On the men who fancy us

The Activist
By Sass Rogando Sasot

“Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there’s no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.”
Wizlawa Szymborska

I’ve been meaning to write this article for a long time. The first itch to pen this came in 2002. I was in Sydney to participate in the Global Human Rights Conference organized by Amnesty International-Australia for the Sydney Gay Games. Together with the guy I was dating at that time, I was interviewed for a documentary by one of the media covering the Sydney Gay Games. We were interviewed separately. After the interview, my date and I found out that we were asked a common question, which was about his attraction to transsexual women. He was asked to explain what made him attracted to transsexual women and whether he was gay, while I was asked a more prying one: “Is the attraction of men towards transsexual women just an effect of the influx of ‘shemale porns’? Is this attraction just an expression of hypersexuality?” “Maybe,” I answered, “but it’s hard to pinpoint a particular cause because attraction and desire are very complex processes. The question shouldn’t be why these men are attracted to us, but why is society forcing us to justify this attraction in the first place. I feel the question arises because people have already pre-judged that being sexually or romantically attracted to people like me is perverted and immoral. The motive is not to understand but to find feed for the initial judgment.”

Then the itch to pen this article came again last year. On August 11, 2009, a nasty comment was posted by someone named “Tranny Chaser” on a blog entry at rainbowbloggersphils.blogspot.com. It was specifically addressed to Naomi Fontanos, the current chair of the Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines, and to me, with a specific instruction that the administrators of this blog should make it sure that we would be able to read this:

“To Sass Sasot and Pau Fontanos:

Please be sure they read the following:

No matter how you put it you still men, When are you going to understand? You are nothing but a sex fantasy, nothing but an excuse for those men who are afraid to accept they are gay, they feel better fucking a man with makeup and tits, somehow inside their mind it makes them feel less guilty. GET IT? you are nothing but a fantasy, a toy. A way to deal with homosexuality without feeling 100% guilty, nothing but whores looking for acceptance, you dont believe it? just ask yourselves how many men actually talk to you just because of who you are? The truth is they talk to you because they want to fuck something like you, because they are curious how you look naked and how you suck dick and fuck, they are curious how your tits grow, look and feel ("are those real"?) sounds familiar? they want to have a fantasy they saw in a movie, Those are just a few of the real reasons and not the ones you tell yourselves. Some of us will tell you, you are beautiful and many other crap because we know that will take you to bed with us maybe not right away but one thing for sure, it will be fast enough, and lets be honest, when bullshit is fed to you, you will give away your ass fast, that's why here we call you "the easy bullshit one nightstand whores" because that's what you are. No matter how you put it, you can keep telling yourselves lies, at the end just look in a mirror and look down. What you see? a dick you stupid whores. I know a couple of you, I wont tell if is in person or via internet, lets just say soon I'll be getting closer or more friendly to one of them so we can become "friends" and then "intimate", why? well is typical within the Philippine transgenders when they meet some one they like to give their ass fast, I guess not having self-respect and been a whore is a part of your culture, thats why us western guys love to make "friends" with asian transgenders, so easy to fuck when you tell them what they want to hear, so I'm telling you, you so damn easy to fool when bullshit is fed to you and a a nice picture is given, so now I'm among you and I'll keep my eyes on you. My objective is to show others how whores you all are, activists, divas or not and that you shouldn't go around pretending to be what you are not. I'll be around my dear friends. At the end we both are going to have what we want, you will have the best sex of your lives and I'll have the proof I want.

Tak-grazie-salamat.”

This emotional-assault came at my most vulnerable time: I was at the most fragile stage of nursing a broken heart. The threat in this comment made me somewhat paranoid for some time. It made me distrustful of any man who tried to befriend me or even showed interest in me. But in the end, my relentless faith in the benevolence of life and in the eternal presence of love in our hearts stood triumphant. This article is an expression of that faith and a way of exorcising myself of my own fears.

Bashing men is such a seductive activity, specially after an encounter with a man who was born out of the anus. Moreover, the meme that “All men are pigs!” is a strong reinforcing factor for us to engage in this activity. Having three brothers, having studied in an all-boys schools, having guy friends, and having played the field for a while makes me confident to say that I’m adequately familiar with men. If there’s anything I can definitely say about men, it is the fact that men, just like other people of any gender, are very diverse. An encounter with "a particular man" cannot be used as an overarching statement about "all men." And the same can be said for those men who fancy transwomen.

There are three persistent memes about men who fancy transwomen. First, is the view of transwomen about the men who fancy them: “These men are just using us to fulfill a sexual fantasy.” Second, the view of general society about these men: “These men are perverts.” And third: “These men are ‘really’ gay men who can’t accept they are gay.”

“These men are just using us to fulfill a sexual fantasy…”

What is sexual fantasy? In their paper “Sexual Fantasy”, Harold Leintenberg and Kris Henning defined sexual fantasy as “almost any mental imagery that is sexually arousing or erotic to an individual.” As sexual beings gifted with the faculty of imagination, we all have sexual fantasies; and most of the time, fulfilling a sexual fantasy includes another person. If we all have sexual fantasies, and if we all fulfill some, if not all, of them with another person (or persons, if you will), what then do transwomen find objectionable about the men who fancy them, who transwomen say are “just” fulfilling a sexual fantasy? In order to have a meaningful exploration of this question, we need to know the context from which this view of transwomen comes.

Perhaps it’s safe to say that in all parts of the world, we, transwomen didn’t grow up in societies that positively accept us for who we are. In our growing years, we transwomen experienced rejection from all social institutions (e.g. the family, school, church) that are supposed to be there to serve as nurturing and nourishing agents to the flourishing of our beings. Furthermore the rejection that transwomen face is not just the typical rejection that starts and ends with a No. Each door that closes to us bears a sign: “You should be ashamed of yourselves." We get so insecure of ourselves: our bodies, our abilities, our existence.

Everyone, of course, has experienced what it means to be rejected. Indeed being rejected can strengthen our fortitude. But if rejection is such a recurring and persistent and systematic loop of events in your life, healing becomes more difficult, leading you to easily build walls of suspicion around yourself. This type of rejection is what deeply breeds fear.

In this state of being rejected and shamed, cynicism becomes an addictive escape. In the comforts of our solitude, our tears carry the dolorous melody of the most mind-boggling question: “Why?” But deep inside our hearts is the ancient longing for the exquisite joy and pain of loving and being loved by someone; however, the ghosts of being rejected and shamed turn love into a Sisyphean task.

Then we encounter a surge of men who fancy us….

Suddenly, we are desired for “what we are.” Porn, dating sites, chat rooms, bars where men can go to meet us sprang like mushrooms. Our hungry egos suddenly got its food: Attention. From being untouchables, we become “desirables.” To be lavished with this kind of attention provides such a great pull out of our “untouchable status." Being rejected and shamed almost all of our lives, we find this attention as an irresistible novelty in our lives, which is so refreshing, so fascinating, so addicting, so ego-inflating! In the TS women’s dating/hook-up scene, two terms are being used to describe these men: Tranny Chaser and Tranny Admirer (My view about these terms will be discussed later).

At first, we became so captivated by the novelty of this attention: Remember how a gazillion of men replied the first time you ever posted an ad on a dating site? How at least ten private windows popped in your screen after you entered a chat room? How men go gaga over the girls in those TS bars? And of course, we find it intriguing that one of the fastest growing and in-demand genre of porn is those that feature us (well, most specially those that feature pre-op and non-op TS women).

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