FTM UK - Tranny Chasers

I haven't really had any progress worth mentioning on the transition front, so I'll push on with the FTM UK topics to keep this blog ticking over. Week 7 was 'Tranny Chasers', this term seemed to confuse the guys on the channel strangely enough. Anyway, here we go...

To me, the term 'tranny chaser' counjours up images of a dirty old man in adult book shop. It's not a nice term, it's not a nice thing. My understanding of the term is that it someone who has a sexual fetish for transsexual people, I.E. they fetishise the transsexual aspects of those people. To me a tranny chaser isn't someone who has an attraction to the person, just the physical charactaristics that usually define transsexualism.

I know the term can be banded about far too easily and people in the trans community can be quick to label someone a tranny chaser when it's not the case at all. A friend brought up a genuine point, she was branded a tranny chaser by a group of transpeople because she expressed an attraction to transmen and women. She made the point, by their logic, if a transperson is attracted to another transperson, does that not then make them a tranny chaser? I know myself as a transman who has been attracted to other transpeople, that I'm not a tranny chaser, there's no fetish involved for me and the same is true for my friend.

So what does it make me? Well not a tranny chaser for one. When defining my sexuality, I tend to use the terms queer or pansexual. My primary attraction is to cisgendered females, but I'm not going to rule anything out, so I don't define it too specifically. There is a clear difference between someone who has a genuine attraction to a person who is a transsexual and someone who has a fetish for the transsexual aspects of a person's body.

What my greater concern is, why are we so quick to brand someone a tranny chaser? Why are we so quick to push these people away from our community? To slap this quite frankly derogatory term on them and react so violently towards them? I see the trans community talk about feeling excluded from the 'LGBTQPI' community as a whole, yet when someone from another letter in the acronym shows an interest, we reject it.

I used to see something similar when I was still identifying as a lesbian (a good many years ago!), in pubs and clubs on 'the scene' in Glasgow, the girls I was with branding others as "hettys" and being so disdainful and hateful towards them. I think they felt that it was an attack on their space, there are so many 'straight' clubs in Glasgow yet at that time there was maybe 3 or 4 gay pubs and basically 1 club. Is it the same mentality that is prevailing? A feeling of "us and them"?

Something I'm finding as the trans community comes into it's own, is that with the spectrum of gender identities out there, there's alot of 'gender fucking' going on. The porn that the queer community is producing reflects this, different body types, different genders getting it on and getting off. Where's the harm in that?

Personally, I don't want to be fetishised for those parts of my body. To me, they are abhorrant, and for someone's primary interest in me to be just those parts, it would be an insult to me. On the other hand, if someone was attracted to me for who I was, and who I am because I am trans, well that's just fine by me.