A member of the Nepalese transgender community

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Pride

Explainer

Transwomen and the men who love them

Why do straight-identifying men sleep with transwomen, but refuse to consider a relationship? Luke Williams investigates the transgender taboo.

Published 2 February 2016 9:45am

By Luke Williams

Image: A member of the Nepalese transgender community puts on make up before Nepal's Gay Pride parade in Kathmandu

Dave

“This is my ultimate fantasy,” Dave groaned, and then sucked in air as if to cool some kind of unbearably hot stomach pain. He was looking at 18-year-old me one night in Melbourne’s obscenely hot summer of 1998. Then he looked back at his porn magazine, gasping once again. That is what happens when your female friend goes to get something from the service station and leaves you alone with her new boyfriend for half-an-hour.

“Look at her, she’s gorgeous. She looks like, what’s her name, from Friends… Jennifer Aniston,” he said (it was '90s).

Bar that picture, all Dave's pornography was heterosexual in nature. This Aniston-esque model was, in fact, a beautiful Amazonian woman posing with two important body parts exposed through her lingerie: her large breasts and a fully functional phallus.

A nude adult flim model mingles with videographers on the set of a pornographic video (Photo by Chris Hondros/Newsmakers) Source: Getty Images

Transwomen are undoubtedly popular in male fantasies. One popular pornography site with 69 broad categories on offer has "shemale" ranked at 22.

The small amount of research in this area shows most of the men interested in this kind of category don’t identify as gay - some studies put it at more than 90 per cent who identify as either straight or bisexual.

The particular type of trans-body which usually appeals to heterosexual men is a transwoman. To be more precise, it's a very feminine-looking transwoman with full breasts and a penis - “the hermaphroditic ideal” as described by New Zealand-French psychoanalyst Joyce McDougall. McDougall traces the desire to a kind of impossible maternal longing; a kind of wholeness she links to a pre-separation experience of the mother before a male knew she had different genitals to them.

How does somebody develop an attraction to a body which does not exist in nature?

Speaking about the attraction to university students two years ago, transsexual performer, writer and university lecturer Nina Arsenault asked, "How does somebody develop an attraction to a body which does not exist in nature?". And inevitably some people may ask, are these men actually closeted gay men?

In the 1960s and '70s, we had the sexual revolution; hormone treatments and sex reassignments became more popular. Transwomen started appearing in the press and pornography – often as exotic objects of desire

In the years following, a growing number of treatments became available for transwomen; to soften their skin, lose their body hair, heighten their cheek bones and their voice, and even remove their adam's apples. Then came the internet – and boom! Hundreds of millions of men began having sexual fantasies about transwomen all over the world.

Dr Ogi Ogas is an American computational neuroscientist and author of the pop-psychology book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us about Sexual Relationships. Dr Ogas and his colleague Dr Sai Gaddam analysed a huge amount porn statistics, porn history and data from dating sites in their book, the authors estimate their research reflects the online behaviour – and therefore probably the sexual fantasies - of approximately 100 million people.

“One of the most popular types of erotica is transgender porn,” Dr Ogas said in a lecture to promote his book.

“We had no idea interest in transwoman porn was so popular, we spoke to sex therapists about it and they had no idea what it meant either in psychological terms.”

Orgas described the attraction to transwomen in porn as kind of "optimal illusion".

"There really isn’t anything gay about liking [transwoman porn]. Gay men are not interested in it at all,” he said.

Photo: Chris Hondros/Newsmakers.

Melody

...we are placed below women at the lowest rungs of society, beneath everyone else, because of our gender diversity. In many respects this means we are treated as subhuman.

“There’s plenty of men who will sleep - and really want to specifically sleep - with transwomen,” explained Melody Moore, the founder of Trans Health Australia.

“About 80 per cent of the straight-identifying men who contact me through dating sites still remain interested once they know I’m trans.”

Moore, an articulate photographer who spends much of her time photographing crocodiles and majestic birds of prey in the lush wilds just outside of Cairns, said there certainly isn’t a shortage of men who are interested in transwomen sexually. She said they are often treated as men’s "dirty little secret,” which obviously contributes to feelings of rejection.

“Pornography also has a lot to do with the expectations of us from heterosexual men, presenting transwomen as sexually available, sexual objects,” Moore said.

“Like most porn, it's all about male gratification… women are generally subservient to men in society, and we are placed below women at the lowest rungs of society beneath everyone else because of our gender diversity. In many respects this means we are treated as subhuman.”

Rachel

As a teenager living on the rural outskirts of Emerald in Central Queensland, Rachel Hearn was struggling with deep feelings of self-hatred.

“All my friends in high school were becoming beautiful young women. I felt sad and depressed, I didn’t like who I was. I had a terrible time in high school, people just assumed I was gay," Hearn said.

“Then I watched a documentary about transsexuals on the internet and I realised it was me. I told my best friend and my family, and they were all very supportive, and at 18 I began hormone therapy.”

Now 21, her extra bit of height makes her look like a model. She said she doesn’t have a dating app (she didn’t want her real name published because she was worried about an onslaught of men contacting her on Facebook), but through Instagram she said she gets hundreds of offers from men, including several famous actors and sportstars.

“As soon as I tell them I am a transwoman they start asking about what’s between my legs and the conversation gets very sexual. It’s usually because they have been watching transwomen in porn and get the wrong idea about us."

Men have told me they would get into a relationship with me, but they are worried about their reputation.

Manners clearly matter to Hearn - she is very much a country girl. She constantly apologised during our conversation for saying things she thought might be too risqué.

“Men just assume all transwomen are sluts – if you will excuse my expression,” she said.

“Men basically assume I will have the sex-drive of a man, [they] have told me they would get into a relationship with me, but they are worried about their reputation."

Dana

It is difficult to overstate the discrimination transpeople still face, and men’s reluctance to enter into public relationships with transwomen remains an obvious example. There are few high profile transwoman-male partnerships in the United States – even less here in Australia.

And is it any wonder? Online articles like the one below are not uncommon. Hosted on an American hip-hop magazine's website, it lists “10 celebrities caught with he-shes” and goes on to say such celebrities should “honestly be ashamed” and that “I don’t know what Chingy should be more ashamed of, his rap career or his constant encounters with TYs”.

Source: Supplied

“Transwomen-male long-term relationships are actually rare,” Melody Moore said.

“Often transwomen form long-term relationships with other transwomen or with women, who are usually more accepting.”

Rare, yes, but they do happen:

“We met on RSVP,” explains Dana Trang, a 27-year-old from Western Sydney.

“But, gee, do people even still use RSVP?”

Trang has spent five years with her partner, who identifies as heterosexual. She said when they met, he hesitated at first about telling his friends and going public with the fact that Dana is a transwoman.

“I don't expect my boyfriend to make a big deal about it and be annoying, but I expect him to not be ashamed of what we have together. A relationship is about trust, and not wanting to go public comes across as lacking trust,” she said.

And when the couple did decide to tell their friends, Trang said that her partner eventually discovered that those around him weren’t as judgmental as he thought they would be.

Drag

To complicate matters further, many drag queens often find themselves getting welcome and unwelcome sexual attention from straight-identifying men when they go out to party or perform.

In parts of Australia’s drag scene there is something the performers call a ‘Loon’; a somewhat derisive term for a straight man who wants to sleep with people who have a blend of genders. Drag queens mostly refer to it as somebody - particularly a sleazy straight guy - who wants to sleep with a drag queen.

Of course, drag queens are not transwomen (though transwomen often perform alongside drag queens), because they do not identify as women - they are simply dressing up as women for performance. The men who find drag queens attractive and often have sex with them would not have sex with that man in the dress. Sometimes termed gynandromorphophilia, these men tend to experience group attraction to feminine drag queens, 'cross-dressers' and transwomen alike.

Source: Getty Images

Melody Moore said it’s this kind of conflation of drag queens, cross-dressers and transwomen that's part of the problem.

In any event, many suggest it's time for trans-attracted men to make their feelings known to the world.

“Guys in Australia really need to grow some balls – pun intended – and talk about their attraction to transwomen,” Rachel Heard said.

Jose Monzon, a development associate at the Center for Constitutional Rights in the United States, who is married to a transwoman, wrote an article in Huffington Post earlier this year that trans-attracted men "have a duty to speak up". Monzon wrote the piece in response to revelations that 21 transwomen had been murdered in the US this year, as a direct result of anti-trans bias.

...these labels and categories are conflating a whole group of people with very diverse tastes and desires, and it’s time we simply moved on from that way of thinking.

Nina Arsenault suggests that what is needed is a new type of recognised sexual identity - one she calls ‘Straight with a Twist’. Others see the emerging new notion of pansexuality as a way forward in bringing attraction to transwoman out of the closet.

When it comes to creating more categories, Moore said she believes these labels are actually leading to transphobia and biphobia.

"People are just human, people are just sexual. These labels and categories are conflating a whole group of people with very diverse tastes and desires, and it’s time we simply moved on from that way of thinking."

Photo: Denis Doyle/Getty Images.

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