CA I have become quite fond of your writing and usually find myself in agreement with your points. I find myself a bit ambivalent about this article. I don’t disagree with your premise that trans women should be respected as women. After all I are one! Where I have difficulty is in the disconnect many cis men feel when confronted with a beautiful trans woman who is either preop or nonop. If they were expecting different equipment that would be a legitimate reason to pause and take a step back. Or maybe they would reevaluate their sexuality and explore a new way of being intimate. But I believe it is more likely that they would pursue someone else if the equipment just did not fit properly in their own mind. I can relate to this in my decades as a heterosexual male. In the pre-smart phone era when there were really no apps, I was fascinated by the pictures coming mostly out of Europe of nonop transgender women. At the time most of the people I knew referred to them as shemales. We did not attach a moral judgment to this term; it was merely descriptive. Today it would be viewed as transphobic. I remember wondering why these women would be proud of their male genitals. It seemed to me that they were trying to exist in a small niche also inhabited by drag queens—and they were so beautiful. I could not understand why they did not fully transition. But then I’m binary, so a non-binary lifestyle was a little more difficult for me to grasp, especially in those days.
I have never visited modern dating site apps, so I am unfamiliar with the dynamics and whatever gamesmanship may occur. Theoretically I could see how a heterosexual male would be surprised when he encountered a beautiful woman who later turned out to be a pre or nonop transwoman, but was unaware of it until in the midst of a budding relationship. I think it would be a legitimate reaction to feel misled. And I don’t know if some of the women posting themselves intentionally keep their profiles vague about their equipment. It seems to me a certain degree of honesty and transparency is warranted. If someone looks like a woman, I think almost all men would assume that they are equipped as such unless a disclaimer was posted along with their picture.
The situation changes when superficially heterosexual men enjoy nontraditional forms of sex and try to keep their interest hidden. If they do this by trying to dismiss the legitimacy of the trans and nonbinary women they encounter or treat them as somehow aberrant, there is a big problem. No one has the right to dismiss or criticize a group merely due to their own feelings of discomfort or attempt to keep their more adventurous sexual side hidden. I perceive that as part of the complaint you raised in your article and it is of course valid. I suppose my bottom line is to raise the question of how much of the problem you raise is more due to the failure during initial encounters of two people to fully understand the person with whom they are attempting to engage than to be intentionally bigoted or to have an abusive attitude.
