yeah, “trans-attracted” isn’t really a thing. we’re just the gender we tell you we are. trying to differentiate us from cis people is a red flag.

To preface this, i’m “trans attracted” in that i’m a transfem exclusively dating other trans people (t4t). Trans people dating other trans people is a common thing for a number of reasons, ranging from simple things such as me literally being in community with more trans people than cis people to a deeper mutual understanding to the idea of t4t as a form of liberatory love. There’s a lot of reasons why i date other trans people, and none of them have anything to do with the reasons chasers date trans people. A lot of this effortpost is also strongly influenced by my own experience with transmysogyny. That does not exclue the very specific, very real struggles of transmasculine people dating cis people, it’s just that i lack the personal experience with that and not everything i write will be 100% transferrrable to what they go through. Still, i want to stress that both straight and gay transmasculine people have their own dating struggles, some of them closely paralleling mine, some being very unique to their experience.

First of all, i need to come clean about one thing: The idea that finding trans people attractive would already make you a chaser is inherently ultra transphobic. This also applies to trans people having that idea - i know there’s trans people, usually straight and very binary, very traditionally-feminine trans women, who think that any man wanting to date them needs to be absolutely convinced that they are actually a cis woman until they tell them and must never have dated another trans woman before. While that may seem like a safeguard against chasers, it actually betrays a high amount of self hatred rooted in internalized transphobia, and a misguided, problematic idolization of cisnormative beauty standards. It’s not hard to find trans people attractive, we do not have to pass as cis people to be hot, either, and while it’s very often problematic when cis people are attracted to us in ways that are related to us being trans, it’s not automatically chaser-y and what defines a chaser is not our transness, it’s their way to deal with it.

Also, as a card-carrying man-hating feminist i have found out that a staggering number of men who are “in the dating market” have a pronounced tendency to view the people they date as objects for their sexual gratification. That makes them horrible human beings, but it doesn’t make them cis girl chasers or cis gay dude chasers, it just means they’re vapid fuckbois. I don’t see why that would be any different when they’re dating trans people.

Thirdly, chasers are absolutely a thing that exists and are actually not hard to define. A chaser is a person (usually a cishet man) who sexually objectifies trans people (usually trans women) in ways that are inherently transphobic. This intersection between objectification and transphobia is what defines chasers, and leads to a very specific array of behaviors that are typically exhibited by them in their dating strategy. Being confronted with these behaviors is sadly a part of the trans experience, even if we go out of our way to not date cis men. If you spend any time in trans communities, you know this shit both personally and through countless tales from other transfems.

Examples include, but are not limited to:

- Behavior rooted in the misgendering of trans people, which leads to treating trans women as men. This often means acting more aggressive and more overtly sexual towards trans women than they would towards cis women. It can also manifest in the idea that “boys make the best girls”, a believe that trans women serve better to fulfill male sexual fantasies and are less demanding in romantic relationships than cis women. Spoiler: This is nonsense. In many cases, the opposite is true and you’d have an easier time dating cis women. In fact, one of the many, many reasons why i prefer dating other trans people is that they are the only people who can treat me good without needing to read the instruction manual beforehand. If you want to date a man looking like a girl, just date a drag queen or a femboy who identifies as a gay cis dude. It’s not that hard. People who fulfill your need of being men looking like women are out there, it’s just that they are actual men and not trans girls. Just don’t act surprised when they refuse to spend three hours getting into drag every time before they meet you.

- Acting manipulative in ways that specifically target the insecurities of trans people. There’s unfortunately a ton of guys out there who are manipulative, controlling people and such behavior is always one of the biggest red flags in dating, but some of them specialize in preying on trans women. We have our share of specific insecurities and needs for affirmation and it’s not that hard to exploit that. It’s fortunately also not that hard to spot if you’re aware this is a thing. I’m not getting more specific here because i do not want to give anybody ideas, but let’s just put a pin in the idea that there’s guys out there who date in ways that are downright predatory, with a modus operandi that puts vulnerabilities of trans people front and center in their predation strategy.

- Placing one’s sexual demands over our transition needs. When you date somebody who physically transitions, that automatically means our body will change in often very profound ways and these changes are inseperable from our happyness. We need this to happen. This is something you just have to accept when you date a trans person over an extended period of time. I understand there’s people who are fascinated by the idea of girls with dicks, i also know there are transfems who do not want bottom surgery, or who want one or the other form of penile-preserving bottom surgery and that’s cool and valid, but when you date a trans person, it’s not up to you to decide about that. You can like my girldick, my gal pal certainly does and i honestly feel flattered, i’d also be all over that thing if it belonged to another girl, but it’s gonna be a clit less than two years from now and at that point i’ll need somebody who does grocery shopping when i can’t walk longer distances again yet, not somebody who tries to talk me out of a surgery i had to jump through 500 hoops to get it approved. The transition steps we undergo are not negotiable.

- Placing one’s sexual demands over our dysphoria triggers. This is similar to the last point, but behavorial instead of physical. Let me point out that people are different and there are trans girls who like to top, but you can’t expect us to act like your transphobic porn fantasy. Most of us will not even to reliably reliably get an erection after a while on HRT, and that’s usually on purpose. Even having a boner is agonizing to a lot of transfem people. Not to all of us, i do not want to generalize, but you can’t expect us to fuck you like a dude just because we have a penis. You don’t have to date a trans girl if you want to be railed by a woman, there’s strap-ons (which, btw, are also something a lot of transfems may be more comfortable with than using their girldick). If you date an unoperated or pre OP trans woman, it’s often, not always, but often, a safer bet to treat her girldick like a clit. Some will insist on you calling it a clit, too. What’S a t the core of this is that you cannot assume certain organs to be used or to even be organically the same as they are in cis people. Girls often use their penis differently than men even before HRT completely alters how it works, feels, smells and tastes. Stop making assumptions based on porn shoots that wouldn’t be possible without viagra. More importantly, fucking deal with the fact that people do not exist as extensions of your sex fantasies, but have needs and limits of their own.

- Not being able to own the fact that you’re dating us. It’s a massive red flag if you can’t be seen with me in public. Yeah, sure, transphobia is a thing and it also affects cis people that date us. I get that. Like any queer person with a dating life, i already live with the fact that me and my gal pal always have to gauge how queerphobic a place is before we hold hands in public. Do you think i want to put up with somebody who can’t handle that kind of pressure at all? As somebody who doesn’t have the choice if i want to deal with transphobia or not, i have zero pity for people who can’t put up with a fraction of what i have to endure. Not to mention that i can’t know how you’ll react once your hornyness has worn off when you start being weird about being seen with me. Lovers freaking out because they’re afraid they’ll be exposed is one of the main reasons why we get murdered. This is a serious hate crime risk and it’s a risk that is just not worth taking. I’m not gonna take chances when it comes to this, i don’t need to put up with a dude getting violent on me just because he can’t handle that he slept with a trans woman, or can’t handle how his shitty peer group will react to that. If you can’t be seen with me in public, you don’t deserve to see me in private. Simple as.