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Notes -
I'll caveat that my tastes are ... unusual, and a lot of the part I can relay aren't necessarily representative, and those that are representative are going to reflect more 'masked' environments (eg, tumblr, blahaj programmer world) than unmasked ones (eg, furry fandom stuff).
To some extent, although from inside my personal experience is less about who was worthy, and more about who could have a thing done, in a way that worked successfully. I haven't exactly had an easy or good time in gay dating spaces. But I don't get the same 'learn a foreign language' feeling.
I like to use the metaphor of the dishwasher here. Most people who've loaded a dishwasher end up with The One True Way to do it. Getting into a long-term relationship, you're going to find out that some people do things in crazy ways: forks facing up in the silverware holders, putting bowls on the top rack and cups on the bottom, running it on a daily basis even if it's almost empty, so on.
That's definitely part of it, but there's also a lot of ugly physical ramifications about Guys Who Think Transwomen Are Always Up For X. The central argument that trans activists bring up is the guy who's post-nut-clarity devolves into horror or even violence, but you can usually get the admission that, in the modern era, that's at least unusual (especially outside of sex work), or where the chaser is only interested in trans women as seen on porn. There's still a lot of room for disagreement, and when a sexual partner's change of presentation or mutability of presentation is part of the attraction to start with, even honest and well-intended trans chasers that are genuinely interested in a longer-term relationship can be Trouble.
At the most overt and crude level, someone that's explicitly interested in trans women qua "chicks-with-dicks" is going to have a really complex negotiation if their sexual partner wants or has had bottom surgery. Someone that's really focused on the idea of being pegged by a real penis is going to have problem with a large number of trans women who, even if they're planning on keeping their dick, don't particularly want to penetrate anything with it and definitely don't like having someone focusing on it. There's a lot of stuff that's built around the fetish and isn't actually built for the person. There's a lot of sissy and sissification stuff that's really common in gay porn and you might think would be catnip for the actual-AGPs, but a sizable number of trans women (even some actually-AGP ones!) find so overtly mocking that it puts them entirely out of their rhythm.
(tbf, because most of it is mocking the sub, just in a way a cis sub gay guy's going to like; for those not too squicked out by the content, contrast tyroo as a trans sub take and vonepitaph as a cis sub take.).
And that goes far beyond sex stuff itself. Like people who chase Asian women, you get some chasers that think that trans-femininity is going to mean a ultra-submissive barefoot-and-in-kitchen trad-wifing that doesn't seem to actually be that desired by that many trans women.
There's also the gay culture problem and 'quality' problem, where a lot of 'discrete masc tops' are... just not very good people or physically appealing in the market-for-lemons manner that plagues a lot of dating spheres. I still think they layer on top of that first one, though.
((This can go the other direction, although for obvious reasons FTM complain about it less since guys don't bitch like that. For all the 'bonus hole' porn out there, there's a lot of trans guys who either don't want to or physically can't take a dick there. There's a lot of gay tops that really like the idea of breeding someone, but actual ramifications of a working reproductive system squick them the fuck out. And the ramifications of a near-inevitable hysterectomy put massive pressures on romantic development. The 'bisexual' guys who treat FTMs like dyke-breaking do get a lot of complaints, and with pretty fair reason imo.))
Hm. I guess this is one of the lines in your posts that I find hard to parse... could you expand on what you mean, with the "who could have a thing done" thing?
Yeah - that's what I was gesturing at with the "cis women are bitches, I'm going to date a *trans-*woman" protests. I think there's some level of belief some folks have, as in the motte post I quoted, that dating trans women is a kind of Konami code to unlock "super extra real hardcore femininity mode" and get the goods that cis women aren't giving them.
That said -- I recall once reading a reddit thread where a trans person actually endorsed that framing to a degree, to many upvotes. I tried to find it, but alas I couldn't. If I recall correctly, it went something like:
That was definitely surprising, and went contrary to my understanding of how such things tend to go.
I suppose it's like drag; that's taking certain elements of femininity and exaggerating them to the nth degree (and hence why some old-school feminists don't like drag).
Some MTF do go the hyper-feminine, everything pink and sparkly, skirt go spinny! route, so if you're a straight guy you're getting the "womanly woman" stuff without the "treat me like a person not a pair of tits" demands (or at least I imagine that's the perceived attraction; someone who is delighted to be treated as a pair of tits, because that chimes with their notions of what being a woman is about - the physical attributes of femininity).
To be fair, I have seen some cis women doing the same "treat me like a brainless dumb bimbo who is perpetually stupid and perpetually horny" stuff and I have no idea why they do it, even if it is some kind of 'I'm selling porn to subscribers' model where this is the product the consumers want. But there we go.
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