Beer and Daisies and Lollypops

by Enny Viar

  

One of the most intriguing television phenomenons of the past 10 years has been The Jerry Springer Show. From trash talking prostitutes to mother-daughter love affairs, the most shocking underbelly of American culture has been exposed to those who would never suspect. One of the recurring themes that Jerry keeps using is the "Oops, I'm really a man" story. A woman, who was, or in at least one way still is, a man, tells her lover of a year that she is not who she appears to be. The audience gets a howl, the man is shocked, and the woman is embarrassed. But such is the nature of daytime trash TV.

On Springer, everything is all about the over-dramatic, the violent, and the shocking. So these men are (at least in theory) ignorant of their lovers' secret. What drives these women to be secretive about themselves? Are they afraid of the rejection, or is there no one who would accept a 'woman with a penis'? A lot of men would be pretty put off by this idea, but as I've discovered, there are more than a few men who don't mind at all.

A few definitions are in line first, as this document will contain some terms that are unfamiliar to most. The first term is transgendered. Simply put, this describes one who 'transcends' the cultural notions of gender that most of us are brought up with. Within this transgendered subculture, there lies several subgroups. There are the cross dressers, who are people who will wear the clothing of the opposite gender in the comfort of their home, usually to gain sexual or emotional satisfaction. Some of these people will also appropriate some form of women's clothing in the outside world, as well, such as a man wearing a woman's skirt to a nightclub. For the most part, cross dressers do not attempt to 'pass' in public as a member of the opposite gender.

The next term is transvestite, which would apply to one who does attempt to pass as a member of the opposite gender. A woman who cuts her hair extremely short, binds her breasts, puts on a pair of khaki pants, a fake mustache, and a sport jacket would be a transvestite. These people usually lead normal lives, but this is a "fun" side of themselves they like to express when the mood strikes them. At the end of the day, they can take off the clothing and return to the person they were. Closely related to transvestites are the "Drag Queens/Kings", which are those who follow the behavior patterns of transvestites, but do so for entertainment, not personal reasons.

Falling to the extreme of the transgender spectrum are transsexuals. Transsexuals are those who feel they were born the wrong gender, and seek ways to get themselves right with the way they feel inside. Most transsexuals are diagnosed with the mental condition "Gender Identity Disorder", and many will attempt to change their bodies through hormone therapy and surgeries, to not just change their outward appearance, but to give them the full functioning of the opposite sex. Among the transsexuals, there are two basic subgroups, the female-to-males and the male-to-females, which go off the biological sex of the person. Within these, there are the pre-ops and post-ops, describing whether one has their genitalia altered surgically to be more like the opposite sex.

There are other subgroups of the transgendered community, such as the inter sexed, the non-ops, and the gender queers, but this research is not about them, it's about the people who love them. I will be focusing this paper on the "tranny chasers", specifically on the men and women who pursue myself as a pre-op transsexual woman. During the past two months, I have analyzed their behavior and come up with observational data that may serve to understand this unique form of deviance.

In order to get a good grasp on these people, I did my research in several different areas. First of all, I trolled many of the transgender friendly establishments in Columbus, such as the Union Station and Wall Street nightclubs. For a more diverse group of people, and to gain more data, I did a lot of Internet research by frequenting chat rooms and the websites www.outincolumbus.com and www.gay.com. These sites, while primarily for gay and lesbians, also had a pretty large contingent of transgendered folks and their admirers. I also set up a Yahoo.com profile to attract personal messages from admirers. I would do this at different times of the day, but usually late at night due to my work schedule. Time of day definitely mattered when it came to the people I ran into.

To simplify things, I will break down these people into several categories. The first group are not into real-life encounters with transgendered women, they are simply turned on by the idea of a woman with male organs. I call these people the "lurkers", as they were not, for the most part, looking for anything other than fun on the Internet. A post-op woman is of no interest to them, because they are for all intents and purposes a female. A good number of them are also involved in cross dressing behavior on their own, as I discovered by having conversations with people with screen names such as "TammyCD" and "GuyInSkirt". They are also the most secretive of everyone I spoke to, and a good number of them were married or involved in long term relationships. They were exclusively male, and were for the most part only interested in cyber-sex.

The second group were what I call the fetishists. These people were attracted to the idea of a woman with male organs, possibly to explore their own sexuality. Like the lurkers, their primary interests were sexual, and were mostly into brief encounters with transgendered people. Some of these people were also married or in long term relationships with genetic women, but they had been involved with transgendered women in the past, and still have that fetish. These people were much nicer than the lurkers, on the whole, and they were up-front about what they wanted. And of course, they never called back. As a general rule, they were also not interested in post-op women. One fetishist put it to me this way "Why do that when I can have a 'real' woman?"

Besides these two groups, there were also what I called the 'searchers', who were looking for a long-term relationship with a transgendered woman. The majority of men I spoke to didn't care whether their women stayed pre-operative or not, and that they would support the decision that I would make. However, some would not, and I was told on more than one occasion "I don't want to fuck a fake pussy".

Doing this research was particularly draining on myself. I was trying to coordinate the beginnings of a relationship with this paper, but it was not in the cards. I unfortunately ran into a lot of men who were very condescending and insensitive to me as a woman, which from talks with other transsexual women is the rule rather than the exception. I actually questioned my choice to be strictly with men for a while, until I found women who were just as bad as those men I had spoken to. Now, as this experiment has wound down, I plan on stopping the majority of my activities, and trying to work on several men that I met during this time who were actually decent people. My self-image improved, especially hearing the compliments about my appearance and conversational ability, so while I sometimes feel like a freak because of being transsexual, I've at least learned that I'm attractive.

When taken as a whole, one can apply the labeling theory of deviance to the tranny chaser subculture. Many of the men and women I talked to professed to being either bisexual or "straight, but curious". Due to the stigma of homosexual behavior, most of these people do not want to be thought of as a 'queer' by their peers or family. To minimize this, they go for an attractive, "passable" pre-op male-to-female transsexual, and date or have sex with them, hoping to avoid the 'gay' label. Transgendered author Kate Bornstein says, "intentionally having sex with a 'chick with a dick' doesn't make you gay," (Savage), and many of those I spoke with agreed with this assumption.

Another reason why the labeling theory may apply is because these men have-labeled themselves as bisexual or queer, but also wish to conform to the monogamous culture we have in the US. In order to do this, many feel that they must find the "best of both worlds", so they can have "gay sex", and yet still be with a woman.

The last part of the labeling theory I'd like to discuss is the treatment of myself by these men. During the past 2 months of research, I have been called everything from a "Shemale" to a "t-girl" to "he-she", as well as some unsavory names as well. The terms she-male and t-girl are usually used in the adult entertainment industry. If one were to do an Internet search on shemale, there would be tens of thousands of different shemale sex sites, all of which show these ultra-enhanced women with penises in various states of sexual activity. For most tranny chasers, this is the only knowledge they have of transgendered people, and as such may think that every trans-woman is a raving sex addict. Men see women on a daily basis, but transsexuals are much more rare, and it's likely that if a man did meet one, he was unaware of it. The man labels me a shemale, and thusly expects me to be a sex-addict. Doing some talks with transsexual women who were once (or still are) in the adult industry, they have the same basic thing to say about it that most genetic women I've spoken to do. It's all about the money. The hormones the doctors put us on to grow breasts also shrink our penises to be useless sexually, and our sex drives change to be less aggressive, much like natural born women normally have.

The social controls regarding tranny chasers are, in my experience, not very sensitive to the transgendered. A good example of this would be the story of Barry Winchell and Calpernia Addams. Winchell was a young soldier who started a relationship with Ms. Addams, a transgendered performer. When his fellow troops got wind of his relationship, he was murdered. Many men fear the repercussions of what would happen if they were discovered with a transsexual. Names are just the start of the problems, as PFC Winchell discovered tragically. The controls do keep the level of this deviance pretty low, though. The majority of dates I have had in the past 2 months were in places that were known to be gay friendly, and if they weren't, there was very little in the way of public display of affection.

This article has explored a very narrow, and yet more common than one thinks, deviance. While I think that somewhere there is the guy for me, I don't know if I'll be able to find him until I no longer have a "little secret". While dealing with these people, I actually hope so. Their extreme sexual predatory nature, as well as condescending attitude towards transgendered women notwithstanding, the pickings are pretty slim, and I sure don't want to settle for less than will make me happy. I hope that the reader will begin to understand a little more what transgendered people go through while dating, and perhaps maybe even understand why the transsexuals on Jerry Springer never tell their boyfriends about themselves. We're all looking for love and happiness, so we get it however we can.

 

References

Savage, Dan. "Savage Love: Chicks with Dicks". The Stranger. Vol 8, No 34. 19 May 1999

  

  

  

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