Shemales: Desiring Transgender through the Porn Industry

"Is he gay!? Or courious!? 

Or just a freak!?"

Topix.com

*Note: if you are a church member or search committee,
please, actually ready the scholarship and don't jump to conclusions based on visuals.
The thesis of the argument is about thinking critically and not judging on first glance.

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Defining Tranny-Chasers

“We’re the taboo, and where does taboo usually happen?" asks Wendy Williams, a trans performer. "Behind closed doors.” This is the reason, says Williams, that most of the consumption of Shemale porn and sex toys happens online. The viewers want that disconnect. They want the fantasy, not the reality. Ironically, Williams goes on, this separation is asserted by gay men as well as straight men. “Even if you go into the [gay] clubs, transsexuals and drag queens are primarily there for entertainment... It’s not really inclusive. We’re kind of in limbo, we’re in between both worlds.” In the end, gay and straight men work together to secure the patriarchy from trans bodies that they want to enjoy and discard. As such, they want Shemales to embody "the Best of Both Worlds," which is another way of the audience saying, they don't want trans women in either world. They want them to be an exception to the rules they set so they can do what they want without answering either to their homophobia or sexism - in their place, transphobia consumes them both. While in part 1 of "Shemales" I examined the way the Porn Industry Defines Transgender, in part 2, I will examine how the Porn Industry Defines Attraction to Transgender. As in the prior case, where the term Shemale functions as an understanding of transgender defined largely by the fantasies of straight cisgender men, here the attraction to trans persons is not structured through the loving (bisexual, pansexual, queer, gay, lesbian, straight) partners in the trans community but by those who define themselves as ardently outside the community and constitute their attraction as a form of fetishizing based in subjugation and shame.

Under names such as "Tranny Chasers," the consumers of Shemale Porn define themselves as separate from the partners of trans persons in ways that pathologize their own attraction yet displace this corruptions of desire by establishing trans persons as hyper-sexual and predatory in their entrapment of innocent straight cisgender men. This self-definition often occurs online. An illustrative example comes from the Encyclopedia Dramatica, which at once pokes fun at the online arguments around Shemales at the same time as it reports and imitates the genuine backlash the community receives. The Encyclopedia explains the focus on shaming or degrading trans women more than trans men as stemming from patriarchal sexism. According to such a definition, "Shemales" are "the inferior type of transsexual. Unlike their FTM counterparts who seek self improvement through means of masculinity, MTFs degrade themselves and all mankind by lowering themselves to the disgraceful level of a woman." This line of argument is unfortunately neither fictive nor new. Christian theology running back to Augustine's City of God testify that "hermaphrodites" or other person existing in a gender non-binary state should be assigned masculine because it is closer to human perfection. This follows an Aristotelian understanding of human generation wherein men were the Platonic ideal of humanity and females were males who were underdeveloped in the womb. As such, Shemales or trans women are doubly shameful. "It is popular opinion," continues the Encyclopedia, "that God made these people for the lulz of all mankind, as there is no bigger joke than wasting half your life as an emo faggot, only to some day, after a shitload of agonizing surgery, look vaguely girlish and have a fake pussy." Invoking divine as well as natural authority, the patriarchy positions trans women as existing outside even the subjugated position of women, put in a state of exception outside of human dignity and respect. In the end, the Encyclopedia concludes, "MTFs that are attracted to men are most likely just gays in total denial, and they are willing to go through all that surgery and change as their warped way to justify the fact that they crave hot cock." Thus both by nature and by an exemption from nature, Shemales both deserve and want subjugation by men. This puts the patriarchy in the position not of fulfilling their own taboo desires by executing the desires of Shemales, nature, and God. 

A key problem for the treatment of trans persons and the defaulting on the taboo treatment that accompanies Shemale pornography is a lack of terminology and critical thought on the attraction to trans persons. Broad surveys turn up a variety of affirmative language, such as pansexual, transsenual, transamorous, and trans* erotic. Then there are the technical terminology proposed by the sciences, such as gynemimetophilia and andromimetophilia. Here the language reflects an attempt to categorize trans persons as woman-like or man-like and the attraction to them to be the desire for artifice. For this reason, it has not caught on among either those in the trans community, their fans, or their partners. Other terms stress a commercial and media appreciation, such as transfan, admirer, and tammyfan. Others reflect the often aggressive mode of relations that many men assert when encountering trans persons, such as trans catcher, tranny chaser, and tranny hawk. The aggressive way that tranny chasers (those attracted to the fetish of trans bodies) has been well recounted in the trans and cross-dressing community. Helen Boyd attests to the social and political problems that tranny chasers cause for the trans community. "Tranny chasers are the big bugaboo in the crossdressing community, because their very existence suggests that crossdressers are not all as straight as they claim to be," attests Boyd. This relationship, however, can breed cooperation as the trans community is often in need of the social and financial capital the straight men offer. "Chasers are willing to give crossdressed men the kind of attention they desire, and that attention (a drink, a compliment) validates the crossdresser's experience, and completes the fantasy of feeling like a woman." These gifts come at a price. These real life bribes reflect the cultural work of Shemale Porn: trans persons are given a place in the patriarchy but only if they are willing to be defined by the fantasies, shame, and subjugating power of straight cisgender men.

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(Un)Desiring Transgender

To understand how "Tranny Chasers" fetishize and pathologize their own behavior and excuse it by pinning the blame on predatory hyper-sexual trans persons, it is helpful to close read the narratives that such Chasers and Reformed-Chasers tell themselves. Accounts of straight cisgender men living out their fantasy and then pathologizing trans women as well as their own attraction to them are common on the internet. A representative example of such a narrative comes from Reddit.com, where one user, "a 21 year old straight male," recounts having Been free from shemale porn for two years. Using the language of medicine, the goal of such narratives is openly to mark the attraction to Shemales (Trans women) as an illness that can be cured. "I've decided to do a post aimed at those who's recovering from watching / abusing transsexual /shemale / ladyboy porn," writes the author, promising to walk others through the ways he "rewired" his brain so that he no longer desired trans women. "[A] recovery towards your real sexuality is possible" he claims, appropriating the Trevor Project anti-LGBT bullying slogan, "it it gets better. Oh boy, it does." In fact, he comes close to affirming trans-orientation as a form of sexual identity. "I also want you to learn to accept yourself no matter what your true feelings are," he says. But he adds that these feelings should be abandoned as hopeless and kept in the past. "[F]eel no shame in the past. You're here for a reason, and that is because you've learned from the it" he concludes. "There's no shame in yesterday. There's only the hope of tomorrow." The structure of the reform story testifies to a narrative that imagines the attraction to transgender as an unnatural disease that is not inherent in straight men but imposed on them by Shemales must be overcome by shamefully eschewing the trans community after they have been thoroughly used and exploited. 

True to the cure-narrative form, this story begins by admitting (as if to a doctor or rehab discussion group) that the man not only desired trans women, but the porn revealed that he desired to become a trans woman. "Somewhere along the line I began to dabble in porn featuring transsexual women," he writes. "I won't go into too much detail, but I didn't really find it interesting to imagine myself being the one who does the penetrating - I imagined myself being the 'girl." He characterizes the shift to an open desire for and identification with trans women a dangerous "form of escalation." Over time, he began to admit to himself what was going on inside himself around 2010. Yet the author does not pin the trans-orientation as stemming from natural or social causes, but because of an illness and overuse of mind affecting drugs. "I doubted my sexuality very heavily towards the end of 2010, and as luck would have it , due to consuming various illegal substances I fell into a drug psychosis," he writes. As a result of his psychosis, he writes,"I believed myself to be gay, and I lost any form of sexual drive towards women." Eventually, he says, the psychosis gave him a new disorder, "transsexual feelings." The author would eventually transition. He lived "my fantasy of being a 'woman'" for three months (he stresses that he did this "in public") before being assigned to a "psychiatric hospital." As a result of the counseling, he believes he was cured of the attraction to men and blamed Shemale porn and trans women for screwing up his life.

At this point, the author began his campaign to undesire transgender and to help others reject the trans-orientations connected with Shemale porn as well. "Upon finding NoFap," writes the author, "I said something to myself: "Never again." This referred to all and any pornography concerning trangenderism." In line with the mission of such websites, the author promises that it is possible to "rewire" the brain to undo the effects of transgender. This is a process, he warns, that may take time but will be effective if readers embrace the unnaturalness of trans-orientation. "You have to understand that arousal at transgender pornography is a form of fetischism - an acquired taste that is originally not part of nature" he writes. Transgender and the attraction to trans bodies he says is "something that was not originally part of human evolution" because certain transition technologies developed to their current state only recently in the 20th century. As a result, "[i]t is then impossible to assume that mankind as a whole has adopted to these inventions and that arousal from transsexuals is a sexuality you are born with." Based on this belief that trans bodies are only possible with modern technology, it is in essence artificial, the author argues that attraction or identification with transgender is unnatural. This rhetorically positions trans bodies are outside of natural affections and justifies why innocent straight men would be interested in them: "it makes sense that the curious mind would check it out and eventually escalate to masturbating to it." This, he continues, does not mean that he wants to have sex with trans people in real life. He admits that there are those who date trans people and express genuine affection but that does not describe most of the audience of Shemale porn, "It is rare in the grand scheme of things." In fact, he claims, 90% of people who watch Shemale porn claims they would not have relations with real trans people.

The author works hard to re-narrate his life to excuse his identification as a trans woman and his personal (not merely virtual) attraction to trans women. He admits that he had two "close-up encounters with transsexuals" but claims that both were "purely accidental," he was "drunk" and was effectively "trapped" by the overly sexual trans women who (like characters in a porn) were brutishly desiring of his straight cis-gender attention. Indeed, his narratives work hard to dehumanize trans women in order to divest the stories of any sense of real attraction. The first trans woman he met in a club. He calls her "fairly unattractive,"  but adds that he "drunk and we somehow maked out," as though it was her sexuality and not his that instigated the encounter. How could he desire such a woman. "Her lips felt very strange; very dull," he claims. "The kiss was very... lacking." Not only does she lack true womanhood or manhood, his body somehow seemed to affirm his belief that trans women are unnatural. He admits that "I did get some blood pumping in my member, but I didn't even get a semi-boner... It was nothing like the kisses I've had with a biological woman. It just felt wrong." The second story is nearly identical. It also happened in "a club" suggesting that the author in fact frequented locations that featured trans women and that he knowingly sought them out. Nonetheless, he claims it was not him who instigated this encounter either. "A "girl" came on to me. We talked. I got a reaction down there, as one would while being touched by somebody who looks like a female" he defends. As if sensing a momentary break in his revisionist history, he adds that he "later found out what she was" and "Lost any attraction that I had for her in that instant." Now that he has rejected his past, he claims that he has returned to a natural disgust of trans people. "While it makes me feel uncomfortable, I feel neither lust nor need for me to seek out pornography or get in touch with a transperson in real life," he claims, completing his cure narrative as a reformed tranny chaser. Having used and abused the trans community, the straight male wipes his hands clean and leaves trans women to wallow in the pathological and marginalized place imagined for transgender in the patriarchy.

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Disturbing Heteronormativity

In part 1, we found that Shemales are defined by the porn industry as an impossible contradiction of hyper-femininity and an aggressive penetrating phallus. Likewise, tranny-chaser society defines its attraction to transgender as a pathological interruption, that is nonetheless sustained within heteronormative culture. Rather than embracing pansexuality or queerness, heterosexuality remains seemingly secure and separate as part of the patriarchy by making Shemale Porn a place of exception where the rules and responsibilities of sexual relations do not apply. In other words, by marketing Shemales as "the Best of Both Worlds," the Porn Industry promises the straight world that it can have its cake and eat it too. This is an operation that is nonetheless run with the tension of anxiety. For many, the very possibility that gender is not so simple offers the terrifying possibility that their straightness may not mean what be what they imagined. For women such as WorriedCatherine, "Your Brain Rebalanced" offers an outlet for heteronormative couples to play out their anxieties about transgender. In a November 2013 post, Catherine posts that "it turns out that [her husband] has been spending a lot of time (an hour or two or three) many evenings a night watching transsexual porn." This behavior causes a crisis for women such as Catherine because they fear that their control over sexuality is not complete. "[H]e possibly has desires I can never even fulfil," Catherine laments. Many like Catherine point to Shemale Porn and other trans media as infecting heteronormativity, as  Netmums  and  Topix.com  threads evidence.  These posts worry whether this challenges her boyfriend's sexuality. "Now does make him wanna know what's its like to be with another man or shemale," wonders one. "Is he gay!? Or courious!? Or just a freak!?"

The power of the Shemale's exceptionality is epitomized by online traffic but is sustained even in face to face relations by eschewing these encounters to taboo spaces in clubs and bars where drug-use is common. For Catherine's husband, as with others, the virtual trans-orientation directed and defined his lived experiences. "He was a member of BDSM and transvestite and transsexual meeting communities," she writes, "and every few months he would even pay money... to visit mistresses or, particularly in the last year or so, pre-op transsexuals and/or transvestites for anal sex." As in the case of other narratives, excuses other than sexual orientations and the attractiveness of trans bodies are invoked. "He'd combine this with drug use," she claims. "[S]o he'd arrange it all online, go and get high and then act it out." Here, as in the previous self-narrative, the use of drugs is used to explain how a supposedly straight and healthy person could possibly be attracted to a trans person. "[H]e says that he's not attracted to shemales, that he couldn't even get an erection most of the time," claims Catherine. [I]t was more a compulsive and addictive activity, a search for a high like he would get with drugs. That the anticipation involved was akin to drug use and he explains the transsexual stuff by saying he just got dragged into more and more extreme things." Catherine's story affirms a growingly popular narrative of trans-orientation being an unnatural psychosis formed by drug use. This associates one kind of artificial, taboo state with transgender. Nonetheless, the damage is done, she claims. "That this is part of his sexuality now" she writes, "and it'll always be there." In the patriarchal structuring of space, the "there" of the transgender is always already "here" in the midst of things. While eschewed to the margins, the danger of transgender is that its influences run across the sexual divisions of place like a drug in the bloodstream.

The anxiety about Shemales who are everywhere and nowhere suggests that problem that is trying to be located is in the fantasies that work to organized transgender rather in trans bodies themselves. As a result, the search for trans bodies to blame runs amuck and sees transgender everywhere. In a warped self-reflexive motion, narratives turn trans-attraction into evidence of male homosexuality or trans-identification. "I've had a very similar thing happen in the past to me," writes one response to the stories. "After lots of investigating and questions I found out my boyfriend was gay. He now lives with a cross dresser. Chances are so is your man." Another responder to the Netnum post says that her husband also shared trans identification. A few weeks into the marriage, he confessed to her, "he liked to dress in womens clothes but that he absolutely didnt want to become a woman!" This woman also worried that the presence of Shemale Porn suggested that he may be gay. Each of these responses at once repeat the conclusions of the others and extend them with their own stories. The majority of responses end up taking some form of this reasoning: given the belief that trans women, including shemales, cross-dressers, and transvestites, are men and not women, then their partners must be gay. Their responses are damning of the relationship if not the partner. Numerous suggest that if the boyfriend can be cured of his attraction to trans women, their heterosexuality may stay in tact. "[T]his guy is sick as all gays," writes one response, "get him help'put a block on pc 'they make meds for ppl like this they need to take them." As the pathological language evidences, while the tranny chase that turns back on the tranny chasers may seem like self-reflection, bringing a suspension of tension, instead it is rather a folding back in on itself. The system becomes so paranoid of transgender that it turns its own fetishistic desire for trans bodies into the proof positive that transgender is shameful.

Despite the heated violence repeated throughout the culture of Tranny Chasers, at times these dialogs turn into sincere self-reflection as alternative models of gender and sexuality begin to break through the Shemale Hermeneutic with life-giving as well as dangerous possibilities. Such narratives suggest that an attraction to trans women should not be conflated with a lack of attraction to cis women, often citing personal experiences. "I have always been curious about transsexuals even to an erotic degree so long as they were passable and at least feminine," he writes, suggesting that his orientation towards the feminine was elastic enough to include a wide variety of women. "95% of men have looked at [trans porn] once," claims another response. "Doesn't mean he's gay." While these narrative do not embrace trans-attraction as legitimate, they nonetheless do not think the assumption of homosexuality needs to stem from an interest in trans porn. In this negative space, the lack of definition opens up onto a host of alternatives, some affirmative and others offering yet another way to objectify trans bodies establish a distance between the Shemale and her audience. "[P]erhaps he is just into the 'weird' factor rather than actually getting off on it," writes on post. "I mean people watch slasher/horrors without actually wanting to kill people." Such comparisons, having sex with a trans woman and murdering people reveal the shadowy background to which the patriarchy eschews all bodies and desires it pathologizes. It is the space where pathologized love looks a lot like murderous hate. It is the fantasies (evident in such games as Grand Theft Auto) where you can fuck someone, assault them, and leave without consequences. As the real life abuse and death of trans women attest, these fantasies practiced in games and pornography daily become real violences.

What then are the alternatives? As of yet, it seems as though Shemale Porn and Tranny Chaser culture cannot yet imagine in itself an arrangement where trans lives matter. From outside, people comment and educate. Rarely, the occasional voice chimes into the forums, such as one commenter who suggests that the surprised partner of the trans-oriented man openly and honestly explore these desires in the bedroom. "Buy a strap-on and surprise him," she writes. If such alternatives were ventured, straight cisgender men and heterosexual couples might begin to admit that the erotic pathology that they ascribed to trans bodies has more to do with their own violent desires rather than locatable in the trans body itself. Through these open dialogues and exploration of possibilities, hetero culture may begin to reform their own violence systems of desire and shame. This self-conscious self-attention will liberate the trans community from the shackles of having to embody the fantasies and fears of patriarchal heterosexual culture. As a result, more trans people will live safe from the violence of the Shemale Porn industry and Tranny Chasers. And in time, perhaps, there can be a reconciliation were former tranny chasers can engage trans bodies they desire with care and dignity. In this hoped for alternative, new relations can be formed and olds ones reformed. Shemales may yet be reclaimed as an affirmative gender construct and Tranny Chasing can turn into honest, safe, and respectful pansexual attraction.

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Return to Part 1:

"Shemales: Defining Transgender Through the Porn Industry"

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Shemales: Defining Transgender through the Porn Industry

“It’s a porn term that describes a genre.
That way, some country, straight-ass guy 
in the corner is going to understand. 
You say ‘transsexual’ & they’re confused,
 you say ‘shemale’ & they know what that is”*

Wendy Williams

*Note: if you are a church member or search committee,
please, actually ready the scholarship and don't jump to conclusions based on visuals.
The thesis of the argument is about thinking critically and not judging on first glance.

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The Definition

How does society get its relations and information about transgender? For a majority of men in the United States, their first and most instructive encounter with trans women are likely to be through a subgenre of pornography called "Shemale Porn." In an article listing a variety of amusing porn titles, Funny or Die promotes an advertisement, "A Shemale for All Seasons." The ad asks the question: "I know what you’re thinking. 'Wait, aren’t Shemales just for Autumn?' No, you’re wrong, and this porn is here to prove it. Shemale’s are for ALL seasons and especially Christmas time." Featuring a cover showing a trans woman wearing an bright green elf costume, "Jules" helps Santa with sexual release. She is advertised as "the best of both worlds." While it may seem to take the matter too seriously, with the name of the film gesturing back to the classic "A Man For All Seasons," an articulate remembering of a man who represented a controversial view-point in a critical moment of cultural upheaval, the Shemale Porn seems to beg the question: is this how we want history to remember the trans community? As historians of culture can attest, erotic media provide critical information in imagining how peoples of the past lived. In terms of realities that are shaped on perceptions, the trans community past, present, and future are at least partially defined by the powerful cultural presence that is the Shemale. 

In her Post-Transsexual Manifesto, Sandy Stone calls for a shift towards a model of gender that embraces the multiplicity of social constructions suggested by the term genre. Gender and genre share a common etymology, stemming back to the Latin, "Genus." In other words, gender and genre simply mean "category." Yet while the latter remains alive in creative arts with dynamic changes in meanings with every new iteration or new generation of artists come to embody it. Indeed, there is even a relationship between gender and genre. Certain genres are associated with certain genders. Westerns promise a kind of lone butch masculinity. Romantic-comedies always seem to summon up a manic form of femme-ness. In this way, genres lay scripts and expectations for gender. For the trans community, the associated genres of trans literature are a veritable minefield of marginalization and objectification. Among the most prominent and dangerous genders that defines trans lives are "the Shemale" and the attraction to trans bodies through "Shemale porn."

"Shemale is a term exclusively employed for the porn industry, for movies featuring pre-op transsexual women," explains MyLadyboyDate.com. Despite the terms offensive associations, it is regularly used by certain populations of men when addressing trans women. "Interestingly and unfortunately," observes LadyboyDate, "it's a very popular word, with way more results on Google on the subject than for any other term." The popularity of the term demonstrates the power of narrative. For many, masturbating to Shemale Porn is only context in which they come to know and relate to trans bodies. As a result, their own tense feelings of objectification, fetishes, and shame become invariably tied to transgender. Transgender becomes defined by pornography as a deviant sexuality that embodies all the conflicted feelings of the desirers rather than reflecting the realities of the trans community. Despite the prominence of the term, few people seem to be familiar with its definitions. Indeed, the power of the term Shemale is a lack of consideration of alternatives.  The pervasive confusion that the term inspires is evident in internet forums and encyclopedias. Wikipedia offers extensive definitions and sub-entries on the term and genres of Shemales. The entry explains that while Shemale is currently defined by the Porn Industry, it had a wider history in attacks against cis-gender women as well. Feminist intellectuals or other women in the workplace of the 19th century were sometimes called "Shemales" to describe a female taking on a male role. Likewise, lesbians were described as Shemales because they took on a male role in pursuing women sexually. There is then a continuity with the terms use in porn where Shemales are primarily portrayed as the penetrator, a supposedly male position.

A telling example comes from Yahoo Answers, where one user asks, "What is the difference between transgender, transsexual, shemale, ladyboy, and tranny?" For many, engaging with the trans community or even becoming educated on transgender is blocked by misunderstanding of terminology. A host of terms are available that all seem to mean the same and yet the majority of them seem rooted in the discourse of porn. The "best answer" (as voted by the site users) to the Yahoo question tries to distinguish these diverse histories. "Shemale is a term used by the porn industry to refer to transgendered individuals, and often more specifically, transsexuals," writes the answers. Then goes on to warn about the use of the term outside of the media of porn. "It is seen by transsexuals similar to how the N-word is seen by African-Americans," writes the answer, but adds "except that it is not used by transsexuals themselves to refer to each other." Wikipedia explains the term as an overdetermination of gender by physical sex, "in this view, the term emphasizes the biological sex of a person and neglects their gender." The entry also stresses that the term is so bound to porn that it suggests a very narrow association between transgender and sex work. 

Despite its pejorative use and associations with sex work, some academics still defend their use of the term Shemale. "Some biologists have used shemale to refer to male non-human animals displaying female traits or behaviors, such as female pheromones being given off by male reptiles," reports Wikipedia. Likewise, "The term is also used by some psychologists to refer to male-to-female transsexual people who have transitioned to female but have not undergone genital surgery" (Wikipedia). Others have tried to find a technical use for the term within the queer and trans community. In 1969, Janice Raymond, in The Transsexual Empire: the Making of the She-Male, invoked the pornographic term to paint trans women as an aggressive, sexual male invasion of the feminine sphere constituting  a "rape" of feminist culture. Others offered more optimistic meanings. In 1990, Jennifer Anne argued in From Masculine to Feminine and All Points in Between, defined a "Shemale" as "usually a gay male who lives full-time as a woman; a gay transgenderist" (Wikipedia). Likewise, The Oxford English Dictionary defines Shemale as a kind of trans/gay hybrid, "a passive male homosexual or transvestite" (Wikipedia). These practices have been highly criticized as being highly unscientific. Rather than use precise technical terms or reference language drawn from the society being addressed, these scientists impose derogatory language borrowed from the porn industry. This demonstrates that science and medicine are not free from the cultural power of porn in defining transgender early and distinctly.

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The Porn Industry

The problem with the term "Shemale" is not simply that is functions primarily to define transgender through the discourse of sex work, but that the way the porn industry treats trans performers and the narratives that they chose to tell are themselves oppressive. In a  Salon.com  article, a trans man going by "Tomcat" reports of the marginalization of trans performers. “I still encounter many non-trans performers who will not work with [female] Ts performers because they consider [them] to be more of a STI risk to do a scene with," Tomcast testifies. "This is bullshit," he adds. "In a industry where everyone is tested and everyone makes choices, the same risks are present regardless of gender identity.” The ideology suggested by the isolation of the trans community is that transgender bodies are somehow more inherently pathological. Furthermore, the Shemale genre defines transgender in porn as almost exclusively feminine. On her Tumblr, Tranzfat brings attention to the exclusion of trans men from prominent trans performances, "Because it’s the only kind of trans porn there is, i.e. trans men don’t exist." While notable exceptions exist, it is evident to all that "Porn featuring trans men is rare because it’s a niche market" because "the vast majority of porn is made for white men." In other words, the definition of transgender in the porn industry as Shemale is fueled by the simultaneous desire for a transerotic, transphobic taboo and the homoerotic, homophobic desire for feminine phallus.  As will be explored later, the term Shemale promoted in the porn industry instills a sense of transgender as a desirable taboo, an exciting danger, that can be enjoyed by not embraced.

The mistreatment of trans performers are reinforced by the Shemale Porn that they are paid to sustain in the cultural imagination despite the progress the transgender movement has made in the past decades. “People still search for Ts porn using ‘Shemale,'” Tomcat says. “To me, this is like searching online for a cab company by typing in ‘stagecoach.’ It’s an antiquated term that is ignorant, incorrect and no longer OK to use.” The intentional use of the term Shemale is at once derogatory and a rhetorical move to set back the clock to an hour when transgender rights and dignities were less respected. The pervasiveness of the term Shemale is mirrored by the use and intent of other terms such as "chicks with dicks, tranny porn, or t-girl porn." These derogatory terms point back to the primary audience of Shemale porn: "straight" cisgender men. This imagined audience is evident to trans performers, such as Wendy Williams, who acknowledges "Shemale Porn" as a "Straight Specialty." These straight men are also the typical partners portrayed in the pornography. Typically, the cismale subject becomes penetrated by the trans woman. The use of derogatory language reasserts a sense of difference, superiority, and disgust over transgender bodies. They enjoy imagining being put in the "submissive" or "feminine" sexual position and the derogatory language is a way to reclaim a sense of power. While some claim that the working conditions of Shemale performers is not as bad as reported, others, such as the blogger, Tranzfat takes issue with the way the industry and narratives position trans performers in a state of dejection or subjection, "Because you never see a trans woman in porn smiling or laughing." By playing up a distaste for transgender, the consumers of Shemale porn are able to cover up their desire for and even possible identification with the trans community.

In recent years, the Porn Industry has shown signs of wavering to pressure from progressive transgender politics. A key sign of this positive change came in 2008 in the form of the support of the Transgender Erotica Awards where trans performers can have their contribution to the industry respected and recognized. The Awards are sponsored by Grooby Productions, an adult industry production company. At first, the awards were named "The Tranny Awards" until the industry was forced to admit that the disrespect suggested by the name of the awards outweighed the good of the recognition. With the new awards and new name, the Awards work to change the place and perception of trans performers in the porn industry. The advantage of have an Award show specifically for trans performers was that diversity in the community and profession could be recognized. A few of the award categories included "Best FTM [Female to Male] Performer", "Best Non-TS (non-Transsexual) Performer," and "Best Foreign (Non-US) Performer." Despite the number of awards offered, however, the name and diversity of performers still remain relatively small and concentrated on trans women who either have or do no have a penis. While some believe that the positive change will happen over time, others are actively working to transform the circumstances. A key example of this is “Doing It Ourselves: The Trans Women Porn Project.” It's director, Tobi Hill-Meyer left mainstream porn “to create an alternative that allowed trans women to be represented the way each performer wanted to see herself represented,” reports Salon.com. “More and more performers are speaking out about changes they’d like to see and setting up their own websites or productions.” This, some suggest, may transform the way transgender is defined and treated in the porn industry. 

  

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The Genre

In an impassioned diatribe on "Why “Shemale” Porn is not OK," blogger tranzfat composes a list of reasons she opposes the industry's definition of trans performance. "1. Because… you guessed it, fuck you," she writes and echoes again in point 10. Within this emotional exhortation, Tranzfat goes into particular complaints. Highlights include issues with the way trans feminine embodiments are portrayed, "2. Because it only feature women with large breasts, often augmented ones, which not only perpetuates the idea that “real women” have big boobs," "8. Because there are never any fat transwomen," and "5. Because there are never any 'post op' transwomen in trans porn, because that’s just too close to the 'real thing' and there’s no mystery/fetish to be had. I can’t play the game 'who’s the tranny' when it’s two 'normal looking' women!" To this point, another blogger had responses from FreedomInWickness, an intersex trans worker. FreedomInWickness writes on the streotypical feminine image that the Shemale Porn genre uses. "It’s fair to say a majority of 'shemale' porn features girls with big tits, but it absolutely not only and always." While exceptions do exist, both bloggers agree that the porn industry primarily sets stereotypical feminine beauty standards on Shemale performers, that is, besides the demands for a fully functioning penis. The simultaneous presentation of the hyper-feminine with the hyper phallic creates a particular effect desired by the audience.

On Quara.com, the topic of how a trans woman becomes a "Shemale" in particular heats up and gets into how the genre defines transgender in particular ways based on narrative, sex acts, and audience. "Someone who self labels as "shemale" could technically get GRS surgery or take hormones," writes one Anonymous poster. "[B]ut their marketability as 'shemale' in porn would be eliminated because the shemale identity is essentially a bigendered one." While the transgender and intersex community might counter that the definitions of being trans are elastic enough to include many different genres of embodiments, the turn to "bigender" to describe "Shemales" gets at how the subgenre makes particular demands on trans body. "The people who buy shemale porn, in general, are looking for a particular image," continues the post. "They want a woman with a functioning penis... In a way, that feeds into a negative and exploitative stereotype of the transgender female as the best of both worlds." Indeed, when many trans persons are told they are "the best of both worlds," the echoes of porn slogans are marketing are evident. Rather than attending to the personal identity or chosen embodiment of the trans person, they become defined by the demands of those attracted to the genre of porn. In this way, Shemale is defined more by the audience and marketing than by the trans community themselves. This, more than a mere relation to the sex work industry, is why trans people take offense. A similar debate rages between the trans community and the medical industry over who gets to define terminology.

“[Men] get tired of just the same old thing. Transsexuals are more feminine, they’re like hyper-feminine. To me, it’s kind of get the best of both worlds,” Madison Montag, a nominee for Transsexual Performer of the Year, tells Salon.com. Using the language of Shemale Porn slogans, "Best of Both Worlds," Montag gestures to the expectations set by the porn market for what makes a trans woman attractive. The demand for Shemales is the desire not for the trans feminine as such but for the taboo aroused through contradictions. The Shemale is supposed to super feminine to make the phallus feel safer, less homoerotic for men. In order to fulfill this fantasy of being "both" hyper phallic and securely femme, trans women are supposed to work hard to accentuate their femininity when they play Shemales. Otherwise, they are not attractive to these "Tranny Chasers." “I pull my hair up into ponytail and throw on some lip gloss and people just think I’m a tall girl with big boobs,” recounts Montag to Salon on her day to day life as a trans woman. To become the Shemale her viewers desire, however, she needs to embody more of a contradiction, one that has real life effects on her body.  “You need to seem extremely feminine, but if you want to seem feminine, then you need to be on hormones," attests Montag. "[B]ut if you’re on hormones, you can’t stay hard and come, and if you can’t stay hard and come, you’re a bad performer.” The difficult if not impossible demands of the audience of Shemale porn demonstrate a disconnect between the consumers of the fantasy and real life trans women. 

Regardless of how one judges the current industry, the anonymous poster on Quara.com points towards ways to improve the treatment of trans persons in and outside porn. "My feeling," writes the post, "is that porn which is made to satisfy the needs of chasers will continue to perpetuate a false sense of the transgender woman (or man) unless it is either made by transgender people, or the porn industry actually becomes sensitive to the needs of transgender people (not likely)." So long as the porn industry privileges the demands of its audiences over the care and respect of its trans performers, the power dynamic will continue to keep Shemale Porn a marginalized and fetishized subculture. Indeed, the post argues that so long as people hold onto the term "Shemale," transgender rights will not effectively break into the porn industry. "People who use the term 'shemale' with regard to porn consumption usually are pinpointed by the transgender community as either being really uneducated or as being a 'chaser' or someone who fetishizes the transgender community," claims the post. "If you are an admirer, don't be a chaser and don't use the term shemale." More optimistic than others, the anonymous poster points to a few companies that offer a better model of power dynamics, definitions, and narratives. "There are actually independent companies run by transgender people for transgender people," notes the post, "such as Trannywood Pictures, or the independent video production that Buck Angel® Pioneering Filmmaker, Speaker, and LGBTQ Advocate does." In all likelihood, porn will continue to define transgender in much the same was as it defines gender and sex in other areas of culture. Yet, by attending to the words, narratives, and contexts in which transgender is imagined and by reclaiming power over the engines of the industry, trans lives can reclaim themselves from the negative work of the word "Shemale."

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Go to Part 2:

"Shemales: Desiring Transgender through the Porn Industry"

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The Hanging Tree: Remembering the Transgender Community

"Are you, are you coming to the tree,
wear a necklace of hope,
side by side with me?"

The Hanging Tree
Suzanne Collins

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End Times

On the last day of Transgender History Month, I wake up early to the scripture set for Sunday, November 30th, in Catholic and Congregational churches is the Gospel of Mark 13:1-37. In it, Jesus prophesies the hard days ahead. In particular, the author of Mark is living in the wake of the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem by the Roman government. But Jesus's words extend further. "Be watchful! Be alert!" he warns, "Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes from place to place and there will be famines. These are the beginnings of the labor pains."  (Mark 13: 8-33). These are chastening words to hear in November as the Liturgical Year is coming to an end. Indeed, the final days of the Christian cycle always dwells on Apocalyptic visions. This is not for reasons of despair but to remind those who have heard the scripture throughout the year that the revolution of values proposed means great difficulty for all involved. These endings are also new beginnings, "labor pains." When this month is over and Advent begins, the tone shifts from despair to hope and anticipation. "Woe to pregnant women and nursing mothers in those days. Pray that this does not happen in winter," (Mark 13: 17-18) strikes with palpable warning of the destruction that comes before the story resets with the birth of Jesus at Christmas and the restart of the Liturgical year.

Revolutions must be prepared for divisiveness, those who will set "nation... against nation and kingdom against kingdom." A radical collectivity, such as the community Jesus modeled in the 1st century CE calls us not to give in to such divisions but to always seek out the other, the poor and the marginalized as our kindred . These mounting deaths and systematic violence can feel impossible to overcome. “They will hand you over to the courts. You will be beaten in synagogues. You will be arraigned before governors and kings because of me, as a witness before them," Jesus warns (Mark 13:9). The places where the law is read, justice is carried out, power is ordered can all be turned against us with the aim to divide and conquer. These are the Hanging Trees of Myers, Cleveland, Ferguson, Panem and we might add Jerusalem and Golgotha. When Mark is writing his Gospel, he knows not only how the Jewish and Christian communities will be split and fragmented but how Jesus, who he writes speaking these words, will soon find himself on a "hanging tree" of the Roman government. Jesus hangs on his tree and calls for others to follow him. This may mean hanging side by side with those we are told are criminals, boundary crossers, revolutionaries, but they are our fellow victims of a system which opens wide to hang us all. It is this "hanging tree" (the Cross/Crucifix) that becomes a symbol for hope but one that does not hide the scars of those who have died before us.

Getting out of bed on this day, the Transgender Day of Remembrance, can be that much harder when reading literature that claims that "It Gets Better" only after it gets much much worse. Yet by considering such days in context provides a reason and an impetus for action. Apocalyptic literature is a genre defined by endings. By its structure it asks the question I am asking: how do we move on when the past and the future is filled with destruction of all the things and people we love? When all things come to an end, our systems, our communities, our own lives, will it mean anything? The challenge to remember the trans community is to work for a world that we may not see. We may never reach the promised land, the utopia at the end of the revolution, and that stresses how important it is that we do not work for ourselves. If these are "labor pains" then it is possible and likely many of us will not live through the birthing process. Even more, transgender narratives teach us that things often do not become themselves until some time after our initial birth. The future requires rearing as well as midwifing. Remembering the trans community may mean that those who inherit the world that we build may look radically different than us and those who have come before us. "Be watchful! Be alert!" Transformation demands nothing less than an act of love without predetermining or categorizing or fixing what and who our beloved people may become and what or who may be included.

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Re-membering Transgender

Can you remember Yaz'min Shansez? Pictured below, Yaz'min was a thirty-one years old trans woman of color who lived in Myers, Florida. If you were walking down a particular alley on June 19th, you would have seen her body laying behind a garbage bin, filling the private drive with the smell of burning flesh. If you were there a little earlier, you would have seen her body being set on fire. Can you re-member that? Can you bring back a member of the trans community? Are you, are you going stand in her place?

The month of November has been marked as Transgender History Month, with Nov. 20th set as Transgender Remembrance Day. Now that this period has come to an end, I ask, what did we remember? Remembering seems to suggest that we are bringing back something that we have forgotten. Certainly the lives and deaths of trans persons around the world go duly unnoticed, buried under the more accessible headlines of cisgender victims. For the intentionally transphobic, there is an active practice of dismembering or misremembering the trans community. There are those who actively pull the trigger, strangle the throat, or burn the flesh. Then there are those who passively accept the death of trans persons as the natural consequence of transgressing boundaries. These are the systematically transphobic; no special feeling or thought is required to participate in this mode of diminishing the membership of the trans community. The less that is done or thought, the more effective the erasure.

Can you remember Betty Skinner? Pictured below, Betty was a fifty-two year old disabled trans woman, living confined to a senior assisted living complex in Cleveland, Ohio, where she was found dead. Unable to leave her bed during the attack, much less the violent environment, Betty's life ended when her head was bashed in. Controlled, bound, and alone, no one was there to help Betty nor to identify her murderers. The police have no leads or suspects. Can you re-member what so many turned their back on? Can you re-collect the divided and secluded members of the trans community? Are you, are you able to feel the chains of disability?

Remembering is not merely about intentionality. It is not about a special feeling or thought. It is about re-collecting fragments of a divided and erased history. It is about re-membering a community that is decimated on such a daily basis, that the reported deaths of transgender persons this year come close to matching number of days in 2014. Suddenly, such a systematic remembrance may appear impossible. How do we re-write a history that has not been written? How do we resurrect those denied a livable life? Many of these wounds will never heal. The best alternative we have may be to help them scar. We can do this by being the voice of the forgotten and being the bodies of the dismembered. This does not mean standing in the spot light and speaking for a vulnerable community (and the dead are in many respects particularly and politically vulnerable). This means re-directing the spot-light to those who need it and standing in the shadows, in the margins, in the place of the forgotten. It means remembering the transgender community by becoming an active member of it. This does not necessarily mean transforming ones body or gender presentation, but it does mean changing one's relations and one's politics. It means not viewing the oppression and violence as something that happens to "them" but as the potential for power and resistance that happens through "us."

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Are You Politically Trans*?

This November was more than Transgender History Month, it saw the return of two revolutions, one real and one imagined. The Transgender Law Center remembered, as the protests flooded the streets after the Virginia Supreme Court washed its hands of the blood of the murder of a black youth, "What’s happening in Ferguson cannot be understood outside of the deeply troubling context of systemic oppression in policing in the United States. Nearly half of Black transgender people have been incarcerated at some time, and only 35% of trans people report that they feel comfortable seeking police assistance... It is clear that these realities are not just a few problems with a system that otherwise works" (Transgender Law Center). What we read in these words is the work of a alternative mode of history. By recording the intersection of violences, a critical solidarity grows. This does not conflate race and gender, but rather acknowledges a shared political community founded on shared positionality and power. We hear this multiplicity, an existence between and across boundaries of identity that characterizes a critical trans politics, echoing through our imagined communities. We hear the drums in hearts of Myers, Cleveland, and Ferguson, providing the rhythm to music in "The Hanging Tree" from The Hunger Games: the Mockingjay Part 1, released November 19th (right before Transgender Remembrance Day). Sung in a fictionalized future for the United States, the song recollects the histories of lynchings that have brought together disparate communities to stand against not only the ideas but the physical systems that works to divide interconnected lives into more easily managed sections, often tracing along and encouraging perceived differences in gender, race, ability, and class.

"Are you, are you, coming to the tree?" the song begins, perhaps not merely repeating a plea to its audience but directing its plea to more than one audience. "They strung up a man, They say who murdered three," the song continues. Again, the use of repetition, the reference to an unnamed "they," emphasizes not only the many actions of an actor but the plurality of actors. This is about a system, a system which claims to speak for justice but casting a shadow of doubt at what "they say." "Strange things did happen here, No stranger would it be," concludes the first stanza, "If we met at midnight, In the hanging tree." Yet again, repetition uses rhythm to destabilize what we think we know about the invoked "strange" or "stranger." What has happened before, history, seems to continue to play itself out, perhaps forecasting our own future. This turn from "a man" to "they" and finally to a "we" brought together by a shared "strangeness" creates a formula for the movement across differences in time and identity towards a collectivity. Even if one feels alienated by the distinctiveness of the events of one lynching, in the fullness of time the system may just as well swallow us all. The logic of the "they" that seems to generate its own justifications.

The operation of the song is to produce a sense that "the Hanging Tree" is not the plight of any one "man" or the weapon of any one "they" but collectively "Our Hanging Tree" where systems devour its own operators. This flipping of the script potentially cuts both ways. Not only might be find ourselves at times the victims but at other times the victimizers. It's all a matter of time and rhythm. The danger and the power lies in collectively (but unequally) being tied up together in the tree. We each "wear a necklace of rope" the song confessions in one place and "wear a necklace of hope" in the dubbed rewrite. Sexism, ableism, and racism create inequalities in power, unique privileges and vulnerabilities which form the architecture of the systems of employment, enforcement, and encounters that grow outwards and upwards like a great hanging tree. It is by redirecting this power and sharing positions on the tree that we can finally begin the process of transforming the system itself. Systems predisposes our relations and by resisting and redefining those relations, we our trans politics can remember our community by looking not only behind (to the past) and forward (to the future) but sideways, to all those who stand "side by side."

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In a system of violence where each of our deaths are interconnected, no list of those politically trans bodies we lost this year can possibly be exhaustive, but in a critical act of calling for the remembering of a community that cuts across all lines and allegiances, we might remember a few who lived and died beside Yaz'min and Betty, even if they never knew each other existed.

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