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Why I Don't Like TG Fiction
As I've noted a few times in the last couple of weeks, this originally started as my thoughts on a surprising conclusion I'd reached recently: Despite the fact that I am
1) at least somewhat transgendered, and
2) have read over a thousand pieces of TG-themed fiction, and
3) have written a novel and some stories with TG themes ...
I, um, don't really like the genre very much.
But when I got to "why is that exactly?" I began thinking more about my past and who I am, and suddenly it became autobiography. So while this is entitled "Why I Don't Like TG Fiction," and will address that eventually, you have to wade through a lot more information than you wanted along the way. I cannot apologize for that enough.
You see, I dislike autobiography intensely. To me, all autobiography is ego. It says you think you are important enough or interesting enough that someone else wants to read about your life. I don't believe either of those things - no, really, I don't - so this prose has no justification for existing.
It exists anyway because I wrote it and I want to keep it for myself and this is the best place to keep it.
ME
I don't talk about my gender much anymore. I got tired of it. I got sick of trying to classify who I was and what I was - it was a rigged game and I didn't fit any of the categories anyway.
At the same time, I was learning that I could get away with more than I thought I could in public, that I could dress and look enough like what I wanted to be that the urgency, the pain when I looked in the mirror, abated considerably.
So I dropped the subject. That was not especially long ago. You can see in a journal entry where I reached my epiphany, realized, "Hey, I'm basically getting what I want!" For now. It may change in the future. I may want more. But not now.
Yet in order to tell you the rest of this story, I have to categorize myself, because it's important. And before I can do that, I have to give you a lot of history - which I hope at least will be interesting.
MEN
I have a bad attitude toward men. I distrust them immensely. While I do find them attractive on occasion - I mean, in the leering-on-the-subway sense - a man would have to be ungodly beautiful for me to overcome my stereotypes about his personality and actually take him to bed.
For one thing, given my lack of female genitals, he'd probably be penetrating me anally - which isn't a problem, in fact it's a lot of fun ... except that it requires a lot of sexual communication and I don't think men do that very well, especially not when it comes to listening to what the person on the bottom wants. Men usually just sort of brute-force their way through sex. (This is probably why I have a problem with penetration - but I'm ahead of myself.)
Men are my natural enemies. When I walk down the street - even dressed in boy clothes - and I see a group of three males, no matter what their age, affiliation or peer group, I want to cross the street. And the only reason I don't is because then they would see my cowardice and jeer harder. I am always left with the impression that a group of men is making fun of me. It is usually not my imagination, either: I hate them and fear them, and, like dogs, they know it instinctively and respond.
I hate men. Individually I know a few whom I have learned to like, whom I can hold a conversation with. (And some of them are even straight!) But as a group, they are definitely guilty until proven innocent.
HISTORY AND SEX
When I was eighteen I was going to Rocky Horror in costume every weekend and not realizing the connection I was acquiring: Out of fishnets, geeky young man who was always either humiliating himself with displays of intelligence or verbal weirdness, or becoming mute for days on end to overcompensate. In fishnets, sexy young man who has both men and women ogling, fondling, vying for him to sit on their laps. I realized I liked the game. I didn't realize the game was serious, or that I had an exhibitionist streak that only surfaced when cross-dressed. Not then.
When I was twenty I was researching a novel with a character who gets a (basically magical) sex change. So I did the legwork. I talked briefly to a psychologist. It wasn't until years later that I realized I was asking for myself.
I was slow. What do you expect for someone who didn't lose his virginity until twenty-four or twenty-five? I got in trouble, years later, for writing a sixteen-year-old male character who is not just wholly naive about sex, but uninterested ... who in fact insists at one point that he's too young for that sort of thing. Test readers told me it wasn't credible. The hell it wasn't - it was me. I still think sixteen's too young for sex. Call me a moralist.
But I wasn't naive. Oh, no. I was writing smut, masturbating, performing oral sex on my then-fiancee - just not penetrating her. And not really wanting to do anything with my penis except masturbate with it. With fantasies that didn't match the equipment.
That relationship lasted three years, and she beat me to the exit by a very small margin. I then almost immediately began another serious relationship, which lasted another three years and had the same problems, in the bedroom at least, despite her being far more tolerant of my quirks.
Eventually - after the dust had settled from that one - I put all the pieces together. It was around then - rather by accident - that I actually had penetrative sex for the first time, with a roommate of mine. I think she was doing it out of sympathy for me, but I have never been upset about it, because I think her motives were good - but I would have to say it couldn't have been much fun for her. It wasn't all that much fun for me.
After I figured it out, sex became much better, because I knew what was going on in my brain and could accommodate it. But even to this day I have some problems with penetration. I would rather please the other person and leave my penis out of it. This is not always acceptable to the other person.
SRS
When I realized I was transgendered, I assumed that one day I would have to pursue a sex change, because that was the only way transgendered people could truly be happy, right? It took me until after I was thirty to realize that wasn't what I wanted. And it may change again. I have learned to never assume anything in my psychological makeup is permanent.
The first thing that someone asks you when they find out you're transgendered and you're serious is, "Have you considered/Are you planning to get a sex change?" The second question, when they're talking to me, is "Oh? Why not?"
People inside TG circles like to call a sex change "SRS" (Sexual Reassignment Surgery) which is the clinical jargon. Separates them from the dilettantes, I guess. I think "sex change" is more descriptive, but SRS is easier to type a lot, so I'll use that from here on.
The short answer for why I don't get SRS is: I don't hate my penis.
It's true that I prefer to use it to masturbate, but I enjoy that just fine. I don't care to play the game of "Would the climax be better if I had a vagina instead?" That way, to me, lies madness, especially since I have no complaints about what I get now.
As I'll explain later, there are two ways to contemplate Becoming Female. There's the realistic view, where you only consider what medical science and cosmetic artistry can do in the real world. And there's the fantasy view, where you think in terms of, "What if I had been born female?"
There are plenty of things I like and desire about being female, and I'll come to those, but the sticking point is the penis. You don't contemplate SRS just so you can get breasts. And if you don't have a problem with your penis, there's no real reason to undergo that expense, ridicule, and pain.
I have no illusions about being female - even about the fantasy case. I know a lot about the discomforts involved, having grown up in a house with just a very unabashed mother and sister as influences, and I'm not interested in menstruating or having cramps - and I'm sure as hell not interested in having a baby (although I'd like to experience the feeling of being pregnant, for a very short time - that mass inside your body, moving around in its own way - but that's a separate fantasy).
I don't think that being female is in some way a magical experience where everything suddenly becomes more emotionally intense or more pleasurable. Most women lead lives that are eight-tenths toil and tedium, just like most men. And women still have a lot more oppression and social stigmas to deal with. If I had been born female, I would probably still be where I am today - assuming my interests and upbringing were still the same - but I'd probably have had to work a lot harder to get there.
So what do I desire about being female?
Well, this sounds horrible, but it's almost all on the surface.
See, the problem is that everything I consider beautiful in a human is a classically female idea of beauty. I don't think most men are pretty - so why would I want to look like that? I want to look like the people I think are pretty. I want a soft face without any protruding features, smooth skin with no visible pores or facial hair. I want arch, shaped eyebrows. I want to be able to wear makeup if I need to, to cover the red blotches and the circles under my eyes. I like skirts and loose blouses. I like scoop necklines. I like women's shoes and belts and I prefer carrying a small bag to keeping anything in my pants pockets, which I find profoundly uncomfortable. I think I'd look better with hips and breasts. I hate body hair anywhere, but I like the hair on my head long, and I like to tie it up in braids and buns and so forth.
My drive for SRS, limited as it was, has abated severely in the past two years. What happened was I started to experiment and find out how much I can get away with. I learned that I can wear eyeliner and foundation to work and no one comments (most people don't even notice). I've learned I can wear almost all of the clothing I like except the skirts, and if people assume I'm a flamboyant gay male, who cares? I've learned that I can style my hair and have fun with it, and in general, a few strange looks on the subway is worth the fun it gives me.
And, most importantly, I've learned that if I get to indulge these needs whenever I look in the morning mirror and am unhappy with what I get, than wearing my usual jeans and flannels the rest of the week or month becomes much more tolerable. Since I've discovered this freedom, my "I need to be girly" days have decreased. It was only not being able to have them which made me want them so desperately.
SO AM I TG?
The transgendered community does not always get along perfectly. There are the usual sad, avoidable disputes about who "belongs" in the community and who doesn't. Some people would say I don't.
It's true that I am not contemplating SRS for the foreseeable future, and that I don't cross-dress even as much as I did when I was frequenting the weirder New Orleans dance clubs in my mid-twenties. I can understand, especially given the paragraph above, how I might come off as a dilettante.
But I am always female when I fantasize, and to the extent that I remember them, I am always female when I dream. I think of myself as female (hating men like I do, what did you expect?) And when I become aware that I am acting in what I consider a stereotypically "male" way - as I often do - I get very upset with myself.
I know I sound like a male, even when writing. I have an analytical writing style, which, I'm afraid, many people interpret as masculine. I sound even more like a male when I talk. Although I can make my voice more female if I think about it, I rarely think about it, preferring not to resort to artifice. My natural voice is low and gravelly and (since I am almost always congested) rather nasal, to my dismay.
But I consider myself more female than male. And that's important to me, obviously. I think men operate under a number of big constraints I refuse to accept. A stereotypical man would not write this piece - too much disclosure. Stereotypical men do not discuss their emotions or their psychology if they can help it. Stereotypical men are not allowed to feel - or are not allowed to admit it if they do.
A CAVEAT
Since anyone male reading this is prepared to come after me with an axe at this point, I should say this (and right quick, too): I know you're not all like that, silly. I'm discussing what I feel are some of the worst traits of the narrowest definition - the least common denominator, if you will - of what society considers male behavior. There are lots of people in this world and they are notoriously slippery to characterize. I am not making fun of you. I am making fun of the pigeonhole that we frequently find ourselves being crammed into.
If you hate that pigeonhole too, great. Defy it.
Anyway, the point is, maybe I don't want to be be female. Maybe I just want to be a male who can act the way he damn well pleases. But you must forgive me if I have formed the idea that Male is a point at one end of a spectrum - a very narrow place to stand - and everything else on the number line, while not exactly Female, is Not-Male. Maybe I don't want to be Female. Maybe I just want the freedom to be Not-Male. That still, to me, makes me transgendered. To me transgendered is anything in the middle ground.
CRAZY THEORIES
Now the waters get deep. Or perhaps deeper.
I've been reading a lot these days about the distinction between two types of male-to-female transsexuals (or potential transsexuals) - "androphilic" and "autogynephilic." I've been reading a lot about it because a lot of people in the TG community, and some in the medical community, think it's bullshit. TG folks have a somewhat adversarial relationship with the medical/psychological community. Too many scars, too many years of people telling us that it's just a mental aberration and we need to be cured. New theories like this don't help - to us it looks like another way to be marginalized, to say, "Oh, you're just a fetishist" instead of "oh, you're just crazy."
In brief (very brief), an androphilic M2F wants to be female because he/she is aroused by men and wants to facilitate having sex with men. An autogynephilic M2F is aroused by the idea of becoming female, by being transformed into a female. Never mind that this reduces the whole bucket of possible reasons why someone might be a transsexual into a matter of what makes you horny. Never mind that the pigeonholes can't contain everyone neatly.
Given all the information above, hopefully you can see why I have a problem classifying myself into one of these two categories. I certainly don't want to have sex with men. But I don't see any particular romance or thrill in becoming a woman either. I would probably be happier with what I saw in the mirror, but it's not magic and I wouldn't expect it to be.
On the other hand, I do read a lot of transgender fiction, and transgender fiction is all about being turned into a female (with rare F2M excursions). And, yes, for me TG fiction is often sexual fantasy material - but in a strange way, which, alas, I have to stop and explain.
I read smut and put it away before I have sex or masturbate. It gets me in the mood, but the fantasies I have while having sex or masturbating are usually very different. The reason I'm explaining this is that, while I get aroused reading about a man being turned into a women, once I'm actually in the bed I don't use that ... once I'm in the bed, I already am a woman. In bed I generally have very straightforward submission fantasies (assuming that's not an oxymoron) where I am female.
Or (pardon the pun): If there was a physical transformation, it happened before I got physical.
TG FICTION AT LAST
There are, it seems to me, two types of readers of TG fiction (although they overlap). One type is reading it as sexual or wish-fulfillment fantasy material. The other wants a realistic treatment of the social, mental, and physical problems of being the opposite sex. The latter is more interesting; the former is more fun.
When I think about the theories above, I wonder if there's a connection between the two categories of transsexual - spurious as they are - and the two types of readers (also somewhat spurious, let it be said).
If so, it doesn't surprise me that I favor the wish-fulfillment story (as I lean more toward the autogynephilic category) ... and it also doesn't surprise me that, underneath that preference, I tend to instinctively reject both types of stories, the same way I reject both of those categories.
Some of that is me resenting pigeonholes (which I do, as a matter of routine), and some of it is just that I think I'm honestly a bad fit.
Of course, this all could be just a red herring. I could be rejecting TG fiction primarily for reasons of story content, and to heck with all this psychology.
WHAT'S BETWEEN THE COVERS
The people who like the wish-fulfillment stories are the same people who are more likely to actually prefer fiction that reinforces some or all of these Famous TG Clichés:
- Everybody "passes". Always. If a boy is taken out crossdressed, even his own school chums don't recognize him.
- Everyone looks good in the mirror when dressed, even if it's the very first time. If it's a boy, he sees a pretty young girl. If it's a man, he sees either a gorgeous lady or a slutty sexpot.
- In fact, no-one ever looks ridiculous crossdressed.
- If a male of any age tries on some girl's or woman's clothes, they always fit him perfectly.
- Men who crossdress always have ideal bodies for doing so - short, slim, and generally feminine in appearance.
- Any magical or numinous object always causes either a sex change or a body swap, either directly or as an unavoidable (and unexpected) side effect.
- Sex changes caused by biological agents take effect within minutes of the time the agents are introduced. Bodies so treated likewise change shape completely within minutes.
- Ears, newly pierced, are ready for earrings immediately. No temporary studs, no disinfectant, no waiting for the wounds to heal. Just pop in the earrings and you're ready to go.
- Any man who goes to a girlie show or a brothel will end up as one of the employees.
- The more chauvinistic a man is, the more likely he is to be forcibly feminized.
- Makeovers of crossdressed males are invariably successful beyond anybody's dreams.
- If a wife catches her husband dressed, the outcome is never divorce. Instead, she feminizes him, either lovingly or as a punishment.
- If a parent discovers that a son loves to dress like a girl, (s)he punishes him by ... making him dress like a girl.
- Any boy who plays with girls for any length of time will eventually be made to wear their clothes.
- No matter how bitterly a boy hates being feminized at first, he will unfailingly end up loving it.
I stole these from the TG Fiction mailing list - my apologies to the originator(s). There were many more, but I've edited them down to just the ones I personally have seen over and over again. And I have perpetrated a few of them myself - because I am generally not in the realism camp.
Part of me doesn't like showing the realistic consequences of a sex change because I don't believe that some of them would happen. I mean, I'd believe losing a job or a wife, but not having difficulty with tampons. (Remember I grew up in a house with two non-shy females.) And I still don't completely believe all the comments from the readers that someone who suddenly got breasts would spend a huge amount of time bumping into things with their new frontal elevation. I can walk in high heels better than most women I know, and most of the women I know scorn the things anyway - as they should; heels are torture. In short, I believe there would be social and psychological adjustment pains, but I place limited stock in the physical ones .... Are cramps hell? Yes. Are you quickly going to get adjusted to having them every month? Yes.
And I don't usually want to read or write about the social and psychological pains because I undergo those to a limited extent now, and I already don't want reminders of those unpleasant things in my fiction. That's like asking me to go see a movie about Brandon Teena. What, you want to make me cry? I have enough anguish just in my comfortable little semi-transgendered life, thanks, and that's without daring to wear skirts in public.
So the realistic school of TG fiction is not my cup of tea. Thing is - deep sigh here - I'm realizing that the fantasy school isn't either. Or is becoming less so.
SEX AND LITTLE ELSE
There are two collections of stories - Dick For A Day and Chick For A Day - about what would happen if you were the opposite sex for twenty-four hours. I have avoided reading them. They annoy me, sight unseen, and I'm not entirely sure why. The pat dismissal I used the other night was, "Well, I just figured they'd all say, 'I'd go have sex with somebody' in different ways. I mean, that's the canonical test, right?"
Unfortunately, I can use the same logic to dismiss everything in the fantasy school of TG fiction. Sex change happens. Person learns to love it gradually. Eventually they have their first sexual encounter in their new gender and it's just fabulous, better than they ever dreamed of. Everyone lives happily ever after.
Gradually I realized that my kinks were more in the area of mind-control and psychological abuse, and that I was only into the TG fiction as sexual fiction because there were so many forced-feminization stories there. Once I realized that, I shifted gradually to sites that focused on fem-dom material and my odds got much better. In short, that easy happy wish-fulfillment TG transition - oh, everything is so much better now - is happy to contemplate, but it gets boring to read. On the sexual level or otherwise.
What can you say about sex? You can say it's better for either sex and no one will be able to prove you wrong. For that matter, no one's ever been able to quantify "better" in sex - it's all subjective. All the orgasms sound the same after a while.
NOT REALLY A CONCLUSION
I know, I know, I sound bitchy and horribly jaded to boot. So what would I like to read in the TG arena? What would bring back my attention span? Am I impossible to please?
Well, sexually, yes. I've realized that my personal kinks only overlap with the TG material coincidentally, and that's no one's fault and no one's problem but mine. Nor does it reflect on the quality of the goods.
Now, for something to work for me as a story - that is, to interest me for something other than arousal ....
I'd like to see more alien situations. Strange worlds and other places where the difference between being male and female is more than just being harrassed by construction workers and leered at or fired by your boss, more than just facing a messy divorce and wondering what you're going to tell the kids. I am not trying to make light of those problems - they're quite real - but I want to see a world which, say, works on the beehive system - where the difference in genders is also the difference in what you do and where you stand socially and how you're supposed to think.
Of course, some would say that's a fair description of present-day Earth, but you get my point.
In other words, I'd need to see a TG story where the sex change is a means to getting somewhere else ... not the whole reason for the story's existence. I have simply seen a character react in the mirror to his/her new breasts too many times at this point, no matter whether the reaction is realistic ("Oh, hell, what do I do now?") or fantastic ("Oooh, wow, and they're so sensitive!") It's no longer enough. Like a newly-spawned nymphomaniac in a particularly bad TG cliché, I need more.
Much, much more.
© Columbine
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I said I wasn't ready to go into this, and then I immediately went and finished it. All 4500 words of it. It has some very frank language and way Too Much Information. Consider yourself warned.
It also reads a little disjointedly - goes from place to place without a clear thesis. I'm not going to bother to go back and make it hold together better, but I want you to know that I do know how to write a damn good persuasive essay; however, this isn't the way.
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