As discussed elsewhere on this very blog, when it comes to sex talk, male viewers invariably focus heavily on their own penises, both in terms of how they are responding to the visual and sensory stimuli, and what they would like to do with it (often extremely keen to show it off, whether via stills or video cam, as if one organ is going to be radically different or more fascinating than any other). Interacting with a trans*/CD person, they literally became a part of the 2-in-1 pornographic duality described by Kipnis: 2 genders, 1 sex, in which both males and females are fully and completely compatible. Where I was concerned, we shared the same biology, making it much easier for viewers to identify with, but to also bring to bear a broad spectrum of readings of myself – anything from a 'sissy boy' to a 'bona fide woman' (in all but essentialist anatomy) - more thoughts on anatomy and specific body parts noted here.
From what I've observed, male viewers seem to have a very strong psychological need for the tangible, an attempt to grasp something beyond the immediate, unfolding visual pleasures, a projection into the future possibility of the corporeal – as opposed to, and derived from, the existing virtual here-and-now. A 2nd or 3rd message (following the inevitible “hi”), was often “Where are you?”, “location?” or some such variant, expressed more creatively through “Wish I was there now”, “I’d love to meet you”, “Do you ever get to x?”, where x is invariably some far flung South coast city (if within the UK), or else often in another continent altogether.
(Such desires, often very pushy in their articulation and insistence that they will travel to me, that I’m definitely worth the journey/time/money, almost entirely without fail, become laughable in the face of the reality – once the proverbial load has been shot and the user disappears suddenly and abruptly from vision, for ever. My deflections of such overtures started early in my career, with my location limited to “a long way away” (invariably true). The elaborate and seemingly earnest fantasies spun by users with regard to positing some potential future scene of togetherness, going beyond even the merely carnal to social public outings are exemplified in the illustration below. Despite his promises to travel to me (across the Atlantic), and wine and dine me (presumably at his expense, though the user admits to being 19, less than half my age), the suggestion that he spend a few dollars on fulfilling his desires for the here and now prompted a sudden and terminal disappearing act (note the time difference, bottom right, in the 2nd and 3rd screenshots below):
The very fact that I screenshotted these messages at the time demonstrates my understanding that here was, in fact, an object lesson in the fantasists’ rhetoric – or perhaps, less a desire for actual reality than an extension of the fantasy currently being played out before them, the need to discuss his imaginings and his projection of himself into my physical (not just virtual) space.
Beyond those who identify as men (by far the majority of users I interacted with on video chat), those who identify as CDs, TVs or any trans* spectators, however, tend to refer primarily to appearances – whether the details of my own (appreciation), or theirs, frequently in terms of the materiality of clothing and underwear, and how that makes them feel as a result, and are usually very explicit in terms of what they are wearing (taking care to mention pleats in skirts, seams in stockings, colours, etc., as if either looking in the mirror or referencing very specific images, which they may well be looking at at that time). The zone of interest in each case therefore descends into a strangely traditional – even stereotypical – binary of experience, reflecting precisely John Berger's famous sentiment that “men act, women appear” - herein refined to “men fuck”, “CDs dress [to be fucked]” since much of their discourse focuses around how their clothing makes them feel in the mood to be sexualised, and to experience the pleasure they both seek for themselves and to give to others – whether or not anyone else finds it arousing (it is assumed that someone will). The men seek an object of pleasure – the CD chooses to be that object, often with overt reference to their own desires to be used, abused, and to be seen and denigrated as a “slut”, “whore”, “sissy” etc. Herein I find myself deviating completely from this generic, fetishized CD/TV scene, where the focus is on the lowest, patriarchal interpretations of femaleness: the objectification, the submission, the eagerness to please, to be (ab)used, even humiliated publicly – zones of pleasure which I do not enter, as I do not read or view femaleness on that level, so therefore have no interest in aspiring to it. My observation is that, as cisgendered women (outside of pornography, whether hard or soft) are no longer willing to fulfil those roles unhesitatingly socially or sexually, that men turn to the 'safer' form of the CD/TV with their outward manifestation of femininity, their biological and psycho-sexual phallus and its comforting familiarity, and the CD's very raison d'etre being often solely the gratification of pleasure – woman surrogates who are only too happy to please and who can, one suspects, be treated the way certain men would like to treat their cis women (but cannot) – a worrying tendency I've theorized in the past2 as “cis-misogyny by proxy”, in which transfemales are degraded and used with the knowledge that there is no (or scant) legal or socio-political protection for a group of people who remain stigmatized, persecuted and, in many territories, legislated against. That many (who at least claim to be) on the trans* spectrum both allow and seek out this, is indeed a problematic issue, as it bundles paraphiliac fetishists together with both part-timers and full-timers, genderfluid and NB persons, and therefore lends weight to at least some of the transphobic rhetoric from opponents that, in some contexts, cross-dressing behaviour can empower patriarchy and misogyny, normalize such attitudes as a knock-on effect against cisgender women (if it's okay to refer to a trans* female as a “slut” or “whore”). As a performer, seeking reactions and embodying desires which I do not find problematic (turn-offs), I instead aim to operate as the controller of the situation, not the controlled. The presence of capital in the Xhamster ‘paid performer’ scenarios complicated things, bringing with it power on the part of the wielder of the tokens, which is why I very soon made explicit my ‘do/don’t’ list on my profile, to show that I wouldn’t tolerate just any old degradation for the sake of a few bucks. The ‘anything goes’ attitudes of many transvestite and cross-dressed users, for me, come very close to the fetishistic ‘forced feminization’ genre of (usually extreme) pornography, a subject I find personally distasteful, but which seems to go hand-in-hand with the attitudes cited above, namely the ‘sissy’, ‘slut’ fantasies of some. I find both forms of conversation very one-sided and boring, being as they are all about the voyeur, not about any particular interaction with me as a unique subject, but rather a malleable form to be manipulated into their own specific desires – as holes to be penetrated, a doll to be dressed or undressed at will – whether or not that is even compatible with my 'menu' or my own interests. The assumption that I can be persuaded to accord with their desires regardless is somewhat uncomfortably in line with the notion propagated in media and certain films, that cis women, upon resisting men's advances can, with sufficient persuasion and encouragement, be made to submit and agree to the encounter. In this sense I was repeatedly made to feel like one of Allen Jones' mannequin sculptures – an object to have the viewer's obsessions hung upon, rather than as a living, thinking “date” or partner, and which of course led directly to these works.
In terms of the overall situation of attitude/expectation, however, not everyone who is not a part of the solution is necessarily a part of the problem: many millions of women, at the height of the sexual revolution, still chose housework and child-rearing over sexual equality and career-building, although the situation of women in the career/home-making dilemma is not quite analogous to the paraphiliac/fetishist /genderqueer/trans* dichotomy due not only to overlapping tendencies and behaviours, but also that any woman is a legally-documented, tax-paying entity and therefore a statistical value: she either receives family benefits, or a wage/salary, and is able to be counted as such, while cross-dressing paraphilias are visible only when they are seen. Closeted (even married) men who cross-dress (whether through meetings, privately or online), and even cultivate a 'femme' persona and name, are under the radar as far as statistics go, which is why any attempt at quantifying any percentage of the population as trans* is always going to be wholly inadequate. The issue remains that many men are forced into acting as if they were paraphiliacs (sneaking out to hotels to dress, catching time when the spouse is away, 'borrowing' female family members' underwear) because the problems of 'coming out' are too immense or disruptive to family, career or other circumstances and that, given proper time to gestate and flourish, an inner persona may evolve into actual, realised physical embodiment – which is what happened to me3 once I found myself living by myself for the first time. My opportunity to fully investigate the hitherto repressed (albeit awkwardly) side of my personality manifested in a series of online feminine/trans personae (depending upon whether the website in question allowed gender options outside of the binary), and over the years of emails, messaging, chatroom and webcam interactions, I grew to realise that I was evolving as a person, and pushed this evolution as far as I dared. The climax was my first ever night out in public, in March 2014 – an evolution which could never have prospered had I remained with family, or stayed married or in other relationships. In my case, what could have easily been regarded as paraphiliac behaviour in its incipient stages, was ultimately revealed to be the logical conclusion to a process which had its roots in my early childhood.
To return to the online chatroom environment and the difference between the cis male and the TV/CD users, my observation is that the TVs, often apropos of nothing in particular, are keen to describe in detail what pretty, feminine things they are wearing, whether in actuality, or fantasy, e.g.: "I am wearing a short pleated pink skirt and soft white satin blouse right now...", the abundance of adjectives both suggestive of amateur fanfiction as well as overt emphasis both on the look and the feel of the fetishistic garments, either inspired by images or videos, or the viewer's own preferred garments:
This kind of description goes hand in hand with the submissive/masochistic tendencies cited by psychologists as a paraphilia, in which the clothing itself imbues that state of altered self, the objectified 'slut' (usually in the person's own words) who desires to serve orally etc., or be used any which way by a dominant other. The scopophilia of fetishized cross-dressing is therefore made blatant. Clothing as a tactile experience has never had much effect upon me, the result being more in general appearance (does it look right? Do I do it justice?) and how that affects others (do they appreciate it?). It therefore becomes necessary to, in theory, distinguish between paraphilia (cross-dressing solely for sexual purposes) and those who enjoy sexual experiences whilst cross-dressed but also exist in that mode in day-to-day life. Where I stand apart from this internalized form of idealised femininity, which exists only as a pleasure principle, is that my growth as a genderfluid person was refined over decades of masquerade as a cis/het person whilst internalizing my own brand of femininity, and my interest in female clothing and style was informed primarily by real women whom I knew (or at least saw on television or in the media), and whose styles appealed to me first and foremost as distinctive and radical, my recurring point of interest being a classic late 1970s/Bohemian look – long sleeves, long hemlines, boots, hat, gloves – in fact, pretty much full body coverage (think classic Stevie Nicks). I realised, as soon as I'd started to put all this together in the early 2000s, that my reference points dated back in fact to my own lived experiences of growing up with late 1970s, when long swirly skirts and boots were the fashion for women. That such styles now sit comfortably in modern genres as 'gothic', 'steampunk' and 'boho' endows me with accidental underground trendiness. Had I been born female, I would likely have been influenced by, and continue to wear, the same styles, as this was the look adopted by many female friends I had during the 1990s, in the Dundee rock/punk/gothic music scene – which embraced multiple subcultures without much friction or mockery, including bikers, heavy metallists, and others4.
2 In my undergrad dissertation, 'The Non-Binary Body' (2020).
3 My beginnings at an early age meant I had no 'girl' clothes to cross-dress into, so I had to rely on imagination, inner dialogue, fantasy and to a large extent, the use of mirrors in order to construct my Other, inner self. While I increasingly felt more female as years went by, it was only through visualising and creating a dialogue with the mirror (and later, the camera) that I was able to see myself as Other and judge, appreciate, modify that construction. Thinking, or 'acting female' whilst embedded in day-to-day 'male mode' felt completely incongruous, and is the source of my own limited, low-level dysphoria – when I find mysef in a situation in which I could only fully and happily express myself in a female mode of being (for example, hearing ABBA or 80s dance tunes whilst out in male mode – music has long been a driving force behind my gender fluidity to the point of me having two completely segregated sets of playlists on my laptops). By age 9 or 10, because I would have felt ridiculous asking my parents to buy me girls' dolls, I made do with 'feminizing' my action men, giving them plasticine breasts, long hair hacked from old rugs and felt-tip pen makeup, resulting in characters who, when dressed, probably looked like Nazi drag queens from Cabaret. This early collision of masculine musculature and physiognomy, and primary symbols of glamour and femininity, appear to be a symptom of my deep-rooted sense of androgyny which has so troubled some viewers of my comic-book art in the more recent past – where certain of my character drawings were regarded as little more than men with breasts and makeup. I recall being very proud of my 'action women', and they seemed far closer to my personal view of womanhood than the impossibly ideal (and very skinny) proportions of Sindy and Barbie. I cannot say if the sense of feminization of these customised figures was in any way heightened by Action Man's lack of genitals – in any case, I don't ever recall considering that aspect of women much until my teens.
4 The extent of my appropriation of my female friends' styles only really occurred to me when I attended a Halloween party in 2005 in full goth drag – my first ever tentative time 'out' (hiding in plain sight) – hosted by the high priestess of Dundee's goth scene herself (and who in fact ran her own coven). I walked in wearing floor-length black velvet, Spanish riding hat and spike-heeled boots, to be welcomed by my hostess: “Oh my God, he's come as me”.
