I think that much fetishisation of trans*people is only a thin veneer over a kind of insidious transphobia. Tranny chasers range from annoying to frightening, and people that aren’t exactly tranny chasers, but still make a fetish of one’s transsexuality are just as upsetting.

When I first heard of tranny chasers I had a brief fantasy of having nubile young women throwing themselves at me in fits of lust. I was quickly educated that most tranny chasers are men, and most chase trans*women. Now that I have had experience with people with a trans-fetish, I honestly don’t feel left out at all. I feel relieved.

I think that the transfetish can come in different levels, and I think that a transfetish for transwomen, and a transfetish for transmen are often very different things. I’ll be focusing on trans*fetishes of trans*men, cos I am mostly familiar with it, having been on the receiving end.

I think that there are a variety of motivators for transfetishes. For straight men that are particularly cursed with misogyny and homophobia a pre-op, pre-HRT transman seems like the ultimate sexual partner. A man in a woman’s body. Pretty hot. After all, we are taught in this culture to despise women’s minds, and sexualise their bodies. Women that have a transfetish are significantly more opaque to me. I can’t say I am certain what exactly causes it. I believe that some lesbians hold up trans*people as this kind of ultimate political rebellion against gender, and so often they will blur the lines between genderqueer women, drag kings and trans*men.

I find nothing more upsetting and difficult to deal with than being seen as female by an intimate partner. I refuse to take my clothes off with my current partner because I don’t want to break the delicate illusion of my masculinity. I think that my heart would break if I heard him refer to me as a ’she’.

Now, back to the idea that a transfetish is a kind of transphobia. Transwomen are women, and transmen are men… unless you are transphobic, in which case transwomen will always be men to you, and transmen are forever women.
I think that it is telling if someone lists their interests as “women, ciswomen, transmen” on a social networking site. They are declaring their interest to be in those born women. Now, the women-born-women debate is one of the most transphobic blog wars on the left.

I will never again set foot in a women’s only space. I was offered a women’s only scholarship this year and turned it down. I quite literally won’t be a woman even if you PAY ME.
There are some women’s only spaces that I am really interested in, and kinda wish I could enter, to see what they are like. At the same time, I know that if I enter I betray transmen, and transwomen, by buying into the woman-born-woman rhetoric. So I wont go. I don’t care if the let transmen in… it denies my manhood.

If you are a tranny-chaser you are othering trans*people. You are making us something other than a person, you are objectifying us. In the worst cases you are denying our gender identity. You aren’t an ally. You are just another transphobe.