Thoughts: Presenting and Reception

Since I began presenting full-time as a socially-defined female, I've noticed, more than anything, that strangers who are ostensibly-straight men make more public comments to me about my appearance than ever before. (Some gay men do, too.)

In fact, I never got comments on my appearance before. Or about what someone would like to do with me. *Shudder*

This is of course no surprise; I'd heard such completely sexist men utter these comments to other women before, and I've read/heard my fair share of societal critiques on the phenomenon (as many of any of my readers have as well, I'm sure).

But nothing compares to the experience of real, live, daily objectification.

So I won't go on telling you about the comments I get in particular, as I'm sure they'd be no surprise (however hilarious yet pathetic some may be).

I find fascinating however, that the straight men who openly objectify me have absolutely no idea that I was born biologically male.

I mean, how many times have we all heard a straight guy gloat about how "secure" he is in his heterosexuality? And yet - only 3 months into hormone replacement therapy - I am being objectified by these very men, who (at "best") might react to the knowledge of my transness in a manner not dissimilar to the men in the transphobic conclusion to Ace Ventura: Pet Detective; at worst, I could be physically and/or sexually assaulted.

(BTW, "transphobic" has gotten a red squiggly... I guess we're not using it enough!)

To me, this experience - of objectification by men who are so allegedly secure in their sexualities - completely blows apart any traditional conception of sexual attraction.

That is, unless we believe that sexual attraction boils down to one's presentation, and how that aligns with gender norms.

But in my opinion, this is not the most common belief in my society. In fact, it seems - by my crude guesstimation - that most people in my society define their sexuality by their feelings about others' physical body parts.

In public, many of these body parts are not visible. I'm focusing of course on sex/gender related characteristics only, and I'm not talking about secondary sex characteristics (e.g. height, body hair, voice, skin, distribution of body fat, etc).

The physical body parts I'm focusing on - in relation to how most people seem to define their sexuality - are primary sex organs like the vagina, penis, breasts, and/or other configurations of the "private areas."

So, of the men who decide to share their interest in having sex with me, let's suppose that most of them define their sexuality by what they assume is under my clothing (but in reality, isn't). What is it that they are really attracted to? My presentation, or what they imagine is underneath my clothing?

Does my presentation validate their imagination? Or is my presentation the very thing to which they are attracted?

In general, it's possible to assume that it could go either way, and/or be both. But of those individuals who openly objectify me, I think it is safe to assume that my presentation is just a means by which to justify what they assume must be underneath my clothing.

So what is it about my presentation that has this effect? My long hair? My breast forms? My cowboy boots? My tight pants? My puffy jacket, sewn in such a way that it creates the illusion of wide hips?

Not to get too personal - except completely personal - if a group of test subjects were to look at me naked, right now, most of them would "gender," or "sex" me as male (unless you had trained yourself to never assume anyone's sex/gender, in which case... I would love to get coffee with you). But if I throw on a few external "female" cues, all of a sudden everything changes.

I am privileged in some regards. I have mostly soft facial features. But this doesn't change the fact that I was born biologically male, and I have only been taking female hormones for a very short time.

It seems to me that somewhere in society, people are being taught what to imagine "should" be underneath others' clothes.

In America, we have a thing called Junior High - I'm not sure if it's called the same thing in other countries, but during the 8th grade of this academic institution (I was 14 years old), we were introduced - way too heteronormatively and gender-binarily - to the "two" human sex/genders and how they "should" interact.

Of course, like many young people of my and later generations, this was not my first brush with the "private" regions and acts associated with sex and gender. (Although pornography, for example, really only confused me; the first porn I saw was a picture of an older woman with a double-sided dildo emerging from her vagina, which I assumed was actually a phallus growing out of her body. Oh, the seeds of my non-binary perceptions!)

Anyway, I wonder if sex ed has anything to do with the way we imagine what is underneath others' clothing. Media and society show us how what presentations and secondary sex characteristics "match" with which sex/genders, and then sex ed swoops in and gives us all the details about what should be underneath, why it's there, and what you will probably want to do with it.

And then... puberty swoops in and pulls the whole meal together. Especially given how age-segregated our educational institutions are, youngsters are bathed in reinforcement of all those previously learned roles, norms and expectations about sex and gender.

Puberty acts like cement for the mold.

Suppose we weren't taught that sex and gender is typically heteronormative and binary. What if every person, by the age of 14, knew that any one of those folks with a "male presentation" could very well have "female private parts?" Or those with a "female presentation" could have "male private parts?"

If those guys who objectify me on the street had grown up in such a society, I wonder if they would still risk "emasculating" themselves by openly objectifying me?

If male/female norms weren't established, could a concept like "emasculation" not even exist?

Without concrete presentations on which to base our assumptions about another person's sex/gender, how would we define our sexualities? Would we define our sexualities?

Given the democratic nature of my society (i.e., majority rules), I expect that most people would still resort to equating presentations with sex/gender.

But I still like to imagine all the different ways people could decide what attracts them to others - in spite of sex/gender - without fear of repercussion or shame.