Attraction to transgender people

Romantic or sexual attraction to transgender people can be toward trans men, trans women, non-binary people, or a combination of these. This attraction can be a person's occasional, or exclusive interest.

Like transgender people, individuals attracted to transgender people may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, or with none of these categories; they may identify as transgender or cisgender.

Terminology

There are a variety of terms, inside both the transgender and academic communities, for people who are attracted to transgender people. These terms include admirer, transfan, trans* catcher, trans* erotic, transsensual, transoriented,[1] tranny chaser, tranny hawk,[2] though the final two may be considered offensive as they contain a slur.

The term tranny chaser was originally (and still predominantly) used to describe men sexually interested in visibly trans women, but it is now used by some trans men as well. Transgender people often use the term in a pejorative sense, because they consider chasers to value them for their trans status alone, rather than being attracted to them as a person.[3] However, some claim this term in an affirming manner.[4] The term tranny (or trannie) is itself considered a slur in many circles.[5][6]

Less pejorative terms such as transamorous and transsensual have also emerged, but they have not seen much usage.[3]

The term skoliosexual has been used to describe attraction to non-binary people.[7][8]

Academic terms

Sexologists have created numerous terms for preferential attraction to transgender people. John Money and Malgorzata Lamacz proposed the term gynemimetophilia to refer to a sexual preference for male-assigned people who look like, act like, or are women, including crossdressed men and trans women. They also proposed the term andromimetophilia to describe a sexual attraction to female-assigned people who look like, act like, or are men.[9]

Ray Blanchard and Peter Collins proposed the term gynandromorphophilia,[10] while Martin S. Weinberg and Colin J. Williams proposed the term men sexually interested in transwomen (MSTW) to describe the phenomenon among men.[11]

Conisexuality is defined by the sexual and/or romantic attraction and orientation exclusively directed towards another person or persons combining feminine as well as masculine traits. This includes androgynous, non-binary and non-operative transgender individuals.

Social aspects

People who are attracted to trans women, trans men, or non-binary people describe being attracted to individuals rather than to transgender people overall. Other tendencies are reported descriptions of being attracted to what transgender people represent (a challenge to the traditional male/female dichotomy) and the explicit focus on the transgender body and appearance: "I like women with dicks. I like tits and I like dicks....Something erotic about getting fucked by someone who is a woman."[12]

According to Jeffrey Escoffier of the Centre for Gay and Lesbian Studies of CUNY, sexual interest in trans women first emerged in 1953, associated with the then famous transition of Christine Jorgensen.[13] It was after sex reassignment surgery became more feasible over the 1960s that sexual orientation came to be re-conceptualized as distinct from gender identity and cross-dressing. In survey of men who engage in sex with trans women, 73%[12] to 92%[14] identified their sexual identity as straight or bisexual.

A study employing the penile plethysmograph demonstrated that the arousal patterns, genital and subjective, of men who self-report attraction to trans women are similar to those of straight men, and different from those of gay men. The study showed that those men, also known in literature as gynandromorphophiliacs, are much more strongly aroused to female than to male stimuli. They differ from both straight and gay men, however, in displaying strong arousal to stimuli featuring trans women, which in this group was as arousing as the female stimuli. The study also found that autogynephilia is common in this group: 42% of the study group scored above 1 point on a questionnaire measuring autogynephilic arousal, compared to 12% of straight men and 0% of gay men. In the sample, 41.7% of men attracted to trans women identified as bisexual, with the remainder identifying as straight. The bisexuals among them did not display significantly more arousal to male stimuli than their heterosexual counterparts, however, they had a high number of male sex partners and they had higher levels of self-reported autogynephilic arousal than their straight counterparts.[15]

Erotic materials created for people attracted to trans men have become more visible in recent years, largely due to pornographic actor Buck Angel.[16] Jamison Green writes that some cisgender gay men often enjoy sexual relations with trans men. Green writes, "Plenty of penis-less transmen [...] engage in sex with penis-equipped gay men [...] and these non-trans partners are often surprised to find that a penis is not what defines a man, that the lack of a penis does not mean a lack of masculinity, manliness, or male sexuality."[17]

Academic views

Some academics characterize attraction to transgender people as a medical diagnosis to be managed[18] or a type of paraphilia.[19] Others state that stigma against attractions to transgender people can invalidate transgender identities and deny transgender sexualities, and argue that such attractions should be destigmatized.[3]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Description of Transoriented Guys - TransOriented.com". transoriented.com. Retrieved 2018-01-22.
  2. ↑ Baker, Paul (2004). Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang. Continuum International Publishing Group, ISBN 978-0-8264-7343-1
  3. 1 2 3 Tompkins, Avery Brooks (2 December 2013). ""There's No Chasing Involved": Cis/Trans Relationships, "Tranny Chasers," and the Future of a Sex-Positive Trans Politics". Journal of Homosexuality. 61: 766–780. doi:10.1080/00918369.2014.870448. Retrieved 8 May 2014.
  4. ↑ Green, Eli; Eric Peterson. "LGBTTSQI Terminology & Definitions". Trans academics. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-09-05. Retrieved 8 May 2014.
  5. ↑ Staff report (4 January 2010). Paper guilty of transsexual slur. BBC News
  6. ↑ Lennard, Natasha (7 April 2010). Transgender Film Draws Protests at Festival Site. The New York Times
  7. ↑ Michelson, Noah (16 October 2015). "What's a Skoliosexual?". Huffington Post. Retrieved 16 July 2017.
  8. ↑ Anderson-Minshall, Jacob (18 May 2017). "Is Fetishizing Trans Bodies Offensive?". The Advocate. Retrieved 14 October 2017.
  9. ↑ Money, J; M. Lamacz (1984). "Gynemimesis and gynemimetophilia: Individual and cross-cultural manifestations of a gender-coping strategy hitherto unnamed". Comprehensive Psychiatry. 25 (4): 392–403. doi:10.1016/0010-440x(84)90074-9. PMID 6467919.
  10. ↑ Blanchard, R.; Collins, P. I. (1993). "Men with sexual interest in transvestites, transsexuals, and she-males". Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. 181: 570–575. doi:10.1097/00005053-199309000-00008. PMID 8245926.
  11. ↑ Weinberg, M. S.; Williams, C. J. (2010). "Men Sexually Interested in Transwomen (MSTW): Gendered Embodiment and the Construction of Sexual Desire". Journal of Sex Research. 47 (4): 374–383. doi:10.1080/00224490903050568. PMID 19544216.
  12. 1 2 Operario, D.; Burton, J.; Underhill, K.; Sevelius, J. (2008). "Men who have sex with transgender women: Challenges to category-based HIV prevention". AIDS and Behavior. 12: 18–26. doi:10.1007/s10461-007-9303-y. PMID 17705095.
  13. ↑ Escoffier, J (2011). "Imagining the she/male: Pornography and the transsexualization of the heterosexual male". Studies in Gender and Sexuality. 12: 268–281. doi:10.1080/15240657.2011.610230.
  14. ↑ Tracy Clark-Flory (23 October 2011). "What's Behind Transsexual Attraction?".
  15. ↑ Kevin J Hsu; David Miller; J. Michael Bailey (2015). "Who are gynandromorphophilic men? Characterizing men with sexual interest in transgender women". Psychological Medicine. 46: 819–27. doi:10.1017/S0033291715002317. PMID 26498424.
  16. ↑ Richardson, Niall (2010). Transgressive Bodies: Representations in Film and Popular Culture. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 9780754676225
  17. ↑ Green, Jamison (2004). Becoming a Visible Man. Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press. p. 121. ISBN 0-826-51456-1. Retrieved 8 May 2014.
  18. ↑ Barrett, James (2007). Transsexual and Other Disorders of Gender Identity: A Practical Guide to Management. Radcliffe Publishing, ISBN 9781857757194
  19. ↑ Richard Laws, D; O'Donohue, William T (2008-01-07). Sexual Deviance, Second Edition: Theory, Assessment, and Treatment. ISBN 9781593856052.

Further reading

  • Tracie O'Keefe, Katrina Fox, eds., Trans People in Love, Routledge, 2008, ISBN 0-7890-3572-3
  • Hsu, K. J.; Rosenthal, A. M.; Miller, D. I.; Bailey, J. M. (2015). "Who are gynandromorphophilic men? Characterizing men with sexual interest in transgender women" (PDF). Psychological Medicine. 46: 1–9. doi:10.1017/S0033291715002317. ISSN 0033-2917. PMID 26498424.
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