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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.))
Are those ramifications like "if you think about it that's not really a man, because by virtue of breeding it's evidently a woman, and women are squicky", or more like "the sex part sounds hot but the last thing I want is an actual baby, babies are squicky".
Sometimes, but more... with some warning about more explicit detail than you'd probably want to know:
Pregnancy concerns specifically get complicated. There's a lot of ways to avoid them pretty effectively, and some gay guys are under the (not entirely correct) impression that just being on testosterone is itself effective birth control. But you do see some who are really into the idea in fictional contexts and get grossed out because an IUD isn't perfect.
((And they tend to be polarizing for trans guys, where either it's something out of Alien as a fate-worse-than-death, or they get out of high school with an exact number of kids that they want. But I have met a few exceptions who like the idea but aren't sure they're ready for it, a la Daxhush, and there's a lot of cis woman who have similar divisions, so not sure how much of that's downstream of trans stuff as how much is downstream of the whole progressive culture.))
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pls breed. no pregnant, only breed
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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.
Uh... sorry, trying not to get too prurient.
There's a lot of scripts and modes of discussion that occur between potential or new romantic partners. They vary a lot between the sexes and sexual orientations. At least in my experience, the ones for a man going after women, or propositioning sex within an existing but new relationship, are kinda a mess, filled with minefields and potential miscommunications and active hostility. It's not that the gay versions are always easier to read, or always work, or avoid costly side effects, or are even that different -- I've got my horror stories, it's definitely easy to swing and miss, and that's on top of the alcoholism problems.
The straight scripts seem just fucked.
I might want to invite someone over for tea and some good cardio regardless of gender, so it's not seeing the women as Madonnas and the men as whores. But I can probably come up with a plan, even a likely-doomed plan, for the latter. Even inside established relationships, there's a lot of expectations that men initiate sex or perform desire, but only in the ways that the women want done to them, and that's a list that is neither well-documented nor consistent.
Can't find it, but it's certainly a believable result. The median chaser-trans interaction is probably pretty rough, but ultimately, they are just guys with a lot of focus on a kink. That doesn't necessarily make them bad people, just a potential trouble that has to be negotiated. Part of why the discourse gets so toxic in reddit environments is that it's something that should be solvable.
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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.
Some cis woman 'bimboization' is about not wanting to be responsible for her own desires (or missteps) or cognizant of her own fears or shame, especially in written formats. Not a common kink, but neither is it anywhere near as rare as you'd think. For cis guys who like the kink, it seems more about ease of access and forwardness of desire.
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