Transcripts / Are Traps Gay?

Introduction

🚬😈

Lenora: Hello, my devilish darlings. It is I, Lenora LaVey. Your hostess of horror, and I'm here to warn you that some viewers may find tonight's program disturbing. There will be discussion of transphobic slurs and violence, and graphic displays of anime. Ugh. So if that's gonna make you sad, please don't watch this. Unless you enjoy sadness, I know I do. But your macabre mother wants you to take care of yourself. So here, I made you a wet pot of hot tea and you can take it out on the balcony and pour it on some pedestrians. That always cheers me up.

Part One: Traps

Lady Foppington: Gentlemen of the academy, it is my duty to submit to you the findings of my latest memetic research. Many sleepless nights have I lingered in all the great libraries of Europe scrutinizing volumes ancient and modern in search of the answer to two fundamental questions. What are traps? And be they gay? 

With respect to the former inquiry, I adduce for your consideration a treatise by the lady scholar known as ThePedanticRomantic wherein the derivation of the word "trap" is traced to patrons of animated pictures from the Orient. Curious. The chronicle begins in the first years of the present century when devotees of picture forums would proclaim the idiom "it's a trap" alongside the likeness of one Admiral Ackbar, to suggest that some manner of deception had taken place. Contemporaneous to this was a most whimsical mania for depictions of nymphic Japonesques, to some of which the aforementioned slogan would be rejoined. 

The implication being that the subject of the portrait was not in-soothe a daughter of Eve, but rather that the spectator had fallen prey to some manner of transvestite skullduggery. Furthermore, it appears that from the first, the designation trap has signified not only transvestites but transsexuals as well. And this must needs be remarked, for 'tis evident such persons ofttimes inflame the lust of ordinary men. It is hence with respect to this phenomenon I pose my second question thus. Fellas, is it gay? 

Natalie: I'm sorry, who are you talking to?

Lady Foppington: Gentlemen of the academy!

Natalie: Did you get thrown out of Dairy Queen again?

Lady Foppington: It must needs be remarked!

Natalie: Please stop breaking into my house

Lady Foppington: I shall be the queen of dairy. 

Natalie: I'm sure you will be. Crossdresser. Hi, I'm Natalie Wynn, biological woman. 😉

Can we pan the camera down? My hair is less high. 

"Are Traps Gay?" The meme that will not die. Originating around 15 years ago on 4chan, the word "trap" refers to either a male crossdresser or a trans woman especially in a context of neotenous kawaii decadence. The meme, "Are Traps Gay?" is a mostly jokey debate about the sexuality of men who are attracted to dickgirls, futanari, MTFs… You know a lot of these men don't know or care about the difference between a trans woman and a crossdresser, so it's kind of pointless to get hung up on that. The meme peaked in popularity about a year ago, after someone released the worst specimens of the white race into the wild:

"Are traps are gay?"

 "One of life's most important questions" 

"Are traps are gay" 

"Traps are gay. Yes. Will there be transsexuals in the ethnostate? Hopefully not."

To the men who meme about this topic, it's all lighthearted fun. It's part of a wider game they like to play called "Is It Gay?" You know, is it gay to have an MMF threesome? Only if the balls touch– don't cross the streams– and so on. But to many trans women, the meme and the word trap itself are highly offensive. 

In fact last year when I first proposed making a video about this topic, many trans people on Twitter were outraged because they felt that this topic is just too harmful to even discuss. So here's the challenge I face making this video. On the one hand there's people who are gonna be upset and offended that I'm making a video about this topic at all, and on the other hand there are people who think this is all just harmless otaku shitposting and who are gonna be annoyed by my trigger warnings. 

But first to the people who think it's too offensive, here's what I have to say for myself. I've always believed that if you want to persuade anyone, it helps to meet them where they're at. And in this case, "Are Traps Gay?" is where people are at. At one of my YouTube meetups I met a high school teacher who told me that he overheard some of his male students joking in the hallway about "Are Traps Gay?" When those teenage boys go home and google "Are Traps Gay?" Who do you want to explain it to them? Your choices are Milo Yiannopoulos, this guy, a Scottish hate crime convict named Count Dankula, or this tran. And at the risk of sounding arrogant, I think it should be me. 

You know, as trans women we have little influence in society. The people who lead the conversations about us are bigger and stronger than we are. So we're like a jogger racing against a car. The only way to win is to hijack the car. And so, this video is my attempt to hijack the conversation that straight men are having about us. As always my aspiration is to derive a woke conclusion from edgy premises, to shitpost my way to the moral high ground. 

Now straight men, isn't all this offense-taking just more politically correct cuckoldry designed to take away your free speech? Well, I assure you there will be no taking of your free speech on this channel– unless you clock my makeup dickbag, comment deleted– But if you want to know why trans women are offended by "Are Traps Gay?" I'm happy to tell you. Not to silence you of course, but just in case you have the intellectual curiosity to want to know why someone different from you might be hurt by something that to you seems harmless to you. So, well, let's put it this way.

Part Two: Trans Panic

The 1990 documentary "Paris Is Burning" depicts the ball culture of Black and Latinx gay and transgender people in New York City in the late 1980s. One of the main storylines follows a trans woman named Venus Xtravangaza who describes her precarious existence as a sex worker: 

"I was with a guy and he was playing with my titties till he touched me down there. He felt it and he seen it and he like, totally flipped out. He said, 'You fucking faggot!' 'You're a freak!' 'You're a victim of AIDS and you're trying to give me AIDS. What, are you crazy? You're a homo! I should kill you!' And like, I was really terrified. So I just jumped out the window."

During the filming of "Paris Is Burning", Venus was choked to death presumably by a client. Her body was discovered four days later under a hotel bed. Trans women– in my country almost entirely trans women of color– are murdered at a disgracefully high rate, reaching a record of 29 deaths in 2017. 

The men who murder trans women often claim they were provoked to violence by the alleged deception of their victims. This is what's called the "trans panic defense" when legally invoked, as in the 2004 trial of the killers of the teenage trans girl Gwen Araujo. One of these killers, who had sex with Gwen before learning she was trans cried "I can't be fucking gay" before beating her to death. 

Men are often willing to side with these killers, saying that if trans women don't want to get murdered then they shouldn't "trick" men. But what you have to understand is first, men usually do know when they're sleeping with a trans woman. Like, if you have a dick it's pretty hard to have sex with someone without them noticing it. And second, a lot of men view trans women's entire existence as itself a kind of trickery.

A Black trans woman named Islan Nettles was murdered in Harlem in 2013 by a man whose friends had mocked him for flirting with her. All she did to "provoke" him was walk down the street with two friends. The common thread here is not deception on the part of the victims, but rather the drive of the killers to protect their social standing as masculine and straight. 

But being perceived as a kind of fraudulent lure is something that many trans women across class and race experience some version of. Because men view femininity itself as an enticement, as the orchidaceous invitation to a proboscis. I was just reading a Twitter thread by a trans woman who was attacked recently by a man at a bar who started flirting with her until he realized she was trans, and then punched her. Like what was she supposed to do to stop that from happening, just stay at home? 

For trans women, fears about men retaliating against us for existing actually limit our freedom. There's bars I won't go into because I don't trust the clientele to side with me if some shit like that goes down. And I've had little scares. I was in the back of an Uber once, and the driver comes on a little flirty you know: "What's your name?" "Are you a student?" And I'm thinking: "Wow, he thinks I'm young enough to be a student." But at some point he goes silent, and suddenly I'm getting a very icy glare in the rear view mirror like fucking clocked and for a second I'm like: "Fuck, I'm going to die in the back of this car." And of course I didn't die, the rest of the ride was quiet but it was fine. 

I mean, I'm gonna be fine because white middle-class transsexuals don't get murdered in this country. The murder issue exists at a specific intersection of gender, class, and race, and it's really not my oppression to claim. You know sometimes I hear white bougie middle-class computer programmer trans women be like "we're being murdered in the streets!" Who's we? It's not white middle-class trans women. So the trans panic murder issue is really not my lane. It exists at this intersection of masculinity and race, and that's really not a conversation that should be led by a white woman. Especially when there's so, so, so many things to critique about white masculinity. Let's talk about some now. 

Part Three: Taking Offense

Okay, back to traps. Now this is my lane. I'm not sure anything has ever been more my lane. Ahh the exquisite pleasure of being entitled to the soapbox. So boys, I've showed you how trans women's freedom is abridged by our need to navigate around men who view our gender presentation, in fact our very existence as a kind of "trap". I think it should therefore be pretty clear why trans women are not the biggest fans of you using that word for us, or "futanari", or "crossdressers", or whatever. 

I mean to be honest if someone calls me a trap my response is more like: "Wow, a transphobe thought I looked like a woman!" But that's because I'm so pathetic I have to go dumpster diving for validation. But the rest of the trans women out there, the ones with dignity and self-respect you should definitely not call them traps. 

Of course some trans women will overstate the case and say "the word trap is literally getting trans women killed" which… I can't find any examples of the word "trap" being connected to a murder, but why don't we stop using the word before someone dies hmm? Because what you're doing when you call trans women "traps", is you're showing us that you think of us in the exact same way as the men who try to justify attacking us. 

When a man kills a trans woman, literally the argument he trots out in court is that he was "trapped". And that's what you're reminding us of when you use that word, and that's why trans women are getting triggered over it. You know, sometimes people have good reasons for being triggered by things and this is one of those times. 

So, if I were a different kind of creator I could really end this video now. I think I've made a pretty convincing case that trans women are justifiably offended by the word "trap". But, if I leave it at that– and this is for you Twitter, this is why I'm making this video– if I simply argue that "Are Traps Gay?" is offensive then here's what happens. 

First a lot of people simply don't give a shit, and in fact my telling them that it's offensive will only make them want to say it more, because they feel on a deep level that they are by nature superior to trans people. So an uppity tr*nny telling them what words they're allowed to say completely enrages them. So they'll comment "traps are gay lel", just to reaffirm their superiority over me and that I have no power or influence over them. And there's really nothing I can do about those people. 

But another group of people– the socially progressive liberals– they'll say: "Okay, so since you're offended by it I won't say the word trap anymore". And they'll be super woke about it, and they'll post Twitter callouts canceling anyone who uses the word "trap", and they'll be very respectful and compassionate towards trans people in public. So long as it makes them look good to indulge and pity this tragic Third World country of a gender minority. But then they'll go home at night, and in that twilight moment between consciousness and sleep their inner voice will whisper: "But are traps gay?" And then, years later when their son brings home a transgender girlfriend we'll suddenly watch all that shallow wokeness vanish like so much politically correct vapor.

Real acceptance has to be built on real understanding. So it's just not enough for me to argue that "Are Traps Gay?" is offensive, I also have to argue whether traps are gay. So... are traps gay? Let's watch an instructional video to learn more. 

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Part Four: The Philosopher

Hello boys, it is I the half-queen Points. After 30 days and 30 nights, the philosopher descended from the mountaintop and to the gathered villagers thus spake "Are Traps Gay?" said he. To whom the half-queen thus replied: "Hmm, let's see. Let me think about it. Oh…" (NO)

I'm gonna stop saying "trap" now because it's not a good word, as has been explained. In fact it's really best to treat it like a slur. So what we're really asking here is if a man is attracted to or has sex with a trans woman, is that gay? Well the simple answer is no, because trans women are women and a man having sex with a woman is um… let's see here according to the experts I've consulted, it is not in fact gay. 

But that's not the most persuasive answer because in order to find it convincing, you already have to believe that trans women are women. And unfortunately if you ask the average person about this, what they say is something like: "Sure, I think trans women are women BUT… They shouldn't expect men to want to date them, unless they're into that sort of thing". Oh? And what sort of thing is that? Usually when a man tells you he's dating a woman and you say "oh what's she like?" And he says "she's from Cincinnati", your response is not: "Oh David. I didn't realize you were into... that sort of thing". 

In other words, these people tell you: "Trans women are women, BUT..." And then they say something that shows they don't really think trans women are women at all. So since test audiences have proven shaky on that point, it would basically be circular reasoning for me to try to argue that attraction to trans women isn't gay because trans women are women; since the womanhood of trans women is precisely the point that's being disputed. 

So maybe the observational approach is better. The facts are indisputable. Many heterosexual men are attracted to trans women and comparatively few gay men are. Now to trans women, this is just an obvious fact about our everyday experience in the world. We know who's attracted to us and who isn't. So to us this completely unnecessary debate is as impractical as the question of whether the sun will rise tomorrow. Sure, philosophers can say: "But how do we know the sun will rise tomorrow?" To which the correct response is: "Shut the fuck up nerd. Stop playing 3D chess against your own brain and find a real thing to worry about". 

It's just a basic fact of experience that the sun rises every morning, and for trans women it's a basic fact of experience that the people who are attracted to us are people who are attracted to women. Of the cis men I've been with since I started my transition, all identify as straight, and all had only been with cis women before this tran came along. Am I really so powerful a seductress that lifetime heterosexuals are turning gay over these tiny tits? Let's not get… cocky. 

I mean if a man is attracted to women and not to men, and he perceives me as a woman, and is attracted to me as a woman, and he sleeps with me, and then continues being attracted to women and not to men, in what world is that anything but a straight man? What wild maze of reasoning do you have to invent to argue that this man is really gay? Well we all know exactly how this maze of reasoning goes, beginning with the obvious. 

🔔What 🔔 about 🔔 the 🔔 penis? 

Ah yes, the penis. Look baby we'll get to the penis, don't you worry about that. But first I should remind everyone that a lot of trans women do in fact have vaginas because they got:

Part Five: The Surgery 

In fact I've been thinking of signing up for a vagina myself. But the thing is I make too much money for medicaid now, so I have to form an LLC, become my own employer so I can give myself health benefits, and ugh it's so much paperwork. You have to become an unincorporated legal entity in this country just to get a fucking c*nt. 

Of course, transphobic radical feminists will say that it's not a real vagina, just a fuckhole because "a real vagina is a sacred passage". And that's fine by me. What am I gonna do with a sacred passage anyway, get fingered by the Pope? Pass! Straight men don't get hung up on this. I guarantee you no man has ever thought of a vagina as a sacred passage. They're either grossed out by it or they're trying to climb inside. 

What I'm trying to say is, in the past I've been a little uncertain about getting a vagina because my genital dysphoria isn't that bad and besides, chicks with dicks are very in right now, very 2019, very trending. And being a dickgirl, it's kind of like being a legendary Pokemon you know? People take interest, people pay attention to you and isn't that what we all want?

But unfashionable though it is, I do think I want the surgery because... well guys can I confess something kind of dark to you? I have this really fucked up fetish where I want a boy to put his penis in my vagina. Crazy right? I mean I like anal, but the gross thing about anal is you have to eat well. Eww. I don't want to eat well. I want to shove garbage into my mouth hole and get dicked, is that a crime? It is kind of a scary surgery though, like what if my vagina sucks? 

I'm afraid I have some bad news. The tests are back and are showing that in the medical terminology, your vagina does indeed suck. 👩‍⚕️📋

The point is, the easy-sell version of the argument I'm making is that there is nothing homosexual about a man's attraction to a trans woman who's been on hormones for a couple years. She has female skin, she smells like a woman, she has breasts, she's giving hair-body-face, she's post-op and has a vagina. 

Now even in this situation people will still say "it's gay because of the chromosomes". But look, human beings have five senses and none of them can detect chromosomes. Sexual attraction is not based on some chromosomal metaphysics of gender. It's based on perception. And if you're a man, and you perceive someone as a woman, and you're attracted to her as a woman, then you are having a heterosexual moment my dude. Congratulations, you're a breeder. 🍾

Now the argument people make is: "Okay fine, it's straight if you mistake her for a biological woman. But if you know she's a man and you're still attracted then it's gaaaaay." So look, if you believe that trans women are men, then that belief might interfere with your perceptions, and it might change the relationship between your perceptions and your sexual response. But more likely is that you still will feel attraction to the trans woman. Only if you value your identity as a straight man, you'll feel ashamed of your attraction, and you'll try to fight and deny it, and you'll probably end up treating trans women like absolute garbage. 

Now if I wanted to make the SJW 101-type response here, I would say 👏 trans 👏 women 👏 are 👏 women because they identify as women. And so every man [gay, straight or bi] who's experiencing attraction to a trans woman is necessarily experiencing heterosexual attraction, because of the way the person he's attracted to identifies. But that's just replacing the black-and-white thinking of a biology dogma with a black-and-white thinking of an identity dogma. 

But human sexuality is not black and white. It's not even shades of gray. It's a multicolor acid trip, it's centaur Donna Summer charging at you with a spanking paddle. So sexual attraction is not based on chromosomes, but it's usually not based on psychological identity either. Most of the time, initial attraction anyway is based on what I'd call presentation, how you look and act. And I think that's especially true of men, they get turned on by that initial visual "pop". They see, they conquer, they come. I mean you have to admire the simplicity of it. Sometimes I wish I were a man. 🎻

So look, if what you want is a woman who pops then rest assured there are plenty of trans women who pop. Maybe you don't think I pop, but you'd be hard-pressed to argue that any number of trans models and actresses don't pop as much as any cis woman pops. So the pop is undeniable, no one's questioning the pop. In fact without the pop, it would never have occurred to men to call trans women "traps" because they wouldn't be "trapped" if they weren't attracted in the first place. 

But a lot of men seem to think that the pop, the visual presentation of a trans woman is some kind of illusion or facade that at some point will be dropped, revealing that our womanhood is a sham and that we're really men. No. Here's a big difference between dating a trans woman and dating a drag queen. If you date a cis drag queen, at some point, you're getting a man honey. As explained by the only good YouTuber Jasmine Masters:

"I don't want to date nobody that want to date me like this because this comes off, and you not doing nothing with this."

But if you date me there's no de-dragging, there's never a moment where I become a man. Baby what you see is what you get. At least on this side, this is my natural side. And this side is my biological side. 

Everyone's always hating on trans women for being stereotypically feminine. So why do you think that in the bedroom we'd be any other way? Part of it is that people are really ignorant about hormone replacement therapy and what it does for trans women. It feminizes our skin, our smell, our body fat distribution, it makes us grow breasts. That's right, these are my very real, very biological titties. I mean I'm wearing a push-up bra, but at least there's something to push up now. Here, I'll show you. 

I mean they're small, but it's not by any measure a male chest. And what I have is very real, very biological, and very female. You people think everything to do with trans women is "fake". "Fake voice", "fake boobs", "fake hair". But that's prejudice more than observation, like I've noticed that whether or not I actually wear a wig in a video has exactly zero effect on how many people comment to call me a man in a wig. So I may as well just wear wigs, and I may as well get my boobs done too since people are gonna call them fake either way. 

But for what it's worth, this is my real hair at least on this half, and these are my real boobs, and if I bring home a gentleman– or a lady– all that stays on in bed, and it's there when I wake up in the morning. But 🔔 what 🔔 about 🔔 the 🔔 penis?

All right, all right. Look, if the penis is feminine how is that gay? I rest my case, roll credits.

🎬

Part Six: The Feminine Penis 🍆

Look, some guys want the Ts and the D. And that's the T. Now a lot of people assume that the involvement of a dick, even a ladydick makes any sexual interaction with a man gay. But isn't male homosexuality usually understood as attraction to men? And not merely to penises wherever they may arise? I think there probably are some gay men who really just like dick, and I'm not judging I'm not here to attack anyone's preferences. 

But being a straight man, I don't really think that's best understood as a man attracted to vaginas. You call women "pussy", but then you're always like "eww periods. I'm a straight man, I'm not used to putting a towel down when I fuck. I don't know how to use a condom because I just expect cis women to be on birth control and do everything for me". And you have straight incels online calling labia roast beef and generally putting on a show of vaginal disgust, I mean if you're gonna date cis women or post-op trans women I think you really owe it to them to be a little more vagina-positive. 

Cause even though straight men are like "ew dicks, that's gay", you guys also kinda love dicks? You're always drawing them, your buildings look like dicks, your porn all has dicks in it. So what about dicks on chicks? Well men like chicks and men like dicks, so what's the problem officer? 

I think the booming popularity of t-girl porn speaks for itself. On Pornhub the "Shemale" category contains more videos than other such popular categories as rough sex, orgy, and webcam. And it's mostly straight men who watch it. When adultempire.com moved their t-girl content from their gay site to their straight site, views increased 50%. In 2016, the same year North Carolina passed a transphobic and discriminatory bathroom bill; the adult site GameLink's top selling titles in North Carolina were "My Transsexual Teacher", "Shemale Shenanigans", and Joey Silvera's "Trans-Visions 6". 

A lot of straight men first find out about trans women through porn, which is not great since most t-girl porn is not trans-positive, and uses dehumanizing slurs like "shemale" and "tranny." Which is how you end up living in a country full of people who will jerk off to you, but won't give you rights. So to a lot of men that's the representation we have, shemales, trannies, and Caitlyn Jenner. Great! I love that for us. 🙃

Now there probably are some men who will always be put off by a woman's having a dick, and you know what? That's fine. Not every man can be a poet, a visionary, a sage. You like what you like. I'm not here to police anyone's desires. In fact quite the opposite, I'm here to liberate men of sophisticated taste from society's cruel and unjust prejudice against their t-girl loving ways. But liberation begins with understanding, so who are the men who love trans girls? 

Well according to the trans women I've talked to and my own personal experience, the men who date us can be divided into three general groups. Group one are men who to be honest, are actually kind of put off by the dick, but they're so attracted to the woman it's attached to that they're willing to work around it or wait for it to… grow on them? 

Group two are men who are attracted to trans women including their penises, but they don't specifically fetishize the penis so they wouldn't mind if their trans lover had genital reassignment and got a vagina. 

And then group three are men who specifically fetishize chicks with dicks, and often want to worship the penis or be penetrated by it. Now group three are what the trans community calls "chasers". Dating chasers is generally a bad idea because their attraction to us is based around fetishizing our genitals, which is often the part of us that we're most uncomfortable with. 

So if you're a t-girl who likes men, group two is really Goldilocks perfection unless you really like topping or you've had "the surgery". Now I should say that group two does include some bisexual men. And bisexual people of either gender can be great partners if you're trans. You like girls, you like dick, I'm a girl with a dick, let's make this happen. That said if someone views that part of me as male, and wants me to do with it what men do with it then pass. Not interested. 

Now you might be wondering: "What is this postmodern neo-Marxist SJW insanity? How could I view it as anything other than a male part? It's a fucking penis". Well, I'm glad you asked. I always jump at the opportunity to enlighten someone about the ecstasies of the feminine penis. 

You see there are three factors that make a penis feminine: context, usage, and physiology. So first, context. Picture in your mind's eye a feminine woman. Now picture her with a penis. That's not a man's penis, that's a woman's penis. It's feminine because of the context that it's in. 

Second, usage. A lesson in penis etiquette: A gentleman need not be coy about his penis. He may flaunt, he may brandish, he may tug, he may penetrate, he may order you to get on your knees like a good girl and ********. Whereas, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a lady of good breeding never brandishes her penis. When she rises from the bath she covers it gracefully with a demure hand, and when not in use she keeps it carefully stowed away. 

Here's how to tuck your penis like a lady: The first step is to put on a set of vicious stiletto claws. This doesn't make things any easier, but it does build character. Next you want to take not one but two pairs of cotton-lined poly/spandex bikini-cut panties at least one size too small, and pull them most of the way up your legs. Now, there's just no way to put this delicately my dears. You're gonna take your claw, and you're going to grab your scrotum, and you're gonna yank that bubblegum back into your peach crease. Now hold it back with one hand and with your other hand you push your penis back, pressing those little eggs up into your pelvis. Bring your thighs together to hold everything in place, and then pull your panties up. Front first, then back. Run your hand over it to make sure nothing's seeping out the sides and then voila, it's like it was never there. For more information, you can purchase my book Tuck Your Penis with a new forward by Dr. Jordan B Peterson. 

I've now explained both the context and the usage of the feminine penis, so let us now turn to physiology. Most people don't realize that taking feminizing hormones actually changes the anatomy and functionality of the genitals, shrinking everything down, and softening everything up. That means changes to a little thing not a lot of people are talking about, but something I've been trying to raise awareness of you know, start a conversation, open a dialogue. Really get people talking about:

Part Seven: The Mouthfeel 🫦🥕

👃🍷

Oh hi. It's me Natalie Wynn, your tasting specialist. I have tasted everything, the royal flush of oral sex. Girl dick, boy dick, girl pussy, and let us not forget about the masculine clitoris. But today, we amuse the palette with the feminine penis. 

Now with respect to flavor, the feminine penis has more sweetness than the masculine penis and fewer truffle notes, while retaining the fundamental dick umami. With respect to mouthfeel, the feminine penis is of course softer and smoother than the masculine penis and does not become as turgid. And as for the cum taste well, it is a known fact that girl cum is clear, liquid, and tastes of saline whereas boy cum is milky, viscous, and more acidic. It is therefore the consensus among sommeliers, that sucking a female penis is not gay. Cheers. 

👄🍷

Part Eight: Being Straight Is Pretty Gay

So I've been trying to clear up some misconceptions about sex with trans women. But ultimately, you kind of just need to try it yourself to fully viscerally understand why sex with a trans woman is sex with a woman. Now we must always be wary of being over-simplistic in our thinking. Sexuality is complicated, and while it's undeniable that many straight men are attracted to trans women, the messy reality is that a lot of straight men are also attracted to male crossdressers. 

Before I transitioned I was a crossdresser, and I didn't present super womanly either like fully Dr. Frank-N-Furter. And that's why I'm so iconic. I showed the world that in two years you can transition from literally Dr Frank-N-Furter to a very real, very biological drag queen. But even when I was that baritone-voiced transvestite, I still got semi-regular messages from men being like: "So I'm a straight man, but I'm like really attracted to you when you dress like a woman and it's really making me question my sexuality". Now I could flatter myself with some kind of retcon and be like: "Well maybe those men just picked up on my inherently womanly female energy essence that I've always had since I was born a female biological soul trapped in the body of a crossdressing baby". 

But let's be real. There are straight men who fuck crossdressers, there are straight men who fuck drag queens, there are straight-identifying men who fuck other straight-identifying men. What is going on here? Straight men, what is your deal? Who are you? What is your life? How did you become straight? Did they recruit you? Were you groomed? I blame the parents. 

Let's go back to the game you guys like to play, the one I call "Is This Gay?" The commonly understood definition of homosexual acts is that they're sex acts between people of the same gender. But I've heard men argue that if a woman puts on a strap-on and pegs a guy, then that's gay. Or that it's gay if a man enjoys a woman touching his nipples. To be clear we're talking about one man and one woman– Eve sucking Adam's nipples– and according to these men it's totally gay. 

What that shows us is that the idea of heterosexuality includes much more than just sex between a man and a woman. It actually encompasses a complex series of rituals that must be performed by people who are playing the correct roles. So if a man deviates from his assigned part in the approved bedroom activities, then according this very fragile view of heterosexuality he ceases to be straight.

Even a man's relationship with his own body is policed by these narrow confines. For instance, some men won't even wash their own assholes for fear that some involuntary twinge of anal pleasure might transform them irrevocably into raving homos. I mean to be fair, before I washed my asshole I was a quarterback. Now I'm a cheerleader! V-I-C-T-R-O-Y don't tell the coach I was a guy! 

This obsession with the details of what sex is allowed and what prohibited reminds me of what psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls an ethics of purity and degradation. Basically it's a style of moral thinking that treats the body like a temple that must be protected from desecration. Which means you have to obey laws about how you can fuck and what you can eat, so for example religious dietary laws. I think this hypermasculine hetero man code is basically an ethics of purity, a kind of kosher law governing straightness, and the "Is This Gay?" game is its theology. 

Now this whole line of thinking has been reduced to absurdity pretty effectively by, of all people Count Dankula:

"If you class yourself as a straight man and you're masturbating, that means that you're touching a dick. And that's gay." 

Lady Foppington: Well meme'd my lord, well meme'd. 

The pinnacle of the whole discussion is reached when Dankula concludes that since a woman inherits half her DNA from her father, she is technically half a man and therefore having sex with a woman is pretty gay. Obviously this is shitposting, but it's logically just as good an argument as "traps are gay because chromosomes". So I think what we have here is a very bad theory about what it is to be gay. So, what is being gay? Socrates… hmm on second thought, I don't know her.

Part Nine: Being Gay Is Good Actually

Sometimes when you've been arguing about something for more than half an hour, it's good to take a step back and ask yourself why are we even asking this question in the first place? Why does it even matter whether attraction to trans women is gay or straight? It seems like the most pressing reason is that a lot of men equate straightness with manhood, and they defend their manhood at all costs. 

Now men, this might to be difficult to hear and maybe you don't want to hear it from me, but this idea of manhood is hurting you, and it's hurting cis women, it's hurting trans women, and it's hurting gay people. For one thing, it makes you really, really bad at sex. Who wants to sleep with a guy who's so hung up on homophobic paranoia that he can't even enjoy his own body? Having your nipples sucked does not make you gay. Being pegged does not make you gay. Sucking another man's dick just to try it, does not make you gay. And why? Because being gay is a socially constructed identity defined as a type of person who is persistently attracted to people of the same gender. 

If you're persistently attracted to people of the same gender, and you identify with the word gay, then you're gay. If not, then you're not and nothing you can do will change that. So that's one reason to stop worrying about this, and reason two is that being gay is good actually. I mean, why would you be worried about this if you didn't think being gay was bad? 

Now I don't identify as gay except in some pan-LGBT cultural sense– we, the gays! 🏳️‍🌈– but as a queer person, I can't help but be a little wounded by the fact that straight men are so obsessed with proving that they aren't like us. But that is not a wound I am going to dwell on, because life is much too short for me to waste any more time processing your homophobic baggage. Are traps gay? Baby, who cares. Just do what feels good. 

That's the simple answer. But the truth is that when people say "traps are gay, but there's nothing wrong with being gay", that is nothing but a sneaky attempt to call trans women men, and to reinforce the stigma against dating us among the group of people who are in fact, most attracted to us. Because it is mostly straight men and not gay men who like us. And the gay stigma is the reason why only a small fraction of the men who are attracted to us are willing to openly date us. 

And the stigma is very real. A straight man who dates a trans woman takes on some of the burden of queerness. Men who date us can be mocked by other men, they can be rejected by their families, they experience in short, a sample of the difficultly all queer people face. 

But a real man in my opinion, is not the kind of man who lets other people's prejudices control his life. A real man does not act like an insecure little boy afraid of what people will say about him. A real man owns what he likes and is not ashamed of the women he loves. And so my edgy little boys by that measure, I may be a woman but I'm still more man than you. 💅

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Part Ten: I Have Feelings Too

Well, I guess today we learned that "Are Traps Gay?" is not a debate worth winning. Because just by participating, we're accepting the validity of an insincere question and the bigoted assumptions it relies on. Now some harsh words have been said about men tonight, and I think that harshness is deserved. #NotAllGamers. But also this video completely centers men's feelings, and I have feelings too goddamn it! And some of those feelings are not all that different from the anxieties men have, let me explain… 📹

Let me explain. So I identify my sexuality as queer and poly, which in my case is politically correct terminology for confused slutbag. Before I transitioned I dated women, and I still do have lesbicious and lesbaniacal feelings. But early in my transition I encountered a lot of TERF shit, and it really scared me off dating cis lesbians which I never have. Even before I transitioned the question "do I want to fuck men?" had been in the back of my head for a long time, but about a year ago I was like "I want to fuck men". I want to fuck men. 

But when I first started messing around with men, I mean I was terrified. Because men are scary, and in my early transition I'd only dated bisexual trans people and NBs. And just as an aside, some of those experiences were really revelatory. 

A person with a vagina can be fully a man in bed. That teaches you something about gender that might be hard to learn otherwise. And loving a trans woman, like I still sometimes do struggle to fully believe that I'm a real woman. But to experience another trans woman, not just as a woman but as the radiant model of womanhood; that's an experience that's meant a lot to me. And if you're attracted to women and that's an experience you haven't had, you're missing out. 

But what I was gonna say is bisexual trans and non-binary people are a safe group of people to date when you're early in transition, because they're pretty chill about anatomy and presentation. But if you're gonna date cishet men, you need to be serving woman– and I mean I guess you don't need to, but it doesn't hurt. And I did wonder if I was woman enough for it. 

So the first couple times I was so afraid I was like, "when I take my clothes off is he gonna think I'm a man?" Basically my anxiety was are traps gay? But what I ended up doing is just working up to things gradually. And of course, you start by sucking dick. That's very safe because like, what red-blooded man is gonna turn down a t-girl blowjob? And it doesn't involve my junk in any way. Then I got a little bolder and I got with a guy who like, years before I transitioned we'd been guy friends. So to then have a sexual experience where it was very much between a man and woman like, that shit is super hot. 

Recently I took what seemed like the biggest risk and I let a straight guy go down on me. And I was so nervous about that, because like what if he thinks I'm a man? What if he gets repulsed? Can you feel like a woman while your dick is being sucked? The answer is yes. It was so hot. I loved it, he loved it, and just knowing that he'd never done that before but I was just so special, 10 out of 10. And you know what he told me after? He told me he liked the mouthfeel. Everyone's talking about it now bitches. 

So look I really don't want to shame men for feeling anxious about dating trans women because, I mean I was anxious too in the other direction. But I do want to shame men for treating trans women like their dirty little secrets. And I do wanna shame men for dehumanizing us, and voting away our rights by day while jerking off to shemale porn by night. And I do wanna shame men for refusing to date us because they're not fucking strong enough to shoulder one hundredth of the burden of stigma that every trans woman carries every moment of every day. And I do wanna shame men for attacking their trans girlfriends because they couldn't stand being treated like a gay man for five minutes. 

That is pathetic. If you're so worried about proving you're a man, why don't you start by standing up for the women you love, you chickenshit cowards. So look, what I'm asking for is so basic. Don't call human beings traps. If you're attracted to trans women, don't be ashamed of it. It's okay you can date us, we're more than just jack-off material. If you aren't attracted to trans women, respect the people who are. If you do date a trans woman, treat her like a princess because God knows she's been through enough shit. And finally, protect trans women of color at all costs. 

All I want here is basic human decency, is that really too much to ask? Well… this is the Internet, so yes. Yes it is. Goddamn it. 🍷

🚬😈

Lenora: Well, that was long. I suppose the lesson is as Sigmund Freud once said, sometimes a cigar is just a beautiful woman's penis.