PERSONAL ESSAY

Oops, I Retroactively Changed Your Sexuality by Coming Out as Trans

Cis perceptions of attraction and what is medically possible can become a dangerous problem for trans people

CW: Transphobic violence and murder mentioned without details

Last night, I had the sort of violent nightmare that is really common for a trans person. It’s the kind of nightmare that’s a reality for so many of us at any given moment. It’s why navigating the dating world outside my immediate trans community feels scary.

I dreamt that I ran into an ex-boyfriend, and he recognized me. I watched it slowly dawn on him that I was really a man. He went through several letters of the LGBTQ+ spectrum trying to make sense of me through the slurs corresponding to each letter. Eventually, he began to try on those letters for himself, believing that I had forced them onto him through my existence and his previous attraction to me. The dream quickly became violent, echoing what happened in that relationship for what I believe were much the same reasons, but with less conscious awareness on either of our parts.

I woke up grateful to be located very far away from nearly everyone I’ve ever dated or had a sexual encounter with before beginning my transition. Most of them probably believe they’ve only ever been with cis people. Some of them may believe they’re only capable of being attracted to cis people, if they are even familiar enough with our community to differentiate between the possibility of cis and trans lovers.

One of my ex-partners who learned I was trans asked me if I thought his attraction to me before I transitioned made him gay, before blocking me on all social media.

I think the fact that I turned out to be trans caused him some kind of crisis regarding his sexuality. Another who learned that I was trans unceremoniously changed his profile to indicate he wasn’t heterosexual, but queer. He never spoke to me about it or made it my problem. That was a surprising affirmation that I was very grateful for.

When I hear that someone is “only attracted to cis people,” I get very uncomfortable.

My discomfort isn’t actually about their physical desires or whether they could theoretically be attracted to me. Someone who has so little knowledge about trans bodies is unlikely to give a trans person like me a positive sexual or romantic experience. I’m not at all interested in convincing anyone to consider trans people as an option.

My discomfort is multi-layered.

At best, saying that you’re “only attracted to cis people” shows a belief that trans people can always be identified on sight, with or without our clothes on. It shows a belief that one’s birth gender assignment is always obvious and that it’s always possible to know whether that matches our true gender and our gender performance. The belief that it’s always obvious that a person is trans is not only disrespectful of our gender reality, indicating that any use of our correct names and pronouns is just humoring us; it’s also incorrect.

Cis people who exhibit this attitude are often unaware of what’s medically and physically possible.

Some trans bodies can become virtually indistinguishable from cis bodies, with or without our clothes on. Cis people are also sometimes unaware that prior to transition, a trans person can look exactly like any cis person. We aren’t necessarily born looking androgynous or like our true gender. Some of us are also intersex, and some intersex people are cisgender.

What is happening in our brains may or may not be reflected in our bodies or in our outward performance of gender. In my case, I quickly learned to double down on feminine performance for my own safety while in the closet. For most of my life, my body was indistinguishable from that of a cis woman’s body. I was still a man, just as I am now. I just didn’t have words for who I was. I wasn’t aware of what was possible.

Meanwhile, some cis bodies are virtually indistinguishable from trans bodies. There are cis women with enough testosterone in their bodies to produce beards, narrow hips, and big muscles. There are cis men with enough estrogen to have large breasts or other feminine features. Cis men and women get misgendered all the time, just like many trans people. You may see a cis person and wrongly believe that they are trans because of natural variation in human bodies. Mannerisms, hair, and clothing can play a role in this as well.

When cis people realize it’s not always possible to determine whether other people are cisgender, but still believe they’re only attracted to cis people, we get to the worst-case scenario:

A sense of entitlement to disclosure of trans status.

I had no idea I was trans until less than 3 years ago, so I couldn’t possibly have disclosed this information to everyone prior to transitioning. Does this affect the sexualities of everyone I’ve ever been with? That’s a complicated question that shouldn’t be my problem. Your attraction isn’t a matter of who you’ve been with. A gay man who has been with a cis woman while in the closet is still gay. A pansexual non-binary person who is a virgin or who has only been with people of one gender is still pansexual because of that attraction and who they say they are.

When your attraction is to a type of person you cannot reliably identify, your attraction becomes not about you, but about your potential partners taking responsibility for your sexual discomfort with the idea of trans bodies. You become reliant on trans people to disclose something intimate that we shouldn’t have to share prior to some undefined point where you decide your attraction to one of us has solidified.

And what are the consequences if we don’t feed into cis entitlement to know what doctors thought about our genitals at birth?

For too many of us, the consequences for cis discomfort with their attraction to trans bodies have been violence. My nightmare last night was a manifestation of endless stories that I’ve read from year to year, gathered for TDOR (Trans Day of Remembrance), in case any of us missed the news happening continuously all around us. It’s our partners who are most likely to kill and assault us for being trans. We spend hours upon hours discussing when it’s safe and when it’s required to disclose out of fear of this violence, instead of out of a desire to develop healthy intimacy.

The belief that we’re “tricking” someone who is “only attracted to cis people” is a dangerous trope that is inevitably distilled from the reality that one cannot 100% identify who is cis and who is trans. When you can’t identify us, yet know you aren’t attracted to us, you eventually have to decide that it’s that you don’t like the idea of us and that we’re somehow responsible for protecting you from us by outing ourselves before you have an uncomfortable thought.

At the end of the day, this discussion of identification and disclosure too often becomes the center of trans discussion of sexuality, taking from us the opportunity to really flesh out our own wide variety of sexualities and needs. I don’t want to be with someone who I have to reassure about what their attraction to me means for their sexuality. I’d rather be with someone who is knowledgeable enough about trans bodies, about my body, to allow me to have an affirming, safe romantic and/or sexual experience.

Making sense of my own sexuality is difficult enough without being held responsible for the sexualities of people who are uncomfortable with bodies like mine.

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