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A THREAD: Micro gender & sexual roles within the gay community, their relation to transgenderism & androphilic trans women, detailing many trans womens common pathway from homosexual male to homosexual transsexuals.
Strap in peeps, it's gonna get tranecdotal, detailed & dirty
Strap in peeps, it's gonna get tranecdotal, detailed & dirty
In our human interactions, sexuality & gender roles are significant & interlinked. In straight world, a form this often takes is: men use masculinity to attract women, women use femininity to attract men. These aren't the sole purposes of these roles, but they are important.
These roles took form, in some way, by pre-cursored biology. Men typically penetrate women, & women are typically penetrated. Because our bodies function intuitively this way, & have been fostered by evolutionary biology to do so. So how does this relate to homosexuals (male)?
Gay culture, especially in males, is highly sexual. Mainly because, testosterone is a hell of a drug, and can create an intense physical sex drive, that you can only truly understand if you've experienced it. Their culture & roles are, again, built around biological precursors.
In the average heterosexual socio-sexual interactions, men are limited by womens disconnect to their powerful T-sex drives, & thus a masculine role is shaped where men do various things to woo a wee lass, as it were. Such as providing security, displaying physical strength, etc.
In gay culture, there is a spectrum of masculinity & femininity that is not as vivid in straight culture. Some gay men are extremely feminine, played with dolls, the whole shablam. Other gay men are seemingly not so different from the average masculine straight man.
If you're a homosexual, you've probably heard of the question ''So who is the man in the relationship?''. To which the answer is typically ''Thats NOT how it works''. But, in some ways, that IS how it works. For some further reading on that: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1557988312455214
The intuitive assumption, borrowing from heterosexual culture, is that the more masculine partner, is the sexually insertive one (top) & the more feminine partner, the sexually receptive one (bottom), & vice versa, the insertive partner is assumed to be more masculine, etc.
If you've spent time in gay spaces, you know that this is actually true, to some extent. It is especially true for gay men at the feminine extreme of the spectrum. The hyper feminine ones often yearn the most of all homosexuals on average, to be penetrated by a masculine partner.
It isn't a purely sexual phenomenon either. These feminine men truly DESIRE to express their femininity, which comes naturally & comfortably to them, and have others, including most importantly their partners, valued & even celebrated, but sex does inform this & vice versa.
But then comes the complication, within the gay community, masculinity, on average, is heralded as the pinnacle of attractiveness. Sometimes this is even related to straight men, who are seen as inherently the most masculine, because on average, they undoubtable & simply are.
Feminine men, are not as valued as the counterparts at the other extreme of the spectrum within the gay community. They are often belittled, & tend to have less sexual & romantic attention than a hunky, can barely tell he's gay, homosexual male.
And the kicker is, these hyper masculine men, are often attracted to OTHER hyper masculine men, & they aspire to this masculinity because.. like many homosexuals, they want a masculine male. Complexly, this doesn't mean these men are all ''tops'', they're not, but they tend to.
This leaves highly feminine men in a difficult position, one where they are not only generally disrespected by larger society, but simultaneously, not very attractive in their own communities. There are only two loopholes (hehe) to this ,the double T's, twinks & trannies.
Twinks are known in gay world as youngish pretty boys. I'll use myself here as an example, as I was, if I may say so, an exceptionally attractive & thus valued, twink. These homosexuals are basically the only subgroup of gay men, in which femininity is ''tolerated''.
Because of the boyish, androgynous nature of twinks, they are assumed to be somewhat feminine/bottoms, & on average they tend to be, more so than average. Their youth & beauty gives them a pass of sorts, some gay men are twinks by chance at a certain age, some aspire to it.
As a twink, it is tolerated, sometimes even DESIRED, that you have a feminine role to some extent. This is often a comfortable place for most feminine men to exist if they are lucky enough with their genes, but this role only allows SOME femininity, and it is temporary.
A status as a twink relies on your ability to appear as a beautiful young boyish male, in his late teens/early twenties, for most. By the time you hit your mid/late twenties, almost all men simply cannot maintain their status as twinks, and thus lose their coveted feminine role.
For many gay men, twinkdom is subconciously understood as short relatively lived & also limited. The most extreme of feminine behaviours & desires are still not entirely acceptable or desired by other gay men. So most twinks, ''transition'' into a more masculine role as they age.
In the past as basically twink royalty, I was prideful. I KNEW people wanted me, but the men I desire most, hyper masculine men, were the most resistant to me. They could be with other hyper masculine gay men. ''Sorry, I want a REAL man, no twinks/fems'' common on the app Grindr.
''Why would I date a feminine twink, might as well date a woman then'' HMMM yes.. indeed... INTERESTING THOUGHT. In the gay community, even the most masculine gay guy, tends to look up to straight men. Straight men are highly desired, often even fetishized by gay men outright.
So, does it come to anyones surprise, really. That androphilic TW (HSTS) tend to transition young & escape their position as aging feminine men. I'm not saying their transition is purely based upon sex/romance, but it is a strong, often subconcious motivating factor. REAL SHIT
Because for most people, gay or not, sex is often a precursor & interlinked aspect of relationships/happiness in general, & is pretty fucking important. People placed in a highly comprimised position like fem gay men, who are minority to begin with, understand this viscerally.
Some androphilic TW (HSTS) are for whatever reason, so extremely feminine that they transition before they have any sexual contact with other men, & skip the gay experience all together. They often come from accepting backgrounds, etc, For the rest of us, i'll tell a tale.
I know, personally, of many fem gay men, who are simply at a crossroads in early adulthood. ''I am/feel highly feminine.. but I also want to be accepted by society & I want a potential mate, I want my life to have the full range of what is possible for happiness''.
So, which way, fem gay? You have three main options at this metaphorical, trident shaped path. Either, you accept that you are feminine gay man, & will simply age as such, & accept the limits of your desirability/acceptability. Maybe you don't feel THAT feminine, it's a spectrum.
Option 2, you butch it up. As you age, masculinity becomes more heavily associated with you as your youthful facial fat deposits desolve. Maybe, you're not so feminine that you can't fake it till you make it, & become a ''daddy'' with a nice masculine-ish gay partner to top you.
Option 3, my personal favourite. This is the option that is the most difficult (physically, emotionally, financially, & culturally), you transition & become a trans woman, & enter, to some extent, the heterosexual dating pool & the most feminine social role of ''woman''.
At the low cost (lmao) of medically feminizing your body, potentially being disowned, certainly being discriminated by society even more & going through painful surgeries & perhaps therapy to deal with dysphoria, you can be as feminine as your little gay heart desires, AND....
You get a chance at the one thing, that SO many gay men want, a masculine, straight (complicated, see my other thread, but similar enough) partner who will love & desire how feminine you are, fuck you till the night is long, and literally sweep you off your feet into the sunset.
For many people, this is simply the end result of using your one life, to chase the things you want most, no matter how difficult they may be. You may read this as being hyper sexual. But fundamentally, this has a profound impact emotionally on your potential happiness in life.
I talk with my fem gay friends often & listen to their lives. They aren't all doomed to misery & loneliness, ofcourse not. But there is an undertone of feeling limited, perhaps they are not feminine enought to WANT to transition, at the end of the day, society isn't built for us.
Personally, going through this transition, it has been difficult, but profoundly rewarding, to an extent I didn't realise was even possible. But I'm glad I took the hard road, because I got what I wanted, and that's the realest tea I can spill for yall.
