One thing that I keep articulating in my posts, and it’s something that I don’t see enough people saying or writing or expressing: WE ARE ALL LEARNING.
I advocate for relearning, unlearning, and just plain LEARNING about sexuality, over and over, and deeper and deeper.
Growing up in the ’80s, there was absolutely NO mainstream conversation about ANY of the gender identity concepts and social justice issues that are so much a part of the regular zeitgeist and daily discussion by the public. Good lord have mercy, you should expect to become a castaway on Gilligan’s Island if you were to try and demand everyone you work with or go to school with “respect your pronouns not being he or she” if you were trans. I sincerely and highly doubt that many trans people were as verbal and visible then as they are now, even in the most open-minded and liberal cities or countries on earth.
We’ve come quite a way, but there’s still so much further to go…
I don’t know if there’s a name for this phenomenon, but it’s something that I’ve been pondering since my first few relationships with transgender women and men. If there IS a word for it, please share it with me and our readers!
There’s the actual reality of the attraction spectrum, and if nothing else about Alfred Kinsey is true, the Kinsey scale of 0-6 for “straight/gay/lesbian/queer” is a pretty workable idea (until we collectively come up with a better one). And for the “regular” people (not that they are hormonally more regular or normal, it just appears that they are statistically more proliferate) aka the monogamous masses, a certain degree of them are attracted to trans folks, such as myself. But there are others who are not. That’s just basic math and stats.
Not everyone is equally attracted to everyone, and that’s what makes life good. But the crux of this query of mine rests snugly upon this thought: what is the proportion of transgender people who are attracted to cis-gendered people?
I’ve spent a good amount of time concentrating on my attraction to trans folks and my relations with them, but the lens has to swing in the other direction to tell the whole truth. How many trans folks are attracted to cis-gendered males? To queer males? To lesbians? Are most/some/few trans people only attracted to other trans people? What is the name for that phenomenon in sexuality? I dunno, but it’s real, baby.
I know it differs from person to person, but pick a trans person, any trans person, and ask: do you even LIKE cis-males, yo? If the answer is “Ew, no!” I completely understand and totally respect that, but if the answer is “Yes, please!” my next question is probably something along the lines of “When are you free to hang out?” Ha ha!
Sincerely,
Addi Stewart
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