right thread.
 

some of these posts have a tone of female self-subjugation.

and fetishlike

I agree. One must not undermine another’s identity when describing one’s own attractions. And I certainly see how ascribing ‘feminine’ traits- whatever those may be, exactly- to FTMs (in particular, among men as a whole) is undermining. That’s a really important point and I’m glad this discussion is happening.

What I was wondering about, and perhaps not articulating well, was whether wishing to date or to partner with men who belong to this community, specifically, was necessarily undermining. (Maybe it is, btw- not meant to be a rhetorical question...)

To me (and speaking only from my me place), I don't see dating people within One's community as undermining anything. Personally, if someone told me they ONLY date FTMs, I have no problem with that either. I wonder how someone would KNOW an FTM on the street from any other man, but...

I (me, me, me) DO wonder is IF and DO folks in this community who date men feel the need to either A) 'hide' that for fear of 'having their community card' taken away or B) constantly ID their partner (in some way) as 'formerly woman' or 'female bodied' for (again) fear of 'having their community card taken away'

I know very well the crap married/formerly married folks, bisexual folks, folks who partner with guys get/have gotten over the years in this community, and I just seriously wonder if this makes some people feel the need to constantly refer to their partner as FTM/trans/etc instead of just 'guy' or 'man'. Like if those people feel maybe they'll get less 'flack' and deal with less 'explaining' if they constantly refer to their partner as 'formerly-woman'.

Honestly, if One is dating only butches and transmen...I have to kind of wonder A) how do you know who's trans and who's not and B) are you seeing transmen as 'really butch women'?


Dylan

This is a great thread. Dylan, I always love your posts-thanks for speaking exactly what I'm thinking at times.

I shall continue to follow this thread....

Well, I'm Queer. And I am attracted to Butches, FTMs, non-trans-guys, Drew Barrymore, Jack Black, and whoever happens to be providing me with coffee. I am quite open about my bi/pansexuality. (I hate the term pansexual because it has the word "pan" in it - irrationally.) If I weren't married and monogamous now god only knows who I would be with - but I was still dating people who were born with a penis right up until the time I started dating my spouse.

I feel like you're excluding those of us who aren't lesbians from your definition of Queer. I'm not liking it.

Nope, sure doesn't.

Exactly. What things look like -TO ME- is a whole lot of people are attracted to the FT part of FTM.

In the case of some (not all) people B is what I generally suspect. I see it in real life a lot.

I come from a pretty huge city, so I have had the pleasure of being acquainted with a zillion different people. And a really big chunk (we're talking well more than half, here) of the REAL LIFE transmen I know will only date women who -do- date both trans and non-trans men. And these -are- transmen who I met in the Queer community. (I actually don't have any friends who aren't part of the Queer community - because that's who I choose to pal around with.) All I know (and this is in pretty stark contrast to what I see online) is that the majority of my FTM friends feel that it's very important to know that the people they date are attracted to who they ARE and not who they "were" or some journey they supposedly have gone on.

Also - I don't get where people are under the impression that anybody is putting the weight of understanding on the shoulder of Femmes and expecting nobody else to understand anything? Maybe I missed the post that has given people that impression - but it reads as very knee-jerky to me.

Betenoire, I don't think all queers are lesbians. I don't think all queer femmes are lesbians. There I've said it twice now- this time with a little refinement.

Do you know that there is NO DIET GRAPE SODA in California????? i live among barbarians.

Well, if there are transmen who will only date women who will date both trans and non-transmen, then that's there preference. My first thought is do the women dating them have any rules of their own, like say see me for the queer that I am and not just interchangeable with straight women? Then again, what would I know. I am just a simple lesbian.

i like Dylan's original post. The what do you like about transmen thread was blowing my mind. Most transguys i know would have hated most of that stuff. The they understand me better or they have been through so much and are therefore more sensitive. Dylan put it way better than i could summarize. Most transmen i have met do not date femmes. If they like feminine women, they prefer straight or bi women. (i know there are bi femmes.)

However, this stuff can veer toward dissing femmes, which makes me sad. Like Dylan's comment about if someone is dating only transmen, are they just seeing them as really butch butches. Well, what if they DO??? As long as whoever they are dating is fine with it. Seriously, if a transguy is with a queer femme, then he is probably a little more queer identified than the average transguy. He may not be squicked.

i think the queer femmes who ID as transensual or however -- that they prefer to date transguys -- get enormous amounts of shit, some of it blatantly sexist. They are labelled fetishists. They are accused of seeing transmen as other than men. i was told by one transguy that queer femmes are not "real woman" and that a real woman is someone who knows how to be with a man. He felt that if a woman did not like cisgendered men that the fact that she liked him was demeaning to him.

So i appreciate this thread as a corrective to the other one, which i figured HAD to get a reaction at some point. But boy i hate to see this interrogation of the motives of femmes who like transguys.

i do not date transmen. i did for a second. And i realized, hey, these guys are men, and i am a dyke. Not going to work. That's why when Dylan seems to argue for some separate category for transmen, as somehow exempt from accusations of male privilege, i don't get it. i experience transmen as men. That's how it FEELS. That is the effect they have on me.

I agree with almost everything in your post. I purpled the one part, because you misquoted me. I said, "see them as really butch women". 1. Some transguys ID as butch. But 2. It's none of my business what goes on between two people in a relationship.

My question wasn't pertaining to anyone in particular...it's just something I wonder. I don't have any male friends whose partners view them as really butch women...but that doesn't mean I don't know of couples in which a transguy's partner DOES view him as 'formerly female', and I notice very often how ThisPartner will do things to 'put him in his place'. They are very subtle things, but they are there. ThisPartner will occasionally she him, and she'll just say things. So, yeah, I DO wonder. And maybe ThisGuy is squicked and maybe he's not. I don't really know as I don't really talk to these people. But I still wonder. I also wonder many other things.

I also said, "If someone only dates butches and transmen"...meaning (in the shortest form) masculine women and transmen.


Dylan

Dylan, you make a very big distinction between cis and transmen. That's two different categories of men right? Why would I be seeing all men exactly the same if some are considered trans and some are considered cis?

I was referring to this statement:

"How does this (also dating non-trans men) work if one is queer?"

Since you did not mean that it was unqueer to date non-trans men...what -did- you mean, exactly?

Wow, way to bait. Nobody implied in any fashion that lesbians were too "simple" to understand anything.

And I can assure you that nobody sees me as interchangeable with a straight woman.

Well gee Betenoire, you seem to think I don't even know gay men exist and that I think all queers are lesbians. Anyway, I seriously don't think it matters how up to speed or not I am on queer identities in terms of this discussion.

To me it looks like a lot of double standards, but hey if people are happy go for it.

So, when people ask you to clarify a statement you're going to use snark in order to get out of clarifying? Neat.

And of course I know that you know Gay men exist. You said that Bisexual Men tend to hang out in the Gay Male community rather than in the Queer community - so I gathered from that that you were aware of the existence of the Gay Male.

What looks like a lot of double-standards to you, and in which way?

What was I supposed to clarify? I scrolled up, but not sure.

And quoting myself:

Originally Posted by betenoire View Post
I was referring to this statement:

"How does this (also dating non-trans men) work if one is queer?"

Since you did not mean that it was unqueer to date non-trans men...what -did- you mean, exactly?

I was asking a question, not making a statement. My own view is if someone is queer, they are queer no matter who they date. I don't understand why it's a requirement for someone who might be attracted to transmen and/or FTMs who are part of a queer community to also be obligated- at least theoretically- be willing to date cis men. I seriously don't get it.

As to the double standards, I agree with Martina. This is how it looks to me.

Yup, it is a Queer community, but also one embracing the B-F dynamic. And there are a whole lot of lesbian queers here, too. Butches and femmes.

Nope.... lumping any group of people into neat little stereotypes is not a good idea! When I look at all of the Transmen I know (and I mean, really know), they are all quite unique and sure don't fit into any particular box. Nor do the MtF’s I know. The same goes for all of the different butch-femme, queer folks I know and have met through this very online community. I'm a butch woman who is a lesbian which I see as just one part of the entire queer community. Lesbians don't fall into one category, either. Then we have all of the differing kinds of sexuality within the queer community.

Thinking, however, that I have not seen the numbers of generalizations and stereotypes I have in the B-F community since I was a teenager and straight! I'm 59 now. Why is this community so closed minded and at the same time pretends to aspire to diversity?

I'm thinking, (but do not know this, as I am not a Transperson) that any person on the trans spectrum would want someone to be attracted to them due to their entire persona just like attraction works for all people. I mean the past, present and future promise in a person's experience and growth. Sure, physical appeal (which really is in the eye of the beholder) has to be present, but so do common values, politics, goals.... And the element of magic, yanno, the chemistry that just happens to us all.

I would hope to hell that someone would not do to a Transperson the same that some straight people do in experimenting with queer folks without really caring for them! And, we have all seen star-fucking in action throughout life!

Hummm... are we talking just attraction here, or attraction as it relates to relationship building? Asking because, I know that how I acted on just pure physical attraction in my teens and 20's is a hell of a lot different than when I was older.. and very different now.

I guess I am seeing a difference between the basic fuck-factor and attraction and the fuck-factor plus phenomena concerning attraction. Seems like both would apply to all of us, No?

I still at times find non-Transmen attractive and yes, that means that my ovaries spin just as they do when I am very attracted (for me that means a totality of factors about an individual including the physical) to a woman or a femme (yes, I am attracted to non-femmes, sometimes). Also, I have had attractions to MtF’s and Transmen that are gay men (Sean Dorsey and other FtM’s like him are fine!). Go figure! Humm, to date, I have not been attracted to a Transman that is straight. Or one that identifies as queer as in within the B-F community.

Shit, this is complicated! And… diverse! I hope I didn’t mix anything up with my distinctions! And Heaven forbid, my butch-card could be discredited by admitting different attractions! Again, I speak of how closed ( and really quite conformist) I often view this community to be (which makes me sad).

LOL... I'm cussing, again! I hardly ever swore until I joined the B-F community.... see what ya'll are doing to me! Nah, its all good... really it ALL is good!

Oh, I see. So even though you put "If a queer femme is to see trans men exactly as they see non-trans men, then in order to be attracted to a trans man she's supposed to be attracted to all men?" and "How does this work if one is queer?" immediately following each other in the same paragraph (only things that were in that paragraph, in fact) the two questions had nothing to do with each other. You just forgot to hit the enter key between your two separate and completely unrelated thoughts, is all. Got it.

I'm sorry that you cannot see how being attracted to FTMs but not to non-trans men can be hurtful to (some) guys. All men are men. They just are. FTMs are not ex-women, they're men.