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 past
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
me
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 others.
