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A couple of participants had cameras attached to all of their saucy parts and jiggly bits, and then were filmed having sexual intercourse in the missionary position. Via a tiny lens placed inside the vagina itself, viewers can get a close-up of the penis as it enters, stimulating the clitoris and the front vaginal wall, where the G-spot is located.
Further cameras placed on the woman’s nipple and the man’s penis provide different perspectives on the effects of sex on the body, which, unsurprisingly, tends to get rather excited before making a mess all over the camera, thus bringing the scientific experiment to a close.
While all this is going on, the woman may experience an orgasm of her own, which announces itself in a number of ways, including muscular contractions and a sensation of being able to feel one’s own heartbeat in the vagina. This happens as a result of direct stimulation of the clitoris, which, as viewers can see, is one of the missionary position’s big selling points.
Both the clitoris and the glans (the head of the penis) contain a high number of nerve endings, which send sensory information to the brain when they become stimulated, resulting in the release of large amounts of dopamine and oxytocin. These are responsible for the feelings of pleasure and intimacy that accompany orgasms.
Just weeks after changing his ID trans teen Allan, 17, takes his life.
“Alan has left us.” Posted on chrysallis.org Dec. 25, 2015
Allan, a transsexual teen from Barcelona, Spain, finally succeeded this December when a magistrate gave him authorization to change the name on his legal documents. He had the support of his entire family, but lacked support from the school environment. And on Thursday, he took his own life.
Friday his mother gave the sad news to the association of transsexual children’s families Chrisallys: “It hurts my soul to have to give this terrible and sad news. Our son Alan took his short life of 17 years yesterday (Thursday). He could not handle the pressure of society and has left us forever. thank you for all the support received.
Alan, aged 17, had suffered “bullying” due to his transsexuality in his school, which made him enter in the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona diagnosed with “depression”. The young man left the hospital and moved to another school, but also suffered “bullying situations,” according to Chrisallys. Apparently, the family and the direction of the new school had already planned a meeting to “deal with this situation,” after Christmas holidays.
He could not handle the pressure from society and has left us forever “Today all Chrysallis families are with Alan and his family,” reads the condolence message released by the association. “This was the first Christmas he was living according to his identity, the first in which he had a brand new DNI, the first in which there would be house party for many years but, tragically, has proved to be the last,” explained her vice president, Saida Garcia by phone. In her view, it was “the pressure and misunderstanding in schools have defeated Alan and tonight he has decided to stop walking among us.”
From Chrysalis, a group who helps about 200 families throughout Spain, added in its statement on the website: “There are no words to accompany this pain nor to express the anger, frustration and embarrassment from governments that never arrives on time, always ranging behind the needs of transsexual children and teens”. They say for some tome that they will “fight for society to respect our daughters and sons, but to Alan it will no longer be of use.”
Alan was one of the two Catalan children who succeded this December amending their legal documents so the name with which they identified is on the DNI. They were the first to do so in Catalonia and in the rest of Spain only 25 other children have succeeded, even though the law states that to change the name on the ID one must be of age and have mandatory medical reports.
PinkNews takes a look at the best gay fan art the internet has to offer.
Following the news that a real-life Lex Luthor appears to have taken a knife to a mural showing Batman and Superman locking lips, PinkNews takes a look at the works of gay superhero fan fiction.
The mural in Park Street, Croydon, had been put up by artist Rich Simmons as part of a street project led by the Rise Gallery.
The large image featured Kal-el of Krypton getting intimate with billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne.
However, this week Mr Simmons discovered that someone had hacked through the image with a knife, taking a chunk out of the wall to distort the kiss.
The vandal clearly had some kryptonite in their possession – as the damage left a gouge across the face of Superman.
“You should see them as heroes regardless of their sexuality,” Mr Simmons said.
“It doesn’t matter what background you’re from – what race, what religion, what sexuality – you can be a hero no matter what.
“But some people will see it and think, ‘It’s just a couple of gays’.”
Luckily, the mystery supervillain seems one of the few people out there who doesn’t love some good old-fashioned hero on hero action, as our list below clearly show.
Whether its Iron Man and Captain America getting up close and personal, or the aforementioned DC icons flying off into the Metropolis sunset, it seems that some fans are desperate for their favourite superheroes to become more than just team mates…
Batman and Superman
Rich Simmons piece shows the DC legends locked in a passionate embrace, much to the dismay of a possible damsel in distress… Lois Lane?
However, Mr Simmons isn’t the only one who seems keen to see Clark and Bruce finally give a go
Batman and Robin
Although it seems some fans prefer the idea of Batman hooking with Boy Wonder Dick Grayson. What would Alfred say?!
Wonder Woman and Supergirl
Two powerful women coming together as one.
Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy
And it seems its not only the good guys who are getting in on the action, as two of these two bad girls show…
Cassils melting an ice sculpture. Credit Clover Leary, Courtesy of Cassils
“I see the body as a social sculpture,” says Cassils, whose work has critiqued the pursuit of an unsustainable physique or the difficulty of representing violence in art. One of Cassils’ first major performances required the artist to stand still, nude, for five hours flush against an ice sculpture of a neoclassical male bust until it melted from the artist’s body heat.
Cassils’s more recent work has been even more provocative. This month, for the Spill Festival at London’s National Theater, Cassils was set on fire for 14 seconds, a “static burn” considered particularly dangerous by the stunt coordinators who trained and advised the artist. The piece, “Inextinguishable Fire,” required Cassils not to inhale (to keep from scorching the esophagus) and to wear a freezing fireproof suit that induces hypothermia (to avoid perspiration, which would otherwise boil on the surface of the skin).
Feats like these have led to increasing exposure for the Los Angeles-based artist. This summer, the MU art center in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, held Cassils’s first solo museum show. The artist is also participating in a major group show about gender and sexual identities at the Deutsches Historisches Museum and the Schwules Museum in Berlin. (The show’s poster is a photograph of Cassils, shirtless and muscular, with bright red lipstick.) In the following edited interview, Cassils discusses some of the ideas behind the challenging work.
Q. I’m sure you’re asked this quite often, but why did you light yourself on fire?
A. In 2002, I graduated from Cal Arts [California Institute of the Arts], which is this essentially Marxist grad school, and went back to my old day job of working as a personal trainer at Crunch in West Hollywood. There I watched the battle of Fallujah on 22 different monitors simultaneously while blonde actresses were running at their optimal fat burn target heart rate. The disparity between those realities really informed this piece. But the title comes from Harun Farocki’s documentary “Inextinguishable Fire” [which deals with the Vietnam War]. There’s this moment where he’s smoking a cigarette and he looks into the camera and says, “The embers from this cigarette burn at 400 degrees Celsius and Napalm burns at 3,000.” And then he extinguishes the cigarette in his arm.
Q. While your performance refers to a similarly extreme act, it’s controlled. There’s no intent to harm yourself.
A. Well, there’s always some risk. And the fact is, in the live performance in London, the tension in the room was unbelievable. And it was helped along by the fact that the stunt coordinator had never done this sort of thing as a live performance and he underestimated the power of stage fright. His hands were shaking as he was putting the fireproof garments and this protective goop on me — to the point that it was blocking my nostrils and my mouth and I couldn’t breathe. And because I had everything miked, the sound created an intimacy, a kind of acoustic focus. You can hear me telling him, “Look I can’t breathe, you gotta take some of this out.” It wasn’t acting, it wasn’t rehearsed, it was an actual moment. And that tension in this simulated environment makes you think about what it would be like to have it not be a consensual performance. What would it mean for an actual body to be experiencing this? I am not self-immolating, I’m doing a controlled action, but it references the constant barrage of images we have of traumatized bodies.
Q. What was the reaction to the performance?
A. People said they were sick to their stomachs, that they were shaking. People were having these intense empathetic physical reactions. The minute you start to strip the garment off, there’s so much adrenaline and, even though you haven’t been burnt, the body has sent stress signals, so there’s a convulsing that happens partly due to the hypothermia and partly due to the body being traumatized slightly. And then you just undergo an after-care, which is to warm up, and then those sensations subside.
Q. How does a piece like this relate to transgender politics?
A. It’s about not having a fixed body, but a body that’s in a constant state of flux. My goal is to hopefully ask people to think more critically. When you look at me, you’re not seeing my body, you’re seeing, in this case, an abstracted human form engulfed in flames, and you can place yourself in that position for a moment and think about what it would be like to be subjected to that violence. Thinking about that may change the way you walk through the world. Stephen Heyman.
The first same-sex weddings could now take place within just two weeks.
Same-sex marriage was officially signed into law in Ireland on yesterday (October 29), five months after the historic referendum took place.
The Republic of Ireland overwhelmingly voted in favour of equality in May this year, in a public referendum on same-sex marriage.
The government had pledged to legislate to permit weddings as soon as possible – but the plans were hit by delays due to a legal challenge to the ruling, and Parliamentary recess.
However, after the Seanad passed the bill last week, all that is needed now is a commencement order from the justice minister and the first weddings could take place in two weeks.
“The Presidential Commission today signed the ‘Marriage Bill 2015’ into law,” the president’s office said in a statement.
Senator Katherine Zappone called the signing “a defining moment” in Irish history.
“It is a deeply emotional moment for those of us who have campaigned for so long,” she said in a statement.
“This victory truly belongs to the nation, it is a moment for us all.”
LGBT activists have also praised those who fought to push the bill through as quickly as possible.
“Tribute must also be paid to national politicians in Ireland, as all the main political parties put aside their partisan differences to campaign for the greater goal of equality,” Evelyne Paradis of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice previously said the weddings would hopefully go ahead “before the end of this year” if all goes to plan.
Last month, Ireland’s government also put its revolutionary new Gender Recognition Act into effect – meaning transgender people can now gain legal recognition without seeing a doctor.
The bold new Gender Recognition Bill, which passed through Parliament in July without issue, includes sweeping changes to allow transgender people to self-declare their gender.
The form to apply for an Irish GRC is just two pages long – compared to other countries, where the process is often full of bureaucratic hurdles. The two-page form compares to the five pages you’d have to fill out to replace a missing pensions book.
DRESDEN, Germany — Rami Ktifan made a snap decision to come out. A fellow Syrian had spotted a rainbow flag lying near the 23-year-old university student’s belongings inside a packed refugee center. The curious man, Ktifan recalled, picked it up before casually asking, “What is this?”
“I decided to tell the truth, that it is the flag for gay people like me,” Ktifan said. “I thought, I am in Europe now. In Germany, I should not have to hide anymore.”
What followed over the next several weeks, though, was abuse — both verbal and physical — from other refugees, including an attempt to burn Ktifan’s feet in the middle of the night. The harassment ultimately became so severe that he and two other openly gay asylum seekers were removed from the refugee center with the aid of a local gay activist group and placed in separate accommodations across town.
As the largest flow of refugees since World War II streams into Europe, Ktifan’s case illustrates an emerging problem for gay and lesbian asylum seekers. Some of them arrive in Europe only to find themselves under threat from fellow refugees.
Gays who face official persecution in nations such as Iran and Uganda have been fleeing to Europe for years. But experts estimate that a record number of gays and lesbians seeking asylum, as many as 50,000, will arrive this year in Germany, the European nation accepting the largest number of refugees. Rather than leaving their home countries specifically because of anti-gay persecution, many are fleeing violence and war in nations such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Once in Europe, gays and lesbians are herded along with other asylum seekers into cramped shelters and camps, where a number of them are exposed to serious harassment.
There are no official figures. But the Lesbian and Gay Federation of Berlin and Brandenburg, for instance, says it is receiving three to six cases a week in which gay asylum seekers have been victims of physical abuse, including sexual assault. Earlier this month, a 21-year-old gay Arab asylum seeker in Berlin was hospitalized after he was insulted and assaulted at the refugee center where he was staying. In the city of Dresden, an eastern German metropolis of 525,000, at least seven gay asylum seekers have been removed from shelters this year for their own safety.
Sensing a growing threat, officials in Berlin are seeking to open the city’s first refugee center exclusively for gays and lesbians. The Berlin gay federation, meanwhile, has rolled out a new campaign called Love Deserves Respect, putting up posters inside refugee centers showing three couples kissing — a man and a woman, two women and two men.
[Europe’s refugee crisis strengthens far-right parties]
“Just like everyone else, with the refugees, there are good ones and bad ones, and there are those who are carrying homophobic attitudes from their homelands,” said Jouanna Hassoun, head of the Berlin gay federation’s migrant program. “Those attitudes won’t be abandoned immediately.”
The incidents are fast becoming political lightning rods, playing into the broader debate in Germany over questions of how to integrate hundreds of thousands of new refugees and whether to start sending more of them back.
The majority of the newcomers are coming from nations in the Middle East and Africa with sharply different laws and social norms from Germany regarding, for example, gays and women. Even some on Germany’s political right — rarely seen as champions of gay rights — have seized on gay bashing as further evidence of the dangers of accepting so many refugees, many of whom may never fully embrace modern German values.
Many on the political left, while demanding protections for all refugees, concede that there is, at the very least, a steep learning curve ahead for newcomers to accept established norms in a country that is led by a female chancellor — Angela Merkel — and that offers legal benefits, if not full marriage, to same-sex couples.
“You must forget what you learned at home about what is right or wrong,” commentator Harald Martenstein recently wrote in the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel, addressing refugees. “You do not have to give up your culture, not that. But you must accept the equality of women. You must learn that homosexuals and Jews are just like everyone else. You must bear mocking and satire, even when it concerns your religion. . . . If you don’t accept these rules, you have no future here.”
[Gay rights in Eastern Europe: A new battleground for Russia and the West]
Ktifan and two other men — Yousif al-Doori, 25, of Iraq, and Ahmed Suliman, 20, of Syria — said that initially they suffered only verbal abuse after word spread about their sexual orientation in a refugee shelter in Munich. But after they were relocated with other refugees to a longer-term facility in Dresden, things took a turn for the worse.
The majority of the newcomers are coming from nations in the Middle East and Africa with sharply different laws and social norms from Germany regarding, for example, gays and women. Even some on Germany’s political right — rarely seen as champions of gay rights — have seized on gay bashing as further evidence of the dangers of accepting so many refugees, many of whom may never fully embrace modern German values.
Many on the political left, while demanding protections for all refugees, concede that there is, at the very least, a steep learning curve ahead for newcomers to accept established norms in a country that is led by a female chancellor — Angela Merkel — and that offers legal benefits, if not full marriage, to same-sex couples.
“You must forget what you learned at home about what is right or wrong,” commentator Harald Martenstein recently wrote in the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel, addressing refugees. “You do not have to give up your culture, not that. But you must accept the equality of women. You must learn that homosexuals and Jews are just like everyone else. You must bear mocking and satire, even when it concerns your religion. . . . If you don’t accept these rules, you have no future here.”
[Gay rights in Eastern Europe: A new battleground for Russia and the West]
Ktifan and two other men — Yousif al-Doori, 25, of Iraq, and Ahmed Suliman, 20, of Syria — said that initially they suffered only verbal abuse after word spread about their sexual orientation in a refugee shelter in Munich. But after they were relocated with other refugees to a longer-term facility in Dresden, things took a turn for the worse.
The harassment became so constant that, with the aid of local gay activists, Ktifan, al-Doori and Suliman were pulled out of the refugee center last month and installed in a small separate apartment near the city center. The dangers they faced, though, were nothing new.
Before fleeing for Europe, al-Doori said, he was kidnapped and held for two days in Baghdad by religious thugs who had tried to extort his family because he is gay. Ktifan said that in Syria he hid his sexuality from all but a select few and initially fled to Libya to escape his country’s civil war. But after a Libyan man tried to blackmail him for being gay, Ktifan said, he returned to Syria. As he grew increasingly fearful of Islamist extremists who were targeting gays and lesbians, he said he decided to join the exodus to Europe.
“We thought we were leaving that kind of treatment behind,” Suliman said. “But inside the refugee center, it felt like we were back in Syria.”
Widely differing views
Yet opinions among refugees regarding gays and lesbians differ widely and often are very nuanced. On a recent afternoon outside Berlin’s teeming main refugee registration center, some asylum seekers who were asked about their beliefs strongly denounced gays and lesbians and said they should not be tolerated.
Others, such as Ali Ahmad Haydari, a 25-year-old father of four who said he had lost two of his children during the war in Afghanistan, said accepting gay rights came with the territory of a new life in Europe.
“I don’t have a problem with that,” he said.“I like the freedom here. Everybody should live as they want.”
Read more:
In Europe, creating a post-gender world one small rule at a time
Gay rights in eastern Europe just took a big step forward
‘People in Europe are full of fear’ over refugee crisis
Jamie Raines
Why did you start taking selfies?
Jamie Raines: It was to see how testosterone can change the face, so if people come away seeing that it can make those changes then that’s good. But also I just wanted something for me to document my transition. I thought I’d take a photo every day so when I strung it all together you could see the changes. Within the first six months you didn’t see that much but as time went on it became more and more rewarding. So now I feel like I’ve been doing it for so long I just want to keep going, for maybe five years. I’m really happy I’ve done it.
When you started testosterone, could you imagine how your face would end up looking?
JR: When I first started I tried not to have an image in my mind – I was taking testosterone so I could go through the correct puberty for me – and I tried not to have expectations, because testosterone affects everyone differently and different changes come in at different points. Some people get loads of facial hair within the first six months, and some people never get it. I didn’t pin too many hopes on T [testosterone] changing me drastically and just took the changes as they came.
How did you feel when you looked in the mirror aged 17, and how does that compare to now?
JR: I didn’t really see myself. I got my hair cut really short and that made things a bit better but it was a very awkward time. I didn’t like looking in the mirror, but then as soon as I started testosterone it was about looking for those changes and then every time you noticed something it was exciting. And it’s the complete opposite now, I’m very happy with what I see in the mirror and very grateful for how I look now.
How important was it for you to get facial hair?
JR: Not massively, but I’m really happy I have it. But when I first started medically transitioning the two main things I wanted was getting top surgery [mastectomy and/or chest reconstruction] and a deeper voice. The other changes were really an added bonus.
How quickly did your voice change?
JR: It happened in stages. In the first six months, there was a very slight change at one month and two months, and then at three months I had my first proper voice drop, and then four months it started to sound more naturally deep, and since the six-month mark it’s been gradual. I don’t think it’s still changing now but I make yearly voice comparisons to keep up to date with how it’s changed.
Did testosterone change your mood at all?
JR: I think I’m less emotional but that’s it, really. I guess I cry less and my temper is slightly shorter but I don’t think it’s changed my personality or anything.
How have your loved ones reacted to your transition?
JR: My whole family and my girlfriend [Shaaba] have just been really supportive and really excited for me because of the changes. I told my mum first and then she told my dad and brother and they’ve all just been really great with it. My mum thinks this was always how I was supposed to be. She doesn’t feel like she’s lost a daughter, because I’m the same person to her – I’m still her child, but now I’m just her son.
It sounds like it was pretty clear to your mum early on?
JR: Yeah, when I told her she said it explained a lot, because of how I’d been throughout my life. I had just turned 17 when I told her, so [it was] just under a year before I started testosterone. I went to the GP and he told me it would be about two years by the time I was seen by the gender clinic, so I went to a private doctor to start testosterone and have top surgery. I got the surgery after I’d been on testosterone for six months.
What advice would you give to other trans guys who are about to start testosterone?
JR: That patience is your best friend with transitioning and it’s good to surround yourself with a community or friends and family that will support you – either online or in real life. Ask questions of people who’ve already gone through it. It feels like it takes ages for things to start happening but then when it does start everything changes really quickly. Now people are surprised when I tell them I’m trans. I had a job interview recently and when I told them they thought I was going to transition from male to female!
Matt didn’t know it was possible for a girl to have a dick before the model pictured in his Hustler-esque mag drew seven inches. She had slipped in unannounced between the magazine’s other, more typical spreads. His stroke quickened, sticking with sweat in his Brooklyn bedroom while a worrying thought knocked in his skull: Did it mean he was gay?
I met Matt in his home, thirty years after that fateful day in his teenage bedroom. (His name has been changed to maintain anonymity.) We sat on opposite ends of an ultra suede sofa, he in a pair of basketball shorts and a white t-shirt. Now in his late forties, Matt is a solid man, limbs thick from decades of manual labor. He’s safe now, free after years spent in anguish. “It made me mentally ill,” Matt said, his rough mouth blackened by 5 o’clock shadow.
In the 1980s, it was particularly daunting for a trans amorous man to confront his sexual identity. “The stigma that went along with being gay at that time in my youth was horrible,” Matt said. “There was nowhere to go, no LGBT Center. Most people when I grew up didn’t even have cable.” He felt he had a lot to lose—not the least of which was an attachment to his identity as a heterosexual man.
There are many men who share his fear. On Reddit, arguably the most revealing cultural sampler of our times, one trans amorous man recently aired his turmoil. He wrote about his relationship with a trans girl and his family and friends’ rejection of her. According to him, his loved ones mock him, ask if she’s got a dick, call him gay. “She is pre-op but I still only see her as a girl,” he wrote. On other boards, users ask straight men if they’d consider dating a trans woman. Some guys give a flat out no; others appear unburdened by social stigma, down for it so long as she passes well and is hot. But there’s another prevalent response, one that lands nearer to the heart of this issue. User kelevra206 wrote, “In a different society, I don’t think it would be an issue with me at all to be with a trans woman, but… with the way things are, I just couldn’t do it.”
Matt’s first sexual experience with a trans woman was in 1987, with a girl he picked up on the West Side Highway. This stretch of New York road runs parallel to the Hudson River, from the southern harbors of Manhattan to the Upper West Side. It used to be an infamous pickup spot for trans sex workers. Though Matt loved the sex itself, it wasn’t long after orgasm that he felt a throat-clenching sense of anxiety. “I was driving her back and I was so nervous, ‘Is someone going to see me?’ Absolute fear—HIV, Did I give myself HIV? I was so afraid [thinking of] how I’d tell anybody.”
It was the height of the AIDS epidemic. A disease that anybody could acquire had become a profound symbol of the cultural stigma against queer sexuality and sex. “There was no cure,” Matt said, shaking his head. “Instant death, you’re gone. We used condoms but I was more afraid of that conflict.” The internal conflict Matt felt between his identity as a straight man was even more frightening to him than the threat of acquiring HIV: The illness might have meant a tragic, untimely end to his life, but it also would have branded him a fag.
Matt said that he’s seen countless trans sex workers throughout his life. He was a John—or generic male client—for thirty years. Despite his insecurities, though, he always wanted more from those relationships. He tried to romance girls, but he was continually rejected.
It was the height of the AIDS epidemic. A disease that anybody could acquire had become a profound symbol of the cultural stigma against queer sexuality and sex. “There was no cure,” Matt said, shaking his head. “Instant death, you’re gone. We used condoms but I was more afraid of that conflict.” The internal conflict Matt felt between his identity as a straight man was even more frightening to him than the threat of acquiring HIV: The illness might have meant a tragic, untimely end to his life, but it also would have branded him a fag.
Matt said that he’s seen countless trans sex workers throughout his life. He was a John—or generic male client—for thirty years. Despite his insecurities, though, he always wanted more from those relationships. He tried to romance girls, but he was continually rejected.
When I asked Alex how important it is that a girl is able to pass well, he responded, “I’m attracted to femininity, not masculinity. It’s that simple.” People are entitled to their own tastes, but one wonders to what degree this extreme devotion to masculine or feminine ideals is a result of being inundated with hyper-gendered imagery in pop culture. Not to mention that holding trans women to a cisgender standard is unrealistic: The majority of trans girls will probably never pass perfectly. Clearly, having a boner for hot girls with dicks is far from synonymous with undoing the stigma against loving transgender women.
Later in his life, Matt has tried to give transgender women more—he’s tried to surpass the stigma surrounding his sexuality by being available emotionally and forging real relationships with trans women. About ten years ago, in his late thirties, he met a girl in the sex trade named Alicia. She’d come to New York from Brazil in the 80s—around the same time he’d been cruising the west side highway. “She’s the first trans woman I ever kissed in public,” Matt said. “We were walking down her block, and I was nervous: Is someone going to see me? I remember her saying to me, ‘I’m walking down the street with you, but if you’re going to be embarrassed by me, I’m going to be embarrassed by you.'” Then he kissed her. Matt smiled, gently shaking his head at the insecure man he’d once been.
Cristina Herrera heads the Gender Identity Project (GIP) at New York City’s LGBT Community Center. The GIP runs a variety of programs for the trans community; among other services, Herrera provides support groups. One group caters to partners of transgender individuals. It’s a place for anyone trans amorous to go and talk with other trans amorous men or women. “There is very little support for individuals who are partnering with trans people,” Herrera told me. “Society is harder on the men who date transgender individuals. There is a lot of stigma attached to it: Their sexuality is called into question”
“I knew a trans girl who told me that, with all the men she’s slept with, all the guys who have come through her doors, there’s no such thing as straight men,” Matt said. “I wonder sometimes, when I hear people spew hatred, how many of them have actually been with trans women before.”
Nearly all the men I’ve dated have identified as heterosexual. A handful have been bi, but none gay. Early on in my transition I frequently posted personal ads. There was a man who used to email me a couple times a week. He was a typical Williamsburg ruffian—tall, tattooed, with an undercut. He was a handsome guy, but I never met him because all he wanted was sex. I started seeing him around my neighborhood. He was always with his girlfriend. There they’d be slurping a Thai noodle lunch special, stocking a grocery cart with kombucha, or clouding their coffee with cream in our shared cafe. They held hands at their table. His cock-hungry messages lay close, stored in my phone at the bottom of my purse. I wondered if she knew he was cruising for sex with other people. Did she know he’s into trans women? When she finds out, will she ask him if he’s gay?
In his mid-thirties, Matt grew tired of denying himself the kind of life he’s always wanted. “I started seeing girls more often and just enjoying it, letting all the shame and guilt go and saying, ‘You know what? I have been doing this for so long anyway. This is something I’m gonna do for me.'”
He wanted Alicia to be more than someone he paid for sex, but there were multiple factors working against them both. Like many impoverished trans women, Alicia was addicted to drugs. She called Matt a few times desperate for cash. “I brought her a hundred dollars, and it wasn’t for sex. She looked horrible; she was thirty, forty, pounds lighter than she was when I’d first met her. It broke my heart.” He wanted to help, but couldn’t. It was too painful to watch Alicia’s descent into addiction, so Matt stopped seeing her and resumed living in secrecy. Six or seven years after he last saw Alicia, he attempted to find her again to no avail. She was gone, her online ads deleted.
Last year, after decades of living a double life, Matt was finally ready for a partner. He became serious about finding the right trans woman to spend his life with. But where to look? There’s been an active market for trans personal ads on Craigslist for years. Clicking into the m4t category of Misc. Romance, you’ll find reams of posts by trans amorous men. There is a weighty symbolism to Craigslist’s subcategories: Casual Encounters is, as one would expect, the most popular. If you’re cruising there, all bets are off. As the guys see it, social graces are checked at the door. Then, over in Misc. Romance, again and again, you’ll find posts by guys professing their exhaustion with Casual Encounters. They’ve had enough; they want more. There is a tenderness to the forum—the same users post diligently week after week in pursuit of their transgender soul mate, and stock photos of roses often accompany their ads.
With the rise of services like OkCupid, Craigslist and other trans community backchannels are becoming less necessary than they once were. In recent years OkCupid has integrated categories for transgender people. Matt made a throwaway profile on OkCupid just to see who was out there. “I checked the box for trans and the very first woman that came up was [Alicia],” he said. “I thought she had died. She even told me she wasn’t gonna live more than ten years.”
Alicia looked healthy. According to her profile, she had a job and was looking for a relationship. Judging by the smile in her photos, she was happy. In the years since they’d separated, she quit drugs and began working in advocacy for the transgender community. She remembered him and agreed to meet, but the wall she’d built remained intact. “I was still just a John to her, that’s all,” Matt said, disappointed. “I knew I was more than that. I want more and I can give more.”
It was hard to convince Alicia to let down her wall, but Matt understood why. “People can be assholes to trans women. It happens all the time. The looks, the stares, sometimes they say things. I remember our first date where we were together and it wasn’t for money and sex. It was a date. We were walking to downtown Brooklyn, to sit on the rocks under the Brooklyn Bridge.” She gave him the same speech she’d given ten years prior, before their first kiss. “She said, ‘If you’re going to be embarrassed by me, we can just go back to my apartment and you can pay me.’ I was so proud of myself. I held her hand, and walked down the street and we sat on the rocks and had a really romantic night. That was my first time not being afraid.”
A door across the room from us suddenly opened. Alicia passed through it, coming from the kitchen with a fresh plateful of empanadas. Matt grinned like a little kid. He tried to pull her onto the sofa but she refused, saying, “You two talk!” She laughed, swatting him away as she put her long hair in a clip. She was barefoot in a floor length, striped jersey summer dress. Eventually she gave in, and took a seat beside him.
Matt and Alicia share a “normal” life together. They’re both in their forties, they both work full time, and they both take care of their bodies. He loves her ambitious personality and sense of humor. Alicia told me it goes both ways. “I think every trans partner is as special as the trans woman they’re with,” she said.
“It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of guys out here that do this,” Matt said. “We went to a bar; it was a trans event. One of Alicia’s friends told me, ‘You’re the only one. The only guy here.’ It’s rare, there are very few of us. I’d like to see more.” Matt briefly knew a guy who was dating a friend of Alicia’s. “He was younger than me and he was seeing this girl. She was mostly a bottom. But then I guess she topped him one time, which is a stigma in and of itself. He said to me, ‘Does that make me gay?’ and I said, ‘You know what? If it felt good and you’re making your partner happy, go for it. What the hell. Have fun, let it go.’ I think hearing that from me made a difference in his life.”
Alicia shook her head, laughing. “Does this make me gay?” She was asked that question countless times by men throughout her years in the sex trade. “If they were good, I’d tell them no, of course not. If they were bad I’d say, pretty much!”
Matt has progressively gained Alicia’s trust. “Getting our own place together was really important,” he said, encircling her in his arms. Sharing their home was a big step for both of them, and Matt saw it as crucial to showing his sincerity.
“To tell you the truth, sitting here talking to you about, I’m kind of embarrassed. I should be proudly sharing her in every part of my life,” he said, referring to his colleagues and family, two groups with which he’s yet to break that seal of secrecy. It may not be safe to—Matt’s colleagues say hateful things about trans women. “‘Not human.’ ‘Should be executed.’ Nasty stuff. Alicia’s told me not to stick my neck out at work, but a couple of times I said, ‘You know what, I bet that person who has been conflicted their whole lives, and has probably suffered their whole life, is finally free.” Matt thinks that if they ever found out, the consequences could be tragic. “You’d read about me in the paper, unfortunately.”
As Cristina Herrera sees it, guys like Matt have the cards stacked against them. The cultural stigma against loving trans women is deeply ingrained into our society to the point of ubiquity. “There is a lot of bullying going on,” Herrera said. “Public figures that have been discovered having sexual relations with trans women have paid a heavy price.” Herrera said these public shamings “hurt the whole process. It makes other men much more nervous. They know it could happen to them, that their friends or colleagues might treat them the same way if they knew.”
We try awfully hard to bend ourselves around language, but even the people who feel best represented with words like “straight” don’t fit all the criteria. One of the central issues to identity politics, and the LGBT string of labels, is the idea that people whose sexuality or gender differ from a heteronormative standard are inherently different, where those whose gender or sexuality conform to it are not. Rather than trying to normalize queer people, we could recognize that no one is normal. Straight, cisgender people are different too. Alicia alluded to it when she said that every trans partner is as special as the trans person they’re with.
I asked Matt what he thought it would take to change society, to bring his trans amorous brethren out from the shadows. “The more of us that are out there,” he said. “The more men who walk down the street holding a trans woman’s hand. It’ll show other men, give them their courage to say, ‘I like that too, and I’m not afraid.'”
San Francisco supervisor David Campos, right, walks with Sister Roma after a meeting in his office with drag queens last month. Photograph: Eric Risberg/AP
Facebook apologized to drag queens on Wednesday following a meeting with community members and queens who protested against the company’s order to use their legal names on the social networking site.
Facebook’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, said: “I want to apologise to the affected community of drag queens, drag kings, transgender, and extensive community of our friends, neighbours, and members of the LGBT community for the hardship that we’ve put you through in dealing with your Facebook accounts over the past few weeks.”
Drag queens challenged the social media giant in September after several received emails telling them that they must change their profiles to their “real names”.
Cox said one Facebook user reported several hundred accounts as fake, which prompted their incorporation into the company’s weekly fake names report. He said that 99% of the accounts that make that report are “bad actors doing bad things” like impersonating and bullying, and said nobody at Facebook had noticed the pattern of one person reporting specific types of accounts.
He said the policy has never required everyone on Facebook to use their legal name and that the company is building better tools to authenticate accounts for users who prefer not to, like drag queens. He also said Facebook is working to require better customer service for people whose accounts are flagged, which was one of the key demands made by the drag queens and their supporters.
“The spirit of our policy is that everyone on Facebook uses the authentic name they use in real life. For Sister Roma, that’s Sister Roma. For Lil Miss Hot Mess, that’s Lil Miss Hot Mess,” said Cox. “Part of what’s been so difficult about this conversation is that we support both of these individuals, and so many others affected by this, completely and utterly in how they use Facebook.”
Cox reaffirmed that the “real-name” policy is meant to differentiate from other parts of the internet that accept anonymity and to protect people from trolls and abuse conducted by those protected by anonymity.
Wednesday’s meeting was the second between Facebook and the drag queen group, which also included San Francisco supervisor David Campos and other community members. They had condemned the company for asking them to use their “real names”, arguing that the policy is also unfair to transgender people, victims of domestic violence and political dissidents.
“It takes a lot to impress a drag queen, but I’m beyond thrilled that Facebook has offered a genuine apology and agreed that our real names are the ones we make for ourselves,” said Lil Miss Hot Mess in an email to the Guardian. “This is a huge victory not only for us queens, but also for the countless others we’ve met along the way whose names don’t always match their ID cards, but allow them to express themselves with less fear and more fabulousness.”
When the complaints were first brought to Facebook’s attention, the company encouraged people to consider creating fan pages under their preferred names or writing an alias under their profile name.
As discussions between the parties wore on, some performers closed their accounts while others changed their accounts to their “real names” and changed their profile pictures to purple squares with: “#mynameis” written across as a mark of protest.
Organisers had asked queens and performers to gather at San Francisco’s city hall “in face” on Thursday for a rally against the policy. Before the meeting concluded on Wednesday, Lil Miss Hot Mess said the rally was still set to occur.
More than 36,100 people have signed a petition asking Facebook to change its policy to allow performers to use their names on their personal accounts.