is not a passive object for his gaze, and therefore our gaze, to rest upon. Katara is expressive, and animated. As an audience, we are made aware that Katara has her own perspective. We are invited to take part in it and try to understand it.

Not unlike to Portrait of a Lady on Fire, there is a lot of focus placed on mannerisms and body language, an obvious example being Katara often playing with her hair around Aang, telegraphing a shy or flustered state. We also see her express jealousy over Aang, her face becoming sour, brows furrowed. On one occasion she even blew a raspberry, very clearly showing us, the audience, her displeasure with the idea of Aang getting attention from other girls.

Once again, this proves that Katara is not a passive participant in her own relationship, we are very clealry shown her perspective of Aang. Most of the scenes that hint at her and Aang's focus on their shared emotions, rather than, for example, Katara's beauty.

Even when a scene does highlight her physical appearance, it is not devoid of her own thoughts and emotions. The best example of this being the scene before the party in Ba Sing Se where we see Katara's looking snazzy in her outfit. Aang compliments her and Katara doesn't react passively, we see the unabashed joy light up her face, we can tell what she thinks of Aang's comment.

In fact, the first moment between Katara and Aang sets this tone of mutual gaze almost perfectly. Aang opens his eyes, and looks at Katara. Katara looks back.

There is, once again, huge focus on their eyes in this scene, the movement of Aang's eyelids right before they open draws out attention to that part of his face. When the camera shows us Katara, is zooms in onto her expression as it changes, her blinking also drawing attention to her wide and expressive eyes.

This will not be the first time emphasis is placed on Katara and Aang's mutual gaze during a pivotal moment in the show. Two examples off the top of my head would be the Ends of B2 and B3 respevtively. When Katara brings Aang back to life, paralleling the first time they laid eyes on one another. And at the end of the show, where their gaze has a different meaning behind it.

We see Katara's emotions and her intent telegraphed clearly in these instances.

In Book 1, we see her worry for this strange bald boy who fell out of an iceberg, which melts away to relief and a hint of curiosity once she ascertains that he isn't dead.

In B2 we once again see worry, but this time it's more frantic. Her relationship with Aang is much dearer to her heart now, and he is in much worse shape. When we see the relief on her face this time, it manifests in a broad smile, rather than a small grin. We can clearly grasp that her feelings for Aang have evolved.

In B3, we step away from the rule because Aang isn't on the verge of death or unconsciousness for the first time. It is also the first time in a situation like this that Aang isn't seeing Katara from below, but they are on equal footing. I attribute this to symbolising change of pace for their relationship.

The biggest obstacle in the development of Katara and Aang's romance was the war, which endangered both their lives. Due to this, there was a hesitance to start their relationship. In previous scenes that focused this much on Aang and Katara's mutual gaze, Aang was always in a near dead, or at least 'dead adjacent' position. This is is a very harsh reminder that he may very well die in the war, and the reason Katara, who has already endured great loss, is hesitant to allow her love for him to be made... corporeal.

However, now Aang is standing, portraying that the possibily of Katara losing him has been reduced greatly with the coming of peace, the greatest obstacle has been removed, and Katara is the one to initiate this kiss.

Concurrently, Katara's expression here does not portray worry or relief at all, because she has no need to be worried or relieved. No, Katara is blushing, looking directly at Aang with an expression that can be described as a knowing smile. I'd argue that this description is accurate, because Katara knows that she is about to finally kiss the boy she loves.

Ultimately, Katara is the one who initiates the kiss that actually begins her and Aang's romantic relationship.

Kataang's appeal to women is reflected in how Katara is almost always the one to initiate physical affection with Aang. With only 3 exceptions, one of which, the Ember Island kiss being immediately shown by the narrative as wrong, and another being a daydream due to Aang's sleep deptivation. The first moment of outwardly romantic affection between Aang and Katara is her kissing his cheek. And their last kiss in the show is also initiated by Katara.

I won't falsely state that Kataang is the perfect representation of the female gaze. Not only because the storyline has its imperfections, as every piece of media has. But also because I simply belive that the concept of the female gaze is too varied and nebulous to be fully expressed. With this essay, I simply wanted to prove that Kataang is most certainly not the embodiment of catering to the male gaze either. In fact it is quite far from that.

The aspects of Kataang that fall more towards embodying the female gaze don't just appeal to women. There's a reason a lot of vocal Kataang shippers you find are queer. The mutual emotional connection between Katara and Aang is something we don't have to identify with, but something we are still able to emphasise with. It's a profound mutual connection that we watch unfold from both perspectives that sort of tracends more physical, gendered aspects of many onscreen romances. You just need to see instead of simply look.

✨️Bonus round✨️

Aang under the gaze

This started off as a simple part of the previous essay, however I decided I wanted to give it it's own focus, due to the whole discourse around Aang being a wish-fullfilling self insert for Bryke or for men in genral. I always found this baffling considering how utterly... unappealing Aang is to the male gaze.

It may surprise some of you that men are also subjected to the male gaze. Now sadly, this has nothing to do with the male gaze of the male gays. No, when male characters, usually the male protagonist, are created to cater to the male gaze, they aren't portrayed as sexually desirable passive objects, but they embody the active/masculine aide of the binary Laura Mulvey spoke of in the quote I shared at the beginning of this essay.

The protagonist under the male gaze is not the object of desire but rather a character men and boys would desire to be.

They're usually the pinnacle of traditional, stereotypical masculinity.

Appearance wise: muscular but too broad, chiseled facial features, smouldering eyes, depending on the genre wearing something classy or some manner of armour.

Personalitywise they may vary from the cool, suave James Bond type, or a more hotblooded forceful "Alpha male" type. However these are minor differences in the grand scheme of things. The basis is that this protagonist embodies some manner of idealised man. He's strong, decisive, domineering, in control, intimidating... you get the gist. Watch nearly any action movie. There's also a strong focus placed on having sway or power over others. Often men for the male gaze are presented as wealthy, having power and status. Studies (that were proved to be flawed in the way the data was gathered, I believe) say that womem value resources in potential male partners, so it's not surprising that the ideal man has something many believe would attract "mates". [Ew I hated saying that].

Alright, now let's see how Aang holds up to these standards.

Well... um...

Aang does have power, he is the Avatar. However, he is often actually ignored, blown off and otherwise dismissed, either due to his age or his personality and ideals being seen as unrealistic and foolish. Additionally, Aang, as a member of a culture lost a century ago, is also often posited as an outsider, singled out as weak, his beliefs touted as the reason his people died out and.

Physically, Aang doesn't look like the male protagonist archetype, either. He isn't your average late teens to brushing up against middle aged. Aang is very much a child and this is reflected in his soft round features, large eyes and short, less built body. This is not a build most men would aspire to. Now, he still has incredible physical prowess, due to his bending. But I'm not sure how many men are desperate to achieve the "pacifist 12 year old" build to attract women.

Hailing from a nation that had quite an egalitarian system, Aang wouldn't have conventional ideas surrounding leadership, even if he does step up into it later. He also has little in the way of possessions, by choice.

As for Aang's personality, well...

I mean I wouldn't exactly call him your average James Bond or superhero. Aang is mainly characterised through his kindness, empathy, cheerful nature and occasional childishness (which slowly is drained as the trauma intesifies. yay.)

Aang is very unwilling to initiate violence, which sets him aside from many other male protagonists of his era, who were champing at the bit to kick some ass. He values nature, art, dance and fun. He's in tune with his emotions. He tries to desecalate situations before he starts a fight.

Some would say many of Aang's qualities could be classified as feminine. While the other main male characters, Zuko and Sokka try to embody their respective concepts of the ideal man (tied to their fathers), Aang seems content with how he presents and acts. He feels no need to perform masculinity as many men do, choosing to be true to his emotions and feelings.

These "feminine" qualities often attract ridicule from other within the show. He is emasculated or infantiliased as a form of mockery multiple times, the most notable examples being the Ember Island play and Ozai tauntingly referring to him as a "little boy". Hell, even certain Aang haters have participated in this, for example saying that he looks like a bald lesbian.

I'd even argue that, in his relationships with other characters, Aang often represents the passive/feminine. Especially towards Zuko, Aang takes on an almost objectified role of a trophy that can be used to purchase Ozai's love. [Zuko's dehumanisation of others needs to be discussed later, but it isn't surprising with how he was raised and a huge part of his arc is steerring away from that way of thinking.]

Aang and Zuko almost embody certain streotypes about relationships, the forceful, more masculine being a literal pursuer, and the gentler, more feminine being pusued.

We often see Aang framed from Zuko's perspective, creating something akin to the mutual gaze of Katara and Aang, hinting at the potential of Zuko and Aang becoming friends, a concept that is then voiced explicitly in The Blue Spirit.

However, unlike Katara, Zuko is unable to empathise with Aang at first, still seeing Aang as more of an object than a person. We have here an interesting imbalance of Aang seeing Zuko but Zuko meerly looking at Aang.

There is a certain aspect of queer metaphor to Zuko's pursuit of Aang, but I fear I've gotten off topic.

Wrapping this long essay up, I want to reiterate that I'm not saying that Zutara isn't popular with women. Most Zutara shippers I've encountered are women. And most Kataang shippers I've encountered are... also women. Because fandom spaces are occupied predominantly by women.

I'm not exactly making a moral judgement on any shippers either, or to point at Kataang and go: "oh, look girls can like this too. Stop shipping Zutara and come ship this instead."

I want to point out that the juxtaposition of Zutara and Kataang as respectively appealing to the feminine and masculine, is a flawed endeavour because neither ship does this fully.

The concept of Kataang being a purely male fantasy is also flawed due to the points I've outlied in this post.

Are there going to be male Kataang shippers who self insert onto Aang and use it for wish fulfilment? Probably. Are there going to be male Zutara shippers who do the same? Also probably.

In the end, our interpretation of media, particularly visual mediums like film are heavily influenced by our own biases, interests, beliefs andmost importantly our... well, our gaze. The creators can try to steer us with meaningful shots and voiced thought, directing actors or animating a scene to be a certain way, but ultimately we all inevitably draw our own conclusions.

A fan of Zutara can argue that Kataang is the epitome of catering to the male gaze, while Zutara is the answer to women everywhere's wishes.

While I can just as easily argue the exact opposite.

It really is just a matter of interpretation. What is really interesting, is what our gaze says about us. What we can see of ourselves when the subject gazes back at us.

I may want to analyse how Zutara caters to the male gaze in some instances, if those of you who manage to slog through this essay enjoy the subject matter.

[johannestevans]

The Joy of Trans Creation

On the liberty of making unapologetically transgender art.

Originally published in Prism & Pen.

For me as a child, there was no real transgender representation around me.

Transfeminine characters were exciting when I saw them, even though they were frequently the butt of jokes, highly sexualised, or the targets of violence from the narratives they appeared in. They were never afforded complex character arcs, and I can’t recall any trans women on my screens or on the pages of the books appearing for more than an episode or in small appearance before being killed or disappearing off-screen.

And trans men?

Nothing.

In the British soap series, Waterloo Road, there was a narrative about a trans guy that started when I was a young teenager myself, and it was… difficult. The narrative was clumsy and uninformed about trans experiences. It seemed more about cisgender parents’ anxieties about their trans children and was very conservative in extending liberty or freedom to the trans guy’s life or his body. He was sporty, a football player, and dykey — he was presented almost as if he was transitioning just to play sports.

And the obvious inspiration for this Waterloo Road plot, She’s The Man (2006) was…

Well, that wasn’t much to write home about either. The film is about a girl disguising herself as a boy in order to play soccer. I know that Amanda Bynes, who played the protagonist in She’s The Man, has talked in interviews about experiencing a lot of gender dysphoria whilst in the role, but what better encapsulation of the fact that trans roles were and still are so often played by cis actors who have no business doing so?

I remember watching She’s The Man as a kid and finding a lot of the jokes not very funny. These two trans male narratives, the only ones that I ever saw until I was much older, bore no resemblance to my life, my desires, and my feelings, whatsoever.

They were cisgender heterosexual people’s fantasies of transgender men. One is about a woman “thankfully” going back on her vile trans ways and revealing herself to be sexy and female after playing at being a pathetic and unmasculine man; the other is about an undesirable and lesbianish teenager who is “obviously” transitioning to get around misogyny, more than for any of his internal feelings.

I felt far more gender euphoria — far more excitement, more sense of feeling loved and cared for and genuinely represented and validated — when I saw effortlessly queer and fruity men on my screens. Characters like Hook and Smee in Hook (1991), or Armand and Albert in The Birdcage (1996): two silly, middle-aged men being overdramatic and in love with one another. Or characters like Hollywood Montrose in Mannequin (1987): fashion-focused, catty and, emotional.

Or, hell, even characters like the sexy gay leather bikers in the Blue Oyster Bar in the Police Academy movies — they’re intended as a recurring punchline, but nevertheless portrayed hot hairy men who dance the tango and unapologetically love and desire other men.

I did not feel like or want to be an eternal little boy for being transgender, continuously infantilised and emasculated, treated as if I wasn’t a real man. Moreover, I had no interest in feeling or acting as though manhood or masculinity or men were something I should have been superior to.

I’m a fashionable, pretty gay dude with so many joint problems that going for a jog can put me out of action for days. Narratives about straight trans guys, let alone ultra-sporty ones, couldn’t bear any less resemblance to my life or my desires as a man.

There’s a reason many cisgender people are attracted to these narratives about transmasculinity, and unfortunately, it has nothing to do with truly supporting the trans men who are lesbians, or who are sporty or straight. It has more to do with their feelings about which “women” are best to “allow” to transition, and so much of those feelings are based on their expectations of female attractiveness or desirability within heterosexual society, and never truly afford love or respect to those men.

And men like me?

We’re unthinkable, and thus, invisible.

Times have changed, a little — I do see more trans men on television and in film, bit by bit. I know that in animation particularly, great strides are being made in portraying various trans characters, and we see a much wider variety of trans characters in shows and film.

I do still think that I see far more they/them trans masc types who are often a white monolith with similar butch lesbian stylings, dyed hair, and certain piercings, often as a sort of introduction for cis hetero viewers to the concept of nonbinary identity or the use of they/them pronouns. I know many people like this in real life, nonbinary or trans, and the issue isn’t their physical appearance or the fact that they’re depicted like this — it’s that their characterisations are so often one-note.

I can’t think of seeing a character introduced as nonbinary who appears more transfeminine, or who characters would automatically label as “he” instead of “she” before being corrected to they/them, because nonbinary identity is treated in popular media as a sort of woman-lite; I can think of one gay trans guy who’s in Shameless; I can’t think of many trans men on television at all or in film who are fat, non-white or disabled.

Television and film are still a long way behind the beautiful diversity of real trans experience — but I write books and short stories. I get to create, as a gay trans man, trans men like me, and trans men like my friends, and craft narratives about trans experience that cisgender people would never be able to.

I published my second novel this month. One of the main characters is a transmasc fallen angel with BPD — he’s cold and arrogant, manipulative, cruel, and at the same time, he’s endlessly loving and charismatic, he’s beautiful and savage, he’s radical and believes strongly in his ideas, and in the rights of everybody.

I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams as a child seeing a character like that in any book I read. But many other trans men, trans people, queer people, and readers in general, will be able to pick up my book and connect to that character, see themselves in him, and love him or despise him as they might any other character.

There is no limit as an indie author to the trans characters that I can create, or how many of them I can have. I don’t have to limit myself to having a singular trans man on a cast of cis-hetero characters, his whole person and physicality aligned to the cisgender stereotype of transmasculinity.

I have dozens of trans characters in the universes I create, and many of them are trans men like me, or not: fat trans men, trans men of colour, Jewish trans men, disabled trans men, traumatised trans men. They’re tailors, revolutionaries, students, teachers, historians, archivists, office workers, stablehands, fops, librarians, adventurers, rogues, pirates, sailors, bastards or angels, heroes or villains.

The sheer joy of that reality is striking me regularly at the moment whenever someone leaves a kind or enthusiastic comment on my works or in their reviews. There’s so much joy that people display in reading my short stories or buying my books, and God, the wonder that I feel when I attend conventions or events and people recognise me or recognise my work and enthuse about it to me.

There is no greater compliment to me, no better assurance, no more loving thing to be told or to overhear, than “Finally, I feel seen.”

“He’s just like me!” or “I’ve never felt so represented,” or “Oh, I want to be him. I am him already. I love him.”

It’s lonely to be transgender.

In a society that punishes and penalises any acts of gender transgression or perceived deviation from the norm or expectation, the transgender or nonbinary or otherwise gender-nonconforming person is constantly at risk — and aware of the risk — of ostracisation, of victimisation, of violence, or assault. We go through life aware that we may be attacked or discredited, violently assaulted, denied medical care, treated as unworthy of love, abused, harmed, hurt.

We must fear and be wary of isolation from our friends, our loved ones, and our communities, because society fears us and has been taught it can hate us. Other people, those that we love, that we care about, forging those connections and keeping them strong, they are how we can survive.

And how do we do that, when we don’t know in our heart of hearts that those like us exist? When we can’t be sure that we exist?

I was very lucky as a young man to feel confident and assured in seeing myself and then establishing myself as like the queer, fruity men that I saw and loved on the screen, no matter that they weren’t made with the thought of transgender men like me. Yet so many others, people I talk to, people I’ve never heard of, do not have that assurance.

They stand in front of a mirror and they don’t see anything. To feel transgender before one’s transition is often to see oneself or think of oneself as existing in potentia. We are an egg yet to crack and hatch; we are a soul without a vessel as yet.

How can we imagine a future for ourselves when we can’t envisage it? When we have no framework or canvas or idea of how a person like us can look, can live, can exist? How can we conceive of what we might be or what we truly are, when we might be grappling with our own pains and trauma and dysphoria, and at the same time society’s disregard of us, when we have never known or thought of others like us existing — let alone existing in beautiful diversity, in variety, in the complexity that we truly do?

Whenever I get one of those comments or whenever someone says a kind word to me about my work as a trans man and I see the light in that person’s eyes or the enthusiasm in the words they’ve written, there is an unspeakably immense happiness and joy in it.

To have taken part in that, to have created a mirror for that person to see themselves in, a character or characters that make that person feel real— not merely validated or represented, but seen and loved and cared for by a complete stranger, I can name no greater privilege.

It’s a shame I didn’t have that in my childhood, sure, but what’s important is that I and, far more importantly, a whole variety of trans and nonbinary creators, are doing that work today.

In Daniel Ortberg’s Something That May Shock and Discredit You, there’s a truly beautiful quote:

As my friend Julian puts it, only half winkingly: “God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.”

In being transgender I have created myself — no longer in potentia, I have developed and evolved. I’ve played with my hair and my face and my jewellery and my clothes; I’ve fed and nurtured my masculinity and my love for men and manhood as a gay man; I have created myself, and that’s been very joyful for me…

But to create works that help other people, transgender or otherwise, men or otherwise, create themselves? See for themselves the sort of people they’d like to be, how they would like to make themselves created?

That is a triumph beyond measure, and I am so grateful to do so.

[toc-the-elder]

Warning: gross sex stuff. And surgery. And very long post.

I just wish someone was there for me through all this surgery bullshit. I need help. I am 99% sure this is what I want and what I desperately need. I have never once in my entire life felt sexually comfortable with anyone. Even when I was having boring "heterosexual" sex with my cisgender girlfriend, I struggled to finish. I tried my best to please her, but I never felt like anything I did pleased me, other than getting her off. And since I began my transition, I've had a lot more sex than before, and the majority of my partners have been guys (still prefer women but whatevs) and I have always felt uncomfortable with it, specifically because of my anatomy. It's always felt wrong. I've always felt like a disappointment. It's always felt like a placeholder, something I must make do with in the interim. And the few sexual partners I've had who haven't been weird about it (the others either being completely fixated on my crotch to an uncomfortable degree, or so squeamish to even have contact with it that we made out at a 45° angle) have been accommodating and have tried their best to satisfy me. And I have been satisfied. Never to completion in a traditional "male" sense, but I certainly had climaxes, something that HRT has blessed me with. But even so, I have never felt truly fulfilled. None of it ever left me without wanting more. I just feel awkward, and often find myself apologising for my own anatomy. And don't get me wrong, I've had great, passionate, satisfying sex from doing it up the bum, but my tolerance for the prep and the pain is rapidly diminishing. I have used toys to get myself off like once in over a year. Not because it no longer gets me off, it just reminds me of my shortcomings as a woman.

And after this most recent relationship thing, I don't think there's any healthy path forward for me sexually without surgery. This isn't working. It just isn't.

And beyond the sexual, just the practicalities make sense to me. I spend all day uncomfortable. I wear three pairs of underwear to try and hide my anatomy and allow me to wear clothes that let me feel confident. It takes me like 10 minutes to take a piss because I have to make sure the tuck is gonna be comfortable for the foreseeable future. Half the time, if a chair is just slightly at the wrong angle, just sitting down is painful and uncomfortable. And I hate it.

I haven't been swimming in 14 years. It began as a means of hiding my scars, but now it's just because I don't want people staring at my crotch.

I hate what I see in the mirror. I hate having my incredible figure punctuated by this ugly flap of meat hanging off of it. It makes me not want to be seen naked, even when I am home alone.

I want to be comfortable, be it in bed with someone, or just in my own pants, and I don't see a path to that eventuality without surgery.

But with all the above said, what if I'm wrong?

What if I make this decision, and as soon as I'm out of the OR, I realise I've made a huge mistake? What if I regret it a decade from now? What if I regret it in two?

My transition has been a long series of final decisions, but not all of them are as final as others. Sure, boobs are somewhat permanent, but I could always get a mastectomy if I changed my mind. Sure, changing my name was permanent, but I could change it back if I wanted to. Sure, getting a gender recognition certificate would be permanent, but how often is anyone gonna see my birth certificate anyways? My social transition is pretty permanent, but I could theoretically swallow my shame and walk it back if it came to it. But surgery... That's something different, something completely unreversible in every sense of the word.

And as absolutely sure as I am with this surgical path forward, the physically permanent nature of it still has me hesitating. And it's not like I'm hesitating out of some hidden desire to use my junk in the traditional "male" manner. I don't really have much of a desire there anymore. I haven't been with enough women since my transition to know, but honestly I can't justify putting my happiness on hold on the pipe dream (pun intended) of one day meeting a nice girl who will let me rail her. And even then, I don't even know if that's what I want from other women anyway. But even so, the fact that this cannot be undone has me standing at a cliff's edge. All because I might theoretically maybe regret it one day, despite having 30 years of regret at my current situation behind me already.

But it's not like I have any plans of walking my transition back. I don't want to. For the first time in my life, I smile at my own reflection. I like the woman I have grown into. She's kind and weird and clever and confident and funny in her own way and she's pretty and she has an amazing body and gorgeous hair (sometimes) and everyone always tells her she has a great sense of style. And that woman is me. I finally became who and what I always wanted, nay needed to be. And I have no designs to surrender any of that to the dumpy, miserable, ugly, undesirable, unremarkable nothingburger of a "man" that everyone used to know. I hated who I was. I hated myself for decades. "He" sucked, and should stay dead.

And if I am to embrace my womanhood, I want to be as complete a woman as I can be. And that means surgery. I know that surgery isn't a requirement to be a complete woman, but I cannot deny that I feel incomplete. I cannot deny that I sit atop a mountain of sexual dalliances, each unsatisfactory, some moreso than others. I cannot deny that I still feel uncomfortable seeing myself naked. And I can't deny that I spend my time incredibly uncomfortable, be it whether I am wearing three pairs of knickers or not.

So for my own mental housekeeping:

Pro:

Currently feel uncomfortable sexually

Would probably feel more comfortable sexually

Currently feel uncomfortable generally

Would feel more comfortable wearing a single pair of underwear

Would probably feel less weird about people staring at my crotch

Would probably feel less like a sexual fetish for others to use

Would be able to go swimming again

Wouldn't have to prep for sex in advance

Less butt stuff

Would feel more of a woman

Would probably feel confident naked

Would force the NHS to permanently supply me with HRT

Can ask someone to eat my pussy

Con:

The surgery and journey itself (temporary)

Might regret (hypothetical)(and statistically unlikely)(but theoretically possible)

Big permanent change (non-material, no real consequences unless I actually regret the change)

People generally won't treat me any better because nobody except those I have sex with will really know (people treat me like shit anyways so what's new)

Might eliminate one of the few reasons someone might want to have sex with me (but do I really want to have sex with someone who is only interested in me because of a transphobic assumption of what genre of genitalia I have?)

I think the most frustrating part about all of this is that nobody was there to discuss it with me. My family are obviously grossed out about it, despite being very supportive. I don't really want to discuss my junk with Jack, he might be my best friend but that's weird. And the gender clinic don't have a therapist anymore and don't plan on getting a new one. So I've just have to deal with this on my own.

But at the end of the day, as much as I worry that I am convincing myself of something I might one day regret, there is one factor that tips me to one side of the scale than the other:

If this wasn't for me, then why is it that whenever I picture myself being intimate with someone, I have a vagina? Like I assume normal people don't experience that. I assume normal people don't type paragraphs upon paragraphs and bullet point lists about the pros and cons of their genitals, right? I assume that to feel this much discomfort and explaining is necessary is not something normal people experience. Right?

I know I've made up my mind. And frankly, this is as sure as I have ever been about anything ever. But even so, I find myself unsure, and it just makes me wonder how sure I can be about anything really. I just wish there had been someone there to tell me I am making the right choice.

I have my second surgery referral next week.

[03josten]

Some of my favourite terminology for sex, sexuality, and gender that have mostly fell out of use:

Sapphist: Similar to the term Sapphic which is still in use, derived from the woman loving Greek poet Sappho. The -ist has implications of doing rather than being. A Sapphist is a woman who has romantic and sexual relationships with other women. It was commonly used in the 19th and early 20th century, eventually replaced by lesbian in common usage. Some famous historical figures who used this term include Vita Sackville-West, who also used the terms lesbian and homosexual.

Mukhannathun: Translates roughly to "effeminate ones" or "ones who resemble women", typically refers to a feminine male, an intersex person, or one whose sex is indistinct. Modern scholars place the term Mukhannath in correlation with trans feminine. Mukhannathun traditionally took on the social roles of women in Saudi Arabia and feature in Ḥadīth Islamic literature. They were often musicians and entertainers, Abū ʿAbd al-Munʿim ʿĪsā ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Dhāʾib (or Tuwais) being perhaps the first famous Mukhannath musician. I could not find any depictions of Mukannathun.

Invert: Sexology in the early 20th century believed that same sex desire and cross gender identification were natural in some people. It was coined in German by Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal (1833-1890) and translated across Europe and eventually into English as sexual inversion by John Addington Symonds Jr. (1840-1893) in 1883. Inverts were people whose natural sex instinct (heterosexual, cisgender) were "inverted", causing a natural desire for the same sex or to live as the other sex. It was thought that most inverts desired a relationship with a "normal" member of their own sex, for example a masculine presenting woman would desire a feminine presenting "normal" woman, a feminine presenting man would desire a masculine or "normal" man. While most sexologists thought sexual inversion was natural, they worried about corruption of "normal" people by inverts. The writer 'John' Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943) identified as an invert and explored the life of inverts in her 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness.

Uranism: A Uranian was a man who was romantically or sexually interested in other men. One of the earliest records of the term comes from Friedrich Schiller's 'Sixth Letter' in the Aesthetic Education of Man in 1795. It is derived from the ancient Greek goddess Aphrodite Urania, a manifestation of Aphrodite who was free of physical desire and instead was attracted by mind and soul. Ancient Greek literature was very important in the early formations of queer identity and self-recognition. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was known to use the term Uranian.

Tribadism: Derived from the Greek "tribas" which means "to rub", tribadism denotes both a sexual position (now known as tribbing or scissoring) and a woman who seeks to sexual dominate and/or penetrate another woman. This term could also be used to describe an intersex person who lives as female and is the penetrating partner during sex with women. It became the most common word to describe any kind of sexual intimacy between women in English literature from the 16th to 19th centuries. Marie Antoinette, queen of France from 1773 to 1792 was "defamed" in many anti-monarchist newspapers as being a tribade.

Eonism: Eonism was coined by English sexologist Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) to describe cross gender identification and presentation. "Eon" after the French diplomat Charlotte-Geneviève-Louise-Augusta-Andréa-Timothéa d'Éon de Beaumont, who was assigned male at birth but lived as a woman from 1777 until her death in 1810. Eonism was later replaced by transvestism in popular usage in the early to mid 20th century, coined by Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) in 1910.

Eunuch: the term Eunuch has many connotations but the one common factor that almost all definitions share is that a eunuch is an intentionally castrated male. Eunuchs can also be uncastrated, but put into the social role as eunuch due to their 1) feminine presentation 2) inability to procreate 3) attraction to men. Eunuchs were not seen as men in most cultures, they were specifically chosen and castrated in order to fill a specific, separate social role from men and women. It was sometimes punitive, for example under Assyrian law men who were caught in sexual acts with other men were castrated. Eunuchs often had positions in royal households in the Ancient Middle East, their sexlessness was seen to enhance their loyalty to the crown as they were less likely to be distracted by sex or marriage, and it also allowed for jobs to be given on merit, and not inherited since Eunuchs could not reproduce. In Ancient Greece certain sects of male priests were eunuchs. China had Eunuchs who were fully castrated (penis and testicles) and high ranking in imperial service. In Vietnam, many eunuchs were self castrated in order to gain employment in the royal households.

Homophile: coined in 1924 by Karl-Günther Heimsoth (1899-1933) in his dissertation Hetero- und Homophilie. The term was in common use in the 50s and 60s in gay activism groups. It was an alternative to homosexual coined in 1868 by Károly Mária Kertbeny (1824-1882) which was thought to have pathological and sexual implications, whereas homophile prioritised love and appreciation over the sex act or pathology. It is still in use in some parts of northern Europe. The Homophile Action League was founded by lesbian couple Ada Bello (1933-2023) and Carole Friedmann (1944-?) in Pennsylvania, U.S.A. in 1968, a year before the Stonewall Riots.

[thricedead]

This is going to sound like CRAZY armchair psyhchology crap but without exaggeration I think that Jojos Bizarre Adventure part 7: Steel Ball Run can be used to agitate and observe latent homosexual (and Id even go as ar as to say submissive) desires in cisgender heterosexual identifying men. I have attentively studied this in real life and here are the results of my research.

In a real bad phase of my life, I hung around about 4 or 5 men (all but one identified as cishet, one identified as bisexual) who liked Jojos Bizarre Adventure. Weirdly, ALL 5 of these men named Steel Ball Run as either their parsonally favorite part, or the part they perceived to be objectively highest quality. This baffled me a lot, because while me and my female and transmasc friends enjoyed Steel Ball Run to varying degrees, and it does differ from the previous parts by making a jump from shounen to seinen which affected the story dynamics and maturity, its not really too perfect. However, none of the cis men I interviewed brought this up directly in their reasoning of why they value SBR so much. They each listed a different reason, and those were:

Heterosexual men: Villain has a more interesting and realistic ideology (nationalism) than the previous villains whise goals were cliched (a greed for power, stability, revenge). The story is about a journey, they enjoy this because it makes the pacing dynamic and builds up expectations for the goal (however this was also a case in part 3, and the man who said this does not particularly enjoy part 3). The stakes feel high and you can really sympathize with Johnny because he is trying to improve his own life, he enjoys how selfish Johnny is (but this is also the case in part 5 protagonist Giorno, who is very self centered and goal oriented in the same vein)

Bisexual man: he listed some of the reasons above, but also noted that he enjoys how the relationship between the male protags easily reads as romantic even though he didnt put too great a focus on this

When the bisexual man brought this up, it prompted me to compare the relationship between Gyro and Johnny to the other popular ships in the Jojo fandom (most of them enjoying a LOT more popularity and fan content than Gyro/Johnny) and I feel like the difference is in hmm lets say. Gyro being the first "Jobro" in the saga to play a central, extremely tangible and also multiple role in Johnnys life/arc. This isnt of much consequence to a person whos in Jojo for shipping, bc since they are approaching with predetermination to find ship content, that content is more easily squeezed out of a pair who has some fun and memorable scenes like Avpol n Bruabba, than Gyjo who do not really share much in the way of memorable oneliners and comedic gay framing, but instead sort of more subtly complete each others arcs. I feel like this sort of a dynamic appeals to cishet men because it is one of DEEP malemale affection (it really is just fondness and affection that is hard to misread as just admiration at the others strength/character. Johnny having the discomforting emotional realization that he is prepared to sacrifice his goal of curing his disability and proving himself to his father in order to stay with Gyro is a prominent topic n conflict in SBR. Gyros death is the SOLE death of a companion in JJBA [and there are many] to which the protagonist responds not with vengeful rage but by breaking down into pathetic, emasculating tears, and making a naive blunder that causes the antagonist to overpower him. Even once Johnny does turn the tables, its notable that he is underwhelmed and unsatisfied once he fulfills his goals of walking and making his father clap for him, with sorrow at the loss of Gyro taking precedence. The last scene in the entire story is Johnny setting sail to return Gyros corpse to his homeland, assuming a much more pacified and mature disposition than before and telling Gyro "Let's go home" as he leaves his own homeland. Also, the series of chapters where Gyro dies is called "break my heart, break your heart" with covers featuring a sobbing Johnny with the ghost of Gyro lol). This is the most heavily established and emotionally weighty Jojo/Jobro relationships, and unlike some others, it is never put on a shameful pedestal of being a "gay gag" like many other moments of perceived homosexuality in Jojo that are heavily framed as jokes or oddities. Because of this, I feel that the cishet men reading SBR are able to get "into" this relationship between men because it isnt ever acknowledged as a relationship that crosses the boundaries of "appropriate" malemale friendship, even though it does so for the established world of Jojo.

Because they can indulge in and identify within the duo of Gyro and Johnny without feeling like thats "gay", the men I observed and interviewed allowed themselves to get emotionally invested in the concept of cohabitation and affection with a man eithout even realizing theyre doing so. Most of these men vehemently denied that Johnny and Gyro are gay, but even so, they admitted (whether explicitly or implicitly) to being drawn to it as a dynamic they havent been invested into previously (bc they dont want either anything explicitly gay nor something that caters primarily to women bc they are misogynists). Two men were even able to jokingly agree that Gyro plays something akin to a "manic pixie dream girl" role to Johnny, being a deus ex machina attractive companion who turns Johnnys world upside down, gives him a goal, helps to affirm him, makes him laugh and encourages him etc. And ultimately sacrifices himself for Johnnys sake, and becomes his motivation beyond death to defeat the villain, Johnnys "man pain". Despite playing this role traditionally reserved for disposable female characters, Gyro is not really distinctly effeminate in the world of Jojo, and also plays the much more "appropriate" roles of being Johnny's mentor in mastering the power of Spin, a powerful fighter in his own right, and a male travel companion who tells tales of his trysts with women and dirty jokes and so on. Because Gyro embodies many roles, both that of a yet nonexistant woman in Johnnys life (Johnny goes on to have a heterosexual marriage, yes, but only once he's avenged and likely set Gyro to rest) AND of a man, he is safe and appropriate for these cishet men to be drawn to. When asked why they like Gyro, they can always say something like "he's funny, he's powerful, he's resourceful" etc. A MAJOR dimension of his character which is being Johnny's "heroine" is noticed and internalized, but it doesn't have to be acknowledged, and thus exists without threatening the cisheterosexuality of the male reader.

Here comes the "reach" part, but despite embodying the "heroine" role, Gyro is the older, physically and emotionally "larger" and more assertive of the two men. He habitually passes "lessons" onto Johnny and is shown to be pretty "macho" (implicitly dominant) in his pursuit of women. He is also Italian <- kind of relevant in my head because at least here Italian men are stereotyped as pushy and demanding lovers LOL. So like. I feel that there's something really really telling in these specific (and maybe other but who knows) men who all pursue very traditionally cisheteropatriarchal relationships IRL in which they expect to financially and emotionally (to a degree where this is expected of a man) provide for their female partners to feel drawn to the character of Gyro (in the way of admiration rather than projection). Because I don't really think any of them envisions themselves uprooting the dynamic Johnny has with Gyro (in the hypothetical case of meeting Gyro lmao), I think they'd all want to be his little male friend mentee and learn Spin from him and well what happens in the tent stays in the tent but I don't think they're calling the shots if you get me. (Gestures vaguely) If the men I spoke to, being attached to Jojo to the degree they were, didn't have a single weird dream about being manhandled by Gyro call me Mucius Scaevola and I'll put my right hand into an open flame.

TLDR we all know men are emotionally stunted AF and crave malemale closeness but won't reach out for it bc they don't want to be gay and I don't really pity them or care about them but it's kind of reallyreallyreally funny seeing a cishet guy literally running a fever from his hardon for a jacked Italian superman to take him on a journey of self-discovery, fuck him in the ass and die for him without even realizing what he is going through and why he likes the comic so much lol. Let them simmer, don't tell them what they're experiencing and why it's their fault, it's really funny. Unless you're a girl who wants to top her bf reaaally badly then make him read SBR and buy a hat.

If you read this far and still don't trust me on the framing of Gyro and think it's just typical shounen stuff, look carefully at the framing of these chapter/volume covers. My special note is that this is not supposed to pander to women, because Araki has given a whole interview to a really pushy fujoshi fan during SBR's run and was kind of extremely surprised and unsettled (sometimes rightfully bc the woman was an incest pedo shipper um) at the idea that women read malemale Jojo relationships as homosexual and enjoy this. It's just that Araki also really wants to get fucked by a jacked Italian man and is drawing this shit for himself and other men which is kind of really really funny to witness from the outside omfg.

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Abstract

The question whether some men have a bisexual orientation—that is, whether they are substantially sexually aroused and attracted to both sexes—has remained controversial among both scientists and laypersons. Skeptics believe that male sexual orientation can only be homosexual or heterosexual, and that bisexual identification reflects nonsexual concerns, such as a desire to deemphasize homosexuality. Although most bisexual-identified men report that they are attracted to both men and women, self-report data cannot refute these claims. Patterns of physiological (genital) arousal to male and female erotic stimuli can provide compelling evidence for male sexual orientation. (In contrast, most women provide similar physiological responses to male and female stimuli.) We investigated whether men who self-report bisexual feelings tend to produce bisexual arousal patterns. Prior studies of this issue have been small, used potentially invalid statistical tests, and produced inconsistent findings. We combined nearly all previously published data (from eight previous studies in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada), yielding a sample of 474 to 588 men (depending on analysis). All participants were cisgender males. Highly robust results showed that bisexual-identified men’s genital and subjective arousal patterns were more bisexual than were those who identified as exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. These findings support the view that male sexual orientation contains a range, from heterosexuality, to bisexuality, to homosexuality.

The status of male bisexuality as a sexual orientation—that is, the idea that some men are sexually aroused and attracted to both sexes—has a controversial history (1). Although some men identify as bisexual and have sexual experiences with men and women, the extent to which this reflects an underlying bisexual orientation has been questioned. Early sex researchers Krafft-Ebing (2) and Hirschfeld (3) believed that bisexual behavior and identification occurred primarily among monosexual (i.e., either heterosexual or homosexual) men for reasons other than a bisexual orientation. For example, some homosexual men identify as bisexual, or engage in sex with women, due to social pressures that favor heterosexuality. In response to those who doubted the existence of a bisexual orientation, Kinsey proposed a quasi-continuous scale of sexual orientation, proclaiming: “Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white” (ref. 4, pp. 638–639). With his scale, Kinsey demonstrated that self-reported bisexual attraction and behavior are not rare. However, because the scale relied on self-reports, results could not provide definitive evidence for bisexual orientation. For example, surveys have shown that a large proportion of men who identify as gay or homosexual had gone through a previous and transient phase of bisexual identification (5, 6).

Other reasons why bisexual men’s self-reported sexual feelings have sometimes been questioned likely include cognitive and emotional biases of the questioners. Some heterosexual and homosexual men may find it relatively easy to understand each other’s monosexuality because both have strong sexual attraction to one sex and virtually none to the other. For this reason, these men may have more difficulty accepting bisexuality as it challenges their binary conceptualizations of sexual orientation (7). Furthermore, bisexual individuals may be mistrusted and stigmatized by both heterosexual and homosexual people, and perceived as untrustworthy, promiscuous, and unable to commit (8–10).

Self-reported measures of sexual attraction, interest, and arousal are useful and ubiquitous in sex research. When self-reports are questioned, however, other valid measures are desirable. One promising approach to empirical verification of self-reported male bisexuality as an orientation uses penile plethysmography (i.e., a strain gauge around the penis) to study genital sexual arousal patterns to erotic stimuli featuring men or women (but not both). Examples of stimuli used in these studies include videos of sexual interactions between actors or of solitary actors masturbating (11, 12). Such an approach has several advantages: It relies on physiological processes rather than self-report; it is difficult to consciously manipulate (13); and, for men, sexual arousal to attractive women or men is arguably equivalent to sexual orientation (1). This approach has been used in a handful of studies focusing on male bisexuality with mixed results. Some studies failed to provide evidence that bisexual-identified men had bisexual arousal patterns (11, 14). One other study with stringent recruitment criteria (i.e., minimum criteria for both sexual and romantic experience across sexes) found evidence for bisexual arousal (12). A recent study using less stringent recruitment criteria also found evidence that bisexual-identified men had bisexual physiological arousal patterns (15). All existing studies have been of small to modest size; the largest had 114 participants. Notably, across these studies, bisexual-identified men self-reported subjective arousal to both male and female stimuli, even in samples where their genital arousal did not reflect such a pattern.

Previous research may have not employed sufficiently rigorous statistical tests, further complicating the question of whether bisexual-identified men show bisexual physiological arousal patterns. Crucial predictions regarding bisexual orientation concern U-shaped (or inverted U-shaped) distributions, which previous studies tested via quadratic regression. However, this test may be insufficient to reliably detect U-shaped distributions (16). This is because significant quadratic regressions can occur if a linear regression changes slope over the range of the predictor, even if the sign of the slope does not change. Demonstrating U-shaped distributions without the threat of incorrect interpretation requires showing slope sign reversal from low to high values of the predictor. For example, if the left arm of the estimated regression slope is significantly positive, then the other arm needs to be significantly negative in order to result in a valid, inverse U-shaped estimate.

With the limitations of previous work in mind, the aim of this study was to examine the extent to which men who self-report bisexual orientation exhibit bisexual genital and self-reported arousal patterns. Our study is unique with respect to its large sample and its employment of a version of Simonsohn’s (16) “two-lines” test of U-shaped (or inverted U-shaped) distributions. Data included 606 male participants (with 474 remaining for genital analyses and 588 remaining for self-reported analyses following exclusions) (Materials and Methods) from American, Canadian, and British studies that collected data on men’s self-reported Kinsey scores and their genital and self-reported arousal to male and female erotic stimuli and to neutral stimuli (e.g., footage of landscapes and wildlife). These studies were conducted over the course of approximately two decades, from the years 2000 to 2019. Kinsey scores range from 0 (exclusively heterosexual) to 3 (equal attraction to both sexes) to 6 (exclusively homosexual). Scores of 0 and 6 are usually considered monosexual, and 1 to 5 nonmonosexual. Scores of 2 to 4 are generally accepted to comprise the bisexual range of the Kinsey scale (17).

This study focuses only on male sexual orientation, despite the equal scientific importance of understanding female sexual orientation, for several related reasons. The question of whether bisexual arousal patterns exist has been less controversial about women than men (1). Historically, there was no parallel debate about female sexual orientation to that between skeptics [e.g., Krafft-Ebing (2) and Hirschfeld (3)] and proponents (e.g., Kinsey) (4) of the validity of male bisexuality. Recent scientific developments have supported important and potentially relevant differences in the expression of male and female sexual orientation. In laboratory research, the large majority of women exhibit similar subjective and physiological sexual arousal to both male and female stimuli, despite heterosexual identification (18, 19). Furthermore, the idea that female sexuality is especially “fluid” with respect to gender, with some women situationally attracted to men or women depending on circumstances, has been well-established (20). Male, but not female, self-reported sexual orientation shows a bimodal distribution (21), supporting the idea that male bisexuality is relatively uncommon whereas female bisexuality is less so. Thus, converging lines of evidence suggest that there are important differences in the expression of male and female sexual orientation, perhaps especially bisexuality. Consequently, research exploring the validity of bisexual identification–and especially research comparing the genital response of bisexual and monosexual persons–has been pursued more vigorously for male than for female sexual orientation. The men cumulatively studied in the research on male sexual orientation have been aggregated to comprise the large sample used in the present study.

Results

Fig. 1 presents participants’ ipsatized (i.e., standardized within subjects across erotic and neutral stimuli) genital and self-reported arousal to female and male stimuli across the Kinsey scale, in within-subject SDs. Only participants who produced adequate arousal for our main analyses were included. The figure shows that the relative response to female and male stimuli closely tracked the Kinsey scale, on the whole. The difference in genital arousal to females minus males correlated strongly with the Kinsey scale (r[472] = 0.838, 95% CI [0.809, 0.863], P < 0.0001). The analogous correlation of self-reported arousal with the Kinsey scale was also strong (r[586] = 0.916, 95% CI [0.902, 0.928], P < 0.0001).

Exclusively heterosexual and homosexual men (who have Kinsey scores of 0 and 6, respectively) showed larger mean differences in their arousal to male and female stimuli compared with men who have intermediate Kinsey scores (i.e., scores of 1 to 5). Although this pattern is consistent with the possibility that intermediate Kinsey scores are associated with relatively bisexual arousal patterns, it is also consistent with an alternative explanation. It would be possible to create the mean arousal scores of men with Kinsey scores 1 to 5 (which appear relatively bisexual) by mixing men with arousal patterns similar to the means for Kinsey 0 (exclusively heterosexual) with those similar to Kinsey 6 (exclusively homosexual). Therefore, simply averaging each Kinsey group’s responses to male and to female stimuli can in principle produce misleading results. Thus, results depicted in Fig. 1 by themselves cannot provide conclusive evidence that men who report bisexual attractions have a more bisexual arousal pattern than monosexual men.

Two alternative analyses can provide more definitive evidence (11, 12). Both rely on variables depicted or derived from those in Fig. 2: responses to the more-arousing sex and responses to the less-arousing sex. These variables were determined empirically for each individual. Men have relatively bisexual arousal patterns if 1) their responses to their less arousing sex exceeds that of other men, and 2) the difference between their responses to their more and to their less arousing sex is less than that of other men.

The first criterion for bisexual arousal patterns is demonstrated by considering that men with a bisexual arousal pattern should show more arousal to male stimuli compared with heterosexual men and more arousal to female stimuli compared with homosexual men. Heterosexual men’s less-arousing sex will usually be “male” and homosexual men’s “female.” (Measurement error may prevent this generalization from always being true.) Thus, the first criterion is that bisexual men should show more arousal to erotic stimuli depicting their (empirically defined) less-arousing sex, compared with homosexual and heterosexual men. The second criterion is demonstrated by considering that men with a bisexual arousal pattern should show an especially small unsigned difference between their arousal to male and female stimuli, compared with heterosexual and homosexual men. This difference is equivalent to that between responses to the more arousing sex minus responses to the less arousing sex.

We henceforth refer to the two key dependent variables as Minimum Arousal (i.e., responses to the less arousing sex) and Absolute Arousal Difference (i.e., the unsigned value of the difference between arousal to female stimuli and arousal to male stimuli). The two dependent variables derived from Fig. 2 were almost perfectly negatively correlated with each other: for genital arousal, r = −0.976 and for self-reported arousal, r = −0.944. This strong correspondence is partly an artifact of standardizing within participants using only three scores (i.e., average arousal to male, to female, and to neutral stimuli), especially when two of the scores tend to be similar to each other and different from the third score. Because Minimum Arousal and the Absolute Arousal Difference are not generally so highly correlated (for example, for the unstandardized data we analyzed subsequently, their correlation for genital arousal was r[474] = −0.028), and because they are conceptually distinct, we have retained both variables in our main analyses.

In addition, we created a composite variable using Minimum Arousal and Absolute Arousal Difference, by standardizing both across participants, changing the sign of the Absolute Arousal Difference and then taking their average. We refer to this variable as the Bisexual Arousal Composite, and men with a relatively bisexual arousal pattern should have high scores on it. Although the composite was almost entirely redundant with Minimum Arousal and Absolute Arousal Difference—as the latter are with each other—for the ipsatized data, we retained all three variables because in some subsequent analyses using untransformed data, they were much less highly correlated.

If men who self-report Kinsey scores in the bisexual range indeed have relatively bisexual arousal patterns, then both Minimum Arousal and the Bisexual Arousal Composite should show an inverted U-shaped distribution across the Kinsey range (i.e., men who self-identify as 0 [exclusively heterosexual] and 6 [exclusively homosexual] should have the lowest scores for these variables; men in intermediate groups should have greater values, with the peak resting at a Kinsey score of 3); the Absolute Arousal Difference should show a U-shaped distribution (i.e., exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual men should have lower values than bisexual-identified men). Conversely, if men who indicate that they are relatively bisexual have monosexual arousal patterns in actuality, then the values for these three variables should be evenly distributed across the Kinsey scale, and we should have a flat, horizontal line, rather than a U-shaped distribution. A rigorous demonstration that bisexual men have relatively bisexual arousal patterns requires a change of sign of regression slopes across the Kinsey scale. The method proposed by Simonsohn (16), the two-lines test, requires establishing that, for some break point on the predictor variable, if one conducts separate regression analyses using data on either side of the point, both regression slopes are statistically significant but of opposite sign.

We modified this method as follows. Instead of using Simonsohn’s algorithm for locating one optimal break point, we conducted two sets of analyses using two different break points: 2.5 and 3.5. Our modification was motivated by both necessity and a desire to explore robustness. The middle of the Kinsey distribution is 3, and a Kinsey score of 3 signifies the greatest degree of bisexuality. As such, that score is the best guess for the inversion point of the hypothesized U-shaped and inverted U-shaped distributions. However, the Kinsey score 3 is unavailable as a break point because the break point should not include scores that actually exist in the data. The analysis with 2.5 as the break point compares the correlations between the Kinsey scores and the dependent variables in the range of Kinsey 0 to 2 with the respective correlations in the range of Kinsey 3 to 6. (Note that, because our Kinsey score variable includes only whole numbers, any break point between 2 and 3 is equivalent to a break point of 2.5; all provide exactly the same separation of points.) The analysis using the break point 3.5 compares the correlations in the Kinsey range 0 to 3 with those in the Kinsey range of 4 to 6. Examining results using two different break points in separate analyses allowed us to examine the robustness of results across them. Fig. 3 presents the regression lines comprising the two lines tests for both sets of break points, for both Standardized Minimum Genital Arousal (Fig. 3, Left) and Standardized Absolute Genital Arousal Difference (Fig. 3, Right).

Table 1 includes results of the two-lines analyses for both break points. For analyses of genital arousal, we included data from 474 men with sufficient genital responses. For analyses of self-reported arousal, we included data from 588 men who provided adequate self-reported arousal data. We present standardized correlations because the scale of the variables is more intuitively interpretable than unstandardized coefficients. All correlations were in directions consistent with more bisexual arousal tending to occur toward the middle of the Kinsey scale. The 95% CIs for all correlations excluded zero, usually by a large margin.

We conducted additional analyses to examine the degree to which our results depended on data analytic decisions. At least two such decisions for Table 1 could have influenced our results even though we had scientific justification for making those decisions and have consistently made them in past research: analyzing standardized rather than unstandardized arousal data and excluding participants with low genital responses. Neither of these decisions was required to test our hypotheses, however, and some other researchers have not made them (e.g., ref. 22). Seemingly innocuous decisions such as these can hide a lack of robustness of results had other analytic paths been taken (23).

One way to explore the robustness of results across different data analytic decisions is to conduct “multiverse analyses” in which data are analyzed with respect to all combinations of relevant decisions (24). In our case, this required three additional sets of analyses. Each used the two-lines approach, but each used different data: unstandardized arousal data for men who met our inclusion criteria for sexual response; standardized arousal data for all men regardless of degree of response; or unstandardized arousal data for all men regardless of degree of response. Each set of analyses was conducted for each of the dependent variables: Minimum Arousal, Absolute Arousal Difference, and Bisexual Arousal Composite. Furthermore, each analysis was conducted for both break points (i.e., 2.5 and 3.5), and tests with unstandardized data were repeated for the analyses of self-reported arousal. Because each analysis yielded two separate tests (for points left of the break point and for points right of it), this resulted in a total of 48 tests.

SI Appendix, Table S1 provides the results for these multiverse analyses. All results were in the direction consistent with increased bisexual arousal for more bisexual Kinsey scores. SI Appendix, Fig. S1 also presents the frequency distribution of the 36 exact probabilities for the additional analyses of genital data. Only one P value, 0.0503, exceeded the conventional statistical significance threshold, and most of the other 35 P values were much smaller. Results for the analyses of self-reported arousal were also consistent, with all P values less than 10−8. Thus, our general findings persisted regardless of the data analytic decisions we reconsidered.

Which Kinsey score was associated with the greatest degree of bisexual arousal? To answer this question, we focused on the standardized genital and self-report arousal composites, which correlated r(470) = 0.507, 95% CI (0.437, 0.572), P < 0.0001. Fig. 4 shows the mean genital and self-report bisexual composites for all Kinsey scores. Higher scores represent greater bisexuality. With respect to the genital composite, Kinsey 2’s showed the strongest evidence for bisexual arousal patterns. With respect to the self-report composite, Kinsey 3′s provided the most bisexual responses. Notably, both contrasts increased steadily to the maximum and then decreased steadily, consistent with a gradation model of sexual orientation.

How bisexual were the arousal patterns of men with bisexual Kinsey scores, compared with other men? It is possible, for example, that bisexual men’s sexual responses are only slightly (albeit statistically significantly) more bisexual than the responses of monosexual men. Or alternatively, the two groups could differ substantially. Answering this question requires a direct comparison of magnitudes of indicators of bisexual response. Two of the main dependent variables we have examined—Minimum Arousal and Absolute Arousal Difference—could be especially informative. Ratios of their means comparing men with bisexual Kinsey scores to men with monosexual scores could helpfully express the answer. To be meaningfully interpreted, ratios require ratio-level measurement, with a true value of zero and interval scaling (25). For example, six inches is twice the length of three inches, but a rating of six on a seven-point Likert scale of current happiness is not meaningfully interpreted as twice a rating of three. Because the data we have primarily focused on so far have been standardized within subjects, it is unsuited to provide meaningful ratios for two reasons. First, the standardized data do not have true zeros, with zero indicating an absence of a quantity. More importantly, standardizing within subjects induces a nonlinear between-subjects transformation of the raw scores, and so the ipsatized data do not have interval-level measurement.

Fortunately, the raw genital arousal data have a ratio scale, and so we focus on these data for our final analyses. Fig. 5 presents men’s raw genital responses to their more and to their less arousing sex, by Kinsey score. The figure demonstrates that increased bisexuality toward the middle of the Kinsey range is primarily due to increased responding to the less arousing sex. (Neither a two-lines analysis nor a quadratic regression reveals significant evidence for an inverted U effect for the more arousing sex.) Kinsey scores of 0 and 6 were associated with especially low (though not zero) responding to the less arousing sex, which was one of our main indicators of bisexual response. Men with Kinsey scores in the bisexual range (i.e., 2 to 4) produced 3.30 times more response to their less arousing sex compared with the (unweighted) average of men with monosexual Kinsey scores (i.e., 0 and 6). The difference between responses to the more and less arousing sex should be smaller for men with more bisexual Kinsey scores if those scores reflect men’s sexual orientations. Consistent with this prediction, men with Kinsey scores in the bisexual range produced an average difference that was 0.59 times the difference of men with monosexual scores. Both ratios were markedly different from 1. Still, men with Kinsey scores in the bisexual range produced, on average, penile circumference changes that were notably larger to one sex than to the other. The ratio of bisexual men’s genital arousal to their more arousing sex to genital arousal to their less arousing sex averaged 2.62; for monosexual men, it was 10.13. Note that these numbers comprise the ratio of each group’s mean arousal to the more arousing sex divided by their mean arousal to the less arousing sex. They are not the averages of each individual men’s ratios. Some individual ratios are extreme because the denominator is near zero.

In general, results suggested that bisexual men’s arousal patterns were markedly more bisexual than monosexual men’s, and that bisexual men were typically more aroused by one sex than by the other. The combination of our results and the fact that male sexual orientation is bimodally distributed (21) suggests that men with similar high degrees of sexual arousal to both men and women may be especially uncommon.

Discussion

The primary question motivating this research is whether men who identify as bisexual have sexual arousal patterns that are also relatively bisexual. Results strongly confirmed that men who report attraction to both sexes are more genitally and subjectively aroused by both sexes compared with men who report that they are attracted only to one sex.

The highly consistent evidence for bisexual arousal and orientation from the present study contrasts with inconsistent findings of the past (e.g., ref. 11 [not finding bisexual arousal] and ref. 12 [finding bisexual arousal]). For example, applying the two-lines methodology to the eight individual studies and focusing on the ipsatized genital Bisexual Arousal Composite yielded 29 relevant correlations (i.e., correlations for values on one side of either a 2.5 or 3.5 Kinsey break point, which should be statistically significant for a successful test). Only 12 of these were statistically significant, the median probability equal to 0.073. (SI Appendix, Table S2). The comparison of the inconsistent study-level results with the robust results using combined data from all studies demonstrates the increased statistical power of the latter approach.

A second factor that may have contributed to inconsistent results across individual studies is systematic differences between samples of bisexual men. Men who describe themselves as bisexual likely comprise a diverse set of men, some of whom have a bisexual arousal pattern and others who do not. Examples of the latter likely include transitional bisexual men (5, 6) and some paraphilic men who have sexual fantasies involving men but who are not sexually attracted to them (26). Past studies that did not show correspondence between bisexual self-report and bisexual genital arousal had far fewer subjects than the present analyses, and some may have included a higher proportion of men whose bisexual identification was due to reasons other than bisexual arousal. For example, it is possible that the sample of Rieger et al. (11) contained a higher proportion of transitional bisexual men than other samples. Recruitment of participants for that study included advertisements in both alternative and gay-oriented publications, and the bisexual-identified participants may have responded to the advertisement in the gay-oriented publications.

The present research represents the most systematic and extensive assessment of bisexual men’s arousal patterns to date. The data we analyzed comprise all relevant data that the coauthors had collected as of January 2019, and nearly all relevant data of which we are aware. Although we were unable to obtain data from two other studies with relevant data, their inclusion would not have altered our general conclusions even if we assume that those subsamples would not have shown significant bisexual arousal patterns (SI Appendix, Supplementary Text).

The primary limitation of this study is that participants were necessarily volunteers. Thus, the degree to which they are representative of men across the Kinsey scale is unknown. This limits confident generalization about the magnitude of our results. However, it is unclear how the basic pattern of results—greater bisexual response for men with more bisexual Kinsey scores—could be entirely an artifact of volunteer bias. Additionally, the fact that participants were volunteers sampled exclusively from a few Western countries prevents us from knowing how general the patterns we have observed are. However, we are unaware of promising theories specifying how these patterns might vary cross-culturally.

In a recent highly publicized article on genetic determinants of same-sex versus opposite-sex sex partners, there was no clear genetic gradient distinguishing persons with a high proportion of same-sex partners from those with opposite-sex partners (27). The authors asserted that, because of their negative findings, the validity of the Kinsey scale should be reconsidered. Our findings support the opposite conclusion, and we believe they are more relevant with respect to the validity of self-reported sexual orientations. When we ask men to assess themselves on the Kinsey scale, we do not mean for them to guess their underlying genotypes. Rather, we are asking them about their relative sexual feelings for women and men. Sexual arousal patterns are closely related to these feelings in men; indeed, they are detectable and likely lead to the subjective experience of attraction and desire (1). We have demonstrated that both genital and self-reported sexual arousal to male and female erotic stimuli form a gradient over the Kinsey scale, regardless of their underlying causes.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

Participants comprised those of available studies known to us that included genital measures of sexual arousal in men who also reported their Kinsey scores, with four exceptions. Two studies focused on men with paraphilias (26, 28), and those data were intentionally excluded. Two other studies containing relevant data could not be included because the authors did not respond to our requests for data (14, 23). The unavailable studies comprised genital assessment data of a total of 89 men, including 23 who identified as bisexual.

Participants for the constituent studies were recruited by researchers at four sites: Northwestern University in Evanston, IL (6, 11, 12, 29), the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (18), the University of Essex in Colchester, UK (15, 30), and Cornell University in Ithaca, NY (17). Individual sample sizes and methodological differences between the studies are reported in Table 2.

Across the constituent studies, data for 606 participants were available. All participants were cisgender (i.e., no participants were transgender). Of these, 474 participants were included in our main genital arousal analyses. Of the 132 excluded participants, 96 participants were excluded for exhibiting insufficient genital arousal for meaningful analysis. In any given study of male sexual arousal, there is a proportion of low-responding participants who do not become substantially aroused to any of the stimuli (among the constituent studies, this proportion ranges between 4.95% and 26.73%): Typical self-reported reasons for low response include discomfort and disinterest in the actors or actions featured in the stimuli. We counted as low responders (and excluded from initial analyses) participants who either 1) did not exhibit an average change of at least 2 mm in penile circumference to male or female stimuli compared to a baseline value; or 2) did not produce standardized mean genital arousal to at least one erotic stimulus category that exceeded that to neutral stimuli by more than half of an SD. These criteria have been used in most of the studies included herein (6, 11, 12, 15, 17, 29). Another 36 participants were excluded from genital analyses because their data were incomplete or of poor quality (e.g., impossible values because of technical difficulties when running those participants). Regarding the self-report analyses, 12 participants were excluded from self-reported arousal analyses due to not providing self-reported data, and an additional six participants were excluded for reporting arousal scores of 0 for all stimuli. This resulted in a sample size of 588 men for self-report analyses.

Within the total sample of 606 men, 178 participants self-identified as exclusively heterosexual, 102 identified as mostly heterosexual, 46 as bisexual leaning heterosexual, 34 as bisexual, 37 as bisexual leaning homosexual, 70 as mostly homosexual, and 139 as exclusively homosexual. Note that this distribution of sexual identities is not representative of the overall population. Homosexual- and bisexual-identified men were over-sampled because the focus of the component studies was typically on sexual orientation variation. This nonrepresentative sampling increased statistical power to detect differences in arousal patterns in different regions of the Kinsey scale. The average age was 28.63 y (SD = 9.03). Data for educational attainment were available for 359 participants and were coded as 1 (no high school), 2 (some high school), 3 (high school diploma), 4 (some college), 5 (college graduate), and 6 (postgraduate student or degree). The average level of educational attainment was 4.76 (SD = 0.85), and the most common response was “college graduate” (n = 133). Data for ethnicity were available for 502 participants. Of these, 326 (64.94%) were White/Caucasian, 60 (11.95%) were Black, 42 (8.37%) were Asian, 29 (5.78%) were Hispanic/Latino, and 45 (8.96%) reported other. Distributions of age, ethnicity, and educational attainment by sexual orientation are reported in Table 3.

Measures.

Sexual orientation.

Participants reported their sexual orientation using the seven-point Kinsey scale (4) ranging from 0 (exclusive heterosexual orientation) to 6 (exclusive homosexual orientation), with 3 representing bisexual orientation with equal attraction to men and women. In most studies, the prompt for the scale was worded such that it framed sexual orientation as one’s relative attraction to men versus women. However, two of the included studies (11, 12) (n = 203, or 33% of the overall sample) framed sexual orientation as one’s relative frequency of sexually fantasizing about men versus women.

Genital arousal.

Each study assessed changes in the penile circumference of participants when viewing erotic stimuli, with increases in circumference denoting increased genital arousal (31). The majority of the data were collected using an indium/gallium strain gauge connected to either an MP150 or an MP100 data acquisition unit alongside AcqKnowledge software. Data from Rieger et al. (11) were collected using a mercury-in-rubber strain gauge. Chivers et al. (18) used the Limestone hardware and software and a mercury-in-rubber strain gauge.

Subjective arousal.

Participants subjectively reported their arousal to male and female erotic stimuli and to neutral stimuli following each stimulus. The particular range of each study’s subjective arousal measure varied (e.g., an 11-point scale was used in Jabbour et al. (29) whereas a seven-point scale was used in Rieger et al. (11)). Thus, all subjective ratings for arousal to male stimuli and arousal to female stimuli were rescaled as proportions of the maximum possible response.

Procedure.

In each constituent study, participants privately viewed various erotic video clips while a penile strain gauge was used to measure changes in the circumference of the penis. Most of the studies utilized 3-min clips; Rieger et al. (11) used 2-min clips, and Chivers et al. (18) used 90-s clips. Neutral stimuli (e.g., footage of landscapes and wildlife) were included in each paradigm to assess a baseline level of arousal. Erotic stimuli were presented in random order; these included either a male stimulus (depending on the study, either male–male sexual acts or one male masturbating) or female stimulus (female–female sexual acts or one female masturbating). During or after each stimulus, participants provided a subjective arousal rating. If participants were still aroused before the presentation of the next sexual stimulus (e.g., if their penile circumference exceeded the previously assessed baseline by 2 mm), they were instructed via intercom to perform a distracting task (e.g., “in your head, count all of the multiples of 9”) until they returned to their baseline level and the next stimulus began. After each session, participants were debriefed and compensated for their time.

Data Analysis.

Each individual’s raw genital responses to appropriate stimuli were averaged to provide three values: average arousal (i.e., penile circumference) to neutral stimuli, to male stimuli, and to female stimuli. Raw genital measures were in units of millimeters. Analogously, self-reported ratings were averaged to provide the same three values, in units of proportion of maximum possible ratings. These values were used to produce all subsequent metrics.

For the main analyses, genital and self-reported arousal scores were standardized within participants, using each participant’s average arousal scores for male, female, and neutral erotic stimuli. This practice, also called ipsatizing, is useful to remove unwanted sources of variation, including those attributable to penis size and general responsiveness (32). Each man’s standardized arousal to male and to female stimuli was then transformed by subtracting arousal to neutral stimuli.

The primary analyses in Table 1 comprised a version of the two-lines test (16). The rationale of the test is that, if the relation between two variables is U-shaped (or inverted U-shaped), there must be a point on the predictor range, xC, such that the regression line using values below xC has an opposite sign of the regression line using values above xC. Our analysis diverged from that outlined by Simonsohn in two ways. First, we presented Pearson correlations rather than unstandardized regression coefficients to make it easier for the reader to assess the magnitude of line slopes. Second, instead of allowing Simonsohn’s algorithm to find the ideal break point, xC, we present results for two different break points, one on either side of the midpoint of the Kinsey scale. (One must not use a value for xC that exists in the data, and thus 3 could not be used.) This meant that, for both tests, the middle of the Kinsey scale provided the most bisexual scores on the dependent variables as well as an examination of the robustness of results.

[feministskeptic]

Cotton Ceiling Receipts

Trans activists misrepresent what the “cotton ceiling” is, so I decided to compile a list of descriptions given by pro-trans sources. There are lists compiling receipts from anonymous social media accounts (for example), but I haven’t seen lists compiling more reputable sources on it on it.

As I was putting this together, one thing that struck me was how important it is to distinguish between traditional homophobia, which pressures homosexual people be heterosexual, and a different type of homophobia which pressures homosexual people to be bisexual. Condemning a gay person for not experiencing opposite-sex attraction is homophobic; redefining “homosexuality” and “same-sex” to include attraction to the opposite sex so that you can claim to support homosexuality (but only as long as it also includes opposite-sex attraction) is homophobic.

I stopped at about 31 reputable sources and then about 9 of a more casual blogging variety. I’ve tried to limit my commentary on what I quote.

Cotton Ceiling From Reputable Sources

Article from Curve Magazine (2020) by a male trans person. Curve Magazine is a lesbian magazine dating back to 1991.

The term “cotton ceiling” has been viewed as quite the incendiary phrase. It was coined by porn actress and trans activist Drew DeVeaux in 2015. It’s been used to refer to the tendency by cisgender lesbians to outwardly include and support trans women, but draw the line at considering ever having sex with them.

[…]

The point of such discussion is not, EVER, to exhort anyone to have grudging sex without enthusiastic consent. The point of such discussion is to exhort folks to examine their inherent bigotry. We change, we grow, we learn through familiarity and exposure. We can challenge and re-examine our prejudices and fixed ideas.

Here a lesbian magazine exhorts lesbians that being friendly with male trans people isn’t sufficient, lesbians should “examine” and “change” their “inherent bigotry” (the absence of opposite sex attraction) to learn how to be both-sexes attracted (the correct orientation).

It pays lip service to consent (we would never want anyone to have unwanted sex!) while arguing that not wanting straight sex is bad and you should fix that about yourself. If you don’t want lesbians to have unwanted sex, then you should support and encourage them to double down and defend their boundaries when those boundaries are challenged or undermined—not instruct them that they have a responsibility to "grow” their boundaries.

The author also links to Riley Dennis’s “genital preferences are unfair discrimination” video, which appears further down this list.

Article from The TransAdvocate (2013) by a same-sex attracted woman. The TransAdvocate is an independent nonprofit that was selected by the US Library of Congress to be in its collection of LGBTQ+ writing in 2019.

The question of whether or not to include trans women in women’s sexuality-based events is old and tiresome, but it still comes up with some regularity. I recently responded to a discussion on this topic and I realized that it might be useful to post my thoughts here, as I don’t know that I’ve ever done so in full.

[…]

Assumption 9. The “cotton ceiling” is a way for trans women to bully cis women into having sex with them.

The idea of the “cotton ceiling” is intended to draw attention to how even in spaces that are politically and socially welcoming of trans women, transphobia often retains its influence on how we understand who is sexually desirable and who isn’t. It’s no different from other politicized criteria for desirability—people who are, for instance, fat or disabled are also often welcomed into queer women’s space but not seen as desirable compared to those hot slim, muscular, able-bodied sorts. This isn’t our fault—our entire culture tells us what’s sexy and what’s not, 24 hours a day, and that definition is terribly narrow. But it is really easy to forget how much influence advertising propaganda and social pressure can exert on what gets us wet and hard, and to let the mainstream’s terms dictate our desires.

It is possible to read the idea of the cotton ceiling as being about pressuring people to change who and what they desire. And that pressure can feel unwelcome. With that in mind, I would challenge those who feel it that way to look very carefully at the message that’s being delivered. Is it actually about you being told you need to go out and fuck people you’re not attracted to? Or is it about someone asking you to think about how much of your attractions are based on an underlying assumption of cissexism?

The author argues it’s a problem for women to be “welcoming” of male trans people while drawing the line at sleeping with them. She goes on to compare homosexuality to refusing to sleep with overweight people, arguing that lacking opposite-sex attraction is not a natural sexual orientation, it’s actually just a product of society’s prejudices:

“transphobia often retains its influence on how we understand who is sexually desirable”

Comparing people who aren’t attracted to the opposite sex to people who aren’t attracted to overweight people or disabled people to make homosexuality seem unnatural

“our entire culture tells us what’s sexy and what’s not”

“how much influence advertising propaganda and social pressure can exert on what gets us wet and hard”

“how much of your attractions are based on an underlying assumption of cissexism”

So: lesbians are brainwashed by society into being gay. Got it.

The kicker is when she compares the discomfort a homosexual woman feels from being shamed for being homosexual and from being pressured into being bisexual, to the discomfort a person with privilege feels when confronted with their privilege. It should suffice to say that lesbians don’t lightly come to the conclusion that they lack opposite sex attraction, and no lesbian benefits from being lectured about how she needs to reflect more and think more on her sexuality until she reaches the “correct” conclusion of opposite-sex attraction. By the time she comes out of the closet and is rejecting male trans people, she’s already reflected and thought on her sexuality.

This is trans-typical conversion therapy rhetoric, which a lesbian debunked well in this unconnected screenshot:

Because though the author tries to obscure it, there is a causal link between attraction and sexual relations, and when male trans people criticize lesbians for not being attracted to male trans people, they’re upset about lesbians rejecting sexual relations.

No matter how friendly, how "welcoming,” of male trans people a woman is, if that welcome doesn't extend into her bedroom, she’s a transphobe.

Article from PinkNews (2022). Wikipedia says PinkNews is a British LGBT news outlet founded in 2005.

The “cotton ceiling” is a concept coined by porn star and trans activist Drew DeVeaux, and describes the inherent prejudice that many cisgender lesbians have against trans women, reducing them to their genitals, even if they are outwardly accepting. It is not about an individual’s sexual decisions, which should only ever be made freely and with full, enthusiastic consent.

It’s pointless to include a disclaimer about consent when you’ve just argued it’s not enough for lesbians to be “outwardly accepting,” that lesbians HAVE to be open to sleeping with male trans people in order to truly respect them. The “cotton ceiling” is the transgender version of men complaining about being friendzoned by lesbians.

Scholarly book Does anyone have the right to sex? (2018) by Amia Srinivasan, London Review of Books

The difficulties I have been discussing are currently posed in the most vexed form within feminism by the experience of trans women. Trans women often face sexual exclusion from lesbian cis women who at the same time claim to take them seriously as women. This phenomenon was named the ‘cotton ceiling’ – ‘cotton’ as in underwear – by the trans porn actress and activist Drew DeVeaux. The phenomenon is real, but, as many trans women have noted, the phrase itself is unfortunate. While the ‘glass ceiling’ implies the violation of a woman’s right to advance on the basis of her work, the ‘cotton ceiling’ describes a lack of access to what no one is obligated to give (though DeVeaux has since claimed that the ‘cotton’ refers to the trans woman’s underwear, not the underwear of the cis lesbian who doesn’t want to have sex with her). Yet simply to say to a trans woman, or a disabled woman, or an Asian man, ‘No one is required to have sex with you,’ is to skate over something crucial. There is no entitlement to sex, and everyone is entitled to want what they want, but personal preferences – no dicks, no fems, no fats, no blacks, no arabs, no rice no spice, masc-for-masc – are never just personal.

[…]

…a feminism that totally abjures the political critique of desire is a feminism with little to say about the injustices of exclusion and misrecognition suffered by the women who arguably need feminism the most.

Another author who argues lesbians need to be willing to have sex with male trans people in order to take them seriously as women. Having sex with someone is not evidence you respect them “as women” or otherwise, and refusing sex with someone is not evidence you disrespect them.

Notice that the author’s compared homosexuality to refusing to sleep with disabled people or people of certain races. The goal of the comparison is to argue homosexuality is an unnatural orientation: nobody is biologically wired to be exclusively attracted to people of certain ability or skin color the way gay people are biologically wired to experience exclusively same-sex attraction. It’s not the same thing, and it’s homophobic (and scientifically inaccurate) to argue homosexuality is unnatural.

Also notice that she listed “no dicks” as if it’s analogous to “no blacks.” Rejecting sexual relations with someone because he has a penis is not remotely the same as rejecting someone for their skin color.

During court case, British lawyer compares cotton ceiling workshop to racially integrating South Africa after Apartheid (2021)

During the Allison Bailey trial, a lawyer from the law group Garden Court Chambers compared Planned Parenthood’s cotton ceiling workshop to South Africa’s workshops to racially integrate in order to argue Planned Parenthood’s workshop was good. This lawyer compared lesbians who won’t let male trans people get in their pants to white supremacists enforcing society-wide apartheid.

Here is a more detailed description of this moment in the trial.

If you’ve never read about the OG Planned Parenthood workshop (2012) by Morgan Page and Sarah Hobbs in Toronto…

Planned Parenthood gives a full-throated defense for hosting a workshop called “Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling: Breaking Down Sexual Barriers for Queer Trans Women,” stating that trans women “are denied full participation in queer women’s communities.” But what do they mean by “full participation”? It was a workshop by male trans people upset that they couldn’t get laid with lesbians and bisexual women.

That passive construction, “trans women are denied full participation,” is a euphemism for sexual relations. When Planned Parenthood says “we strongly stand behind queer trans women’ right to participate as full members of LGBTQ communities,” the ~right to participation~ they reference is sexual relations with women who don’t want to sleep with them (if these women wanted to sleep with them, there would be no workshop).

No cookie-cutter disclaimer about oooh consent is so important can change the fact that the core principle underlying this workshop (and the cotton ceiling in general) was that female homosexuality is unfair and oppressive to the male sex.

Planned Parenthood also couldn’t help but imply that the reason lesbians aren’t interested in male trans people is because of how “transphobia and transmisogyny impact sexual desire.” They do not view lesbians’ rejection of male trans people as a natural consequence of their natural sexual orientation. They view lesbians’ homosexuality as a “sexual barrier” to “inclusion” that should be overcome.

Tweets from Drew DeVeaux, male trans person.

I’ve included him in the “reputable” sources section because DeVeaux is widely credited with coining the term “cotton ceiling,” so what he says about it has particular weight.

Excerpt from 2014 speech

These threads are read from the bottom up:

Thread 2:

Thread 3:

Email from Morgan Page (2012), who organized the Planned Parenthood workshop and is currently employed by the British LGBT organization Stonewall (as far as I know)

Article in AutoStraddle (2013) by a male trans person. AutoStraddle is a lesbian publication.

I have written previously about some of the alienation I have experienced as a trans woman dating in the queer women’s community. Now, I want to emphasize here again that no one is obligated to touch a woman’s penis if they aren’t into that. However it’s also important to emphasize:

1) Not every trans woman has a penis. 2) No general means exist to distinguish trans women from cis women.

The implications of these two points together are that statements such as “I am attracted to cis women but not trans women” simply do not make sense and are rooted in social prejudice.

(As a side comment, before moving on let me briefly address something that appears in the previous piece that I linked above. My article from about a year ago contains a reference to the concept of the so-called “cotton ceiling,” which deserves a brief comment here. While several trans woman-hating “radical feminists” have intentionally misconstrued this concept in rather bizarre ways, there are also a few trans people who have made statements in relation to this idea that I think are problematic. Hence, after having some time to reflect on the previous debates about this I have come to the conclusion that the “cotton ceiling” should be considered an unhelpful concept for this type of discussion and should be set aside by trans activists moving forward.)

Sexual attraction is heavily dependent on being compatible in the bedroom. For example: remember a time where you were interested in someone, got with them, it was bad, and you lost all attraction.

Gay people are incompatible in the bedroom with the opposite sex. They might think opposite-sex trans people look good and fantasize about what the bedroom might be like if they were same-sex, but that sexual attraction evaporates when you realize real life sex with this person would suck. Because of your aforementioned incompatibility with the opposite sex.

Notice he specifically suggests strategically setting aside the term cotton ceiling while continuing the same homophobic tripe, so, changing the dressing without changing the content. The term cotton ceiling is unhelpful to the cause of getting more lesbians to learn opposite sex attraction.

I address the “you don’t know who’s trans so how can you be attracted to only women” argument further under the Katy Montgomerie tweets.

A second article from TransAdvocate (2014)

If a small group wanted to talk about how ableism affected cultural notions of beauty and/or desirability, would feminist circles tolerate TERFs going on a yearlong campaign, claiming that those who aren’t able-bodied want to force lesbians to have sex with them?

In a culture that devalues and oppresses trans people, why is it not appropriate to discuss how these cisnormative beauty standards impact notions of desirability, how these biases relate to the fetishization of trans people and how all of this impacts the perception of trans people in queer spaces?

The main point of this article is that the cotton ceiling is a conspiracy cooked up by transphobes: male trans people never promote homophobia towards lesbians and anyone who says so is either stupid or scheming. This article is soundly debunked by looking at this list, or looking at any of the collections of social media receipts (for example), or just plain looking at what the article eventually settles on for the definition of the cotton ceiling (seen above: defining homosexuality as “cisnormative beauty standards” 🤔 gee, what cisnormative beauty standards could trick lesbians into finding the opposite sex undesirable? What cisnormative beauty standards could brainwash lesbians into finding only their same sex attractive?).

It’s written almost entirely using rhetorical questions in order to avoid taking responsibility for anything it proposes.

This article also contains rude and profane receipts from radfems to try to make the fuss about those nasty women who aren’t being good women, instead of tackling the homophobic rape culture inherent in insisting that it’s oppressive and abusive for female homosexuality to draw a boundary excluding the male sex (and for female homosexuality to have a name to use to describe that boundary).

Article from QueerFeminism.com (2012) by a bisexual female trans person. This article was endorsed by an MSNBC journalist (homosexual male trans person) who was recently nominated by GLAAD for an award. It was also linked in the Curve Magazine article cited first on this list.

The blogosphere is fired up over the cotton ceiling today, a term porn actress Drew DeVaux and other queer trans women are using to challenge cis lesbians’ tendency to support trans causes generally but draw the line at sleeping with trans women or including trans lesbians in their sexual communities.

[…]

The narcissism in the radfem community is somewhat hilarious.  Why would a trans woman WANT to sleep with you?  How boring it must be to have sex with someone who reduces your body, your sexual creativity, and your capacity to a penis.

[…]

Radfems, you’re not just missing out on great sex.  You’re confused about what it means to be a lesbian, or a woman.  I don’t care what your physical preferences are or what gender identity you prefer. I do care that you confuse those two things, and thereby insult trans women.  I care that you don’t bother to interrogate the origins of your phallus-based distaste for trans women, and think about whether it’s actually a dislike of the organ that’s happening here or whether transphobia and a refusal to view trans women as women is involved.  I care that you assume describing yourself as a lesbian tells others that you prefer what you call a pussy, as if everyone has the same definition of lesbian, woman, or pussy.

THAT is privilege.  Assuming that you speak the same language, rather than consensually sharing vocabulary.  Using lesbian as a proxy term that tells a whole group of women that they are not real, and not seeing anything wrong with that.  I find your appropriation of the language of oppression disgusting.

Another author who helpfully specifies that the cotton ceiling is about “lesbians’ tendency to support trans causes generally but draw the line at sleeping with trans women.” As I said earlier, no matter how welcoming of male trans people lesbians are, if that welcome doesn’t extend into the bedroom, it’s not enough.

The author here spends a good portion of the post writing about how a lack of willingness to engage in opposite-sex relations makes a person’s sex life deficient. She contradicts herself a couple times—she makes an unusually sincere-sounding disclaimer at the beginning about how not wanting to touch a penis is a valid sexual “preference,” and later says she doesn’t care what women’s “physical preferences” are, but also she mocks women who don’t want to have sexual relations with the opposite sex and says she hopes women come to feel shame for not “examining” their disinterest in sexual relations with the opposite sex.

My impression reading it was that since sexual relations don’t need to involve touching your partner’s penis, the author believes that even if you have an aversion to touching penises, that’s not a “good enough” reason to refuse sex with male trans people because sexual relations doesn’t necessitate penis contact. In the end, as we all know, there is no “good enough” reason for lesbians to lack interest in the opposite sex.

Blog post (2012) by Roz Kaveney, a male trans writer with his own Wikipedia page. He has 22.8K twitter followers. I wasn’t going to include him, but he’s cited by the next source, so here’s the full quote:

Essentially, the Cotton Ceiling - with reference to knickers - is the term parts of the trans community have inventively adopted for the way that, however theoretically accepting of trans people a lot of progressives may be, when it comes to actually having sex with us, they vote with their ...um...feet.

This is not - to jump straight in and answer a crude debating point that has been made by the usual 'radfem' suspects - a matter of the trans community demanding access to cis people's vulnerable and reluctant bodies. It's a matter of asking the question 'how can you say you accept us and still have - as many people do - a blanket assumption that you would never ever sleep with someone trans?' I say 'people' in that sentence because the assumptions that create the cotton ceiling are not peculiar to cis, or if you prefer 'non-trans', people. It's an issue to do with internalised transphobia as well, and something that a lot of trans people have to face up to in themselves. I've not always been as good on this as I might have been.

[…]

So, in the end, my substantive point is this - the cotton ceiling exists and it's an issue for all trans people, women, men and non-binary. It's a matter of transpobia, including internalized transphobia. Given the fact that access to surgery or even HRT is already in the US, and may become in the UK, an economic issue and quite often a racial one too.

To pretend the cotton ceiling does not exist is to deny an important component in transphobia.

Wanting to bang people is respect and not wanting to bang people is an important component of disrespect! Stop disrespecting us, which means, stop being so gay and start banging us!

Notice he employs the common conflation between using “trans” as a euphemism for a certain sex (typically, the male sex, such as by accusing feminists of being “trans-exclusive” if they include female trans people but not male trans people) with the use of trans to describe trans people of both sexes.

Kaveney and DeVeaux were both cited by the scholarly book Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality (2017)

A major step forward came when Drew Deveaux, a model and porn actress, won the Feminist Porn Awards ‘Heartthrob of 2011’. Deveaux, an androgynous trans woman from Toronto, writes that ‘Through performing in porn, I’ve been able to take the world’s fucked up notions about trans women and fuck them into blissful oblivion’ (Deveaux, 2010). She nevertheless experienced feeling isolated in queer sex culture as a trans woman with a vagina. In 2012 she coined the term ‘the cotton ceiling’ to describe the feeling of being invisible as a sexual, queer woman. The cotton ceiling, like the glass ceiling for women in the workplace, is a barrier that limits access to power, recognition and respect. It refers literally to the panties of (cisgender) dykes, suggesting a social barrier to being recognised in queer sex cultures by cisdykes. As trans writer and activist Roz Kaveney sees it, this obstacle is present because, ‘however theoretically accepting of trans people a lot of progressives may be, when it comes to actually having sex with us, they vote with their … um … feet’ (2012).

The cotton ceiling … is a barrier that limits access to power, recognition, and respect. Nothing rape culture about that.

From the scholarly conference NWSA Feminist Transgressions: Too Damn Straight to Kick It with a Science Fiction Girlfriend: Dark Angel as a Symptom of the Feminist and LGBTQ Marginalization of Translesbianism (2014)

The television series Dark Angel is widely read as a cultural artifact of third-wave feminism. In the series, a cislesbian befriends a trans* heterosexual woman but derisively rejects a translesbian who sexually propositions her. This representation invokes feminist dialogue about translesbianism, such as the heated debate about whether the combination of ciswomen’s social acceptance and sexual rejection of transwomen constitutes a “cotton ceiling.” This paper argues that Dark Angel’s representation of trans lesbianism is symptomatic of the broader marginalization of the intersection of trans* identity and lesbianism within feminist and LGBTQ communities.

I couldn’t find more quotes from this source, but considering its argument is that “trans lesbians are marginalized by the LGBTQ community” I think we can safely conclude it comes down on the male sexual rights override female homosexuality side.

From the scholarly book Lesbian Feminism: Essays Opposing Global Heteropatriarchies (2019)

The sexuality of trans women is being policed to such a degree that any conversation that seeks to investigate their place in lesbian communities is twisted into an unpleasant caricature, unrecognizable as mature discourse. I’d like to think it would not be necessary for me to utterly condemn any form of sexual coercion between individuals based on any form of ideology whatsoever, but hey, this might be on the internet – and where the ‘cotton ceiling’ is concerned, woe betide anyone who enters the conversation who doesn’t want to be accused of being rapey’.

[…]

Fear is being used to convince us that the progression of trans rights threaten our safety. We are familiar with the old trope, of painting the ‘enemy’ as a threat of sexual violence against women – it is used to justify war, it is used to justify racism and it is being used here to justify transphobia.

The author compares lesbians who speak up against the pressure to “learn” opposite sex attraction to people who propagate racism to justify war. She avoids defining the cotton ceiling explicitly and just endorses the TransAdvocate article proclaiming that there is a conspiracy among lesbians to slander male trans people.

Excerpt from essay from scholarly book Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is The New Black (alternative link) (2016)

We can think of this as an example of what trans activist and porn star Drew DeVeaux has termed the “cotton ceiling.” Blogger and National Center for Transgender Equality staffer Natalie Reed (2012) provides a good synopsis of the term, writing that the “cotton ceiling” has to do with how trans women are perceived and represented. For example, trans men are often openly regarded as being sexy and hot within queer communities, being the subject of things like calendars and pin-ups and erotica. Trans women, on the other hand, are almost never permitted acknowledgment or representation in such communities as sexual beings. We carry a sort of image of being stuffy, boring, slightly icky, and ultimately eunuch-like things. We’re allowed into the parties, but we sit quiet and lonely in the corner. This ends up being a problem not in that we’re desperately eager to be sexually objectified (we get enough of that from the straight cis male world), but that this act of conceptualizing us as de-sexed and unfuckable is directly attached to larger systems of oppression, dehumanization and invalidation we face.

The “cotton ceiling”—referring to cotton underwear—is a way of shorthanding the phenomenon of desexualizing transwomen in queer spaces.

He’s complaining that lesbians will buy sexy calendars of female trans people but not male trans people because lesbians consider male trans people “unfuckable” because larger systems of oppression dehumanization invalidation. Not because of homosexuality? Could a natural lack of opposite-sex attraction be a significant variable here?

I’ve never seen Orange is the New Black, so I can’t really evaluate the analysis the author presents. But the author talks about how the trans character’s wife begged him not to get a penile inversion, because his wife is no longer sexually interested in him afterwards. The author also complains that the writers didn’t give the trans character any “lesbian” crushes/affairs, remaining loyal to his wife, and says that proves the bigotry of the writers.

I give the full quote from Natalie Reed further down the list.

Article from Hunger (2019), a fashion and culture magazine with 227K followers on instagram

As you may or may not know, lesbians have gathered a bit of a bad reputation in recent years. We’ve got TERFs uniting under the “lesbian” banner to hijack London Pride with their messed-up views; unchecked biphobia running rampant in our dating circles and convoluted in-fighting around the concept that butch people supposedly possess “masculine privilege” (btw, not a thing). As lesbianism increasingly becomes associated with transphobia and the “cotton ceiling” (the romantic and sexual exclusion of trans women and transfeminine people from lesbian circles) it’s a time when many of us are identifying with the wider, more inclusive “queer”.

Lesbians are so un-inclusive! Why should they have sexual boundaries against the opposite sex?

Cotton Ceiling By Any Other Name

As it dawns on trans rights activists what a sticky corner they’ve backed themselves into, they sometimes talk about the cotton ceiling without using the searchable term “cotton ceiling.” Here are some examples from reputable sources.

Quote from Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley to the BBC (2021)

Kelley gave this quote to BBC when they asked her for a comment on their article about male trans people pressuring lesbians for sex.

Given the subject matter, notice her strategic conflation between male trans people and female trans people, and her presumption that dating only one sex is unnatural, comparable to racism.

Tweet from Ash Sarkar, journalist responding to the BBC’s cotton ceiling article (linked above) (Wikipedia)

Nobody should be pressured into sex with anybody, for any reason.

I wouldn't want someone to feel they had to have sex with me out of social pressure, but it'd be fair to ask whether racism plays a part in announcing every 5mins that they'd never sleep with a woman of colour!

Homosexuality ≠ racism! Same sex attraction – opposite sex attraction = natural sexual orientation, not a conspiracy.

NBC article responds to the BBC cotton ceiling article.

BBC responds to complaints about its cotton ceiling article.

Article from VICE by a male trans person (2018). Wikipedia says VICE is a news outlet that’s won a number of prizes.

Let me repeat: I am not saying that it is imperative to be attracted to trans women. I am arguing that your attraction is shaped by preconceived notions and stereotypes of transgender folks. So, no, I am not shaming you because of your sexual orientation. I am merely asking you to critically reflect on the factors that might shape your attractions.

[…]

This doesn’t mean that you have individual control or agency over your sexuality or gender, but that the meanings and perceptions that inform our sexuality and gender are relative to your culture and history. This also doesn’t mean there’s no biological influence, but how we interpret our biological impulses do not exist in a vacuum empty of ideological takes on the world.

[…]

Sexuality and gender aren’t simply something that comes from some biological imperative. They are phenomena that are developed through a messy brew of social, cultural, historical, and psychological factors. They can also prove to be lightly malleable if we try to dig into the foundations of how those oppressive structures influence the ways we see and understand the world.

He spends most of the article detailing harassment against trans people, which is ipso facto horrid. The point of the article is to rebut and explain what’s wrong with gay people not dating opposite-sex trans people, which he flunks at. He argues that society brainwashed gay people into being gay, that sexual orientations are “lightly malleable” (meaning, the jump from homosexual to bisexual is possible for every gay person, yay!), and urging gay people to “critically reflect on” their orientation with the obvious goal of converting them to be both-sex attracted.

Julia Serano in The Daily Beast (2017). In case you haven’t heard of him, he’s a prominent transgender activist. Wikipedia

Sexual attraction is a complex phenomenon, and of course there is lots of individual variation. I certainly do not expect every cis queer woman to swoon over me. And if it were only a small percentage of cis dykes who were not interested in trans women at all, I would write it off as simply a matter of personal preference. But this not a minor problem—it is systemic; it is a predominant sentiment in queer women’s communities. And when the overwhelming majority of cis dykes date and fuck cis women, but are not open to, or are even turned off by, the idea of dating or fucking trans women, how is that not transphobic? And to those cis women who claim a dyke identity, yet consider trans men, but not trans women, to be a part of your dating pool, let me ask you this: How are you not a hypocrite?

The kicker here is that Serano isn’t responding to any individual, he’s just looking at the big picture and noticing that lesbians want to be in same-sex relationships…which is a problem for him. You can tell there’s transphobia afoot when not enough lesbians are having opposite-sex relations. Lesbians, be more equal! Have fewer same-sex relationships and more opposite-sex relationships!

Peer-reviewed scholarly paper Transgender exclusion from the world of dating (alternative link) (2018)

In an ideal world, free of cisgenderism and transprejudice, an individual’s gender identity (transgender vs. cisgender) would not factor into whether they were viewed as a viable dating partner. […] In other words, a heterosexual man or lesbian woman, usually attracted to women, would also indicate a willingness to date trans women.

Scholarly article casually says that in an ideal world, homosexuality and heterosexuality wouldn’t exist. Both-sex attraction only.

Tweets from Veronica Ivy, aka Rachel McKinnon, the male trans person who won the 2018 women’s world championships in cycling. Wikipedia says Ivy is also a tenured professor at a university in South Carolina, US.

Stop comparing homosexuality to something unnatural challenge.

Second transcript of video from EverydayFeminism.com by Riley Dennis (2017), a male trans person.

So what’s been happening is that some people are making the argument that it’s not cissexist at all to only be attracted to people with one kind of genitals. For example, these people might argue that being attracted to only women with vaginas in no way negatively affects trans people.

[…]

1. ‘You’re Being Homophobic!’

In this argument, I often get accused of homophobia, lesbophobia, or lesbian erasure by lesbians who believe that I’m trying to change their sexual orientation or identity. They say that my language sounds a lot like a dude who tried to turn them straight or like conversion therapy.

Those responses are rooted in cissexism.

This is because I’m not telling lesbians that they can’t be lesbians. If you’re a woman who only likes women, go ahead, identify as a lesbian! But some women have penises. And if the fact that some lesbians might be attracted to those women offends you, it’s because you don’t think trans women are real women.

That’s because these accusations of homophobia make it sound like I’m trying to convince lesbians to like men, but I’m not. I’m trying to show that preferences for women with vaginas over women with penises might be partially informed by the influence of a cissexist society.

[…]

2. ‘You’re Upholding Rape Culture’

[…] Suggesting that trans women are rapists for wanting to be fully recognized as women is extremely harmful.

And I should note that I’m not saying you have to do anything without consent. I’m a big of fan of affirmative consent, and you should never feel pressured to have sex with somebody. This isn’t about an individual.

This is not saying, “You have to have sex with a trans woman, or you’re cissexist.” It’s saying that you should examine the societal influences on your preferences. There’s a massive difference between honing in on individual scenarios and considering wider societal issues and attitudes.

[editor’s note: RD is using “fully recognized as women” as a euphemism for sexual relations. Believing that attraction to or sex with you is necessary for your “recognition” IS rape culture.]

3. ‘I’m Allowed to Have My Preferences!’

Technically, you’re right. […]

So if we look a little deeper into this issue, there’s the possibility of your genital preferences being at least somewhat partially informed by growing up in a cissexist society. There’s also the fact that a preference is different than saying you would never do something. [editor’s note: well spotted!]

Like, having a preference for tall girls is fine, but refusing to date anyone under 5’7″ is ridiculous. And obviously that’s not a perfect analogy because short girls as a group don’t face the societal marginalization that trans women do.

But I’m interested in having a conversation about labels and implicit bias and trans-inclusive language. Simply saying “It’s my preference, end of discussion” is a good way of sidelining all of those issues and, instead, centering the feelings of cis people in a discussion that’s about trans people. [editor’s note: dismissing the person who’s rejecting sexual activity and prioritizing the feelings of the person being rejected isn’t helping his argument re: not upholding rape culture]

[…]

And the last thing I want to say about this is that if you’d rather not have sex with a woman who has a penis, maybe just don’t make such a huge deal of it. Trans women are often afraid of not being found attractive or desirable after coming out, and you’re not helping.

If you really want to be an ally to trans people, you could just not talk about it. And by that, I’m not trying to censor you, okay, so don’t pretend this is censorship. You have the freedom to say whatever you want – I’m just asking you to consider if it’s necessary to say those things when they reflect harmful or violent rhetoric.

Because if you have an opinion that you know is only gonna make people feel bad about themselves, why constantly share it with the world?

It’s fine to not find people attractive, but it’s mean to constantly yell about how unattractive you find those people, especially when those people are oppressed. For another imperfect analogy, it’d be like if you weren’t attracted to girls with short hair.

That would fine, but you probably wouldn’t write articles and make videos defending why it’s okay for you to not like girls with short hair. You could do that, but sometimes it’s just best to be polite.

[editor’s note: so lesbians should shut up about being gay bc it hurts the opposite sex’s feelings.]

First transcript of video from EverdayFeminism.com by Riley Dennis (2016). Archive link.

I think the main concern that people have in regards to dating a trans person is that they won’t have the genitals that they expect. Because we associate penises with men and vaginas with women, some people think they could never date a trans man with a vagina or a trans woman with a penis.

But I think that people are more than their genitals. I think that you could feel attraction to someone without knowing what’s between their legs. And if you were to say that you’re only attracted to people with vaginas or people with penises, it really feels like you’re reducing people just to their genitals. You’re kind of objectifying them – but you’re thinking of them more as genitals than objects. So I guess you’re kinda genitalifying them?

Anyway, my point is, we have implicit biases that we were raised with or that we developed over time, and they can be hard to get rid of. And I think this can be especially prominent within the queer community.

Gay men often pride themselves on being disgusted by vaginas, and the same goes for lesbian women with penises. It’s difficult because some queer people have built their sexual identities on these repulsions, but I don’t think they’re innate at all. If you met someone who was extremely attractive, had a great personality, but didn’t have the genitals that you wanted, you might be surprised to find that it isn’t a dealbreaker.

[…]

But we know that sexual orientations are more innate than learned – they’re more nature and less nurture. Gay “conversion therapy” has been proven not to work. But you can unlearn your own prejudices; it just takes time and conscious effort.

Gee, arguing that a gay man’s disinterest in vaginas or a lesbian’s disinterest in penises is unnatural? Accusing gay people of being superficial perverts incapable of real love? Urging gay people to “unlearn” their "prejudice” to stop being gay? Who’da thunk?

A rant from the site Feministing.com (2012) from a male trans person (an Executive Director of the site). Co-founded by Jessica Valenti, Feministing.com merited attention from the New York Times when it shut down in 2019. It had more than a million unique monthly visitors at its peak.

“I date women and trans men” is the definition of cissexism. It’s basing your frame for sexuality on the gender coercively assigned to a person by their doctor at birth, not on that person’s actual identity. In this case, we’re talking about folks who were assigned female. Of course, “women” means cis women – trans women totally drop off the map.

[…]

It’s incredibly undermining to frame sexuality in a way that lumps these men in with all female assigned folks instead of with cis men. It’s a failure, in the realm of sexuality, to recognize that trans men’s male identities are just as legitimate as cis men’s. If you’re going to base sexuality on gender, better base it on people’s actual genders.

I get why a lot of female assigned folks exist in this frame for reasons that aren’t overtly about undermining trans identities. There’s a ton of gender based trauma out there, and I understand that folks associate this with cis men, and not with trans men. But that’s not a reality-based approach to gender. A lot of that trauma gets easily linked to genitals, but this isn’t about bodies, it’s about patriarchy. I think this sexuality frame is a big part of why so many trans men get away with (and are sometimes even encouraged to practice) unchecked misogyny and male privilege (remember, power is complicated. You can experience both male privilege and cissexist oppression).

My trans brothers deserve better than sex in a frame that undermines their identities. This doesn’t mean queer cis women and gender non-conforming female assigned folks can’t fuck trans men, but then they owe it to these guys to reframe their sexuality in a way that’s not undermining – to recognize that they sleep with men, and to question why they’re OK with sleeping with trans men and not cis men.

[…]

I do put a little more responsibility on trans men for letting this frame push their trans sisters out. This approach to sexuality totally erases trans women by excluding us from the group of sexually existing queer women. Yes, it’s also incredibly undermining of trans women’s identities by moving us out of the category “women” when it comes to sexuality. Ultimately, this frame goes back to the gender coercively assigned at birth for trans women as well. It’s a way for transmisogyny to advance unchecked, because trans women totally drop out of the conversation.

Obviously, claiming that people should be allowed to define their own sexualities without judgment goes out the window. Certain sexualities (*cough* homosexuality in particular *cough*) aren’t allowed.

Advice column from Xtra* Magazine responding to a question from a older woman who calls herself “Ornery Lesbian Dissident” (OLD) by a male trans person (2020)

But what about trans people like [Riley] Dennis and writer Brynne Tannehill, who suggest that it is transphobic for cis people to not want to date trans people?

First, I would suggest spending some time with Dennis and Tannehill’s work, because they present their perspectives with intelligence and nuance. They point out that all sexual and romantic preferences are in some way shaped by cultural and political forces. We are taught, for example, that thin is attractive and fat is ugly; that young people are deserving of sex while elders are not; that white skin is more beautiful than dark skin. While we shouldn’t let this observation dictate our sexual behaviour by immediately (and tokenistically) seeking out “diverse” sexual partners in the name of political correctness, it’s worth thinking about in the long term.

[…]

So when we talk about sexual preference, I believe that it is both possible and preferable to work towards healing our erotic selves by entering into a more mindful and intentional relationship with desire. This is decidedly not about forcing ourselves into sex with someone we aren’t attracted to, but rather about making empowered choices to experiment and expand our desire at a pace and direction that feels right.

You mention, OLD, that you are not attracted to penises or “the way that trans women look,” which I think is fair in the sense that you know your own feelings best. Yet I have to point out that not all trans women have penises, and not all trans women look the same. You also identify as someone who loves women, and I imagine that you love more than their genitalia and their outward appearance. So what does this mean for your assertion that you are not attracted to trans women?

Choosing to stay open to new possibilities while also staying grounded in empowered choice offers us a third way forward in a world where clashing ideals tell us that we can only have love for trans women or consent for cis women, not both. Yet of course, love and consent can only thrive in the presence of one another. Reclaiming control over our own bodies can sometimes open new pathways to erotic joy—throughout history, a great many cis people have discovered a deep and powerful attraction to trans people despite being taught to revile us.

I thought this author was pretty reasonable the first time I read the article; my second time through, I spotted the guilt-tripping and manipulative sexist tactics. He starts off by appealing to the desire to “just get along” (because of course lesbians getting along with male trans people has to include being closeted and/or open to sexual activity), he regurgitates the typical transgender homophobia by comparing it to unnatural things like racism etc, and implies lesbians are shallow genital-obsessed perverts who aren’t appreciating a person’s true self if they are homosexual. (“…I imagine you love more than their genitalia and their outward appearance. So what does this mean for your assertion that you are not attracted to [the opposite sex]?”)

Throughout he emphasizes over and over the idea of “choosing to stay open to the possibility,” “regarding each other through the eyes of possibility,” “it is possible and preferable to work towards […] making empowered choices to experiment and expand our desire at a pace and direction that feels right”—unless what feels right is being homosexual and rejecting the requirement to keep the door open to possibly someday be opposite-sex attracted.

Arguing that rejecting homosexuality “empowers” lesbian is pretty bad. Plus the “sex positive” conviction that sexual boundaries and limits are meant to be overcome, that they’re something to let go of or go beyond (and if you don’t want to go beyond them…you’re not getting along! Be nice!).

In a nutshell: “All” he’s asking for is for lesbians to get along with male trans people by holding onto the just the possibility that someday they’ll desire sexual activity with male trans people! Yet male trans people are not expected to make room for the possibility that female homosexuality is in fact natural, not an arbitrary construct they can identify into. Lesbians are expected to do the work of getting along.

Also the way he says this ~openness to the possibilities~ is the only way to avoid a world where “we can only have love for trans women or consent for lesbians”…as if male trans people can’t get love anywhere else except from lesbians? What?? It has a manipulative, abusive “nobody will love me if you don’t” vibe. Why is lesbians’ disinterest in the opposite sex a problem to solve?

Article from The Daily Beast (2021) by a male trans person, responding to the BBC’s article about the cotton ceiling

Through selective sourcing and questionable quotes, Lowbridge uses phrases like “biological female” and “biological male” to frame cisgender lesbians as defenseless maidens and equate trans women with aggressive, cisgender male sexual predators. Perhaps not so coincidentally.

Here are the basic points of Lowbridge’s 3,850-word screed, to which the BBC attached a warning to readers about “strong language”:

• Using anecdotal accounts of assholish behavior, the author reveals there are lesbians who don’t want to have sex with transgender women yet were “pressured,” “coerced” and at least one said they were raped.

That’s horrible, but as Canadian jurist and bioethicist Florence Ashley told The Daily Beast: “It’s absolutely insidious to transform discussions of how cisnormativity shapes desire into claims of ‘coercion’ which play into the long-standing demonization of trans women as ‘rapists’ and ‘perverts.’”

• Claiming an aversion to sex with a trans woman is “transphobic” and will result in loss of relationships, damage to reputation and in at least one case could potentially cost a lesbian her career.

The truth, cis bisexual and human resources director Jenn Kelley of Connecticut told The Daily Beast, is that people have preferences. “Some lesbians do not like penetration. And to some the mere idea of fellatio literally makes them gag. Therefore, they don’t have sex with people with penises,” Kelley said. “I honestly don’t think that makes them transphobic. They simply choose to engage in sex with persons without penises. Is that a fetish? No! It’s knowing what you like/don’t like and choosing that. It doesn’t diminish another because their gender or body parts aren’t what you prefer.” [Editor’s note: I wish the author had included more quotes from this source, because source doesn’t use the word “preference” to describe homosexuality ("preference” is inserted by the author), but it’s not clear what her opinion is of people being openly homosexual or declining to date post-op male trans people]

[…]

Penis. Penis. Penis. Penis. Penis. Penis. Penis. Although there are trans women, many of them who identify as lesbians, who undergo bottom surgery to transform male genitalia into a neovagina—which appears and functions in almost every way like female genitalia—this is barely referenced in favor of repeating the fallacy that all trans women have penises.

[…]

“This BBC article is just the latest biased and factually inaccurate story about transgender people to appear in British mainstream media,” a spokesperson for GLAAD told The Daily Beast. “It's frankly bad journalism to have a reporter and news outlet reinforce lies and spread hate about a group of people that is already profoundly marginalized. Mainstream media in the UK should immediately give transgender people and their allies platforms to share stories about what it really means to be a trans person in the UK today.”

“The idea that trans women need to pressure anyone into sex is so laughably absurd,” tweeted actor, producer and activist Jen Richards, who happens to be trans. “Don’t fall for stupid op-ed’s written with little to no basis in lived experience and by people who want to erase trans people from public life. If you don’t want us, we don’t want you either. All we ask is that you leave us and our partners the fuck alone.”

“I’m a proud woman, a proud trans person, and a proud lesbian,” writer and trans activist Charlotte Clymer told The Daily Beast. “I don’t know any trans or nonbinary person, let alone any activists, who would claim that cis lesbians are obligated to be attracted to trans women. I don’t know anyone in the trans community who would claim there’s an imperative for any person, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, to be attracted to someone because they’re trans or non-binary. No person is ever obligated to be attracted to another person. That completely goes against the concept of autonomy and consent that is so central to the trans and nonbinary community.” [editor’s note: lol]

This is not a new topic, and there are many great sources one could consult if only Lowbridge had tried: Ana Valens wrote a guide for queer women who want to have sex with trans women in Allure in 2019. She called communication “the lifeblood of good sex.” Mey Rude wrote “How to Have Lesbian Sex with a Trans Woman” for Autostraddle in 2018. In response to a cis lesbian backlash in the comments section, CEO and editor in chief Marie Lyn “Riese” Bernard wrote:

“There is nothing coercive in this post. It’s just information for people who want it. But it is mean that trans women can’t just talk about having sex without hundreds of people showing up to announce I’M NOT ATTRACTED TO YOU OR PEOPLE LIKE YOU! I don’t feel like that would happen on a post about fat women or masculine women or femme women or whatever type of woman if that happens to not be your thing, you know?”

Although Lowbridge wrote that she consulted trans women on both sides of this issue including YouTubers, she overlooked one trans lesbian YouTube personality who has tackled lesbian sex quite frequently: Melody Maia Monet.

“The goal seems to be to create an outsized moral panic over a ‘problem’ that even the anti-trans activists admit is marginal at best,” Monet told The Daily Beast. “Judging from how often I have been propositioned by lesbians who don’t care that I’m trans, framing cis and trans lesbian sexual relationships as forced does not reflect reality.”

Author and public speaker Stephanie Battaglino had this to say: “By focusing on one’s anatomy, the author is missing the bigger—and more inclusive—picture: my being trans is not the only way I present myself to the world. My personality, my interests, my sense of humor, my intelligence and a thousand other things, define who I am as a person. Unfortunately, there seems to be no mention of any of those qualities—that we all possess—in this piece. Do you think this was ghost written by JK Rowling?”

My reality: Since coming out 8 years ago I’ve been propositioned by both women and men. As a queer woman, I’ve been romantic with both women and men. And I don’t claim to be like every other woman, because no woman is. But listen to me, BBC: In publishing this drivel, you’re providing ammunition to those who want to see me excluded, oppressed, beaten, or worse, dead.

The bottom line: I am not my vagina. I was never my penis. But my body, as is every body, is worthy of love, and only from those with whom I consent to share it.

The author’s main argument is that This Doesn’t Happen and if it does happen, it’s not a big deal, and the women probably made up all up anyway. He cites one “expert” who euphemistically refers to homosexuality as “cisnormativity,” then quotes a woman who supports homosexuality as long as you Don’t Say Gay, and then follows up with a quote from GLAAD about how it’s “factually inaccurate” that some male trans people sexually harass lesbians.

He then quotes a ton of trans people, and ends with a dose of homophobia, using the modern politically correct terminology to accuse gay people of being shallow genital obsessed perverts who can’t love a person for who they are on account of their unfortunate homosexuality (the “too bad for you”/“I feel sorry for you”/“I’m so much better than you” refrain).

This article is an example of how transgender activists have zero interest in addressing sexual harassment committed by trans people when the option to condemn lesbian victims and publicly shame lesbians for being homosexual is on the table. Literally! There’s no point to making a cookie-cutter disclaimer about how you’re totally against rape culture, definitely, and then spend the rest of the article doing what he did.

Video of Owen Jones (2022), a same-sex attracted British journalist (Wikipedia)

Some random person on twitter accused Jones of being a hypocrite for only dating men while condoning the homophobia directed at lesbians and gay men for only dating their own sex. There’s no evidence Jones dates only his own sex…but Jones provided evidence of his own homophobia in the video he filmed in response.

The rando says that Jones can disprove his accusation by saying right now that he supports the right for women who are exclusively same-sex attracted to openly announce their orientation (as opposed to being closeted, pretending to be both-sex attracted). Jones says…

Skip to 2:20

“You can prove it if you unequivocally state that lesbians are not transphobic for being vocal or nice about exclusive attraction to the same sex.” You can see he’s shifted the goalposts here, he doesn’t have any evidence for his claim, so he’s abandoned that. And he doesn’t know anything about my own dating history, either, incidentally. The original hypocrisy as he claims I only dated people he considered to be men without me saying anything. [mumbles something in his British accent, saying that the goalposts have shifted].

2:49 But what does he even mean here? Well, he means the right of people to publicly say that trans women are men and trans men are women, just to rampantly misgender them, and the way I’ve put it there, frankly, is even more toned down than the way lots of them misgender trans people, which is just aggressive and hateful and all the rest of it. That’s got nothing to do with who you date, whatsoever, it’s completely irrelevant to that point.

3:13 My response was clear: why do you feel the need to tell the world that you think trans women are men and trans men are women? It objectively makes the lives of trans people harder and more miserable. The basis of hate crimes and violence and abuse and discrimination against trans people, is that they are impostors, that they’re not really who they say they are, that they’re either entitled and aggressive men or fallen women. That’s the basis of abuse. Going around misgendering them is just obviously just whipping up hatred and bigotry to them.

3:44 So you make their lives harder, but how does it make your life happier or contented to do that? What benefit is it to you?

Here’s the key: What does it mean to unequivocally state that lesbians are not transphobic for being vocal or (not) nice about exclusive attraction to the same sex? According to Jones, what it means is, the right of people to publicly say that male trans people are men. Aka, transphobia/bigotry. In other words, he says ok, FINE, if lesbians don’t want to sleep with male trans people they don’t have to, but they ought to be ashamed of their bigoted sexual orientation. No pride for them, only shame.

After all, if you announce you’re exclusively same-sex attracted, that means you’re telling the world you think male trans people are men! So shut up and keep it to yourself, because what reason could a lesbian ever have to want to be out of the closet? What benefit or happiness does it ever bring a gay person to be out of the closet? The only reason is to hurt the feelings of trans people, apparently.

And for bonus, he says they should be ashamed because lesbians are to blame for hate crimes and violence (note: there is no data to support the claim that trans people have an unusually high murder rate) against trans people. Yup.

Tweet by Ashton Pittman (2022), an award-winning same-sex attracted American journalist

The only women permitted at Pride are the ones who like dick. No out lesbians, especially not the ones who loudly and proudly proclaim their homosexuality.

Article from Slate (2015) by a female trans person and a male trans person about tensions between lesbians and male trans people

For cis lesbians, it can also be difficult to tell the difference between an honest lack of attraction and feelings of fear or disgust at the idea of a partner who they perceive as “really” a man—feelings that are rooted in transphobic cultural conditioning. While trans lesbians seeking romantic connections in the lesbian community are often frustrated by the knee-jerk resistance many cis lesbians have to dating trans women, hearing that one’s individual reluctance to date someone may be based in transphobia can feel unfair and accusatory.

Rumors of trans women who attempt to pressure lesbians to date them by insisting that it would be transphobic to do otherwise don’t help matters—these stories may be apocryphal, but the fear of being pressured into a romantic relationship is hardly conducive to relaxed getting-to-know-yous. Rumors of predatory or pressuring behavior by trans women have been fanned by TERFs in order to paint trans women as violent and coercive.

These two want a job as mindreaders: “you think you’re not attracted to the opposite sex, but you are! Because I say so!”

Literally the authors spend the whole article blaming lesbians for this or that and then squeeze in one paragraph at the end saying “and maybe trans people are mean to butches.”

Cotton Ceiling From Not-As Respectable Sources

Wiktionary

A social barrier to consideration (by cisgender women) of transgender women as viable sexual partners

How about, instead of a “social barrier,” a homosexual fact?

Article on Medium (2018) from smalltime male trans journalist who has been published in HuffPost, i News, and PinkNews one time each.

The author, who says he’s bisexual, has also outright stated he personally wouldn’t date a trans person. (He doesn’t say why.)

The cotton ceiling, in short, makes the point that there are certain cis lesbians who are using their sexuality as a way to deny trans women’s womanhood. It’s not about coercing them, it’s not about saying you can’t have sex with only people you want to have sex with, its not about corrective rape or conversion therapy. It’s literally just a name for the concept of using your sexuality as a way of denying trans women’s womanhood; ie “I would never have sex with a trans woman, I’m a lesbian and don’t like men”.

And this happens an awful lot in the anti-trans community. It’s their ultimate GOTCHA! because sexual preferences are kind of seen as a little sacred. I get why, LGB people have fought really bloody hard in our societies to get to where they are now and I don’t want to at all take that away from them. I get the fiery passion behind defending your right to love who you want to love — and as a bisexual woman in a lesbian relationship, I’m super down for that cause. (Yes, this does make me a BLT)

[…]

Like seriously… all trans people want in this regard is that if we’re going to use this straight/gay/bi system— that we get to decide which label to use ourselves and have that respected. Like that’s literally it. But every single time a trans woman calls herself lesbian you can guarantee an anti-trans activist will show up to disagree and shout her down and call her a heterosexual male.

Personally, I suggest dropping the idea of rigid and strict labels like lesbian, gay, bi and straight. You don’t need a label, just tell people what you’re into… ie “I like vaginas and/or dicks” if genitals are absolutely important to you, or in my case “I like it when you orgasm, I like it when I orgasm, I like orgasms.”

To summarise, the cotton ceiling isn’t about corrective rape or an entitlement to vaginas. It’s about the use of sexual preferences as a weapon against the womanhood of trans women.

So he says lesbians can refuse sex with male trans people as long as they don’t say WHY, or if they do say why, they shouldn’t use a label like “gay/bi/lesbian” #DontSayGay. If only there was a label that meant “I’m biologically female and I want someone who’s biologically female.”

Twitter activist Katy Montgomerie (2022), a same-sex attracted male trans person. Montgomerie has given at least one radio interview (2023) about transgender topics, and he gave a presentation at Edinburgh University where he called “same-sex attraction” a transphobic dogwhistle (while pretending the argument is over whether gay men are attracted to male trans people, instead of the real meat of the argument, which is the lack of sexual attraction that gay people have for the opposite sex and the lack of attraction straight people have for their same sex).

Montgomerie’s argument here is that homosexuality is a product of brainwashing—gay people only think they’re exclusively same-sex attracted, but actually some of the people you’re “attracted” to are the opposite sex mimicking your common sex traits to greater or lesser extents, which means Gotcha(TM). It’s a reference to the cotton ceiling because he’s saying lesbians are actually attracted to (some) male trans people, therefore lesbians are attracted to the male sex.

Contrary to his claim, it’s easy to correct.

A lesbian on reddit explained it this way: (VERY loosely from memory, ngl I made most of this up bc I couldn’t find it again) If you saw a cake and were like “that looks delicious! I want to eat this!” and then someone told you the cake is peanut butter flavored, and you said, “oh, I hate peanut butter, never mind!” and that person says “but you just said you wanted to eat this cake! obviously you like peanut butter cake! why are you pretending not to like peanut butter cake?” would you take that person seriously or are they a moron?

You can also compare his argument to this old meme:

According to Montgomerie’s TRA logic, this guy is sexually attracted to laundry machines. After all, it doesn’t matter he didn’t know the laundry machine was a laundry machine! He was turned on by it, which means he’s attracted to it.

In conclusion, if you have to woo someone by deceiving them about what’s in your pants, it doesn’t make homosexuality unnatural, and it doesn’t mean someone’s in denial that they’re attracted to you.

“But you were turned on when you thought the laundry machine was a person!” Yes…because some things are so intuitively fundamental to attraction that the attraction is founded on them. And if that foundation isn’t there, neither is the attraction.

“But you were interested when you thought the cake wasn’t peanut butter flavored!” Yes…because some people only like cakes that don’t have peanut butter.

In order to want something, you have to have an idea of what you want, and if that idea turns out to be mismatched with reality, it doesn’t mean you suddenly like peanut butter cakes just because you wanted a cake before you knew it had peanut butter.

FFS.

From the FreeThoughtBlog (2012) by Natalie Reed, a homosexual male trans person trashing on homosexual women. The author also wrote this post on EverydayFeminism.com, and apparently worked as a staffer for the National Center for Transgender Equality.

The term “Cotton Ceiling” was originally coined by the intensely awesome Canadian trans-activist and porn star Drew DeVeaux, in which she referred (quite specifically) to the tendency within feminist and queer women’s spaces for trans women to be, while nominally accepted as women and supported in their pursuit for rights and equality, regarded and treated as essentially de-sexed, unfuckable, and sometimes a bit repulsive, with this becoming highly politicized in regards to its implications for things like what a lesbian sexuality really means, how much  of sexuality is “orientation” and something we can’t be held accountable for and how much is mediated by our perceptions, how sexuality can reveal that biases and lack of respecting gender identity continue to exist on visceral levels despite being intellectually (or superficially) rejected, etc.

[…]

For example, the idea of us as de-sexed relates directly to the whole “cutting off your penis” myth through which transsexuality is often viewed. It imagines a male-to-female transition (but tellingly NOT a female-to-male transition) as being a loss, a reduction, giving something of oneself up and becoming a lesser being, [editor’s note: lmao is he literally claiming lesbians are more interested in male trans people who have dicks than who don’t?] rather than conceiving it (much more accurately), as a growth, a reconfiguration, an expansion of self and possibilities, gaining new confidence and sexuality and empowerment and self-realization. The idea of us as being fundamentally unattractive relates into the way that cisgender standards of beauty are positioned as the only possible standards, that “passability” and “beauty” are, for trans women, directly equated, and we can ONLY be seen as beautiful, attractive or sexy in so far as we do NOT appear to be trans and instead appear to be cis (which is, you know, really fucked up). The refusal of lesbians to consider us viable sexual partners, or their seeing intimacy with us as somehow a threat to their lesbian identification (I had a #FunWithSearchTerms the other day asking “what do you call a lesbian who’s attracted to both women and trans women?”) is to ultimately, when it comes to staking your own identification upon how you conceive of our gender, to walk your talk, assert that beneath whatever lip-service you’ve paid to the legitimacy of our identity you simply don’t really regard us as women. At least not fully so.

The trouble, though, is that in the painfully typical manner that cis people will consistently view trans issues primarily or only in relation to themselves, they see this notion that how trans women are sexualized (or more accurately, desexualized) within their community is somehow all about us trying to force our way into their pants, to trick our way past their “natural” disinclination to sleeping with our “naturally” less attractive selves. [editor’s note: natural disinclination to sleep with the opposite sex] The conversation was quickly twisted into being about how “nobody needs to be obliged to sleep with someone we don’t regard as attractive! It doesn’t make me a transphobe just because I’m not interested in sleeping with trans women!”

[…]

And to be honest, saying as a blanket statement that you have no interest in sleeping with any trans women ever IS a transphobic statement. As I’ve talked about before, there really isn’t any universal or consistent outward trait common to all trans women. Logically, one can’t possibly experience a basic sexual attraction to cis women but not trans women, at least not while claiming that supposed lack of attraction has anything to do with trans women and trans bodies. It’s about how you perceive trans women. What you’re “not attracted to” is women you KNOW are trans, the IDEA of trans women, the CONCEPT. Which is inherently tied into cultural perceptions. You’d have the same reaction to a cis woman claiming to be trans as you would to an actual trans woman. It’s about your perceptions, not our bodies.

[…]

Sexuality does not occur in a vacuum. Imagine a circumstance where an enormous number of people were saying that latina women just plain weren’t attractive or sexy, and that the only way they COULD be would be to look as little like latina women as possible. And let’s say when this issue is broached, the response is “I just don’t find latinas attractive. I’m not racist! It’s just my sexual interests, which I have a right to define. Trying to force me into having sex with latinas by guilt-tripping me is a form of rape”. Wouldn’t it be justified to explore how racism, and cultural attitudes towards hispanic people, are influencing those attitudes and sexuality? Wouldn’t the women so targeted as “innately” less attractive be justified in their anger and hurt?

[…]

Some aspects of sexuality probably are innate, “Born This Way”. But a whole lot more of it is socio-culturally mediated. How cultural attitudes play out in sexuality is not something that needs to be protected from discussion, and given the fact that this often has real, actual consequences (such as perpetuating the oppression, alienation and dehumanization of trans women), it is something that needs to discussed.

The fact that simply trying to broach the subject of “the cotton ceiling” is something met with such a considerable degree of hostility and opposition is itself pretty strong proof that it is in fact a real phenomenon that is actually limiting how trans women are conceived and talked about in the queer community. It makes sense, of course… there’s a whole lot of important things tied to these issues. The stability of gender, the stability (or even validity) of sexual orientations in a world where gender is not a stable, binary, fixed thing. The importance of what a lesbian identity is and means, where it begins and ends. How much of sexuality is fixed and how much is mutable. How much of our attractions, and sexual orientations, are connected to actual bodies and actual pleasure and how much is all just in our heads and how we think of those bodies and pleasures. The presence of trans women as sexual beings poses considerable threats to understandings of gender and sexuality, both of which are things that carry deeply personal significance to everyone, perhaps especially to queer women.

But this is a discussion that needs to happen. And needs to NOT be made all about cis people. It needs to be focused on us, on trans women, and our representation. To shut down this dialogue simply because it’s a bit scary is to forfeit the right to consider oneself trans-friendly or accepting. It’s to forfeit the right to claim membership in a unified queer community.

Something remarkable about this rant is that the author himself is gay, but he’s this riled up over imagining lesbians rejecting him if he were straight. During the article, he heavily implies that he would only sleep with “cisgender” men, and when someone in the comment section called it out, the author conceded that if he and a female trans person had chemistry…he would be able to make himself have sex with her. It reeked of hypocrisy.

It’s also remarkable that it’s evident he’s a thoughtful person. I thought it was interesting when he proposed the hypothetical of a woman posing as a male trans person. But he invests all of his thought into obsessing over how it’s unfair for lesbians to have a natural sexual orientation that doesn’t change to convenience heterosexual male trans people, without recognizing it takes two to tango, so this idea that the cotton ceiling could ever be about just trans people or trans representation, and not an attack on homosexuality, is a convenient falsehood.

Video from Ira Gray (2013), female trans person who was apparently big on Tumblr back in the day

This is mostly to the ones that identify as queer or lesbian, refusing to date trans women but being ok with dating trans men and cisgender women is super, super cissexist. And I know what you’re thinking, you’re probably thinking like well it’s just my preference, so you can’t tell me what to like or what I don’t like. No, I can’t tell you want to like or to not like, but I can implore you to question why you like those things in the first place. […]

You’re basically lumping people into their gender designation markers and segregating people over something they have no control over. So instead of being like, I like people with these features, you’re saying I like people who have these things on their birth certificate […] and that seems really weird to me. […] 

Basically what you’re saying is that trans men and cisgender women are alike. […] And likewise, saying you won’t date trans women and cisgender men basically lumps them into the same category as well […] basically it goes through the process of undermining someone’s identity. […] 

Just question why you’re into something, and then refusing to do so is really fucked up too. I’ll admit I used to be transmisogynistic in regard to my sexual attraction, I didn’t want to date trans women, because I didn’t want to date someone with a penis. […] 

Any form of logic you use to justify only dating trans men and not dating trans women and dating cisgender women and not dating cisgender men is going to be cissexist. Because you have to […] use super stereotypical arguments that are anti-trans in order to justify them.

This article on Medium (2020) from a straight British male trans person: its author argues that it’s not really a problem that lesbians are “transphobic” when choosing who to date. So, still homophobic, but he expends effort debunking some of your typical trans cotton ceiling arguments.

[…] To put it in a more direct way; is it transphobic that this woman did not want to go on a date with me? Is it transphobic that she didn’t want to sleep with me?

Not to sound like I am avoiding giving an answer to my own questions but, to both: yes, and no. The point where the transphobia was taking place was in the fact that she saw transness as a deal-breaker. [editor’s note: transness is a euphemism for being biologically male]

[…]

Where I might be saying something more contentious, however, is that her being transphobic does not mean she is wrong for not wanting to sleep with me (stick with me here, okay). There are all sorts of reasons that a cis lesbian may not wish to sleep with a trans woman. […] People can quite simply not be attracted to my body, to a penis and small breasts.

[…] They might just not want to sleep with us. It’s a transphobic prejudice, sure, but they are not necessarily a transphobe, and we cannot demand that someone sleep with us to prove they are not a transphobe. I do not think that many, if any at all, trans people would actually do that when it comes down to it.

[…]

I’m a big proponent of violent resistance to fascism, to racism, both institutional and personal. I am not a fan of violent resistance to transphobic feminists. I mean, there’s a reason I’m using that phrase, rather than TERF, even if I obviously think TERF is an accurate descriptor and not a slur. But when I see phrases like KILL ALL TERFS or similar, I can’t really relate to that mindset: a TERF is not a fascist, not exactly (I do think a lot of their thinking is fascist). And most TERFs are women. It’s not helpful for us to scream that we are going to kill them, because, more than anything else, it just fulfils what they already think about us: that we are violent males (even if the people shouting that are cis women). I get why we might jump to violent resistance to this problem, because it has been effective against other forms of bigotry, but different forms of bigotry function in different ways, come from different places, and so on.

Post on the blog Cuntext (2012)

Reframing a specific experience of cissexism and transphobia—not being considered datable or fuckable by the majority of one’s queer community—as simply women treating each other badly is not only delusional, it’s exclusive.

[…]

At risk of sounding repetitive, because this is becoming a bit of a catchphrase for me these days: QUESTION YOUR DESIRE. If you have spent any time thinking about how damaging and fucked up it is that every women’s magazine photoshops models to be skinnier, whiter, and less wrinkled, then you’ve already started. Standards of beauty, aesthetics of fuckability, are not created in a vacuum. They come out of real societies, and they are built on that society’s sexism and racism and ableism and fat negativity and, yes, cissexism and transphobia. Furthermore, desire is not static or permanent. Do you think the same things are hot now as you did when you were fourteen, or has your desire evolved and expanded?

Desire is malleable. Desire changes, and it changes based on many things, including our understandings of what’s hot, who’s a woman, and what lesbian and/or queer sex is. We become less transphobic by learning to see our cis privilege and recognizing instances of cissexism, transphobia, and transmisogyny when they occur. The more we do that, the more “real” trans women become to us, the more legitimately women they become to us—NOT that they need our approval. We do not do this because they need our approval as women; they are women whether we are able to see it and whether we act like it or not. We do this because we recognize that our perceptions are warped and incorrect, and because we want to see clearly. We do this because we are giant assholes when we can’t recognize all women as such, and we’d rather not be assholes. Therefore, what is being asked of us is that we take apart our desire, see its transphobia and transmisogyny, and then we remake it. For me, this is actually a core element of queerness, and don’t fucking tell me it’s impossible, because I do it all the time and so do tons of people out there. Once again: question your desire. Do more. See more. And hey, date more and fuck more, too.

More conversion therapy rhetoric about desire being malleable, asserting lesbians have a moral obligation to remake their sexual orientation to be both-sex attracted, and actually the gayest thing of them all is remaking yourself in order to stop being too gay.

Blog post (2015) on Transgender Forum by a male trans person in San Francisco.

Long, detailed reddit post (2013) about lesbians who won’t date male trans people.

Also, would you rule someone out because she had six toes? Whenever I hear a straight man ask how sex works in the absence of a penis, I feel sorry for his girlfriends/wife, because he clearly doesn't understand how sexytimes work; when I hear a lesbian rule out trans women because of the presence of a hidden penis I feel sorry for her partner, because how superficial is that?

BONUS: Occasionally a TRA recognizes the rape culture inherent in bashing people for not experiencing sexual attraction. (They almost never acknowledge the homophobia.) See:

Tumblr post “Should the cotton ceiling be overcome?”

Medium post “On Dating, Lesbians, Trans Women, and Gender Critical Feminism” (archive)

Changing the Definition to Win the Argument

Sometimes TRAs recognize the “cotton ceiling” is problematic and pretend it means something else in order to justify calling lesbians bigots. I’ve supplied abundant evidence here for what it means. Here are some sources that try to change the definition to win the argument:

SJ Wiki gives multiple “complementing” definitions, the primary definition being that male trans people are excluded from the “higher echelons” of same-sex attracted women (and then quoting multiple sources I already quoted here clarifying that “higher echelons” means sexual activities) (also claims the “cotton” in cotton ceiling refers to the underwear of male trans people, which…does not make it better)

In The Ugly Argument of the Cotton Ceiling the author claims it means men “pretending” to be male trans people to sleep with lesbians

Blog post arguing that cotton ceiling refers to how lesbians are scared of how people will react if they date male trans people (which ofc they’re dying to do!)

Blog post trotting out the claim that the cotton ceiling has nothing to do with banging lesbians or with lesbians at all and it’s all about male trans people’s feelings

Essay from a male trans person who appears to identify as a radical feminist, repeatedly cites Dworkin etc. He alludes to the cotton ceiling as a “privilege gradient” between lesbians and male trans people. His essay is only readable because women in the comments convinced him to change his wording to be less rapey. In the comments of a different essay, a commenter references the cotton ceiling by name.

I’ve also seen them use the terms “genital preference” or “sexual exclusion” to talk about the cotton ceiling without using the searchable term.

[improbablecarny]

i mean i would love an essay on the meaninglessness of the "female gaze" if you get the chance

Thank u... maybe I will eventually. Or maybe I will find an essay that explains it better than I can.

It's really just a combination of:

lots of bickering and contradiction over one solid definition of what it even means

many of the definitions relying on gender essentialism or just a patronizing flattening of the concept of women making art ("female gaze is when women make movie" or "women are intrinsically more candid and emotional in art")

most of these definitions require a very basic, narrow style of narrative structure in which a Relatable Protagonist uses her Agency to Overcome an Obstacle and completely falls apart when applied to any other form of story

people having a poor understanding of what the male gaze is but still trying to make something to be its direct 1:1 opposite, when there's a broader societal context (the treatment of cishet white male as default) that birthed the male gaze as a concept in the first place and trying to replicate it at all just replicates its problems. male gaze does not just mean "when a woman is sexy in movie" and it feels cheap to turn around and just say "female gaze is when MAN is sexy in movie"

a lot of things that internet posters like to tout as "having" "the female gaze", in a way projected as positive, are so overly sexless, cisgender and heterosexual that it's insulting to be told that this is somehow an inherent part of my viewpoint because of my gender.

I think the most useful, and telling, and mostly unintended use of "the female gaze" is for identifying the narrow expectations for how women are supposed to show our desires and make our art palpably "relatable" to a mass-market.

[wolfagenda]

G E N E R A L

FULL NAME: Tadhg Callum Lachlain  (pronounced Tie-g)

NICKNAME(S): Tag

TITLE(S): None.

AGE: 30s

DATE OF BIRTH: April 20th

RACE: Gilnean Human

GENDER: Cisgender Male

PRONOUNS: He/Him

ORIENTATION: Heterosexual

MARITAL STATUS: Widowed

PROFESSION(S): Hunt Master, animal trainer, field guide & tracker. Enforcer for the mercenary company Glove & Gauntlet.

LANGUAGES: Common, conversational Dwarvish

A P P E A R A N C E

HAIR: Dark brown. Fades to a reddish/golden brown along the tips in the summertime.

EYES: Hazel/green. Left eye is now milky and blind.

HEIGHT: 6′4″ (H) / 7′3″ (W)

BUILD: Broad shoulders, compact muscle.

DISTINGUISHING MARKS (visible):

A large scar runs the left side of his face, from the center of his forehead, over his left eye, down to his left cheek. The eye is obviously blind.

COMMON ACCESSORIES:

Two massive Gilnean hounds, Bruiser & Buster.

An old silver cigarette tin with a rose stamped on the cover.

A boot knife.

A gold chain holding two golden bands.

A hunting rifle.

A B O U T

Tadhg is a stoic man who is not prone to showing emotion in public. Despite his frequent silence and rare words in a group setting, when he is with people he knows he is quite conversational; even boisterous. He is a loyal to and a fierce protector of those close to him. Sensitive and intuitive, there is a gentleness that speaks to a desire to listen and offer counsel. He is afflicted, but is not open about it.

Want to know more? Interact or RP!

•extroverted / introverted / in between.

•disorganized / organized / in between.

•close minded / open-minded / in between.

•calm / anxious / in between.

•disagreeable / agreeable / in between.

•cautious / reckless / in between.

•patient / impatient / in between.

•outspoken / reserved / in between.

•leader / follower / in between.

•empathetic / indifferent / in between.

•optimistic / pessimistic / in between.

•traditional / modern / in between.

•hard-working / lazy / in between.

•cultured / uncultured / in between.

•loyal / disloyal / unknown / in between.

•assertive / timid / in between

P E R S O N A L

HOBBIES: Farming, hunting, wood carving, cooking

SKILL(S): Animal training, tracking, hunting, cultivating the earth, woodworking, cooking, keeping children calm

RESIDENCE: Elwynn

BIRTHPLACE: Gilneas

AFFILIATIONS: The Autumn Oath (disbanded), Alliance military (former), Glove & Gauntlet (current).

R E L A T I O N S H I P S

SPOUSE:

Anna (Kelly) Lachlain. Deceased.

CHILDREN:

None.

PARENTS:

William Lachlain, father. Deceased.

Eithne (Farrier) Lachlain, mother. Deceased.

SIBLINGS:

None.

OTHER RELATIVES:

All deceased.

PETS/COMPANIONS/FAMILIARS:

Constant companions:  Bruiser & Buster, Gilnean hounds.

Numerous wild-living companions; too many to name.

V I C E S

SMOKING:  never / rarely / sometimes / frequently / to excess.

DRUGS: never / rarely / sometimes / frequently / to excess.

ALCOHOL: never / rarely / sometimes / frequently / to excess.

O T H E R

FACE REFERENCE(S): Clive Standen (namely as Rollo in Vikings)

VOICE REFERENCE(S): Raspy cockney accent. Very This.

ALIGNMENT: Neutral

SERVER: Moon Guard - Alliance

OTHER:

18+ Only. 25+ preferred.

Open to most themes. Just ask.

Always looking for connections.

[ladsofsorrow24]

anyway, just... some serious thought about gender and stuff for a moment.

i just watched this video by a very fun youtuber, you can check her channel here (her video on minesweeper is hilarious, i love it) where she talked about why representation matters. and when she explained her journey of relating to characters that are... different from other people's expectations, i feel so... seen.

she mentioned how every time she played a character, it always felt easier for her to relate to a female characters than their male counterpart, and i... i felt the same way too, just vice versa.

i never... felt connected much to the concept of femininity, no matter how much it's enforced on me. whether it's watching tv, buying clothes or even when i was talking to friends about what we all like, the concept of femininity never make me feel... comfortable much.

and at first i thought "maybe it's just trauma" especially the... things that happened to me last year. but when i met this girl at my workplace, getting close and confiding to each other about our lives and goals, it made me realized that it wasn't trauma or any of that.

i'm just like this, really.

hearing her talk about things that i never wished to experience (like getting married to a guy, bearing a child and all of the very... "womanly" concepts) really cemented in how, what i want isn't because i was broken by my trauma or anything, i just don't like the thought of sharing a space with men in that... way.

and no, i don't wanna say being a woman or a girl is only that, but there's also this... inherent concept that women, heterosexual women will desire most if not all of those things.

and honestly that just confirmed how not only i am not heterosexual, i am also not that much of a cisgender myself.

which is why, even if i don't present myself as very... gender neutral to some people, deep in my heart i am not a cisgender woman.

and that's enough for me to feel... okay with my body. to feel okay with how i feel. to feel comfortable with the thought that i'm just different than most people around me.

but yeah, gender euphoria is a pretty great thing, huh? i think everyone should experience it in their life. it'll make life so much fun to feel happy about themselves.

[caitrionavalmai]

For all who want or need it - here is all the terms A-Z I’ve come across as a queer woman in my community :)

THE RAINBOW SPECTRUM

By: C. Valmai

Agender: to be without gender

Ally: supporter of equal civil rights, gender equality, and LGBT social movements

Androgynous (Andro): appearance of inter-determinate sex

Androphilia (Minsexual): the attraction to men and masculinity

Aporanger: form of non-binary; to feel seperate from any gender whilst still having a strong and specific gendered feeling.

Aromantic: little to no feeling of romantic attraction

Asexual (Ace): little to no sexual feeling or desire

Autosexual: to be sexually attracted to themselves

Bear: a hairy and heavyset queer man

Bigender: individual that experiences two gender identities; male and female

Bisexual: to be sexually attracted to both males and females

Butch: traditionally masculine appearing queer woman

Cisgender: person who’s gender identity matches their assigned gender at birth

Closeted: person who hasn’t publicly disclosed their sexual orientation

Coming-out: the self disclosure of ones sexual orientation

Cross-dressing: the act of wearing clothes commonly associated with the opposite sex

Demiromantic: person who experiences romantic attraction only after forming a strong emotional connection

Demisexual: person who experiences sexual attraction only after forming a strong emotional connection

Drag queen: males who ostentatiously dress in women’s clothes

Dyke: a lesbian with masculine mannerisms

Equality: the state of equal treatment without regard to differentiating characteristic

Femme (Feminine): queer person who presents in a feminine manner

Fraysexual: sexual attraction to others that they’re less familiar with

Futch: the midway point for lesbians on the scale between femme and butch

FTM/F2M: transition terminology for female to male

Gay: a homosexual male

Gender Dysphoria: discomfort and distress due to the mismatch between ones biological sex and gender identity

Gender fluid/queer: a gender identity not exclusively masculine or feminine

Gender neutral: a word/phrase that doesn’t refer to just one gender; they/them

Gender variant: behaviour or gender expression that doesn’t match masculine or feminine gender norms

Graysexual: A form of Asexuality, with very rare occurrences of sexual attraction

Gynephilia (Finsexual): the attraction to women and femininity

Hermaphrodite: having both sex organs/characteristics, either abnormally or naturally

Heterosexual: a person who is attracted to the opposite sex

Homosexual: a person who is attracted to the same sex

Intersex: individuals born with variations in sex characteristics that don’t fit typical definitions for male or female e.g. chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, genitals etc.

Justified: to be understood and accepted for who you identify as without judgement

Kinks: bizarre or unconventional sexual preferences and behaviours

Lesbian: a homosexual woman

Lithosexual: an individual who experiences sexual attraction but doesn’t want it reciprocated

Lithromantic: an individual who experiences romantic attraction but doesn’t want it reciprocated

Mardi Gras: the annual parade/festival that celebrates the queer community (translates in French to Fat Tuesday)

Masc (Masculine): queer person who presents in a masculine manner

MTF/M2F: transition terminology for male to female

Neutrois: to have no gender or an absence of gender

Non-binary: identifying as without gender or gender identity

Omnisexual (Omni): sexual, romantic or emotional attraction towards others with acknowledgement of sexual orientation and gender identity

Outing: revealing the sexual orientation of someone else without their consent

Pansexual (Pan/Gender Blind): sexual, romantic or emotional attraction towards others regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity

Polyamorous: to have intimate relationships with more than one partner, with the consent of all involved

Polysexual (Poly): sexually attracted to more than one gender

Pride: the positive stance against discrimination and violence towards all queer people

Queer: an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities that aren’t heterosexual or cisgender

Questioning: the process of discovering ones own gender, sexual identity, and/or sexual orientation

Quoisexual: unable to distinguish the differences between sexual and other forms of attraction

Rainbow flag: established in 1979, the rainbow flag of pride symbolises: red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, blue for harmony, and purple for spirit, for the queer community.

Skoliosexual: individuals attracted to gender queer, transgender and/or non-binary people

Stonewall: initially a mafia owned Inn, catered to the poorest and most marginalised people in the queer community

Straight: individual who is attracted to the opposite gender

Transsexual (Trans+): the desire to physically transition to the sex that corresponds with the gender they identify as

Transgender: individual that doesn’t identify as the sex they were assigned at birth

Trigender: individual that experiences three gender identities; male, female and non-binary

Twink: a small frames, young looking queer man, with little to no body hair

Unisex: designed to be suitable for both sexes

Visibility: the accurate representation of the diversity of the queer community

Wigstock: 1980’s annual outdoor drag festival in Manhattan’s East Village on Labour Day

XX/XY Chromosomes: the pair of DNA that determine the biological sex of an individual; XX for female, XY for male

You: the journey of understanding your own gender, orientation, personal preferences, and representation

Ze/Zir: third person pronouns describing individuals without gender assumption

[chubbycow222]

Heya. Are you by any chance looking for a feeder? I came across your profile on Feabie and we live in the same city! I’d love to chat and get to know each other, but first I just wanted to check in and see if that is something you’d even be interested in. I’m never quite sure how to start a conversation like this 😭. (For reference I’m a 25 year old cisgender, heterosexual male who uses he/him pronouns.)

I think I’m looking for a feeder, I’m trying to focus on myself, the right person will find me. I don’t respond to messages on feabie unless I’m in the mood to get teased. My relationship with dating is kind of complicated at the moment. Unironically the best way to get my attention would be to buy me food, and if you don’t have money, reblog or like my stuff! I would talk to someone if they sent me money for fast food :P I know that is a little greedy and selfish of me but I have the word brat in the title of my blog for a reason. If you wanna be my feeder, start feeding me!! I haven’t had a sponsored stuffing yet, I haven’t really posted about my desire for that, but I should start trying to manifest that!

[godsleastfavouriteartist]

william is actually very small for a changeling male. he's ONLY seven foot four at 30

He grows to be 10'4 EVENTUALLY (eventually as in in Hundreds of years) - a VERY respectable height for a changeling male - but because hes half human his secondary growth spurt is delayed until hes well into his 300s.

That being said

william likes women who can pick him up. calliope is much stronger than he is and after becoming fwb with syrina he started to prompt her to pick him up rather frequently.

He likes men smaller than him but he likes all his partners to be stronger than him.

Thats not just him being a weirdo - though that is part of it - changelings are often predisposed to attraction towards stronger mates for a variety of instinctive reasons.

for example

- changelings are brood animals, they have litters of children at a time.

William is an outlier amoungst his siblings in that he has no litter mates.

Having broods means that it helps to have babies with someone who can handle both having a lot of babies at once and has the strength to physically restrain multiple shapeshifting babies.

- changeling females tend to be larger than males. This is because they bare the responsibility of carrying clutches of eggs - produced by the male. Males cannot carry eggs or give birth.

(changelings can both lay eggs and give live birth. Both tend to result in multiple babies at once. Most changeling litters consist of 3-5 babies)

- changelings are apex predators. a strong mate can provide more food for the family. if one knows themselves to be a weak hunter - which william is not, hes very good at hunting - one can balance out their own weaknesses with a strong mate.

- changelings MUST eat at least five times a day. a healthy mate can help provide food for a weakened one.

- changelings are naturally large creatures. Most of them are 9 feet tall. If everyones tall, its even more attractive if Youre exceptionally tall.

That all being said

changelings Can change their sexual characteristics at will. Meaning that "male" and "female" are very limiting descriptors. changelings have the ability - if they understand the internal intricacies of their anatomy (think medical/dissection knowledge) to just Give themselves that anatomy with enough meditation on the change.

Just like in humans, birth sex is not binary. For example, William is intersex. He was born with the Expected characteristics externally but has some internal discrepancies.

For william these discrepancies are not worth correction and simply a fact of his anatomy. He likes his body and does not change it once he becomes aware of it.

the hive is rather progressive in terms of gender recognition and sexual autonomy so there is little societal rejection to be feared if one does not fit into perisex or cisgender binaries.

If everyone can shapeshift it kinda doesnt matter who you fuck, what your body looks like or what you call yourself.

thusly its not a Bio Essientialism thing that draws changelings to large mates. Homosexual changelings are just as prone to desiring large mates as heterosexual ones.

In general, changelings just like em big.

[tpnga003]

WEEK 8: Unmasking the Algorithm: Decoding the Hidden Language of Filters

From the rosy glow of Snapchat and Instagram to the recommended playlists of Spotify or diverse posts in the same themes on social media feeds, filters are everywhere, shaping and expressing how we see ourselves as well as the world around us. But beyond the simple act of beautification or personalization, lies a hidden language - a code that decides what we see, hear, and experience online. Dive deeper and unveil the secrets of the algorithm, decoding how filters, in all their diversity, are transforming the way we interact with technology and shaping our digital reality. 

Beyond the Bling: Beauty Filters

First, it is crucial to establish clear definitions. Beauty apps, as Elis and Gill (2017) defined, are designed to “analyse, rate, evaluate, monitor or enhance appearance”. Associated with beauty apps is beauty filters, which broadly refer to any digital tool that beautifies a user's image. Besides these filters, a subcategory exists is surgery filters, which specifically target heavy augmentation that replicates popular cosmetic procedures.

Snapchat is a prominent example. In 2015, the platform introduced “lenses”, face filters that incorporate augmented reality into self-presentation. These filters allow users to take selfies with virtual accessories and modify facial features. Taking advantage of facial detection technology, the app recognizes facial features and aligns virtual elements accordingly, ensuring a dynamic experience. 

The famous dog filter of Snapchat

Similar trends are evident on Instagram. This platform offers diverse filters providing user preferences for improving aesthetics in photos and videos. Beyond selfies, landscape edits are also possible. The recent emergence of Xingtu (Chinese app) provides young users seeking beauty or surgery filters, with the distinction based on the editting level. A subtle touch of makeup or color correction falls under the beauty filter umbrella, while significant alterations to facial structures classify as surgery filters. Locket, another newly launched platform, uses “ambient filtering” to create a homogenized version of “natural” beauty, where “real” signifies a filtered appearance rather than its raw counterpart (Lavrence & Cambre 2020).

The filters of Instagram can be applied to the landscape photos/videos

Xingtu app (Chinese app to edit portrait photos)

Locket app with the light makeup (ambient filtering)

Using Filters Motivation and Our Post-Stories

Two key theories analyze the motivations behind filter use: Social Comparison Theory (Festinger 1954) and Objectification Theory (Fredrickson & Roberts 1997). Social Comparison Theory highlights the inherent human desire to evaluate ourselves by comparing ourselves to others. We use these comparisons to understand various aspects of ourselves, including abilities and opinions. Objectification Theory, on the other hand, focuses on the social pressure on women to view themselves through the male gaze. This can lead to compulsive body monitoring and result in anxiety, guilt, and a disconnect from internal bodily experiences.

However, the widespread use of filters can have unintended consequences. Defamiliarization, a process where the familiar becomes unrecognizable, can occur. Filters have the potential to homogenize appearances, eroding individuality and the appreciation of unique beauty. Furthermore, research by Lavrence and Cambre (2020) suggests that the association of filters with beautification, often coded as feminine, can lead to questions about masculinity and heterosexuality when used by cisgender heterosexual men.

After all, beauty apps and filters have become popular, shaping self-presentation and influencing beauty standards. While they offer creative ways for self-expression, it is crucial to acknowledge the underlying theories driving their use and the potential downsides associated with excessive reliance on such tools.

The World of Algorithmic Filters: Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms offer a diverse landscape for self-expression, with each platform forming a distinct user culture. Users towards specific platforms based on the functionalities that best suit their desired mode of expression. For instance, Facebook is best at news sharing, Instagram prioritizes aesthetics through photos, videos and stories, Youtube allows for longer video content, and TikTok thrives on short and engaging videos.

This development of self-expression is demonstrably influenced by platform features. The decline in Facebook status updates exemplifies this. Initially, users freely expressed themselves through statuses, but the potential for judgment led to a decrease in activity. Instagram stories, with their special features, motivated the desire to share photos and videos due to the reduced pressure of permanence and the increase of beauty through filters. However, the number of stories sparked concerns about bothering followers. This led to the creation of “close friends” stories, which provides a more intimate and less judgmental space for users. Recently, the appearence of Threads has caused a stir. People come to this platform to share their view. It is similar to X (or Twitter); however, the viral algoriths are different in that everyone' threads can be viral and appear on other feeds.

Beyond platform design, algorithmic curation also shapes our behavior and feeling status. The news feed filtering system on Facebook, for example, can influence the language users employ in their posts. Study by Kramer et al. (2014) was mentioned in Rettberg research (2017) suggesting that users exposed to positive posts tend to adopt a more positive tone in their own updates. This highlights the way Facebook filters not only content, but potentially user behavior and self-expression as well.

Social media platforms are not merely passive tools for expression. They are dynamic ecosystems where users and platform design coexist. As Alice Marwick (2013) conclusion was cited in Rettberg research (2017) aptly states, social media platforms act as filters, shaping user behavior and promoting communities which are adjusted to their specific functionalities. Furthermore, these platforms are constantly developing to adapt to their users' needs, creating a feedback loop that continues to redefine the landscape of online self-expression.

Spotify: Your Personalized DJ with a Magic Touch

Ever felt stuck in a music rut? Same old tunes on repeat? Spotify’s got your back with its clever personalized recommendation features. No psychic powers here, just some seriously impressive tech. Here is how Spotify works its magic:

Friend for Life: It learns your tastes by analyzing the music you listen to, from upbeat pop anthems to mellow jazz nights. The more you listen, the better it gets at predicting your next obsession.

Weekly Discoveries: Get ready for "Discover Weekly", a fresh playlist delivered every Monday, packed with new artists and songs it thinks you'll love. Broaden your musical horizons and find hidden gems!

Daily Doses of Your Favorites: Feeling indecisive? No problem! Spotify's "Daily Mix" serves up multiple playlists tailored to your specific genres and moods. Need an energy boost for your workout? There's a mix for that. Feeling mellow? Take your pick!

Surprising Facts: Receiptify website sums up our top tracks, artists, or genres, etc in the last month, 6 months or all time. Believe me, it will surprise you with some interesting information out of your expectations.

Spotify - Your Personalized DJ with a Magic Touch

So, let Spotify manage your listening experience. It's like having a personal DJ who gets you, always ready to introduce you to amazing new music and keep your playlists fresh. Hit play and rediscover the joy of exploration! 

The Future of Filters

The use of filters goes beyond the realm of social media applications and becoming integrated into technologies. This trend is proved by the incorporation of facial recognition systems, such as Face ID, into smartphones across various brands including iPhone and Samsung. Furthermore, the application of Face ID extends beyond mobile devices, with its implementation in banking and payment. Research by Peng (2020) highlights the use of filters within the Alipay banking app in China. When people make a payment, they don't need to pay by smartphone or cash, they just need to scan their face on the screen to finish the payment.

Face ID Payment of Alipay in China

Reference List

Barker, J 2020, ‘Making-up on mobile: The pretty filters and ugly implications of Snapchat’, Fashion, Style & Popular Culture, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 207–221, viewed 3 March 2024, <https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/fspc_00015_1>.

Elias, AS & Gill, R 2017, ‘Beauty surveillance: The digital self-monitoring cultures of neoliberalism’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 59–77, viewed 3 March 2024, <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1367549417705604?journalCode=ecsa>.

Festinger, L 1954, ‘A Theory of Social Comparison Processes’, Human Relations, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 117–140, viewed 3 March 2024, <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001872675400700202>.

Fredrickson, BL & Roberts, T-A 1997, ‘Objectification Theory: Toward Understanding Women’s Lived Experiences and Mental Health Risks’, Psychology of Women Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 173–206, viewed 3 March 2024, <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb00108.x>.

Lavrence, C & Cambre, C 2020, “Do I Look Like My Selfie?”: Filters and the Digital-Forensic Gaze’, Social Media + Society, vol. 6, no. 4, p. 205630512095518, viewed 3 March 2024, <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305120955182>.

Peng, AY 2020, ‘Alipay adds “beauty filters” to face-scan payments: a form of patriarchal control over women’s bodies’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 582–585, viewed 3 March 2024, <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2020.1750779>.

Rettberg, JW 2014a, ‘Filtered Reality’, Seeing Ourselves Through Technology, SpringerLink, pp. 20–32, viewed 3 March 2024, <https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137476661_2>.

#MDA20009 #Week8 #Filters #BeautyFilters #AlgorithmFilters

[andrewsoc438]

Terminology

LGBT: Abbreviation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender. An umbrella term used to refer to the community as a whole.

Queer:  An umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. Originally meaning 'strange' or 'peculiar', queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century.

Surrogacy: An arrangement, often supported by a legal agreement, whereby a woman agrees to delivery/labor on behalf of another couple or person, who will become the child's parent after birth.

Assisted Reproductive Technology: Any fertility-related treatments in which eggs or embryos are manipulated. Procedures where only sperm are manipulated, such as intrauterine inseminations, are not considered under this definition.

Marginalized: To relegate to an unimportant or powerless position within a society or group.

Disenfranchised: Deprived of some right, privilege, or immunity.

Intersectionality: The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.

Iterative Coding Process: A process where the design of a product or application is improved by repeated review and testing.

Heteronormative: The concept that heterosexuality is the preferred or normal mode of sexual orientation. It assumes the gender binary and that sexual and marital relations are most fitting between people of the opposite sex.

Dysphoric: very unhappy, uneasy, or dissatisfied: marked or characterized by dysphoria.

Gestation: The carrying of young in the uterus.

TGD: Transgender and Gender Diverse

Testosterone: A steroid hormone that stimulates the development of male secondary sexual characteristics, produced mainly in the testes, but also in the ovaries and adrenal cortex. Can also be used for gender-affirming care.

Estrogen: A group of steroid hormones that promote the development and maintenance of female characteristics of the body. Such hormones are also produced artificially for use in oral contraceptives or to treat menopausal and menstrual disorders. Can also be used for gender-affirming care.Medical Transition: A part of a transition in which a transgender person undergoes medical treatments so that their sex characteristics better match their gender identity.