I’ve been around on this forum for quite a while but rarely see the need to post very much except for using the stories section as an opportunity to get people to read my work. Anyway, I’ve decided to break that habit to raise a point that has begun to get on my nerves a little on reading the threads on this board, namely the shocking levels of casual (and sometimes quite insistent) homophobia present among quite a lot of posters, even extending to one user recently describing how he has hurt gay people in the past while at the same time pursuing his interested in transsexuals.
The LGBT community has always been a sprawling mass of disparate identities and viewpoints and yet, still, I have always found it slightly surprising that the different branches of this so-called “community” have been so willing to adopt a confrontational stand point towards others. In particular, this applies to transgender people who are often viewed by homosexuals with suspicion and antagonism and react similarly in response. While it is important to recognise that homosexuality and transgender are not one and the same thing, that a transwoman is not at all the same as a gay man, these two minority groups, often viewed as unnatural by mainstream society, have a lot to gain from adopting a conciliatory standpoint towards each other. Notably, there is an unnecessary level of antagonism between the men who are attracted to transwomen and men who are attracted to other men.
On these boards, this translates as a world of “straight” men who lust after transsexual women denigrating anything they deem to be “gay” as if this was somehow a terrible thing, a disturbing abnormality that no normal man would want to be associated with. There are so many threads of men worried that liking transsexuals means they are gay. The issue here, as I see it, is not whether these guys are gay (there’s as much difference in desires and kinks within these guys as any other, none are at least 100% straight but certainly for some a lust for transsexuals indicates more of a gay side than it does for others), but why these guys consider being gay to be such an objectionable thing that the very thought that they themselves could be gay could stand in the way of their happiness and pleasure. There is an odd notion that those guys who lust after transsexuals but consider themselves “straight” are somehow better than those whose transsexual desires are more gay (partly but not totally linked to the idea that to be a “top” is more straight than to be a gay bottom). How can the one possibly be morally superior to the other?
As for me, I will happily admit to having both my straight side and my gay side, if you’re into labels I’m happy to call myself bisexual. I am a man in a long term relationship with a straight genetic girl, but I do not feel my gay thoughts or fantasies make me somehow any worse than a totally straight guy (obviously they would if I ever acted on these fantasies and cheated on my girl, but that would be equally true of a straight guy who sometimes fantasises about women other than his girlfriend). Anyone who has read my stories will know that I have a load of rather kinky fantasies but I don’t feel this should impact on how I treat real people, whether in person or online. I like to crossdress, but I do so for sexual pleasure, this does not make me the same thing as a genuine transwoman, who feels herself to be an actual woman even if born in a male body and therefore dresses and acts as a woman as her whole life not just sexually. Neither, however, do I feel this means I am less of a person or more worthy of abuse than a transwoman.
I guess this thread is a case in point - http://www.hungangels.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=18584 (This “club kid” would make the perfect t-girl). In this thread pictures are posted of a variety of crossdressers, emo kids, feminine twinks and all sorts else, basically anyone who looks feminine but isn’t undergoing any actual gender reassignment transition. Some of these guys and girls are hot, some of them really aren’t, that’s not the point. The point is that, worryingly, both the fans and haters of this thread rapidly adopt a disturbingly homophobic position. While the haters seem keen to put down anything they don’t like as “gay” and therefore instantly wrong, the fans are no better, worried and paranoid that their desire for femme bois and crossdressed sissies is somehow gay and wrong. Guess what, it is gay! But that can’t make it any more “wrong” than anything else.
I guess that all I’m asking is that people adopt a more tolerant stance towards other people’s desires and fetishes. A straight man is no better than a gay man, a transwoman no worse than one. If you’re not into something, there’s no reason aggressively to strike out at those who are. Everybody is different, what harm can there be in saying love and let love?
