URNotAlone

Julia Serano's "Whipping Girl:

August 26th, 2007 10:39 am MDT

From Chapter 16: "Love Rant" from Julia Serano's "Whipping Girl: A
Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity

"My friend, still seemingly perplexed, asked me, "So if it's not about
genitals, what is it about trans women's bodies that you find most
attractive?"

I paused for a second to consider the question. Then I replied that it is
almost always their eyes. When I look into them, I see both endless
strength and inconsolable sadness. I see someone who has overcome
humiliation and abuses that would flatten the average person. I see a woman
who was made to feel shame for her desires and yet had the courage to pursue
them anyway. I see a woman who was forced against her will into boyhood,
who held on to a dream that everybody in her life desperately tried to beat
out of her, who refused to listen to the endless stream of people who told
her that who she was and what she wanted was impossible.

When I look into trans women's eyes, I see a profound appreciation for
how fucking empowering it can be to be female, an appreciation that seems
lost on many cissexual women who sadly take their female identities and
anatomies for granted, or who perpetually seek to cast themselves as the
victims rather than instigators. In trans women's eyes, I see a
wisdom that can only come from having to fight for right to be recognized as
female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly asserting your right
to be feminine in an inhospitable world. In a trans woman's eyes, I see
someone who understands that, in a culture that's seemingly fueled on male
homophobic hysteria, choosing to be female and openly expressing one's
femininity is not a sign of frivolousness, weakness, or passivity, it's a
fucking badge of courage. Everybody loves to say that drag queens are
"fabulous," but nobody seems to get the fact that trans women are fucking
badass!

It was at this point in the conversation that I realized that perhaps I find
trans women attractive because I see a little bit of myself in them. In
their eyes, I see a part of myself that nobody else ever seems to see, the
part that those who haven't had a trans female experience never seem to
understand. And perhaps it's narcissistic to be attracted to someone who
reminds me a bit of myself. But after spending most of my life feeling
ashamed of who I was and what I desired, I'd like to think that maybe my
attraction to trans women is a sign that I am finally beginning to learn to
love myself."