My latest for Genspect: Members of online FTM/transmasc communities tend to talk about fan fiction and anime the way they talk about sexual trauma or autism. Of course, someone can be trans and also have a traumatic past. Of course, you can be trans
I know people always say they write m/m because it's more equal or that female characters are less interesting/more poorly written/there aren't any, and these have been the narratives around slash for decades, but I still question them given that
1. a significant amount of m/m is very extremely unequal in dynamic. Lots of slavery, bondage, forced feminization--and you don't even have to read the story itself, you just have to read the summaries and it will be like "Protagonist is young and beautiful and has no power and now rich older powerful CEO King Man has bought him as a slave" or you can talk to people about their fic and RP and....you know what, I'm not giving examples because every real world example of something someone told me they were writing is too disturbing. iykyk
2. slash writers can and will take a male character who appears for two seconds or is only a name who never appears on screen and make him half of a wildly popular ship (I'm looking at you, Rosekiller) so clearly well written and interesting aren't pre-requisites.
3. I was involved in text-based RP for a long, loooooong time and it was a constant complaint among RPers that no matter where you looked for an RP partner, everyone only wanted to write "bottoms" aka everyone wanted to write a character who was being pursued, and they wanted their RP partner to write the pursuer character. "oh, I don't want to write with people who only write female characters, they're all desperate for romance and heteronormative" people would say while refusing to write non-romance plot lines and insisting that their character had to be aggressively (and often, in character, unwillingly) pursued. If I had to write romance I preferred to write the pursuer, but it was still....annoying. (maybe annoying in a different way than if you were part of the majority who wanted to be pursued, since for me it was more "and then you join and have to fend off constant thirsty IMs from other women about your fictional character")
Edit: actually, I say that, but thinking about the romance stories targeted at men and the male fans of romance I've met and I'll revise this statement: a very big romantic fantasy for both sexes seems to be that someone VERY SPECIAL (because she's a vampire queen or he's the CEO billionaire or whatever) chooses you and in fact ONLY wants you even though there's not any obvious reason they should choose you over the more powerful/competent/sexier people surrounding them.
4. the equivalent male spaces are full of nerdy awkward men who write all female casts/prefer media that is primarily female casts. And it's truly hilarious to me. Actually, disclaimer, some of my favorite female characters were written by men who write primarily female cast stories. I like their stories and characters, and one of the reasons I like them is because they don't write ABOUT being women. By which I mean, a lot of the similar stories that I've read by women is ABOUT being a woman. The female MC wants to be a hero and is alienated from the other women because of her interests. Whereas if the story is written by one of these guys who writes all/mostly female casts, his heroine is surrounded by other women and he's not writing about her feelings of alienation from women.
On a related note, a lot of those women will be more likely to brawl or be in the military or be assertive and aggressive in ways that remind me more of men (not because women can't be assertive, but the manner in which they assert...if that makes sense?) the same way a lot of the male characters written by women who only write male characters....they're shy and vulnerable and want to talk about their feelings (even when this isn't remotely how they're written in their source material) and people say oh, it's because men don't understand women/women don't understand men but I personally think the REAL thing going on is that people are working out their own issues in a manner that is distant from themselves. Nerdy, awkward dude writing a bunch of assertive female characters couldn't write a male character who was more assertive because he has hang-ups about his own assertiveness. The fangirl writing an emotionally vulnerable male character can't write a female character in that role because she has hang-ups about her own vulnerability.
I mean, also, yeah, in both cases a lot of these people are heterosexual and writing the sex they're attracted to, but I think that's only PART of it, since plenty of heterosexuals aren't afraid of writing characters and casts of their own sex.
Also, real talk, have you ever read women talk about, like, "what do your blorbos have in common"? because they'll always say trauma and being socially awkward and I'm like man. If this discussion thread is anything to go by, every single male cast member of this series is traumatized, and yet you only latched onto one of those? sooooo maybe trauma is NOT the theme here? What I actually have come away with is that the characters they latch onto are the ones they find sexually attractive and also are best able to project their own personal issues onto. I'm sure that's not confusing for your sense of self at all.
The girls I teach - HS 11th and 12th grade - who identify as boys are all like Peter Pans. They are nothing like the actual boys in class, and don't want to identify or be friends with them at all. They just seem to NOT want to be girls. They have a similar uniform. Khakis, button down shirt, sneakers. They are often uncomfortable in their skin, not the most attractive girls. I can see that trying to be "pretty" in a traditional way would be intimidating, especially in this pornified, hypersexualized world. Far safer to remain Peter Pan - a prepubescent boy. Not a man, but not a woman either. At least 2 girls I know of are also on the spectrum. I wish I could tell them there is no wrong way to be a woman. To be proud of who they are. They don't have to be sexually active yet, with anyone. Grow up, learn, develop who they are. Later, a woman or man will love them for who they are. But don't make decisions now. They are babies in every way.
"I read lots of gay male fanfic because I had sexual urges but found male/female sex triggering because of my sexual trauma. I fetishised gay male relationships and could only ever see myself enjoying sex if I was a man. I felt safer as a man.”
I'd like to offer some thoughts about teen girls and young women whose trans fantasy has pushed past the written word and led them to identify as gay men.
It's a protean fantasy that allows youth who are bereft of real human sounding boards to fool themselves into thinking they can transcend the limitations of nature, their bodies and the culture in which they live.
So focused are they on themselves and their imminent liberation from the confinement imposed on them by sex and sex roles that they don't give a moment's thought to the real-world consequences of realizing their fantasy.
Being gay is not just a state of mind. We gay men have long and intimate histories with our male bodies that no trans man could ever have. Our gay male minds and bodies have long and complex experiences with our culture, society and other people that no trans man could ever experience or fully understand. The trans gay male fantasy is a narcissistic nightmare.
Mental health professionals (and everyone else) need to become more aware of what low self-esteem is. Most of the insecurities that are referenced in the above article sound like they are symptoms of low self-esteem: social anxiety, lack of confidence in one's desirability, felt inability to stand up to dominant others, rejection of one's own body, compulsion to get a new body, and lack of an internal sense of being on one's own side.
OMG, Eliza, I have to emphasize (again?) how talented you are at deciphering doublethink, elucidating the psychological hall of mirrors people construct to rationalize their impossible, coping-strategy, beliefs! This helps so much (presumably, many readers and listeners) in figuring out the questions we bang our heads against on this mind-boggling phenomenon. I would recommend readers always click on the "My latest at..." link for the deeper dive.
Tenderized, yes. It's worth putting all this in the context of what we know about the plasticity of the brain, the knowledge that the brain doesn't always clearly differentiate reality from non-reality. This is why we jump and sweat and pump stress hormones watching a scary movie, or risk walking into real walls when wearing VR headsets. It's why we become accustomed after a while to glasses that turn our visual field upside down, and can't immediately deal with normality when they're removed. It's why (if it hasn't been debunked) we gain some physical benefit just from *imagining* we're exercising! So, from that perspective, it's easy to understand that reading about, or watching, male homosexual acts, one can begin to identify with the protagonist(s). And the pressures you describe to avoid attributing this to drives considered unacceptable would only tip the balance further in that direction.
I wonder how transferable this function is to male transgender identification. Lesbian porn has a long history of use by straight males, and reading through some of the comment excerpts, I found it easy to see how they might apply to some trans-identified males, even if some of the social pressures to disinherit one's sex may be different.
Some may well be the same. To the degree that we're straight (since I think that is clearly not a binary), we have a natural revulsion to depictions of same-sex genitalia, especially sexually functioning ones, so porn absent of penises is attractive to straight men. Another impetus mentioned - abuse - would also apply whatever the sex, since if you disown the "bits" you've got, and aren't faced with them in sexual imagery, you can develop sexuality, and find relief for sexual desires, whilst repressing memories of the trauma. Some may be different: boys may, for instance, learn that they are guilty of "toxic masculinity," or in other ways assume the nature of male sexuality must be (just is) aggressive and violent (especially given the current trend in pornography). The two - enjoyment of female sexuality, and a desire to escape their own - might lead from lesbian porn to identification as a trans lesbian.
And we have these two awful mistakes being made: proto-gay kids transing from internalized or external homophobia, and straight youth turning pseudo-gay to avoid the bodies they can't accept.
Back in the Iron Age there was Star Trek Kirk-Spock sex fan fiction by and for lesbians (and also, possibly, straight women, wouldn't know about that).
Media that truly present male and female characters as equals can be hard to find. That's probably why it's easier for fanfic writers to ship characters of the same sex.
Fantastic article getting at the crux of this dynamic with erotica for women (which can also apply to video pornography for men) and how it can warp healthy sexual functioning in vulnerable people, thus leading to identity and mental/emotional health issues that can find an outlet in trans.
Most adults have no idea how distorted and weird the sexual content is that kids/young adults find/get up to online.
Two things:
- people can learn sexually disordered behavior (and therefore also sexually healthy behavior)- but it requires a choice to be healthy and may require support from family/society. Unfortunately, none of this is discussed at home or in school (how would this work? *parent to kids:* “hey kids- I know same sex sex scenes are like crack to your horny teenage brains, but maybe don’t masturbate yourself into a stupor over lesbian porn/gay slash fiction bc that’s disruptive to your sexuality as a straight person. If the only thing that can get you off is lesbians/gay guys then how will you be able to engage with YOUR OWN self as a sexual being with another person?” I’m guessing most people will give a hard pass on that convo.)
-I know someone who has a friend who agreed to a threeway with a heterosexual couple she knows. The guy wanted to watch his wife and her do sexual stuff together. A heterosexual man…had TWO women- his wife, AND her hot friend- willing to have sex with him…and he wanted to just sit back and watch them and presumably masturbate to them pretending to enjoy sex together. This was not some “autogynephilic” transbian-adjacent dweeb addicted to porn in his mom’s basement. This was a “normal” heterosexual man. To me this speaks volumes about how same-sex sexual content 1. Is a natural interest to most straight people and 2. can ultimately warp heterosexual sexuality in a way where one is left out and isolated from one’s own desires.
I'm curious if you know the Netflix show Young Royals, if so, what you think about about it, and how much this dynamic applies beyond fanfiction to actual fiction fiction. The show centers around a romantic relationship between two 17-year-old boys. It's very good, I highly enjoyed watching it, but it absolutely suffers a bit from "fictional-male-characters-written-by-women syndrome". We will likely see in the future more examples of healthy or idealized gay male romances depicted in the future, and I'm curious about to what extent it contributes to the same problematic pipeline.
I know people always say they write m/m because it's more equal or that female characters are less interesting/more poorly written/there aren't any, and these have been the narratives around slash for decades, but I still question them given that
1. a significant amount of m/m is very extremely unequal in dynamic. Lots of slavery, bondage, forced feminization--and you don't even have to read the story itself, you just have to read the summaries and it will be like "Protagonist is young and beautiful and has no power and now rich older powerful CEO King Man has bought him as a slave" or you can talk to people about their fic and RP and....you know what, I'm not giving examples because every real world example of something someone told me they were writing is too disturbing. iykyk
2. slash writers can and will take a male character who appears for two seconds or is only a name who never appears on screen and make him half of a wildly popular ship (I'm looking at you, Rosekiller) so clearly well written and interesting aren't pre-requisites.
3. I was involved in text-based RP for a long, loooooong time and it was a constant complaint among RPers that no matter where you looked for an RP partner, everyone only wanted to write "bottoms" aka everyone wanted to write a character who was being pursued, and they wanted their RP partner to write the pursuer character. "oh, I don't want to write with people who only write female characters, they're all desperate for romance and heteronormative" people would say while refusing to write non-romance plot lines and insisting that their character had to be aggressively (and often, in character, unwillingly) pursued. If I had to write romance I preferred to write the pursuer, but it was still....annoying. (maybe annoying in a different way than if you were part of the majority who wanted to be pursued, since for me it was more "and then you join and have to fend off constant thirsty IMs from other women about your fictional character")
Edit: actually, I say that, but thinking about the romance stories targeted at men and the male fans of romance I've met and I'll revise this statement: a very big romantic fantasy for both sexes seems to be that someone VERY SPECIAL (because she's a vampire queen or he's the CEO billionaire or whatever) chooses you and in fact ONLY wants you even though there's not any obvious reason they should choose you over the more powerful/competent/sexier people surrounding them.
4. the equivalent male spaces are full of nerdy awkward men who write all female casts/prefer media that is primarily female casts. And it's truly hilarious to me. Actually, disclaimer, some of my favorite female characters were written by men who write primarily female cast stories. I like their stories and characters, and one of the reasons I like them is because they don't write ABOUT being women. By which I mean, a lot of the similar stories that I've read by women is ABOUT being a woman. The female MC wants to be a hero and is alienated from the other women because of her interests. Whereas if the story is written by one of these guys who writes all/mostly female casts, his heroine is surrounded by other women and he's not writing about her feelings of alienation from women.
On a related note, a lot of those women will be more likely to brawl or be in the military or be assertive and aggressive in ways that remind me more of men (not because women can't be assertive, but the manner in which they assert...if that makes sense?) the same way a lot of the male characters written by women who only write male characters....they're shy and vulnerable and want to talk about their feelings (even when this isn't remotely how they're written in their source material) and people say oh, it's because men don't understand women/women don't understand men but I personally think the REAL thing going on is that people are working out their own issues in a manner that is distant from themselves. Nerdy, awkward dude writing a bunch of assertive female characters couldn't write a male character who was more assertive because he has hang-ups about his own assertiveness. The fangirl writing an emotionally vulnerable male character can't write a female character in that role because she has hang-ups about her own vulnerability.
I mean, also, yeah, in both cases a lot of these people are heterosexual and writing the sex they're attracted to, but I think that's only PART of it, since plenty of heterosexuals aren't afraid of writing characters and casts of their own sex.
Also, real talk, have you ever read women talk about, like, "what do your blorbos have in common"? because they'll always say trauma and being socially awkward and I'm like man. If this discussion thread is anything to go by, every single male cast member of this series is traumatized, and yet you only latched onto one of those? sooooo maybe trauma is NOT the theme here? What I actually have come away with is that the characters they latch onto are the ones they find sexually attractive and also are best able to project their own personal issues onto. I'm sure that's not confusing for your sense of self at all.
The girls I teach - HS 11th and 12th grade - who identify as boys are all like Peter Pans. They are nothing like the actual boys in class, and don't want to identify or be friends with them at all. They just seem to NOT want to be girls. They have a similar uniform. Khakis, button down shirt, sneakers. They are often uncomfortable in their skin, not the most attractive girls. I can see that trying to be "pretty" in a traditional way would be intimidating, especially in this pornified, hypersexualized world. Far safer to remain Peter Pan - a prepubescent boy. Not a man, but not a woman either. At least 2 girls I know of are also on the spectrum. I wish I could tell them there is no wrong way to be a woman. To be proud of who they are. They don't have to be sexually active yet, with anyone. Grow up, learn, develop who they are. Later, a woman or man will love them for who they are. But don't make decisions now. They are babies in every way.
"I read lots of gay male fanfic because I had sexual urges but found male/female sex triggering because of my sexual trauma. I fetishised gay male relationships and could only ever see myself enjoying sex if I was a man. I felt safer as a man.”
I'd like to offer some thoughts about teen girls and young women whose trans fantasy has pushed past the written word and led them to identify as gay men.
It's a protean fantasy that allows youth who are bereft of real human sounding boards to fool themselves into thinking they can transcend the limitations of nature, their bodies and the culture in which they live.
So focused are they on themselves and their imminent liberation from the confinement imposed on them by sex and sex roles that they don't give a moment's thought to the real-world consequences of realizing their fantasy.
Being gay is not just a state of mind. We gay men have long and intimate histories with our male bodies that no trans man could ever have. Our gay male minds and bodies have long and complex experiences with our culture, society and other people that no trans man could ever experience or fully understand. The trans gay male fantasy is a narcissistic nightmare.
Mental health professionals (and everyone else) need to become more aware of what low self-esteem is. Most of the insecurities that are referenced in the above article sound like they are symptoms of low self-esteem: social anxiety, lack of confidence in one's desirability, felt inability to stand up to dominant others, rejection of one's own body, compulsion to get a new body, and lack of an internal sense of being on one's own side.
OMG, Eliza, I have to emphasize (again?) how talented you are at deciphering doublethink, elucidating the psychological hall of mirrors people construct to rationalize their impossible, coping-strategy, beliefs! This helps so much (presumably, many readers and listeners) in figuring out the questions we bang our heads against on this mind-boggling phenomenon. I would recommend readers always click on the "My latest at..." link for the deeper dive.
Tenderized, yes. It's worth putting all this in the context of what we know about the plasticity of the brain, the knowledge that the brain doesn't always clearly differentiate reality from non-reality. This is why we jump and sweat and pump stress hormones watching a scary movie, or risk walking into real walls when wearing VR headsets. It's why we become accustomed after a while to glasses that turn our visual field upside down, and can't immediately deal with normality when they're removed. It's why (if it hasn't been debunked) we gain some physical benefit just from *imagining* we're exercising! So, from that perspective, it's easy to understand that reading about, or watching, male homosexual acts, one can begin to identify with the protagonist(s). And the pressures you describe to avoid attributing this to drives considered unacceptable would only tip the balance further in that direction.
I wonder how transferable this function is to male transgender identification. Lesbian porn has a long history of use by straight males, and reading through some of the comment excerpts, I found it easy to see how they might apply to some trans-identified males, even if some of the social pressures to disinherit one's sex may be different.
Some may well be the same. To the degree that we're straight (since I think that is clearly not a binary), we have a natural revulsion to depictions of same-sex genitalia, especially sexually functioning ones, so porn absent of penises is attractive to straight men. Another impetus mentioned - abuse - would also apply whatever the sex, since if you disown the "bits" you've got, and aren't faced with them in sexual imagery, you can develop sexuality, and find relief for sexual desires, whilst repressing memories of the trauma. Some may be different: boys may, for instance, learn that they are guilty of "toxic masculinity," or in other ways assume the nature of male sexuality must be (just is) aggressive and violent (especially given the current trend in pornography). The two - enjoyment of female sexuality, and a desire to escape their own - might lead from lesbian porn to identification as a trans lesbian.
And we have these two awful mistakes being made: proto-gay kids transing from internalized or external homophobia, and straight youth turning pseudo-gay to avoid the bodies they can't accept.
Back in the Iron Age there was Star Trek Kirk-Spock sex fan fiction by and for lesbians (and also, possibly, straight women, wouldn't know about that).
Media that truly present male and female characters as equals can be hard to find. That's probably why it's easier for fanfic writers to ship characters of the same sex.
Fantastic article getting at the crux of this dynamic with erotica for women (which can also apply to video pornography for men) and how it can warp healthy sexual functioning in vulnerable people, thus leading to identity and mental/emotional health issues that can find an outlet in trans.
Most adults have no idea how distorted and weird the sexual content is that kids/young adults find/get up to online.
Two things:
- people can learn sexually disordered behavior (and therefore also sexually healthy behavior)- but it requires a choice to be healthy and may require support from family/society. Unfortunately, none of this is discussed at home or in school (how would this work? *parent to kids:* “hey kids- I know same sex sex scenes are like crack to your horny teenage brains, but maybe don’t masturbate yourself into a stupor over lesbian porn/gay slash fiction bc that’s disruptive to your sexuality as a straight person. If the only thing that can get you off is lesbians/gay guys then how will you be able to engage with YOUR OWN self as a sexual being with another person?” I’m guessing most people will give a hard pass on that convo.)
-I know someone who has a friend who agreed to a threeway with a heterosexual couple she knows. The guy wanted to watch his wife and her do sexual stuff together. A heterosexual man…had TWO women- his wife, AND her hot friend- willing to have sex with him…and he wanted to just sit back and watch them and presumably masturbate to them pretending to enjoy sex together. This was not some “autogynephilic” transbian-adjacent dweeb addicted to porn in his mom’s basement. This was a “normal” heterosexual man. To me this speaks volumes about how same-sex sexual content 1. Is a natural interest to most straight people and 2. can ultimately warp heterosexual sexuality in a way where one is left out and isolated from one’s own desires.
I'm curious if you know the Netflix show Young Royals, if so, what you think about about it, and how much this dynamic applies beyond fanfiction to actual fiction fiction. The show centers around a romantic relationship between two 17-year-old boys. It's very good, I highly enjoyed watching it, but it absolutely suffers a bit from "fictional-male-characters-written-by-women syndrome". We will likely see in the future more examples of healthy or idealized gay male romances depicted in the future, and I'm curious about to what extent it contributes to the same problematic pipeline.