I’m 26, straight, and male. I consider myself a socially progressive person, have been a vocal supporter of LGBT issues since high school, and was president of my college Gay-Straight Alliance. Here’s my issue: I fully support the trans community. I have numerous friends in varying states of transition and I’m 100 percent behind them. But in my own dating life, I wouldn’t feel comfortable dating/having sex with a woman who had at one point in her life been a man. I realize I wouldn’t be fucking a dude, but it’s a mental hurdle I can’t clear. All my LGBTQA friends—be they trans, gay, bi—call me a transphobe, because if I were truly on their side, if I truly “understood,” then sex with a MTF straight woman would be no different than sex with a cisgender straight woman. Do I have the right to not feel comfortable with the idea (or reality) of having sex with these women and still consider myself a supporter of the trans community? Are my friends being unreasonable? Or am I a hypocrite?

Fears Real Activism
Undermined [by] Dick

“He’s not transphobic—not in my book,” says Kate Bornstein, author, performer, “advocate for teens, freaks, and other outlaws,” and herself a trans woman. “One more thing he’s not is straight. Sex-positive, supportive of trans folk, and heterosexual? Cool! He’s a queer heterosexual—and some of my best friends are queer heterosexuals.”

As for your specific issue—you’re not attracted to trans women—Bornstein says that by itself isn’t evidence of transphobia.

“A queer heterosexual is just as entitled to the fulfillment of their sex and gender desires as anyone else,” says Bornstein. “Sometimes those desires depend on the nature of their lover’s body. Well, trans people have bodies that are different than cis people’s bodies. We’re two (or more) mints in one—a physical blend that attracts a lot of people. FRAUD just doesn’t happen to be one of them. The fact that he’s sensitive to that blending of genders in our bodies does not make him transphobic.”

What can you do about it?

“Go have good sex with cis women,” says Bornstein. (Don’t know what “cis” means in this context? See: tinyurl.com/cisdefine.)

Whatever else you do, FRAUD, Bornstein wants you to stop identifying as straight.

“He’s part of our queer tribe,” she says. “And who knows? One day, he might meet the right trans person.”

And who knows? One day, your cranky LGBTQA friends might accept who you are just as you’ve accepted them. Make an effort to use “attracted to cis women” in place of “wouldn’t feel comfortable dating” trans women, and you’ll hasten that day’s arrival.

Kate Bornstein’s new memoir, A Queer and Pleasant Danger (Beacon Press), will be published in the spring. Follow her on Twitter @katebornstein. (Follow me @fakedansavage.)

I’m a 26-year-old guy in a polyamorous relationship. As this is my first kick at the poly can, I wasn’t dying to tell my family, “Hey, I’m dating a married woman!” However, through the magic of Facebook, my brother found out that the girl I’m seeing has a husband. Once I was “busted,” I discussed the situation with my sister-in-law. The issue is that my GF and her husband have a 10-year-old son. My brother has compared the poly community to drug addicts and stated that CPS should remove my girlfriend’s child from her home, etc. My brother and his wife are now threatening to cut me out of their lives—as well as their children’s lives, whom I care for a great deal—if I don’t dump the girlfriend. Thoughts?

Forced To Pick

Right off the top of my head: Your brother is a shit-smeared asshole, your sister-in-law is an ass-smeared shithole, and they’d be doing you a huge favor if they cut you out of their lives.

Pick the GF, FTP. That might mean you won’t see your nieces/nephews for a while, which would be sad for you and bad for those kids (children with crazy, controlling parents need to spend quality time with saner family members). But if you dump your girlfriend at their insistence—if you fail to stand up to them—you will have established a dangerous precedent: Your love life isn’t yours to manage, it’s theirs, and all your future partners will be subject to their batshittery/scrutiny and, if they disapprove of any future girlfriends (concurrent or subsequent), they will attempt to exercise the veto power you ceded to them during this conflict.

Your brother and sister-in-law are bullies, FTP, and you’ve got to defend yourself. So long as your GF and her husband aren’t doing anything inappropriate in front of their son and they’re not placing unfair burdens on their son (they don’t expect him to keep secrets, if they’re not out about being poly; they don’t expect him to be out about his parents being poly, if they are out and he’s not comfortable sharing that info with his friends), you need to come to their defense, too. And you might want to consult a lawyer now, just in case your brother and sister-in-law call CPS.

I am a 29-year-old male with a fetish for snapping pictures of women’s legs and feet in nylons. I look for women online who will allow me to pay them to take these pictures. I recently posted an ad and received a reply from a coworker. I find her very attractive and would like to photograph her legs and feet. How should I handle this?

Sent From My Mobile Device

Here’s a relevant story from the files: Vanilla Gay pays a social call on Kinky Gay. KG informs VG that there’s a Hot Dude tied up in his playroom. KG invites VG to view HD. KG is right: HD is hot. HD is also, as it turns out, one of VG’s coworkers—one of VG’s straight coworkers.

It was an unexpected twist of fate—HD didn’t know that VG and KG were friends—that resulted in VG discovering something about HD that HD didn’t choose to reveal to VG. (A twist of fate and the rules HD agreed to when he played with KG: HD had consented to KG showing him off.) While it’s possible that HD wouldn’t have cared that VG knew his secret, it was likelier that HD, if he knew VG knew his bi-for-bondage secret, would’ve felt embarrassed around his coworker—not to mention compromised during any routine workplace conflicts with VG.

I urged VG to keep his mouth shut.

In your case, SFMMD, while it’s possible that your coworker doesn’t care who knows that she does fetish modeling on the side for extra money and/or thrills, it’s likelier that she would be embarrassed to learn that someone she knows professionally discovered what she’s doing. There are plenty of other women out there, and plenty of other legs and feet to photograph. Keep your mouth shut.

I was reading a letter in your archives from a woman who didn’t have much libido. I was disappointed that you didn’t mention that decreased libido is a common side effect of almost every form of hormonal birth control. The first thing a woman with low libido should do, if she’s been on the same pill for years, is to switch methods. I would love it if you’d mention this in your column.

Spread The Word

Done and done.

mail@savagelove.net

324 replies on “Savage Love”

  1. @206 – if you said “I could never like having sex with a woman,” I would probably keep quiet to be polite, but I would think you were naive and prejudiced, yes. Blindfolded, with a finger or a fist probing you, could you really tell the difference between a male hand and a female hand?

  2. @ 204 (EricaP):

    You make an analogy between an expression of sexual non-interest and racial bigotry, when you say that FRAUD’s assertion that he has no sexual interest in any woman not born female is akin to saying ‘”I could never be friends with someone black.”‘

    “Being friends with” is not synonymous with “wants to fuck.”

    I am friends with all kinds of people I don’t want to have sex with (and the list goes far beyond gender differences). I am friends with gay men, with women, straight and lesbian, with people of all races, with those of different religions (for the record, had sex with a few who fit into these categories, too, in case I’m going to get called a racial or religious bigot), with people far, far removed from me generationally. I am friends with straight men I would love to fuck if only things worked out that way, and I am friends with straight men I would never in a zillion years want to fuck. I even have a couple of republican friends.

    I have never used any distinction as an excuse to not get to know another human being, but I have the right to not want to fuck whomsoever I don’t want to fuck and not deserve to get tarred with the bigot brush for it.

    And I can’t ever imagine liking licorice.

  3. @208: But I don’t have sex with a hand. I have sex with a whole person.

    Probably, given the scenario you’re describing, I would be unable to tell the difference between who the hand belonged to, and so, yes, I might get pleasure (fisting being a favorite of mine).

    But that isn’t the point here, and it doesn’t address the lw’s concerns. I am not talking about the equivalent of bathhouse glory-holing. I am talking, about who it is I choose to date, to have a sexual relationship with. Likewise, you could give me a food and serve it to me blindfolded and not tell me that it was haggis and I might enjoy myself. But I’m still never going to enjoy the idea of eating haggis, even afterward, if you said to me, “but you ate it that one time, when you didn’t know what it was, and you liked it.”

    The mind is a powerful organ.

  4. I recently got off hormonal birth control, and my libido has disappeared. It was sky high while on the pill. Just saying that generalizations SUCK!

  5. @209 – just choose not to fuck them as individuals, and I’ll think the world of you. We are all entitled to be friends with whomever we like too – it’s a free country. But if someone tells me that he/she will never be friends with someone of a different race, I consider them prejudiced. You just don’t know.

    @210 If you learned that you had enjoyed haggis, that would not bring you to reevaluate your thoughts on haggis?

  6. So, does “Queer” now mean “anyone who isn’t anti-LGBT”? Because I had thought it meant “I’m Bi but I don’t want to call myself Bi”
    You know, like Pansexuals.

  7. FRAUD can enjoy sex with a trans woman without being BLINDFOLDED because he can never be sure about the DNA of the person he is having sex with.

    the original question only deal with sex.

    Fraud is not comfortable with having sex with any trans woman, he has the right to not feel comfortable, but the question is why is he uncomfortable and how can he feel uncomfortable if he can never know for sure the woman he is having sex with (WIDE EYES OPEN) have a XY or XX choromosome?

    lets imagine this: would FRAUD be more comfortable having sex with a super butch male looking lesbian as opposed to a trans woman who nobody on earth could have guess she had XY DNA.

    Fraud is uncomforable with having sex with any women who are trans, nobody questions his right to feel uncomfortable, but the question is the root of that discomfort , and its the idea of trans women in his mind that turned him off , not the actual reality, because in reality, Fraud cannot know for sure who is trans or not trans.

    So Fraud could be prejudiced against trans women on a subconscious level, it all depends on what is it about the idea of transgender women that turn him off if he cannot honestly tell for sure all the women he feel attracted to were transsexual or cisgender?

  8. (Following up myself@212:) I’m okay with generalizations and statements of fact, just not absolutes set in the future. Out of politeness to the people around you who may be trans, or may love someone trans, can’t you just substitute: “I’ve never been attracted to someone trans, and I doubt I ever will.” Instead of saying “I could never do that?”

    Also, try using more considerate analogies. There’s a difference between comparing transgendered people to haggis (usually considered a horrible food in the US), versus licorice, which many people like (though not me or you).

  9. Re the “expert” advice to LW1: I don’t doubt for a moment that the “expert” who was consulted would be LIVID if anyone presumed to tell him/her/it how “correctly” to refer to his/her/its own sexuality. To exhort the LW to no longer identify himself as “straight” is just as offensive as those rabid religionists who exhort post-surgical transgenders to identify as persons who have voluntarily mutilated their deity-specified bodies for no better reason than transient thrills.

    Please, Dan: Practice what you preach, and apply the same standard to your “consultants.”

    — Spikeygrrl (30 years a BDSMer but still 100% “straight,” thank you very much!)

  10. And again i repeat, transsexual women are not crying over this guy not enjoying the idea of fucking transsexuals.

    I personally can fall in love with someone without fucking them, fuck is is not love.

    I perfer love, and i think most trans women do as well, and if you really are in love with someone, you will want to give them pleasure in every way possible, one of them including the physical.

    A more interesting question again is, can Fraud fall in love with a woman who is trans?

  11. Isnt it transphobic to use the analogy of a straight guy who says he can never be attracted to a man to a straight guy saying he can never be attracted to a woman who happens to be trans?

    Isnt that kind of comparison really boils down to the idea that trans women are not really women?

    I know many people have prejudice against transgender women , some will accept us as women only on a surface level, some wont at all, and some will claim they are great supporter and they will even fuck us but they wont be in an offical or public relationship with us, and someone will say they are supporter but they are NEVER going to be attracted to us (even though they have no way of knowing if a woman is trans or not for sure)

    To me, you can support trans women and not be open minded to trans women, and being a supporter of trans people and being open minded me that you can see yourself being with a trans woman because they are women in your eyes, and you can imagine (no matter how remote) that you could be in a relationship with a trans women because duh, you are attracted to women!

    so i think there are many different degree of acceptance/tolerance toward trans people and its more realistic to look at the issue from that view.

    In my opinon, if a straight man tells me he see trans women as women, and accept us as women, but than he tells me he cant imagine ever being in an intimiate relationship with any trans women even though he is straight, single and looking

    I have to say , yeah, you are a bit of a hypocrite, that’s okay we all are, and I am not going to call you a bigot, but well, it is what it is.

    Not that i dont appreciate straight men who say that to me, becuase lets face it, even if you are not 100 percent accepting, you are doing pretty good if you are 80 or 90 percent there, compared to the kind of hateful anti-trans world we live in.

  12. @218, would you agree that transwomen are a subset of women? A man might say he couldn’t imagine falling in love with a Catholic woman, say, or an ugly woman, a Communist woman, a woman who was an amputee, a tall woman, or a woman who was raised as a male… All of these are prejudices, and in my view it’s foolish for people to think they know the future. But I don’t see that talking about transwomen as a distinct class is necessarily the same as saying that they aren’t real women.

  13. It would be entertaining to see Mr Ank mediating between Ms Erica and Ms Cute over the meaning of “never” and other things.

    Ms Erica and in particular Ms There bring forth interesting questions about knowledge versus assumption.

    I am recalling (very vaguely) a column Agela Watrous wrote about ten years ago in which she framed the issue rather as discrimination in one’s love/sex life, and entirely endorsed the concept of dating/boinking with one’s head as well as with one’s groin, evenn if the resulting discrimination would be unacceptable in any other sphere of life.

  14. Oh, curses – Angela Watrous, not Agela. I had to retype the post because it disappeared.

    This thread has made it seem a bit more surprising to me than usual that I haven’t ever, shall we say, manifested tangible evidence of attraction in female company. Then again, if I were to put a number on how many males (within reasonable bounds of knowledge or assumption) have produced the same, it would be depressingly low. If I weren’t out of circulation (or, to please Ms Erica, if unforeseen circumstances caused me to return), I think in general the logistics of dating a trans man would be a net plus compared to dating a cis man.

  15. @215: I wasn’t comparing transgendered people to haggis. I was using your “if you were blindfolded, how could you tell whose hand was up inside you” question and following it to try and discuss the “informed decision” aspect of actually dating. But thank you for making me out to be a hate-filled bigot.

    And I wonder what is an acceptable ruling-out point to you–surely you have some? If I said I would never be sexually interested in anyone more than 30 years older or younger, would that be okay? Is it all right to say that I, a straight woman, could never be attracted to a woman? Should I leave myself open to the possibility of someday in the future being sexually attracted to a child? (uh, oh, there go those charges of my being inconsiderate again and comparing pedophiles to those who date transpeople.) Okay, what if I couch this in what appears to be the last acceptable arena of prejudice: What if I unilaterally ruled out all people weighing over 350 pounds? How about 400 pounds?

    To say that you and all other enlightened people carefully weigh each individual case and that to have a group of people from whom you recuse yourself from considering as sexual partners is tantamount to naivety or bigotry is hypocritical.

  16. Ms There – It just occurred to me that FRAUD has, in his own words, “numerous friends in varying states of transition”. Is it possible that this could account for much of his difficulty? He may have seen too much of the process, as it were, to exclude those particulars from his appreciation of the end product with women he knows to have transitioned. (This is much more a guess than an assertion.)

    I’m quite satisfied to defer to you about situations concerning his incorrect assumption.

  17. To FTP: A bit of friendly advice. Lose the Facebook page. There are certain realities that we in non mainstream lifestyles have to deal with. One of them is that someone out there will object and make an issue out of your activities. And they’ll use what they’ve found to push their moral agenda. With a kid in the mix, that just gives them more ammunition.

    Its sad that members of your own family see fit to throw a wrench into your relationship and those of people close to you. Imagine how many busy bodies there are who don’t give a sh*t about you and won’t hesitate to make an example of you.

  18. @222 The joy of Slog is that we get so deep into issues. In order to do that, here, I find myself calling your statements prejudiced. I apologize that I can’t find a way to do that without seeming to insult you.

    Of course I have preferences, in food, in movies, in dating, in lust. But I keep an open mind for specific instances of undesirable classes, that might make me change my standards. Generally, I don’t like eating octopus, licking labia, horror movies, or making fundraising calls. But occasionally there are exceptions. I don’t expect to date anyone obese, or anyone under thirty, or anyone who used to have a penis. But stranger things have happened, and I don’t rule it out categorically. Also, to the extent that a category seems particularly distasteful to me, I figure that’s probably my psychological issue, rather than anything to do with those people. Like the later Heinlein, I rather think we’re all inherently omnisexual, if it weren’t for our psychological baggage.

  19. @222 nocutename

    My experience is that I react to people on a case by case basis. But it’s very easy to comprehend that it simply does not work that way for everyone. Exclusively straight people exist as do all the others on the sexual spectrum.

  21. @227 okay, sure. In this world, it amounts to the same thing. But I believe people would mostly be better off if everyone kept a somewhat open mind about who/what might make their wobbly bits tingle. Play the odds, stick with what has worked for you in the past, sure. But why not also stay open to serendipitous sexy surprises…

  22. EricaP:
    Okay, keep an open mind. I think that in practice, I do this more often than not. But I keep going back to this poor letter writer, who maybe should have said, as you suggested, ‘”I’ve never been attracted to someone trans, and I doubt I ever will.”‘ And it occurs to me that although he phrased his attitude to Dan like this: “in my own dating life, I wouldn’t feel comfortable dating/having sex with a woman who had at one point in her life been a man,” he likely wouldn’t have phrased it that way to his actual trans friends, and quite possibly said something more akin to what you’ve provided as a model. And yet he still gets taken to task for it.

    Nowhere in the original letter does he imply that he is harsh or rude in his statement of preference. In fact, even Kate Bornstein, who has irritated so many Sloggers by her re-christening FRAUD as “queer heterosexual” instead of “straight,” agrees that he isn’t transphobic.

    Somehow our hair-splitting got us miles ahead of FRAUD.

  23. @229 – Yep. In person, I’m sure we’re all more polite than on Slog. And FRAUD was probably perfectly polite to his transfriends. But we’re all prone to overinterpreting what people say to us. So maybe his friends just teased FRAUD, saying, “hey, never say never!” And he thought they meant that he should have sex with one of them, to prove that he wasn’t transphobic. Which made him feel defensive; hence the letter to Dan.

  24. @223

    I know I am doing some hair splitting, but I am a trans woman and I have alot of hair to split.

    Anyways FRAUD originally said “But in my own dating life, I wouldn’t feel comfortable dating/having sex with a woman who had at one point in her life been a man”

    Many trans women would not say they were, at any point in their life, a man.

    Many trans women now transitioned really early, so they had literally never been through a male puberty before they transitioned. Many trans women would also say that they have always been a girl, excluding the fact of their outside/outward appearance.

    So perhaps part of FRAUD’s problem with trans women is that he believe trans women were once men and this is definitely not something that the ts community as a whole would agree with.

    Anyhow, my impression of the letter is that FRAUD is asking for premission to not be labelled as an ally of the trans community..

    but if hes really concerned with standing along side of trans women..he should be more detailed as to why he doesnt want to sleep with trans women, or date them or be in a relationship with a trans women.

    As a pre op trans woman, I personally do not tolerate anyone who will not appreciate every part of my body, and if Fraud said hes not comfortable with sleeping with me or a post op trans women, i would just say who said i am interested in you?..but no, i guess I wont consider FRAUD to be transphobic unless if i find out theres more to the source his discomfort.

    yes, i need to write this much to come to the conclusion i am okay with FRAUD, but he is asking for premission, which makes me suspect theres more to his discomfort, and hes not saying it becuase it would make him look bad in front of GLBTQ community =[

  25. @229:

    But we don’t know what FRAUD did or didn’t say to his friends; we only know what he said to Dan, which is “I realize I wouldn’t be fucking a dude, but . . . ” (Which of course means: “Oh noez, I’d be fucking a dude!!1!”) As he’s explained it here, FRAUD’s unwillingness to date transwomen has nothing to do with absence of attraction, and everything to do with the presence of discomfort. (I’m not saying that FRAUD is necessarily attracted to transwomen; I’m just saying he didn’t frame the question in terms of attraction or non-attraction.)

    Like you and a great many other posters, I don’t think anybody should be blamed for their lack of attraction to any person or group of people. Who we’re attracted to isn’t under our conscious control, and not being attracted to somebody doesn’t amount to an expression of prejudice. But being actively uncomfortable with somebody is, I would argue, a little less blameless.

    Yes, FRAUD is only uncomfortable with transwomen (or the idea of transwomen) in the specific context of sex; otherwise, it sounds like he’s perfectly cool with them, which puts him ahead of 99% of the population. And yes, I know that we all have our squicks as well as our turn-ons, and those aren’t necessarily subject to our conscious control, either. But I think that considerate adults should, at the very least, rephrase their squicks as neutral statements of personal preference. Instead of saying “I’m not comfortable with the thought of having sex with a [man, woman, transexual, intersexual, black/Asian/white person, fat person, old person], and it’s a mental hurdle I just can’t clear,” why not just say “I’ve never met a [man, woman, transexual, intersexual, black/Asian/white person, fat person, old person] who turned me on, and I just don’t think my libido’s wired that way”? For me, at least, this isn’t just a question of semantics. The first statement suggests that the speaker has some fundamental objection to [men, women, transexuals, etc.]; the second statement comes across as much less of a sweeping value judgment.

    FRAUD’s letter vaguely reminds me of Dan’s occasional tangents about how female genitals freak him out. Yeah, we get that vaginas don’t turn Dan’s crank, and that’s totally cool. But when he goes on about how vaginas make him feel all grossed-out and icky? That’s not so cool. The same principle applies here. Not attracted to transwomen? Totally cool. Advertising to the world that the thought of having sex with a transwoman is a “mental hurdle [you] can’t clear” and makes you feel all uncomfortable? Keep it to yourself, dude.

  27. @232: You’re right that “advertising to the world that the thought of having sex with a transwoman is a “mental hurdle [you] can’t clear” and makes you feel all uncomfortable” is something best kept to oneself. If FRAUD indeed makes his revulsion known or obvious, he’s a a boor or being uncool and a hypocrite, despite his involvement in the LGBT community.

    And you’re also correct that we don’t know what FRAUD did or didn’t say to his friends. Without that crucial information, we’re making all kinds of assumptions which lie behind our judgments of him as a person.

    I’ve chosen (based on the fact of his having been the president of his college GSA and his claiming to have been a vocal supporter of LGBT issues and having numerous friends going through the various stages of transitioning between genders) to assume that FRAUD displayed more tact with his friends, and that his phrasing of his questions to Dan take the tone of serious introspection, a condition in which one doesn’t always worry so much about sounding offensive, but is trying to really come to a deeper understanding of one’s feelings and motives. If anything, I think that this level of self-questioning is to be commended and I don’t think that great delicacy of expression is necessary under those circumstances.

    You’ve chosen (as have EricaP and arewethereyet) to assume that FRAUD expressed himself to his presumed friends exactly as he has to Dan in this column, and have been accordingly offended by a tone you think is more prejudicial than it needs to be.

    We’ll none of us know what exactly FRAUD said, nor the way in which he said it. So I believe it therefore makes sense to warily cut him some slack.

    But as you and arewethereyet–the only person on this thread with perhaps the best claim to have any sort of stake in this issue–have pointed out, even if he is displaying some prejudice or insensitivity, he is still 99% ahead of the vast majority of the population. Seriously, I think arewehereyet said something about transwomen not crying over FRAUD’s unwillingness to date/fuck/love them, and I think she is right. But he can still be an ally for their rights. I don’t want to sleep with a lot of people, whose rights I work towards securing, and I hope that my efforts aren’t dismissed nor my intentions negated just because I don’t want to have sex with them.

  28. INTOLERANCE ALERT, sorry.
    I feel the same as FRAUD, but for different (or maybe the same reasons.) I can’t imagine feeling miss-assigned in your body and it must be very challenging. I sincerely wish all trans people the best and hope they find the love they deserve, like everyone else.

    However, the whole trans idea makes me totally crazy. (218) Mutilating yourself and taking some hormones does not make you a woman! It makes you a man who cut off his junk and took some hormones. And THAT’S OK! Variety IS the spice of life. I think the real issue is the narrow media -influenced concept of what behaviours are supposedly “male” or “female”. Men can like dresses and women can like building things without having to switch genders. But that’s another story.

    If FRAUD is not attracted to trans women, that’s ok! He doesn’t have to apologize for his hormones and trans people don’t have to apologize to wankers like me. You don’t have to be open to fucking someone to give them basic respect as a human. Yes, It is plausible that he (or I) could become enamoured with a trans woman and have a very happy relationship. But in my case, even if the person were the stunning ideal of stereotypical womanhood, I feel that I would lose my attraction to them if they told me they used to be a man. Because I would not be able to differentiate “used to be” from “currently am.” Or maybe I would shrug and change my status to queer and go on about my day? I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

  31. It’s ironic that the first writer is being told “who he should love” by people who have strongly rejected similar demands.
    I also had to roll my eyes at the new demand that he stop calling himself straight. We need to slow down this rapid lingo turnover, or no one will be able to undestand us! It’s not a secret club with secret words, it’s a message about personal freedom that should be shared.

  32. @235

    “However, the whole trans idea makes me totally crazy. (218) Mutilating yourself and taking some hormones does not make you a woman! It makes you a man who cut off his junk and took some hormones. “

    yeah, you are definitely intolerant and transphobic, its telling that you came to the defense of FRAUD.

  33. @234 – I agreed, I am all for self introspection, I have thought alot about this issue personally. I hope FRAUD is also reading some of our comments and exploring his source of discomfort.

  34. Bornstein clearly doesn’t speak for all of us. I, for one, don’t “blend genders in my body.” Is Bornstein a transgenderist? Because that’s very different from transsexualism.

    Nobody should be judged for not being attracted to a particular person. It’s easy to understand how a lot of straight guys aren’t into mid-transition transsexuals or transgenderists and gender queer people (or trans women that have some male-typical physical characteristics). But what if you physically and emotionally can’t even tell that a person’s trans until she tells you?

    If you’re attracted to a woman, date her for a while, and maybe even have great sex with her, only to get grossed out and dump her when she tells you about her medical history – you’re a bigot.

  35. Bornstein clearly doesn’t speak for all of us. I, for one, don’t “blend genders in my body.” Is Bornstein a transgenderist? Because that’s very different from transsexualism.

    Nobody should be judged for not being attracted to a particular person. It’s easy to understand how a lot of straight guys aren’t into mid-transition transsexuals or transgenderists and gender queer people (or trans women that have some male-typical physical characteristics). But what if you physically and emotionally can’t even tell that a person’s trans until she tells you?

    If you’re attracted to a woman, date her for a while, and maybe even have great sex with her, only to get grossed out and dump her when she tells you about her medical history – you’re a bigot.

  37. My first reaction to the term queer heterosexual (QHet) was positive. However, as I read some of the comments, my perception changed and now I don’t think it applies to FRAUD (thanks to posts like echizen_kurage’s or Sea Otter’s.) That’s why I love ‘Savage Love 2.0’, forum included!

    However, I do like the term in other sense: QHet could be used by heterosexuals who are open to other possibilities in their lives, not only queer friendly but also not one-hundred-percent-heterosexual. Although I believe that most of our sexuality is given by nature, as human beings we are prone to learning, especially if we are open to new possibilities. At forty-something I’m not the same guy I was at twenty. Not gay, not bi, but not completely straight either. Thanks to the Internet, literature and a life dedicated to self-exploration, my mind today is populated by non-vanilla images that make me horny and still don’t move me to act on them. I’m still heterosexual, but not completely. But I’m not bi either and none of the current terms applies to me. I would never come out of a closet I don’t belong to, but I like the possibilities implied by this new term. Yes, in this sense, I would call myself Queer Heterosexual.

    In other words: it’s the equivalent to monogamish: Queer Heterosexual = Heterosexualish.

  41. As a former worker with Texas CPS I can very easily soothe FTP’s fears. CPS don’t give a damn about people’s personal lives. Unless the child has marks and bruises, has lost weight or developed severe mental health issues as a result of the home environment then the poly couple have nothing to fear. Unless of course, they smoke meth or crack or synthetic drugs, but since the child is 10 then it’s not that big of a deal. Children have to actually be abused before CPS gets involved.

  42. As a former worker with Texas CPS I can easily soothe FTP’s fears. CPS don’t give a damn about people’s personal lives. Unless the child has marks, bruises, has lost weight or developed severe mental health issues due to the home environment, then the poly couple have nothing to fear. Unless they smoke meth, crack or synthetic drugs. But since the child is already 10 then even the drugs wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Children actually have to be abused before CPS intervenes. It’s amazing how many people can’t understand that.

  44. Why do “all” of your LGBTetc. friends know this about you, FRAUD? A bit TMI, I’d say. You ID as straight, thus they expect that you’ll be attracted to some women. If you happen not to be attracted to trans, there’s nothing you can do about that. Attraction can’t be forced.

    However, are you SURE you’re straight? Cause this sounds like hella gay drama to me!

  45. SFMMD, keep your sex and and your work separate, dig? HR does NOT like sex/relationship drama making problems and any whispers about fetishes and other things that most people don’t want to know about their co-workers (or worse, DO want to know, and tell everyone) will get you on the layoff list PDQ. She could take down the evidence, then claim you approached her with an unwanted advance.

  46. @243: You mean “Go where you wanna go; do what you wanna do”?
    Otherwise, what does a recording and about six different album covers of The Mamas and the Papas have to do with FRAUD’s situation, for chissakes?

    You HAVE been sitting in car fumes too long, dude!

  48. The thing I’m taking from this most interesting discussion isn’t so much about attraction and transexuality as it is about the utter failure of metaphors when applied to attraction and sexual identity.

    The arguments are:

    Not being attracted to trans people is like not being attracted to tall people or fat people or children or women.

    Calling not being attracted to trans people transphobic is like calling a gay man a misogynistic, woman-hating, pig.

    Analyzing a poem in order to appreciate it is like performing an autopsy on a woman in order to love her.

    Declaring that you could never be attracted to a trans person is as prejudiced as declaring that you could never be attracted to a Black person.

    A man who is convinced that he’s really a woman despite all external evidence to the contrary is like a schizophrenic who is convinced that he’s someone else despite all evidence to the contrary.

    Saying that human sexuality is a social construction is like saying that the sexuality of dogs and cats is a social construction as well, like saying that they’re not really male or female either.

    Changing sex with hormones and surgery is like changing race with dye.

    Getting fisted blindfolded by a transman is like getting fisted blindfolded by any man, or any thing presumably, even a talented robot. The childhood experiences of the fister don’t matter.

    In every one of these, the comparison is used to make the point. They fail to prove it.

  49. The metaphors are not brought in as proof, Crinoline, but to create a space for empathy. If you cannot understand why a woman resents being told that she isn’t really a woman, and can never become a woman (and why decent human beings might avoid telling her so), the idea was to put it in terms that you (and others) might be able to appreciate viscerally.

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