Trans Sex

Sex and sexuality and relationships and everything is complicated. Especially if you’re transgender. For me, sexuality was one of the spheres of life where I couldn’t alienate myself from my body, from my gender. I knew I was attracted to femininity, but I was also disgusted by the mere thought of sex. I learned to fit in, not to be weird, however. To say dirty jokes for attention. I didn’t want to be prude, of course. Perhaps it was easy because these jokes didn’t mean anything to me, because I didn’t understand them, not really. It was more of a science to me, an endeavor to understand something strange that I couldn’t wrap my head around. An endeavor to not be weird.

The journey towards figuring out my sexuality has been long and winding, and I’m not done at all. But I started realizing I wasn’t asexual when I started realizing I was trans. When I thought of myself as a woman, the disgust I felt about sex melted off me like tree snow on a spring day. Sex was the arena where I couldn’t hide my maleness from myself, where I couldn’t push it deep down and put on a fake smile. I couldn’t see how I would fit into this system I studied like an alien anthropologist watching people from a tiny saucer above.

Heterosexuality felt like another planet to me. So a tiny, frightened voice started whispering the magic word somewhere where it was sure nobody could hear. Lesbian. But how could I be a lesbian when I’m not a real woman, when however much I try, people still think of me as a man? When there are people out there who never will see me as anything other than a violent he-wolf in she-ep’s clothing? How will anyone ever desire me for my femininity when I can barely convince myself I am a woman sometimes because of some comment someone made or because I look at myself in the mirror for too long? Because I listen to a recording of my voice and realize this is what people hear when I speak…

NO. STOP IT.

Trans people are beautiful. I am fucking gorgeous. If I tell myself enough times, it is bound to become true, isn’t it?

And sometimes I really feel beautiful when I put on my best makeup, when I dress in my femmest clothes, when someone treats me in a gender-affirming way, when I feel seen. Then, I suddenly see a beautiful woman radiating through my skin. A beautiful woman that is me. The me in the future, after some years of hormones. And I think: this is how I want to be desired.

When traveling recently, I went to a jazz club alone and met a girl who saw me as a woman. To be desired in that way, for my femininity, was an eye-opening experience for me. My rare previous experiences of approaching romance and sex have been like the non-existing awkward Spielberg fan fic “erotic encounters of the Third Kind”. It was clear that those girls expected something else of me, something I couldn’t understand and give them. Luckily, nothing ever went far. It fucked me up quite badly when I realized a girl I was half dating was more into me when I presented more masculine. Returning to my more recent (two) sessions of mostly bad making out on dancefloors, the experience really is different. Being desired in a gender-affirming way, being perceived and desired as a trans woman, truly melts my heart, even if they use far too much teeth when making out. (Why do people do that? Seriously?)

Mainstream media is not kind to trans and genderqueer bodies and sexualities. Before I read the anthology “Take Me There”, with trans and genderqueer erotica, I couldn’t fathom how anyone would ever desire me the way I want to be desired. Reading those stories, however, changed something in me. I realized I don’t have to conform to the CIS norm to be desirable to other people. In fact, the CIS norm might not be the goal at all. Why desperately try to become something that is fundamentally unattainable for me? Reading the stories made me feel that creating trans-friendly romantic bubbles within an otherwise hostile world is possible. Bubbles where someone (who is not a chaser) can be attracted to me not despite, but because of who I am. This is probably one reason for “t4t” (trans for trans), a term that started as hookup slang but has since evolved into something more political, a way of saying that we trans people look after and care for one another. So to anyone who says representation is not important, I will most kindly tell you to go fuck yourself. Good representation changes things. Until very recently, trans women were depicted as something to laugh at in mainstream media. And don’t get me started on the cliche of some male character being attracted to a trans woman only to find out she’s trans and evil and she has been deceiving them all, and then the man infallibly proceeds to throw up because he is so disgusted. Seriously, what’s up with that? In light of all of this floating around in our cultural consciousness, good representation is vital. I’m not only speaking as a trans woman but as a lesbian as well. For real, all the times I’ve seen “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”, I’ve cried, and cried, and cried.

Even though it is not directly related to sexuality, I want to bring up the terrible queues within the Swedish trans care system. I spoke to a person dating a trans woman, and they told me it breaks their heart when they see what their partner is going through — that you first have to wait in the queue for two and a half years (it is three and a half years now) for first contact and then for more than a year to finally start hormone therapy. It breaks their heart to see their partner waiting and waiting and waiting. Is this acceptable when a lot of trans people are struggling with a mountain of dysphoria, and some even contemplate taking their own lives? In fact, the queues are not only long but growing, so something needs to be done soon.

Up until now, I’ve been describing my own situation, but every trans person is, of course, very different. Some lucky bastards seem to have had no problem with sex even before transitioning. Some have never had that much dysphoria about their genitalia. To broaden my perspective and engage in some subversive, smutty fun, I interviewed a woman who has been on hormones for a couple of years. I’m going to call her S.D. These are made-up initials, of course. I was curious about her experiences and the similarities and differences between them and my own.

We had a long, winding, and open discussion. Some things I really related to. For example, before I had my trans-awakening, I always wondered why I was so interested in and desperate for queer narratives, even though I thought I was “straight”. S.D. put it more bluntly, stating: “I was always attracted to lesbians, and then I was always a bit pissed when they didn’t choose me.” This is, of course, related to the pre-trans lesbian realization maxim “Do I wanna be her or do I wanna fuck her?”. Something I recognize in my teenage self; I wanted a girlfriend to gain access to feminine intimacy, to have a space where that might also have allowed myself to express my femininity. Luckily, that need has disappeared more and more as friends have started seeing me as I want to be seen. In relation to this, me and S.D. also discussed the label lesbian as an empowering identity for us. Jokingly because it allowed her to take revenge on all the lesbians that rejected her in the past, but more seriously because it validates our feminine identities. Furthermore, I relate a lot to lesbian narratives and sexuality in a way that feels much more familiar compared to the strangeness of heterosexuality, so seeing myself as a lesbian makes a lot of sense to me.

For me, not having had heteronormative sex, I was curious about S.D.’s experience of it. She told me: “Although I’ve had sex, I still feel like a virgin because it never ever felt like me having sex, but instead as a strange disconnected experience that I had. And that makes me want to do bottom surgery even more because then I might be able to relate to my body more.” Bottom surgery. The final hurdle, the final boss. I’ve been thinking a lot about it. The activist within me wants to say it is unnecessary, and I want to prove to everyone you can be a woman without it, especially to the women who might not have access to the operation. But at the same time, dysphoria is not something that can be treated by “what if we lived in another society?” Because it is hard to change the fact that genitalia are gendered in the cultures trans women have to navigate. S.D. told me she used to have doubts about bottom surgery before for the same reason, but that she’s changed her mind after hormones made her feel more like herself. However, there is a great zine called “Fucking Trans Women” which goes into amazing detail about the possibilities of gender-affirming sex even without bottom surgery. I highly recommend it for any trans girls and their partners out there.

Genitalia are interesting. You can’t escape them, even though you can try to ignore them. S.D. described to me her feeling a sort of “inverse phantom limb syndrome”, sometimes thinking: “Wait, where is my vagina? And then you’re like, “Oh, right”. It’s like it should be there, but it is not.” I believe a lot of trans women can relate to this. For me, I’ve always felt really uncomfortable whenever I get an erection, for example. But here, words can be important and transformative. Some trans people refer to their private parts as “clits” or “ladysticks”, and for me, constructing new language and ways of relating to my genitalia has helped a lot. Sexually, this might involve touching them in new ways, something “Fucking Trans Women” delves into. And then, of course, I usually ignore my parts because I don’t feel they are part of my body anyway. Perhaps not the best coping mechanism, but sometimes it is all you can do.

Finally, I wanted to hear about how S.D.’s relation to her sexuality has changed after starting hormones. She told me she hasn’t had sex since and really has no desire, either. She thought this could also be related to her being demisexual; that she needs a romantic connection to feel desire. But at the same time, her previous endocrinologist totally floored her testosterone levels, which, of course, are important for sexual desire. She also became a lot more interested in BDSM after hormones, for example, having someone on a leash or locking them up. At the same time, she’s not masturbating as much anymore, but she doesn’t really mind:

S.D.: “I stopped masturbating when I started hormones. Or not completely…I have a lot of sex toys now, which are way more fun than they were before. Vibrators are so much more enjoyable. And a lot more is happening with the whole body. But at the same time, it feels like a lot more work. I have to light some candles, read a smutty book, burn some incense, sit with my vibrator for two hours and then finally get a body orgasm. But it’s so much work…I prefer to just eat a sandwich.”

She described not masturbating as a euphoric experience because she always viewed it as a terrible, weird obligation. Not masturbating means she doesn’t have to misgender herself. Here, our experiences differ. I feel I can masturbate in a gender-affirming way, but it has taken me a long time to learn how, and it requires some imagination.

In short, sexuality is a complicated part of trans experiences, but I believe it is something that needs to be talked about. For me, reading books like “Queer Sex” and “take me there” and zines such as “Fucking Trans People” has really helped me formulate myself as a sexual subject, as someone who can be desired. I hope this article finds someone in the same way.