The Whole "Being Sexy" Thing...
I occasionally hear some cisgender woman express her dismay about AMAB girls and women fervently embracing the status of being an object of desire. She might say, "Maybe it's because you haven't been exposed to it all your life like we have, but you sometimes act like none of you never heard of women's liberation and the importance of not just
( Read more... )
The one I saw most recently, I looked at the man's before pics, from when he was a woman, and thought in a clinical way - you had a great look as a woman, though it didn't turn me on. But the man's after pics, I'm thinking - you're fuckin' hot, I want to fuck you.
So, stepping aside from the feminist approach to our society's sexual baggage, I do see how a transgender person may want to celebrate their transition into a different kind of sex object from before. Many people enjoy being sexy, and if you didn't feel sexy as a woman, but now feel sexy as a man, that's cool. Or, vice versa.
As a gay man I never felt oppressed by the leers of other gay men, even though I've been sexually assaulted by one. I like being viewed as sexy, and it probably drives how I present myself more than any other factor - wanting to be viewed as sexy. But I'm also way way way more than a sex object. I have a career, I have intellectual and physical hobbies, and I realize that most of the time, effort, and enjoyment of a healthy relationship comes from non-sexual activities.
I don't know what to say to the feminist cisgender woman who thinks that sexual attractiveness is a sort of oppression, or even to the feminist transgender woman who feels the same way. Perhaps gay men don't oppress other gay men as horribly as straight men oppress women, so I haven't felt the glare in the same way. Perhaps the general power differentials between men and women in our society taint the sexual gaze and make it impossible for feminist women to enjoy it, impossible to disentangle the oppression from the sexiness. But some women do enjoy looking sexy, I'm certain of this.
I wrote elsewhere that one reason I embraced being gay as an adolescent was because there was no gender differential in my gay relationships, and therefore, in a contrasting way, no gender. I feel I can enjoy gay porn because there's no gender difference or gender oppression, whereas straight porn disgusts me well beyond the limits of my sexual orientation, because it feels oppressive to women, yuck.
There's also the issue of beauty standards and how oppressive they can be, which you didn't really get into here. We cannot all be the beauty 1%, for a variety of reasons, starting with genetics and following with free time, wealth, education, diet/exercise, access to medical/dental/mental care, and so forth. Aside from feminism and gender oppression, millions of people feel oppressed by the standards of beauty applied to their bodies from without. And I do wonder the extent to which some transgender transitions are driven by people feeling that they'd do a better job aligning to the standard of beauty applied to their non-birth gender. Maybe the best you could be as a man is a "4", but as a woman you could be an "8", on the global Hot or Not scale, so your gender dysphoria is actually a reflection of gendered societal beauty standards as applied to your genetic potential. Should people be undergoing medical interventions for ... cosmetic reasons? But what if these "cosmetic" reasons make people happier?
So much going on here.
Reply
Leave a comment