Someone sent the following response to a Medium article of ours:
“If you are attracted to transwomen because they are transwomen, That is a fetish,” The person wrote. “Just like if you are attracted to women because they are Asian or Black, if you are White. Not something to be proud of. You’re just being shallow.”
This person went on:
“If you are attracted to women and it doesn’t matter if she is a transwomen, there is nothing to be shamed of. Really, in modern times, I don’t think there is a form of sexual attraction anyone should be ashamed of except when it isn’t towards an human adult.”
Except any sexual attraction this person considers a fetish, apparently.
If your skin color looks like Tom Ellis‘ from the show Lucifer, and you think women who look like Ellis’ South African co-star Lesley-Ann Brandt are sexually attractive, you’re a fetishizer. You mustn’t be proud of that attraction. Even if you genuinely feel attraction to such surface features at first.
That’s what this person says. But is that accurate? Or is more going on here?
There’s more going on
While this person’s comment seems sensical and worthy of agreement, I think it merits further scrutiny. Yet I know many people, especially transgender women on the receiving end of trans-attracted men’s attention, will wholeheartedly agree with it.
That’s because a LOT of transgender women struggle in the self-acceptance department. And, of course, such women’s stories create their reality. No one gets around that.
So men they’ll meet will reflect “lack of self-acceptance” back to such women. A transgender woman unwilling to accept her status as transgender and enjoy that part of her, will create realities showing her resistance to “what is”: the material actuality of who and what she is as trans.
Certainly, a transgender woman is more than transgender. But resisting that material actuality resists what is. And when that happens, the resister will create material actuality reflecting back this unharmonious inner/outer reality.
That material actuality, includes men she meets.
The dilemma of living stealth
Every transwoman who wants to “live stealth” deals with such stories. Even if only slightly. For “stealth” means being seen and accepted as cisgender, which is not what a transperson is.
Certainly excellent reasons drive a trans person to wanting to live stealth. As this Wikipedia entry describes, living stealth can increase one’s self dignity. A person may feel they live fully in their gender when living stealth. They might feel safer too. So living stealth can soothe a lot of resistance. Living stealth also can cause anxiety associated with being discovered as not being cisgender.
That aside, all those excellent reasons – dignity, full access to one’s gender and safety – are states of being. A transgender woman can attain such states without “passing” at all. Let alone living stealth.
I encourage any transgender woman who doesn’t believe this to schedule a free 1:1 and find out. Most people though, generally, look to external reality to confirm, and in some cases create, their internal reality. So I get why so many trans women see passing and stealth as ultimate achievements.
The problem comes when reality hits that ideal. When anyone stands outside of what they want, feeling inadequate, not good enough, unsatisfied and anxious stands alongside them. Those feelings will create realities revealing inconsistencies in who one is being.
Everyone is perfect as they are, moving towards greater perfection. Hear the self-acceptance in that? But who one is being when not accepting oneself as they are now, can’t abide with who one is. The reason life reflects this disharmony is so one can do something about it.
Anytime one feels any less than positive emotion, that feeling indicates disharmony. Emotions such as hopeful, joy, freedom, appreciation, love, positive expectation and eagerness indicate internal harmony.
Perfect matches everywhere
Not standing in such positive emotions, again, creates life experiences matching that. The same holds true for trans-attracted men. Many such men don’t stand in those positive emotions because they don’t accept who they are either. They wonder if trans-attraction means “I am gay” (nope). They fear what friends will think. If married, they worry about wifey finding out.
Doesn’t it make sense then, that these two people – the insecure transgender woman and the insecure trans-attracted man – would find one another? Each perfectly matches the other in their beliefs. And beliefs or stories create reality, including relationship realities.
But if either party judges the other they match with as undesirable, then no progress happens.
Say, for example, the transgender woman harshly rebukes the man’s attention as “chaser behavior”. To the Universe she’s saying more loudly than anything else “I don’t accept myself as acceptable so this man who is attracted to me, can’t be for any other reason other than that which I don’t accept about myself”.
In reply to such stories, the Universe says: “Great. Have some more of this kind of man. Until you figure out how to accept what you are.”
In other words, non-self-acceptance is a tough place from which to find love. For in not loving oneself, how can one find love in another?
“But I can’t accept what I am.” Someone may say.
I assert that that someone already did accept it. They’re here as they are because they accepted that before coming here. And they did so for a metric shit ton of good reasons.
How matches happen
Starting to see how a person attracted to a transgender woman, because she is trans, might not be a fetish? Far deeper explanations exist.
A person attracted to a trans woman because of her trans-ness gets there partly because he is part of that woman’s reality, showing her what she must know to get what she wants (self-acceptance). Another side of the story exists, of course, because both parties co-create the rendezvous.
A trans-attracted man in the “chaser” stage is trying to figure his shit out. He comes with pre-agreement about his trans-attraction just like the trans woman. While his path looks different, it’s actually the same. Mainly, he must accept what and who he is to get what he wants.
But, just like a guy who first discovers girls will chase girls for the “pune-tang”. The chaser-stage, trans-attracted man is like a dog in heat. Maybe he discovered his attraction through porn or a documentary or social media. Either way, he’s excited and intrigued. Hooked.
But he also doesn’t know anything about his object of affection. So he’s going to stumble. He will likely also question his own sexuality. He may even question his gender. That might trigger all kinds of self-acceptance issues. Especially if this guy, like many people, thinks what others think about him carries any importance.
It doesn’t of course, but most people think it does.
So now this guy faces a quandary. He found something he wants, but it causes non-acceptance in him. Getting what he wants requires that he accept what he is. But, just like the transgender woman who lives on the same “story level”, he can’t accept that he might be gay. He also can’t not pursue his attraction.
So he pursues, steeped in insecurity. His insecurity flows from him like radar. That “pinging” gets “heard” by those transgender women – and only those transgender women – on the same radar “frequency”. In other words, insecure ones.
An exceptional life awaits
What do you think happens next?
That’s right. The two match. So they meet.
What happens next depends on what moves each party makes. At The Transamorous Network, we show trans and trans-attracted people how to make moves leading to more positive emotions. Emotions such as hopeful, joy, freedom, appreciation, love, positive expectation and eagerness.
Why?
Because when one stands in those, one’s radar puts out signals which attract people standing similarly. Each client approaches dating happy. So better matches get made.
“Fetish” doesn’t apply to any situation. Especially when those using that word intend to demean the fetishizer or the fetishizing. Underneath surface appearances, a great and eternal dance roils. Huge forces swirl around these encounters, all of which flow from who one “bees” (as in being) at any moment.
So if someone wants to meet someone who wants them for who and what they are, that person must first stand in profound self-acceptance. Anything less will bring relationships showing why that relationship won’t satisfy in the long term. Hardly any relationships come meaning to stay because nearly all of us are works in progress.
We constantly get better, improve, change, become more. And perhaps the greatest challenge for humans lies beneath those words. We are constant, changing beings. Always moving forward. But accepting that in a world unwilling to accept people as constantly changing, becoming-more, eternal entities, can be tough.
That’s why we’re here. We help people figure this out. When they do, they become an exception. And in that, their lives become exceptional.
