I did promise I was going to leave this alone, but after some good points from some people that do understand the issue I have with people pointing the "gay" finger and the labeling - Chelle, Maggie and err... mongo18 - I'm going to have one last crack at articulating things.
So now labels are wrong? Let's stop putting genders down onto birth certificates. No more separate bathrooms or locker rooms. Make all baseball gloves fit both hands. No more naming religions or nationalities. At what point does this nonsense end? May we keep labels on soup cans?
We aren't talking about baseball gloves, religions or soup cans. We're talking about sexuality. Sexuality is a
BROAD SPECTRUM and somebody's orientation cannot always be pigeon-holed. Yes, a huge number of people
can put a label on their own sexual preference, and good for them, but anyone that finds themselves in one of Maggie's "shades of grey" should not have to put up with somebody else sticking a label on them, whether it's "gay" or otherwise.
As best as I can tell, there are five clearly-definable orientations that people could CHOOSE to label themselves :
HETEROSEXUAL - choose to have sex exclusively with the opposite gender.
HOMOSEXUAL - choose to have sex exclusively with the same gender.
BISEXUAL - choose to have sex with people of either gender.
BI-CURIOUS - choose to have sex with the opposite gender, interested in sex with the same gender but hasn't gone there yet.
PANSEXUAL - choose to have sex with anybody irrespective of gender including transgender men or women.
Now that last one is a very important one, because it's "transgender" that we're really talking about here when we talk about "Shemale." The whole POINT of the word transgender is that you are describing somebody between genders, that was born one gender but fundamentally self-identifies as the other, and in the case of pre-op transsexuals are choosing to live their life as the opposite gender, and just haven't had the final surgery to complete the change. If people want to call someone "gay" because they are a man wanting to have sex with a pre-op trans girl, you're both being ignorant to her wish to be viewed as the gender that psychologically she believes herself to be and should have been born as - chemcal imbalance, upbringing, don't ask me what causes it - and you're also imprinting a label onto the guy that's your label about
his orientation despite the fact you've got no right to do so, and your label isn't strictly speaking true.
Example A
Dave finds certain trans girls attractive the same way he finds regular women attractive - they wear makeup, they have breasts, they're feminine. Dave is attracted to the feminine traits, the pretty faces and the plastic boobs. Difference is, they still have their little something extra down below. Dave doesn't mind. Dave quite likes the something extra. By some of the logic I've seen here, it's pretty cut and dry that Dave's bisexual if he still likes regular women or gay if he doesn't, yeah? Except... no. Dave isn't gay if you line a thousand regular guys up in front of him and won't find a single one he wants to fuck. Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, any of them, Dave isn't interested. Dave only likes certain trans girls, with their tittys, feminine faces, desire to live their life as a girl, but still have their dick. Biologically, yes, a trans girl is still a man. I don't think anybody is disputing that. Is Dave gay because he wants to fuck her? Strictly speaking, he wouldn't say so. I wouldn't say so. She wouldn't either, she wants to be considered a woman when she's walking down the street. So.... why do
you people want to call them a gay couple? That's right - because you don't respect the trans community, and would rather just point the finger and say "that's gay" like Beavis or fucking Butthead. Oops, you get "fucking butt" out of that sentence.
GAY.
Example B
Bryan is a trans guy. He was born as a girl but has been undergoing the changes - they've taken his tits off, given him hormones to the point he can grow a beard, and generally he lives a male lifestyle. The only thing they haven't done yet is given him the artificial cock yet. Bryan wants to be a guy, but he's still attracted to other guys. He's a gay guy born in the body of a woman. Bryan goes to a nightclub and pulls a gay guy. They go back to Bryan's flat and Bryan reveals to his conquest that he hasn't had the finally surgery yet, but the guy decides he still fancies Bryan anyway and they got on OK, so he lets Bryan suck his dick for a bit before he fucks Bryan up the ass, then goes home fairly happy with his night's work. Now Bryan is biologically speaking still a woman, so by your logic, people, this gay lad - never had a regular woman in his life, 100% queer up until now - has gone home with masculine acting, bearded Bryan then fucked him up the ass before heading home - and you're going to tell him that was his entry into "hetero" sex because his partner doesn't have a cock yet? Another bisexual born. Except, he isn't, because regular women do
nothing for him. Just trans guys like Bryan.
Am I getting through to anyone here? Do you understand that the very nature of "transgender" precludes the traditional labels of straight, gay or bi making any sense? The trans girl that will fuck a trans guy but not a regular girl.... you going to tell her she's straight? She's feminine fucking someone masculine, there's a cock going inside a pussy... hetero, yeah?
There's nothing wrong with those terms in bold at the top of my rant, if the person whose orientation it is can say "yes, that's me." Most of them are fairly straight forward. But unless you're out-and-out pan (and anything goes) then the second transgender comes into it.... sorry, we don't have a label for you yet. So why bother? Lots of people are straight without question, great. But to paraphrase [NOBABE]Alyssa Jones[/NOBABE] in Chasing Amy, not all of us were given a fucking map at birth, and in the words of the great philosopher [NOBABE]Nicki Minaj[/NOBABE] in her seminal work Starships - "fuck who you want, and fuck who you like."
I'm not trying to convince anyone to agree with my point of view, everybody's got an opinion. If you want to call Dave gay because his girlfriend still has her winkie for now, you'll carry on doing it regardless of anything I have to say, but I didn't want anybody to leave the thread without
understanding my point of view first, that I find the application of labels usually used to describe people who self-identify with the gender they were born with, to potential sex involving transgender people, deeply ignorant of trans people and their want to be accepted for and identified as who they are, not just what set of genitals they were born with.
For the record, in practice I'm straight. I've only ever had real life sexual contact with regular 100% female born ladies that self-identify as women. I assume some of you will have guessed I got my back up because of my own orientation, which isn't true. I just don't care for the "GAY" finger-pointing that goes on, having known gay guys and girls and transsexuals and having respect for their different lifestyles and communities.
Yes, I've been selective in my choices of phrases like "in practice" and "real life." In terms of what gets me off, you'd probably have to colour me grey too.
:rant: