On the men who fancy us

The Activist
By Sass Rogando Sasot

Another frightening aspect of Blanchard's proposal is that any sexual interest other than "genital stimulation or preparatory fondling" is now, by definition, a paraphilia. In his presentation, he claimed that paraphilias should include all "erotic interests that are not focused on copulatory or precopulatory behaviors, or the equivalent behaviors in same-sex adult partners." Copulatory is defined as related to coitus or sexual intercourse (i.e., penetration sex). So, essentially, all forms of sexual arousal and expression that are not centered around penetration sex may now be considered paraphilias.

So, do you and your partner occasionally role-play or talk dirty to one another over the phone? Or engage in arousing play that is not intended to necessarily lead to "doing the deed"? Do you masturbate? Do you get a sexual charge from wearing a particularly sexy outfit or performing any act that falls outside of "genital stimulation or preparatory fondling"? Well, then congratulations, you can be diagnosed with a paraphilia!”

Fear & Hope

One of the storylines in the television series Dirty, Sexy, Money revolved around the love story between Patrick Darling IV (played by William Baldwin), a member of the richest family in New York who was set to run for the senate, and his mistress, Carmelita Rainer (played by real-life transwoman Candis Cayne), a transwoman studying cosmetology. At first, it seemed that this storyline was just following the commonly-heard story in the trans-dating scene: a married man having a transwoman as a “dirty” secret affair. His family, except his wife, was well-aware of this “dirty” secret as it was suggested that he had several transwomen lovers prior to Carmelita. Of course, his family was against it.

In the first episode, Patrick asked their family lawyer to go to the hotel where Carmelita was waiting and tell her it was over between them. A short discussion between Patrick and the family lawyer revealed how Patrick valued Carmelita. When the lawyer said that Carmelita was Patrick’s “dirty sex”, Patrick defended her relationship with Carmelita by saying, “It’s not dirty. It’s just different”. Patrick’s family attempted to stop the affair because it might cost him the election. But every time his family tried to separate him from Carmelita, Patrick became depressed.

The next episodes revealed that Patrick’s relationship with his wife was not really based on love but “wealth and power”. Actually, the relationship between Patrick and Carmelita was one of the most charming and genuine relationships in this show.

Later on, the wife of Patrick died because of an accident after a heated argument between them. Then Patrick won as senator. During his inauguration, against the will of his father, he invited Carmelita to be there with him because he wanted to be public about his relationship with Carmelita. Unfortunately, Carmelita was killed by a stray shot.

To be in a relationship with a transwoman can be very stigmatizing, as society tends to view this kind of relationship as perverted. Dirty, Sexy, Money offered us a possibility where a man is not ashamed of his relationship with a transwoman. Given that the man is a man of extreme affluence and influence, this seems to be a far-fetched idea (But who knows, before Obama, the US having a black president was just something that happened in the movies). Nonetheless, in reality, there are men who are not ashamed of being in a relationship with a transwoman. Though stories about them are scant, we know they exist. Perhaps it’s safe to say that every transwoman knows at least one friend who is in this kind of relationship.

But the other side of the coin of reality says that there are also men who are afraid to be public about their relationship with a transwoman. Well, It’s not easy to be stigmatized, and it takes tremendous courage and fortitude to face this stigma. Whenever a man goes public about his relationship with a transwoman, he is often barraged by invasive, irritating, harassing, and stigmatizing questions such as: “Does she still have a dick?”, “How do you have sex?”, “Are you gay?”, “Are you a pervert?”, “Are you so lonely that you would settle for a freak?”, “Don’t you want to have a biological child of your own?”, “What is wrong with you?” – or just plain “Yuck! Faggot!”. Not only that, the stigma attached to men who fancy transwomen can sometimes snowball into something disturbingly fatal. Remember the film Soldier Girl, the true story of Calpernia Adams and Barry Winchell? Barry Winchell was an infantry soldier in the US Army. He fell in love and had a relationship with Calpernia Adams, who Barry met in a transgender cabaret club. When rumors about his relationship started to circulate, his peers subjected Barry to harassment. This harassment ended in the murder of Barry by one of his peers. He was stricken several times in the head with a baseball bat while he was sleeping.

Besides this, there’s also a fear that their future relationships might be jeopardized by their past relationships with transwomen. A guy once told me that if he wanted to be honest with his future wife (he plans to get married with a cisgendered woman) about his past, he fears that the girl he would like to marry might consider him a pervert, and thereby not marry him. I told him that if that happens, it tells something about the maturity level of his future wife. I also told him that perhaps deep inside him, he considers it as a perversion. There was a long pause before he uttered his reply: “Can I call you when that time comes, so you can explain to my wife that it is not?” And I willingly said yes.

Inside the trans-dating scene, transwomen have a way of attaching a stigmatizing label to the men who fancy them: Tranny Chaser. As we use it, Tranny Chaser describes those men who are only after a quick sexual relationship with a transwoman (usually pre-op or non-op transwoman) and who consider transwomen as a “fetish”. We transwomen always guard ourselves against these men. We look for any sign that a man is just a tranny chaser. Sometimes we may be right about our perception, but there are also times that we are not. Hastily labeling someone as a “tranny chaser” can be a source of suffering to the person being labeled as such, and just promotes a narrow-minded view of people.

This is a very tricky subject for sometimes it’s hard to sift those who are sincere from those who just want to play in the trans-dating field: that goes for both transwomen and the men who fancy them. However, the trans-dating scene doesn’t have a monopoly of hearts being broken, unfulfilled promises, and BS. These things happen in all dating scenes, don’t they? And don’t we transwomen engage in “men chasing” as well? Don’t we also fetisize men? Don’t we have sex with men who fulfill our sexual fantasies? Don’t we also get afraid of commitment that we would just rather have quick sexual relationships than long-term ones? Don’t we also play the field before we meet someone who we are both erotically and emotionally attracted to? We do. And for every transwoman who fears that her heart is going to be broken, there is a man whose heart has already been broken.

No matter who or what you are, finding true love can be difficult. Some say it only comes once in a long while. The journey can be tiring: all the walking, the talking, the running, the thinking, the fucking, the lying, the forgiving, the hurting, the deceiving, the listening, the hearing, the believing, the forgetting, the remembering, the falling, the blabbering, the crying, the smiling, and all the progressive verbs that you can certainly think of can certainly wear us out.

Being tired can dim the glow of our inner capacity to love, our capacity to recognize true love when it’s already there, and our passion to fight for the love we have. This glow is at its peak when we were still children - though unfortunately a lot of children in this world has never experienced glowing at all. At an early age, some have experienced this glow extinguished by those who are envious of someone's flame gently, innocently yet bravely flickering in the darkness and misery of this world. And sometimes, we accidentally or deliberately choose paths that dim this glow.

But every now and then we try to fan the flames of this glow. Humanity has devised a lot of things to bring back the joy and sheer rupture of it. We do whatever we can do to relive once again that same glow – you can call it being children once again. Some even try to compensate their lack of glow with material pursuits, hoping that if they can't make it flicker they can at least fool themselves that they are glowing as soon as they turn on the neon lights of their lives.

Somewhere along the way we meet people that enflame our glow. They make us aware that we still have this glow - it is just dimmed. Sometimes they will walk with us in this journey for just a moment. Sometimes they walk with us long distance until the end. The duration is not what matters. What matters is the quality of the journey shared. Love!

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