𝓝𝓪𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓮 𝓦𝔂𝓷𝓷  💎

Blaire acts down with this, but would she be down with Arielle saying "straight men aren't attracted to you because they're not gay"? Performatively she might be, though the testimony of her actual experience says otherwise, as Blaire herself has discussed elsewhere.

There's a video or stream (link anyone?) where Blaire discusses how she believes she increases trans acceptance merely by looking the way she does. Men tell her "I never thought I'd be attracted to a trans woman because I never thought a trans woman could look like you."

And here's the critical point: these men thought that they would never be attracted to a trans woman *because they had an ignorant misconception* about the way trans women look.

And THIS is the point that Riley, Zinnia, Kat, et al keep making, which everyone seems so determined to misinterpret: not that you're a bigot for not being into trans people, but that the *assumption* that you aren't is often based on ignorant misconceptions about trans people.

Now I do think it's important for us as activists to avoid "shamey" language when discussing this, because we'd all rather be seduced than lectured, and because these misconceptions are the rule, not the exception.

In fact, I used to share these misconceptions myself! Five years ago I wouldn't have thought I'd want to sleep with a trans person. When I first came out myself, I assumed that only bisexuals would ever be into me. I couldn't imagine that a gay girl or straight guy could be.

Wrong on all counts, as it turns out. There's not a shortage of exclusively gynephilic people who are into me—and I'm far from the most cis-passing of trans women.

Likewise the experience of being intimate with trans women has (TMI ahoy) been kind of amazing. I'd go so far as to say that it's hard to grasp the full visceral truth of the slogan "trans women are women" until you've been there. It feels like being with a woman.