Ok, so Caitlin Jenner is a pre-op transsexual woman, meaning she has male genitalia but presents herself as a woman. She also has said her conversion to womanhood has not affected her sexuality, as she is a heterosexual and is (and always has been) attracted to women (presumably straight women).
Where I have some confusion is with who she hopes to attract now, as a transsexual woman with a penis? Straight women? Gay women? Neither? Both? If her sexuality is unchanged, then she would remain attracted to the same sorts of heterosexual women, it would seem. But it also seems that she would be unable to attract those same sorts of women who were previously attracted to her former, very masculine, male identity.
So what does someone like Caitlin Jenner do? How do they reconcile such conflicting realities?
You should watch I Am Cait. She discusses it as well as she can. Even she appears to be somewhat confused about it. As is, she is still attracted to women, but she has stated, multiple times, that she hasn’t given it a whole lot of thought yet.
She does appear to be very close to a Candis Cayne. They’ve both denied a romantic relationship, I’m just saying they both appear to be attracted to each other.
At the outset, I think she would love to date women, but I think her mentality will change as she continues through the process. Where she’ll end up, I don’t know. I don’t think she knows. I think it’ll be a combination of nature and nurture. I think that may be why she seems to have a twinkle in her eye for Candis. Bruce may have never looked at a transgender woman, but now that Cait has this great friend helping her at every step of the way, it may be different.
Actually no, I wouldn’t. Being a paraplegic, I’m quite familiar with the fetish-world of attraction. “Wheelchair devotees” are those who are attracted specifically to those who are disabled and use wheelchairs. There are entire websites devoted to bringing these people and the people they desire together. However, many, many people (myself included) have absolutely no interest in pursuing relationships with those whose interest in them is only sparked by fetishism.
I apply this same reasoning with the transsexual communities. Many people do not wish to be desired for anything less than the people that they are. Fetish-like attractions can make a person feel objectified and I’m sure the transsexual community is no exception to this issue.
Nope. It was possible (several of us did) to read your post as a claim that fetishism was the only reason for such an attraction. If you didn’t mean that…super.
Huh. I didn’t read it that way at all. What I got out of it is that the dating market for X isn’t as large as you’d think if the person objects to being dated solely to fulfill someone’s fetish.
So she’s a lesbian, right? That has to be an interesting point-of-view shift: having who one’s attracted to remain stable but the label the rest of the world will apply changing.
Personally, I’ve pretty much dropped the labels “gay” and “straight”, both on this board and in real life, and replaced them with “gynophile” and “androphile” (designating attraction to women or men, respectively). Not to make some kind of abstract statement, but for convenience. It’s more compact, more precise, and being a member of one group doesn’t exclude you from also belonging to the other.
So, instead of posting: “Gay men and straight women, and bisexual people, and those who like to experiment, and trans people of various configurations, etc, who do you think is the hottest member of One Direction?”
I’ll post: “Androphiles, who do you think is the hottest member of One Direction?”
I really think that it’s a much more sensible standard, that society should adopt completely.
Yeah, just checking in – it was perfectly clear. You were only referring to people whose spark came only from fetishism, as you said. I muse that such would-be lovers provide an intriguing though dismaying window into the soul…