What is the appeal of "chicks with dicks"?

In My Humble Opinion
101

It’s not an intellectualization, or a linguistic trick. It’s simply that there’s no particular reason to place as much emphasis on the dick as you do (said the gay guy to the straight guy). I look at a picture of someone like this, and I’m sorry, but there’s no way your going to convince me that’s not a woman. I don’t care what is or was between her legs, that’s clearly a female of the species. A male attracted to that person is demonstrating a heterosexual attraction.

The intellectualization here is the one that insists that all expressions of human sexuality fit neatly into three little boxes labeled “Straight,” “Gay,” and “[del]Other[/del] Bisexual.”

Okay, gotcha.

Out of curiosity, a guy who wants to fuck a tranny up the ass: gay or straight?

Because homosexuality isn’t defined by any particular sex act.

Maybe not, but it’s a better fit for that category than it is for “homosexual” or “bisexual.” Until we get better categories, that’s where it’s going to have to stay.

102

But it goes beyond intellectually seeing that person as a woman. A transwoman who has been having HRT for several months is going to smell and feel like a woman. The sweat her body puts out, the texture of her skin, the distribution of fat on her body. Your “animal brain” is going to smell woman and feel woman and, oh, there’s an extra body part. The longer she’s on HRT, the less testosterone she produces, so that eventually she’ll be sterile even without having sex re-assignment surgery.

I’ve known many transwomen and it’s not an intellectual exercise at all to see them as women, even when they’re pre-op and just slumming about without bothering with makeup or tucking.

103

So Diogenes, what you’re saying is that you would be attracted to someone who looked exactly like a man in every respect except being equipped with a vagina instead of a penis?

104

But you identify as bisexual, don’t you? You’re not speaking from a strictly hetero perspective. When I see a penis, my animal brain says “wrong gender,” and I can not be sexually attracted to the person (I don’t want to make it sound like I’m repelled, I’m just neutralized).

This is what seems like a contradiction in terms to me. We’re not talking about guys who are attracted to the feminized characteristics but to the one glaringly male one.

What else is there? You like one or the other or you like both. What’s the 4th option?

I think it would depend on why he wants to do it. If he wants to do it specifically because she has a penis (as opposed to being indifferent to the penis or accepting of it because he views the other person as a woman), then I would call it a homosexual impulse.

I’m talking more in terms of desires which center around specific kinds of genitalia rather than the acts themselves.

Better? How so? It’s a prima facie homosexual act. What part of the act better fits a hetero designation than a gay one? What’s so wrong with just admitting that a same sex attraction is a same sex attraction?

105

Not me, but if someone else was, I wouldn’t call him gay.

106

I know trannies. One of my oldest friends came out as trans a couple of years ago. I’ve had some introduction to the trans community in Minneapolis. It has not been my experience that the animal part of my brain perceives them as women. Even if that were not the case, the “extra part” would immediately kill any attraction on my part. A penis is an erotic kill switch for me.

107

Fair enough. I can see how such a thing could be and certainly don’t think that heterosexual men are normally attracted to penises. My own personal thought is that there is a continuum of orientation. On one end, we have people who are strictly attracted to the opposite gender. Like you, this would be men who have zero erotic interest in penises. On the other would be people who are strictly attracted to the same gender. I think there is a very large and complex in-between area, though, that can’t be defined simply as “bisexual”, since there are so many different permutations to it.

I’d say that those who are specifically attracted to transwomen (chasers, fans of CwD porn) are a different type than your standard heterosexual man who might be attracted to a woman in spite of a penis instead of because of it. So, I can agree with you there.

I just, personally, think that “bisexual” is too broad a label, especially when dealing with someone whose main same-sex attraction is entirely towards genitals rather than other gender identifiers. A term so broad is almost meaningless.

108

I understand what you’re saying. I just don’t know what other term to use. A strictly “hetero” designation doesn’t strike me as accurate either. “Bi-curious” maybe?

109

Falling in love with men. In the end (ha) it’s not the brand of sex you enjoy but rather who you fall in love with that will tell you which orientation you are. The rest is just pleasing your tingly bits.

110

Possible, or some sort of fetish designation, since they’re interested in the penis itself and not in the other trappings of manhood. Phallophilia?

111

No. Sexual orienation is defined by sexual attraction alone. You don’t have to be in love with anybody to be straight or gay.

112

Or maybe we don’t need to label everything.

113

Interesting suggestion, but is it technically really a fetish? I guess I see an attraction to a specific kind of genitalia as kind of what defines orientation in the first place.

When all is said and done, it’s just words, I guess.

114

Cite? Wiki, for starters, speaks about who you ‘find attractive’. Are you claiming that there is no attraction other than sexual attraction?

Then we have

from here.

115

I’m saying that no other attraction but the sexual defines sexual orientation. Are you saying that you have to be in love to know whether you’re straight or gay?

116

Yes, I do identify as bi, but that’s not what I’m basing my arguments on. I don’t doubt you at all when you describe your own experience with heterosexuality. I also don’t doubt the experiences of other men who identify as heterosexual, but are attracted to transexuals.

But that’s just it: they aren’t just attracted to the one “glaringly” male one: if that’s all they were interested in, they would be gay, and they wouldn’t be limiting themselves to transexuals. What attracts them is that one male characteristic in addition to all the other female characteristics. They are exclusively attracted to people who present as female: that makes them straight. They happen to be particularly attracted to the subset of women who possess a particular characteristic. As I see it, it’s no different than someone who’s only attracted to blondes. He’s not interested in guys with blonde hair, only women, because he’s not gay. In this instance, he’s not interested in men with penises, only women. Because he’s not gay.

There isn’t a fourth option. There isn’t a first, second, or third option, either. The whole point is that trying to categorize sexuality makes as much sense as trying to categorize race. It’s an artificial, human-created distinction that only very crudely resembles that which it seeks to describe. And your position is analogous to the old “one drop” rule. A guy who is in all his sexual relationships heterosexual doesn’t suddenly jump categories because he gets drunk at a party and makes out with a dude, no more than a white guy suddenly becomes black because his great great grandmother came over from Africa.

(Just to be safe, I don’t intend in any way to make any sort of a moral analogy between what you’re saying and racism. I’m not in any way trying to imply any sort of bigotry or prejudice on your behalf.)

Also, speaking as a bisexual, I really don’t like that term being used as a catchall for every sexual kink that can’t be shoehorned into one of the other two categories, largely for the reasons outlined by CarieD above.

It’s a prima facie heterosexual act because the two parties involved are different genders. However fixated the guy is on dicks, he’s only interested in them when they’re attached to women. If someone is only ever interested in sex with the opposite gender, there’s no reasonable way you can say that he’s homosexual, no matter how many dicks are involved.

117

Yes, to be polite, sentences in Thai end with “kha” for female speakers and “khrap” (often “khap” with the R dropped) in male speakers. Lao has a similar practice, too. I would not be surprised if there were others.

118

A few posts ago, you said this:

But then you said this:

So on the one hand, categories and labels are flexible and adaptable; but on the other hand they are rigid and absolute. Which is it?

And as Priceguy says, why do we need to label everything?

Okay, so, here, hypothetically, we have Steve. He’s turned on by the thought of a shemale, but he’s also got a bit of furry going on. What he really wants is to meet a Minnie Mouse mascot, go down on her, open her costume, and find a big dick. Imagining sucking this dick makes fireworks go off in his brain.

Now, here, we have Roger. He’s also interested in shemales, generally, but more specifically, he has a masturbating nurse kink. What he really wants is to be lying half-asleep in a hospital bed, when a hot chick nurse enters, unbuttons her uniform, and unleashes a throbbing erection, which she proceeds to stroke off, depositing her load in his water pitcher, while he pretends to be asleep.

And over here, maybe, we have Hamid. He likes the idea of being publicly humiliated by a shemale dominatrix. And in fact, nothing would make him happier than to be strapped to the hood of a Cadillac Eldorado in the middle of Times Square, while a corseted babe stands straddling his face, grips her cock by the root, and mushroom stamps the hell out of him.

Into what possible category could all of these men be exclusively placed? As far as I’m concerned, there’s basically no overlap here.

And that’s fine.

You are very familiar, I’m sure, in threads about evolution, with the fallacy of the strictly bounded species, as frequently expressed by the biologically ignorant and the scientifically dishonest. This bird is this bird, they say, and it is not that bird. Or big cat. Or fish, or bug, or whatever. They are separate, and they will always be separate, goes the argument. It’s wrong, obviously. But it’s understandable, in the ignorant at least, because our limited human experience tells us, intuitively, that this thing is not that thing. Our intuition, based on our limited perspective, leads us astray; but you can see where it comes from. It takes a lot of knowledge and experience to recognize that the lines between species are fairly arbitrary, representing little more than a temporary snapshot of a fluid, ever-changing system, and that the lines we draw and the names we assign are really more for our convenience than anything else. They certainly don’t capture any kind of objective reality.

You’re doing the same thing here. This doesn’t make sense to you, so you’re trying to draw boundaries and place labels in such a way as to make it make sense. And all you’re doing is making clear how difficult it is to put yourself – in the sense of “oneself,” not you specifically – totally in somebody else’s unfamiliar shoes.

That’s normal. That’s human.

And so, unfortunately, is being unreasonable about it. :wink:

119

I was surprised (and pleased to have my ignorance fought) when I heard two biologists discussing whether a certain fish could be considered a salmon or not. I thought that all these lines were firmly delineated long since so it was very interesting to find out that’s not the case at all.

I think some people are made very uncomfortable by ambiguity. They like everything with nice dark lines around the edges.

BTW, Cervaise, that was quite the set of scenarios you worked up there.

120

I didn’t say the definitions were flexible. I don’t believe they are. Sometimes there just isn’t a right word for something, though. That doesn’t mean you can plug in any other word you want, and guys who are into shemales do not fit the definition of the word “heterosexual.” It’s possible that “bi” is not right either, but it’s for sure that “hetero” isn’t right.

I’m not the one who started with the labelling. It’s others in this thread who seem to feel a need to put shemale fans in the “hetero” category and won’t accept any other label for them.