[ SECRET POST #3776 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3776 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[French politics / My Little Pony]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 56 secrets from Secret Submission Post #541.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'll freely admit I haven't read very much ftm fic, mostly because when I encountered it (mostly in homestuck fandom with trans!Dave) a huuuuge proportion of it just seemed to be....not well written, by very young writers who were treating transness as like...Another Angst Thing For Angsty Cool Teen Fic, or awkward issue fic wish-fulfillment with Bro being super chill and accepting (whether transness was the issue they needed wish-fulfillment parent figure acceptance about or not).

I can definitely imagine how young female writers who might be alienated from their bodies in a way that might or might not have anything to do with transness (because our culture sucks about respecting or accepting women's bodies) might write ftm in a way that was super uncomfortable for actual trans people, for reasons other than 'omg dude with these parts is so weeeird and iiiiinteresting'. I can also imagine dumb kids trying real hard to write SJW APPROVED ISSUE FIC and lingering on binders because it's like...the only marker they know/understand. But I also definitely believe that there's a lot of bad fetishy stuff out there that doesn't market itself that way.

I mostly asked because the OP specifically mentioned that they found at least some body of ftm fic that they found genuinely fulfilling in terms of desirability and such, and they didn't mention cringing or ignoring parts of it. I think there's a big leap between 'there's some really shitty ftm fic that reflects our society's terribleness about trans bodies' and 'even in the absence of this particular fic I'm enjoying sending up, I ought to assume that it's "almost certain born from fetishizing and objectifying"'. Like, IF you can't tell the author's mindset from the fic, maybe it's actually fine?

(Then again, the whole ABO phenomenon squicks me the fuck out because it feels to be almost like your hetwriters in reverse - slash writers who want to write hyper heterosexual tropes without including any ~icky women~. IDK, 90% of everything is terrible, but I think if OP, who spends all day thinking about this stuff, sincerely gets to enjoy it, maybe it's because there's pockets of decent stuff out there. I live in hope.)

OP

[(Anonymous)]

"(Then again, the whole ABO phenomenon squicks me the fuck out because it feels to be almost like your hetwriters in reverse - slash writers who want to write hyper heterosexual tropes without including any ~icky women~. IDK, 90% of everything is terrible, but I think if OP, who spends all day thinking about this stuff, sincerely gets to enjoy it, maybe it's because there's pockets of decent stuff out there. I live in hope.)"

Don't get me wrong, I mentioned fetishizing and objectifying because there's a whole lot of it out there, which other anons have gone into more detail about.

However, yes, there are more "woke", "mature"--whatever you want to attribute it to--writers who write trans men as desirable without falling into the pitfalls of blatant trans fetishization.

I think the difference for me is this: I'm non-operative by choice. While I'm lucky to have found a partner who loves all aspects of me, loves my body and my personality and would desire and love my body if I decided I needed phalloplasty tomorrow, I take a certain amount of hard-won satisfaction in my non-op body. It's been a journey of years and battling against society's stereotypes about what it is to be a man and masculine worth being based on dick size and more, but I've never internally hated my junk even if it felt like society wanted me to at times, and I'm at peace with myself now.

It shows in how I want to have sex and be desired. For trans people who have dysphoria, even though it's genuinely possible to be attracted to trans bodies without fetishizing us, a lot of them don't want to be reminded in any way of that. They don't want to be desired for being a woman with a penis or a man with a vagina, and they couldn't handle having a partner who desires those parts of them, even if that partner truly desires them as an individual and isn't basing their foundation of attraction on their trans status.

In cases like this, sometimes even good trans fic tends to get swept up by some people into the "all trans fic is fetishizing and bad and you should feel bad" category.

For me and a lot of other trans people I talk to, the fetishization (moreso IRL, but some of this can apply to trans fic) usually comes into play when we start talking about people viewing porn as a legitimate substitute for actual trans people talking about the ways we like to have sex and the physiology of how our bodies work (which, especially in the case of trans women, is NOT the shit you see in porn), and acting entitled to a certain kind of sex with a certain kind of body simply because you feel that attraction to them. A lot of times this comes with abusive, coercive behavior and language, things like telling a trans woman she's broken for not enjoying (or being able to) top someone, or telling a trans man "why even bother with having a second hole if you're not going to use it?", or "you should be flattered that I'm into you, nobody who isn't specifically into trans people will ever want you", that sort of thing.

In trans fic some of the stuff you mentioned in your comment is most definitely fetishization, but I also agree with your framing of it for the most part. It's only in really egregious cases like the artist we had a secret on the other day, RCDart, who draws her "trans man Captain America" with giant balloon titties and inflated hips, calls him "slut" all the time, and just generally treats the character like a busty cis woman pinup model with male pronouns and it's all so obviously a fetish. Not to mention her shitty attitude towards real trans men who expressed dismay over such a ridiculously fetish-y portrayal mainly because RCDart tries to pretend she's on some moral, progressive high ground.

If it's just some young cis girl author who doesn't really understand the ins-and-outs of binding or how hormones work or something, I'm not going to be upset, although I might leave a gentle criticism so they can improve in the future with some actual trans male feedback. :)

I don't know, I've been up for 48 hours now so I'm probably not making a whole lot of sense and most likely didn't answer any questions you may have had, but hopefully I extrapolated a bit at least on why I personally enjoy some of these fics.