𝓝𝓪𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓮 𝓦𝔂𝓷𝓷  💎

Trans women are often confronted with this: "You have no right to DEMAND that other people be attracted to you." Well I'm not demanding shit. As I discussed yesterday, plenty of people are attracted to me already.

I want to turn this conversation upside down. Let's not make this about who is or isn't attracted to me. Let's make this about who I'm attracted to, and why, and what that feels like.

I am bisexual (pan if you prefer). I am attracted to some cis & trans women, and some cis & trans men. Now, some will say this disqualifies me from talking about this, since I could never understand what it's like to be discriminate about genitals.

I disagree. Two reasons: 1 my attraction to women feels very different from my attraction to men, and 2 before I started hormones I was pretty much exclusively attracted to women.

I'll start with my pre-transition perspective. I thought I was only attracted to cis women until I started actually interacting with trans women. I initially found my *idea* of trans women unattractive, but I later discovered some trans women in reality are very attractive.

I always thought the penis thing would be a dealbreaker. But it turns out not to be. When a person looks like a woman in most respects but has a penis, my mind's eye doesn't flip to viewing her as male. Rather, it reconceptualizes the dick: it becomes a female dick.

I'll interrupt the thread here with the disclaimer that I'm not saying everyone will have this experience or must perceive things in this way. Everyone is entitled to their own sexual preferences. Please reread this tweet until it sinks in.

Since I started transitioning all hell has broken loose re who I'm attracted to. I'm attracted to men, but the attraction feels different to me. The attraction I feel to trans women resembles my attraction to cis women. It does not resemble my attraction to men.

So when people say "I'm not attracted to trans women, because I'm gay/straight, I don't like biological males," this just seems really discordant with the way sexual attraction works for me.

I'm not attracted to chromosomes. I'm not attracted to thoughts of a person's cisgender biography. I'm attracted to the person in front of me, their body, the way they move, dress, speak, smell. Many trans women are very womanly by these criteria, and that attracts me to them.