'The majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled
with sexual feeling of any kind.'
Sir William Acton(1857)
As some of you know I believe that many if not most cisgendered people privately believe transsexualism to be not only a sexual fetish but a fetish peculiar to males only. When I first told my mother about the existence of FTMs I could tell by the expression on her face and the surprise in her voice that she had never given the existence of FTMs the slightest thought. My mother was self-aware enough to quickly hide her astonishment of the fact that there are genetic females who consider themselves to be male, because of its obvious implication. Have another closer read of the above quote by Sir William, what Acton was saying indirectly is this :'men are constantly troubled by sexual thoughts which often torment them as much as they delight them if not more so.' Although this quote is over 150 years old things haven't changed all that much in the collective psyche of the cisgendered. It is a widely and sincerely held belief that men are the playthings of sexuality and they very easily fall victim to any and all types of sexual deviancy. Women on the other hand are still very widely believed to be free of sexual thoughts 95% of the time and when they do experiences a sexual thought it is a bland, vanilla bubble that vanishes as quickly as it came, and it is rarely acted upon. According to deeply held and deeply cherished societal beliefs and expectations men are sexual delinquents hopelessly enslaved to near constant lurid sexual fantasies which they often seek to act out. While women are fragrant, quasi-angelic beings who almost never succumb to a sexual fantasy and when they do they dream of having a manly husband who will look after them, a nice home and 2.4 intelligent and photogenic children. The the thinking behind this idea about women is that women are never never never never in the slightest prone to sexual deviancy!
This next statement will get my FTM brothers' tails swishing but huge vast swathes of humanity are completely and utterly unaware of your existence. My mother has been aware of my ->-bleeped-<- for several years and I know that she has thought and read a lot about it but it plainly had never occurred to her that transsexuality/->-bleeped-<- was anything other than a 'male' affliction.
This terrible ignorance may well be one of the reasons society has such problems with us. To their way of thinking mtf transsexuality is all there is to the subject and condition, even those who do know of the existence of FTMs clearly consider them as an extremely rare phenomenon in a sort of 1 :500,000,000+ ratio. These two attitudes clearly hint that society views we mtfs as men suffering from a severe and persistent form of public and semi-public sexual deviancy. The mtf is a sexual deviant who wants decent, respectable, hard-working people to take 'her' seriously and indulge her in her fetish at all times. I do appreciate that I have used some strong words and I haven't pulled any punches or spared your feelings, but I felt this tough talk was necessary for you to see things as they are.
Now of course as we are on the surface at least a polite society, few people will tell you this to your face but they do think it. I have come to this conclusion from my reading analysis and personal experience. I have felt the sheer rage and bitter biting words from people online. I have been called every name you can think of and treated as almost a non-human to which anything can be said to. I have been verbally abused at a womens' website not once but on several occasions and not one person came to my help. Online people can let slip the public everyday mask and let their prejudices and irrational hatreds be seen. Are you perhaps beginning to see that one of the major reasons our mere presence can evoke such reactions is that people despite everything they say essentially view us as being in their words 'perverts' and what is almost intolerable 'public-perverts'.
Every mtf knows that she will almost certainly be forced out of her current job at worst or marked down as 'never to be promoted' at best. Who wants a 'pervert' teaching their children? Who wants a 'pervert' representing their company? Who wants a 'pervert' serving them in a shop or handing them their food? Who wants a 'pervert' to be even seen? The only true explanation is that mtfs are viewed as deviants who no decent person would want to associate with or have come into the slightest contact with their children.
Are you still reading after wading through all that? Good, because after the terrible dark night comes the first rays of the sun heralding a glorious new sunny day. The FTMs will be our saviours! How will they do that? Well they can raise their profile in the media and in their communities. They can show that transsexuality 'afflicts' genetic females as well as genetic males and if you remember from above society believes in the trueness the wholesomeness and the incorruptibility of the genetic female psyche as it believes in few other things. No genetic female could possibly ever be suffering from a sexual perversion. From this people will start to realise that transsexuality is a condition, an endocrinological condition, and not a depraved in your face perversion.
So FTM's come out from the shadows, don't let the cisgendered population believe that you don't exist like the unicorn or that you are fabulously rare.
