transformations

Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode…

Our culture is a jerk for how few tools it gives us to think deeply about ourselves. 

Relevant links:

Alyssa’s article: https://the-orbit.net/alyssa/2016/03/08/baby-problem-steps-porn-edition/

Her blog: https://the-orbit.net/alyssa/

Miss Mako (the YouTube channel Alyssa refers to): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdZQ4Vo7-54mx15dQRONKzg

The Comics Site: http://www.tgcomics.com 

Music by Drake Stafford, used under Creative Commons.

Callie: Big thanks to Becky and Astor for being new patrons this week. Thank you friends. Love you lots. 

[00:00:06] And before we jump in heads up this episode contains content that discusses fetishes and sexuality in relation to gender identity. 

[00:00:13] My name is Callie Wright, and this is Queersplaining. There’s a part of my transition that I don’t talk about a lot. I’ve struggled with whether or not to do an episode about it, because it’s something tha,t if handled badly, can feed into some pretty harmful stereotypes about.

[00:00:29] People but you know what? I trust you. People who hate trans people aren’t going to suddenly stop because we tiptoe around sensitive conversations. So fuck it, right?

[00:00:41] I used to think that my transness was a fetish forced to feminization is a thing and the fetish world, right? And it usually is based around the humiliation of a man by feminizing him. And the idea that’s based on is pretty gross right? The idea that it’s so humiliating to be a woman.

[00:01:01] But there I was. As a kid, I used to spend the night at my grandma’s house a lot. I’d wait for a few hours after she went to bed… Had to make sure she was asleep. After that, I’d go exploring. My Grandma had an unbelievably huge wardrobe. I’d go through her closets. I’d go through the piles of clothes in her basement.

[00:01:22] I’d find something that looked nice and I would change. And it was such a thrill. And after puberty hit, it was sometimes a very explicitly sexual thrill. And when I learned about fetishes, I figured that’s what it was about. I was ashamed of it, but that’s what it was to me. I was never given the tools to think more deeply about it than that.

[00:01:45] I even engaged a little in the *forced* part of the forced feminization. There’s a really harmful stereotype that sexual deviancy is at the heart of transness. And so this can be something that’s difficult to talk about without knowing you have an hour to provide context. But also just, trans people are allowed to be sexual, right?

[00:02:07] And therefore sexuality is allowed to be a part of our identity and how we experience that. It’s not for everyone, and that’s okay, but it is for some of us. And I’m tired of that being denied to us. 

[00:02:20] So, fast forward to just a few weeks ago and I see a Facebook post alluding to exactly this kind of thing and my friend Alyssa linked to an article she had written about almost this exact same thing.

[00:02:34] Alyssa: I’m Alyssa Gonzales, a trans woman who writes over at the Perfumed Void, one of the blogs over at The Orbit.  The tagline I like to use is “the Perfumed Void: research, feelings, and life with Alyssa Gonzales.

[00:02:50] Something I suspect a lot of us will find very familiar, Is that even before we know why this is the case that feeling feminine also feels very sexy.

[00:03:05] Later on, we’re not at all surprised by this. It’s like, “of course, we feel sexier when we feel more ourselves.” It also meant that a tremendous amount of my fantasy life was devoted to the idea of being transformed into a beautiful feminine shape and then doing a variety of sex things And it became a very important part of the overall erotic process.

[00:03:31] By the time I was just beginning to realize what I was actually dealing with, I was very nearly at the point where it wasn’t possible for me to bring a sex act to completion without having this sort of fantasy overlay in my own mind. 

[00:03:46] Callie: And at what point did that start to morph into you better understanding that it was like a larger issue of identity? As opposed to like just being like the Fantastical musings of a kid.

[00:04:00] Alyssa: Probably when I caught myself looking for more explicit implementations of this concept online. It was one thing to be really excited about a specific theme in fiction and to slowly start to notice that I had preferences for how that theme was handled, and quite another to start explicitly looking for sexual content that had this as its Motif 

[00:04:26] Callie: and so what sorts of things would you find?

[00:04:28] Alyssa: Some of it was looking for narrative content on YouTube in particular that featured body-swapping or other transformation type themes.

[00:04:38] Being on YouTube. It means there’s a very hard limit to how like sexually explicit it can be which meant that the psychological aspects, even the ones that were sexually charged, were at the four of the storytelling. And so there was room there for different levels of investment in the production value process and different reactions to being transformed.

[00:05:02] There were people that would set up the story. Where “here’s this neat magical amulet we found” or something and other sorts  “we both take this weird drug” and therefore… It was obvious for everyone making it that the point was less “here’s the hard sci-fi exploration of some future technology. That might let us do this in more…” The more Fantastical “here is an excuse to tell this kind of story” which is more how I prefer to deal with my sci-fi if we’re being honest, but 

[00:05:37] Callie: do you remember any of those specific titles that you found, like what the what the plots were and what they were about?

[00:05:44] Alyssa: There was a series I ran into about a sort of vacation service. The name of the fictional service was called Vacation From You. And the idea is that someone would take a vacation from being themselves and essentially Airbnb their own body for someone else to rent for a little while. While they visit the body of a third person in some chain.

[00:06:12] It’s this delightfully quirky premise, just created lots of excuses for some bored accountant named Jim to suddenly be an Italian supermodel for a weekend. 

[00:06:27] Callie: And so what’s the kind of vacation you take in your head? Like bouncing off this premise where, what is your vacation look like or what did it 

[00:06:34] Alyssa: It was a lot of lounging next to swimming pools. Yeah, a lot of trying on clothes, like just endlessly. (laughs)

[00:06:45] That was really one of the tip-offs that it wasn’t a specifically erotic thing. Like that it wasn’t actually a fetish. That a lot of the time it wasn’t even the characters deciding to get up to sexual Shenanigans while in their exchanged bodies. There’s definitely plenty of that in this genre, but a lot of the ones I preferred weren’t that.

[00:07:10] I mean, I was still pretty aroused the whole time and I certainly took advantage of that. But it was because the fantasy made me feel beautiful and attractive and desirable. And the idea of being that person and feelin,g as good as she did being her and dressing in the way that I’d feel super sexy if I looked like that while dressed that way.

[00:07:34] That was a level of arousal I didn’t have access to any other way in a body that’s felt deeply alien and uncomfortable. And so a lot of these ya know, trips down Fantasy Lane know they were about accessing that so putting myself in the mental position to ever so briefly pretend to be one of these very attractive women.

[00:07:56] Callie: And so now that you have embraced this as being who you actually are, how has that changed for you? Or has it changed for you?

[00:08:07] Alyssa: And genre still holds me on a more academic level. And something I appreciate is that the more thoughtfully done implementations of it actually touched on the transgender experience, instead of having it as a very awkward subtext that they often don’t even acknowledge, like in the less thoughtful ones.

[00:08:30] It’s definitely reduced the allure of this, like It’s hard to get deeply invested in a fantasy that amounts to what my entire life already is. That’s not a level of like self-indulgence I’m really capable of, I think. 

[00:08:48] Callie: The way that it initially worked out for me when it when it started to become sexual… Like obviously as a kid for me It was just like a Sci-Fi like brain transplant or like a, you know, teleport my brain in someone else’s body and someone else’s brain into my body simultaneously and that was more… I don’t want to say academic. There was no like sexual subtext to it then. 

[00:09:11] But then like when I discovered porn, specifically like fetish porn, the first kind of hint of this stuff for me was like I would watch bondage porn and. It wasn’t so much that I was like really into what was happening to the women. It was that I would imagine myself as that person in 

[00:09:32] Alyssa: yuuuuuup 

[00:09:33] Callie: you know in that that fantasy situation and so like the person doing it whether it, regardless of the gender of the person who was like being the Dom and doing the like the tying up in the all of the fetish stuff like, that person was kind of inconsequential to what was going on. 

[00:09:52] I like I was very just into the fantasy of being that person, and, and then for me like, you know growing up like the first time I tried on women’s clothes. It was very much a turn-on and that was in my head that, for me, that was what said like “oh, this is a fetish, you’re a crossdresser, like you’re somebody who gets off on the thrill of wearing women’s clothes” and you know, there was some shame there.

[00:10:17] Eventually as I learned and explored a little bit more, I came to peace with that. I was just like “oh well, I mean that’s a fetish that I have and it doesn’t hurt anyone. So cool, like whatever.” Eventually through some other psychological processes, I realized there was more to it than that, and it was actually an identity thing. And that’s kind of what brought me to where I was. And so I’m kind of struck by the similarities there. 

[00:10:42] Alyssa: Indeed. Oh I found my way into so much forced feminization porn on my way here. 

[00:10:49] Callie: Yes! And I even participated in a little bit of it. Not porn, but when I would get into sexual situations with people, I engaged in a little bit of forced feminization. And I even had the level of self-awareness to understand like “this is kind of problematic isn’t it? Because it kind of hinges on the idea that a man being reduced quote-unquote to being a woman. That’s pretty that’s pretty misogynist, right?” 

[00:11:12] Alyssa: Yeah. That was by far the most uncomfortable part of the genre of pornography for me. It led me to a lot of thoughts that helped me figure out that I just did not have the same relationship to the subject matter as the people for whom it was designed.

[00:11:28] One of the things that kept me visiting this subject was a lot of stories about gender transformation are situations where it’s forced on someone. Not just the ones that are sissification porn with real actors or something like that. Like even the more Fantastical ones will have all sorts of excuses for this to be forced on an ostensibly male character.

[00:11:56] Some lab accident, some coercive service decided they needed some to do this because they get off on it. Alien spaceship landed and had unexpected side effects on people nearby, that was a fun one. 

[00:12:11] Callie: Do You remember any of the names of those stories? 

[00:12:15] Alyssa: The last one was called The Assault.

[00:12:17]Callie:  The Assault 

[00:12:18] Alyssa: which is weird because there wasn’t really any aspect of warfare to it at all, but they called it that. The website is on is called TG comics.com and and they’re great. But there’s there’s some stuff I don’t like on their site mixed in with the stuff I do.

[00:12:37] Part of the, I think part of the Allure for the mostly cis men that I think are their clientele are that because there’s no agency that then there’s a there’s a dominance and a power exchange aspect to it. And for someone like me, the fact that there was no agency meant I didn’t have to admit to myself what exactly I found so appealing about this genre.

[00:13:00] And its a fantasy about the thing be, happening to me whether I wanted it to or not. And therefore I didn’t have to admit how much I wanted it, 

[00:13:09] Callie: huh….

[00:13:10] I hadn’t quite thought about that aspect of it. That’s really interesting. Because if you want it, obviously like, wanting to be a woman as a bad thing, right? Because women are terrible. And so removing the agency is kind of a…It’s kind of a way to do an end-around that shame

[00:13:30]Alyssa:  catch that fragile little egg shell in sort of intact a little while longer. Because I would have had to admit, you know, there’s there’s a word for people who looked like me and want to look like her.

[00:13:44] But if I just kept sticking to stories where it wasn’t something that the character being transformed was actively seeking out then.

[00:13:53] Then I could pretend it was a fetish even though it was very much starting to feel by then like there was something else to it, and that I did just didn’t get the same thing from this story that other people were getting.

[00:14:04] Callie: That’s like a huge light bulb moment for me. I didn’t even think about that. And I’m kind of like going through in my head the the times that that felt real for me and wondering if… Wondering if the fetish thing was part of that the whole like, you know the idea of like having something done to you that’s out of your control. I wonder if that was a way for me to maybe do an end around that shame 

[00:14:30] Alyssa: I would be surprised If you said it wasn’t (laughs)

[00:14:33] Callie: yeah.  gosh.  

[00:14:38] Alyssa: I know one of the things that helped me figure out that I was in fact trans and not this cis man super into feminization porn, was how the characters were portrayed during and after their transformation, I guess you frequent the genre as much as I did, you find stories that focus on every level of explicitness you can think of, and every aspect of this transformation and the associated social changes you can think of.

[00:15:06] Sometimes even all of them if the story is long and detailed enough. A feature that a lot of them have in common is this sort of “extinction of the self” that follows the forced transformation. That whatever kind of person the cis male subject was that being transformed absolutely overwhelms them with feminine libido over the course of the next know 10 or 20 pages. And they can scarcely maintain any sense of themselves as the person they were before, and on top of that are extraordinarily horny to the point where they don’t particularly care who helps them resolve this.

[00:15:51] That’s where it, the fantasy started to feel a lot more male gazey and A lot less you know, contemplative, like the ones I tended to prefer. 

[00:15:59] There was one I particularly disliked that it was set up as what seemed like could have been this like fairly nuanced exploration with this cis male character who has a bisexual girlfriend who is aware of his secret, you know forced feminization fetish.

[00:16:23] And says “hey, so I’ve encountered this magical potion.” And so so he gets his transformation and spends a stretch of time enjoying this feminine body that he’s dreamed about, and it’s wonderful, and it’s sweet and. And later, it turns out that it’s the specific formulation unbeknownst to either of them, transforms the guy into his vision of what the perfect woman is, and not necessarily some you know metaphysical notion of his feminine self or anything.

[00:16:55] So the guy ends up, over the next day or two transforming into this you know, tall busty blonde, voraciously bisexual character whose interests are in order: sex, makeup, fried food. It’s just this amazingly stereotyped story and I’m just like how on Earth did a guy for whom this was his vision of what an ideal woman is end up with her?

[00:17:28] Just like really? Yeah, I was into this until you went there!

[00:17:33] Callie: Well right, and so that’s where you became disconnected from it.  And so the ones that you had the most connection with were the ones that like maybe this is a loaded word, but the ones that were slightly more mundane. Where there’s this body transformation and then some slightly less like Fantastical or like hyper-sexualized version of reality that happens, like you’d mentioned like you like going on vacation and sitting by the pool and trying clothes on

[00:18:05] oh yeah, 

[00:18:06] Alyssa: the trying on clothes ones were the best

[00:18:08] Callie: yeah. 

[00:18:09] Alyssa: Mmhhm 

[00:18:10] Callie: Do you remember the plot line of of any of those in particular? 

[00:18:14] Alyssa: There was one where ” cis male protagonist whose name doesn’t. Number 407″ encounters a spill of you know, fancy lab tech on the street somewhere. And it’s part of some weird nanomedicine test that was designed for a specific person. And the results was that his exposure to it meant that he was being bodily transformed into an exact duplicate of this specific person who turned out to be a young woman. 

[00:18:42] and so it followed the journey of this person’s body through the sort of magical transition process that was a lot closer to what rest of us actually deal with than what most of these stories do.  Main difference was that it changed his hair color and also his genitals. Tragically the rest of the rest of us don’t get just from no exposure to nanomedicine or whatever. 

[00:19:08] Callie: Oh God. If only it were that easy 

[00:19:13] Alyssa: and part of this was it started with you know “hey, I look younger now.” It’s like “wait wait, something’s happening. Oh, oh, oh, oh fuck it’s gone and.” And then toward the end. Starting first it has to sink in that there’s no way to reverse this.

[00:19:33] But over time this person decides, you know, maybe being this pretty blonde woman’s not so bad, you know. “maybe I could get used to this.” And starts just exploring the possibilities that this body offers, while still staying themselves. Like mentally, there’s no point where there would be completely unrecognizable to someone who knew them before this happens in conversation.

[00:19:58] They got to keep being interested in the stuff they were interested in before and having the same sort of the word choice patterns and feels like this person is now it looks different but it’s still them and ended up being really sweet. And in between know this person’s you know obligatory. Bisexual girl friend is trying to help, I guess would be her by this point in the story deal with the fact that this is what her body looks like.

[00:20:28] She’s a bit pushy about how you know, unless the nanomedicine is prepared to prevent testosterone injections from doing anything, this person could have turned out to be a trans man instead of accept being a woman. That wouldn’t have fit the fantasy so they left it out. 

[00:20:47] Callie: Right? Yeah. I wonder what the Venn diagram is between trans women and people who write stories like that because it’s got to be some overlap right?

[00:20:54] Alyssa: There is. Probably one of the most famous ends up being one of my favorite YouTube channels for this kind of thing.  I don’t know what name she’s going by right now, I found out about the news peripherally through a blog post she put up. That the name of the channel at the time was MakoDap. Because her name was (can’t understand) and producing video content of this sort was part of how she explored her gender right out until she finally understood it, to my knowledge.

[00:21:29] Callie: How does video content like that work? Like is it, like Illustrated, animated? Like what do they….

[00:21:35] Alyssa: This one was with actual actors. Like live action with digital effects added.  And it was a lot of fun as they were like very interesting premises for magical forced feminization stories, usually involving some kind of nanotechnology affecting a very rapid transformation.

[00:22:01] and part of what distinguished these from a lot of the others was really protracted transformation sequences. Like the sequence itself is always a focus in these stories, but Mako’s were particularly long, and because of the digital effects added they were especially thorough, so they were they were wonderful.

[00:22:28] They tended to include more of the “psychic Extinction” type stuff than I necessarily liked, but at a time when not having to admit that I actually wanted it to be me was super important to me, It was helpful. 

[00:22:42] Callie: Sure. So talk me through like once you actually came out, started to transition, did your relationship with this content start to change?

[00:22:57] Alyssa: It slowly lost its Appeal on an erotic level.

[00:23:05] It started it started to occur to me that part of what made it important to me was the fact that my body was so misaligned with the end product of these Transformations, and the closer I got to it the less salary the rest of the transformation held at that level. It has become the Practical reality of my life.

[00:23:24] And so that people don’t get off on balancing their checkbooks usually so they don’t get off on this either. (both laugh)

[00:23:33]Callie:  I’ve had such a weird Journey with, with sexuality like especially post-surgery. Like I feel like how uncomfortable I was with my body caused a lot of fixation. And now that I’m comfortable with my body at least I should say, I don’t have any gender dysphoria about my body. Like I have discomfort with my body that I feel like is not unique to being trans.

[00:23:58] But like I don’t… 

[00:23:59] Alyssa: Trying to find lines between those things is a fuzzy and ongoing process for me. (laughs)

[00:24:07] Callie: Absolutely. I think about it and I’m like “well. like there are plenty of cis women who have these problems too, so its like, not even, the context is different for trans folks obviously, but it’s not an entirely different thing. 

[00:24:17] I more and more often find overlap between those things. I find it interesting like watching porn now. Like I still imagine myself as that, you know, the person who is in the scene the person like being tied up or being scratched or whipped or whatever. But it’s so different now because before it seemed so outlandish and like Fantastical that I would be psychologically putting myself in the place of that person. And now the only reason that I’m not that person is because I don’t have the right gear for it. You know, like the the barrier is a practical one 

[00:24:56] Alyssa: indeed 

[00:24:58] Callie: and I find that it’s definitely it’s changed my relationship, kind of in a similar way. Because I feel like for me, part of the Allure was how extreme it was. And its far less extreme now. Like I could go find I could go find a BDSM club and like literally participate in those kinds of things in real life if I wanted to, and my body is now aligned with the way that I have always wanted it to be, and so those things are practically possible for me now 

[00:25:27] and I think for me at least, part of the thrill, that’s the best word that I can think of, maybe it’s not the best word. But for me part of the thrill, I think was the taboo like “oh my God, I shouldn’t be doing this but I’m totally doing it” you know what I mean? I think that was part of the thrill for me and that’s now gone because I don’t have a taboo in my head about like, dressing femininely or engaging in fetish stuff or anything like that

[00:25:51] and I feel like that’s changed my relationship to and I don’t know if it’s for the better, because part of the throne come from that. But maybe that’s been replaced by gender Euphoria because that’s definitely a thing too 

[00:26:02] Alyssa: sounds about right?

[00:26:04]Callie:  Yeah. I was gonna say 

[00:26:05] Alyssa: the sexual thing being forbidden just made me feel vaguely horrified the whole time.

[00:26:12] It didn’t add anything positive to the experience for me. The main thing it did was the make me abstain from it for long periods, and then finally give in. and enjoy myself in a single effusive explosion of pent-up enthusiasm and then feel bad about myself again.  

[00:26:35] Callie: I was gonna  say did, I was going to ask, did the did the shame increase exponentially with the amount of that pent-up energy that you released? 

[00:26:45] Alyssa: I suppose. I know when I reached a point of indulging this a bit more frequently it was. Let’s train full of in bit more to me wondering okay, there is there has to be a reason that it’s this specific thing. I 

[00:27:04] and at the beginning one of my biggest sources of terror was just between this and the wearing feminine clothing at home and getting essentially the same thrill out of it.

[00:27:19] The absolute terror of what it meant for my relationships. I was quite fortunate that it wasn’t too long after I had developed this habit that I found a relationship that didn’t find it terrifying and gross and you know worth removing me from one’s life over that tells me explore it with less shame and from there figure out what it meant.

[00:27:47] whereas while I was ashamed it was dramatic psychological incentive not to actually figure out what was happening. 

[00:27:53] Callie: I mean, that’s great because I, good God. I definitely went through lots and lots of Shame. And you know, I’d probably be lying if I said that it was entirely gone. I think it’s mostly gone.

[00:28:07] But even that’s not all gender-related. Gosh Is there anything else like relevant to this experience or topic that you can think of?

[00:28:17] Alyssa: This genre of porn reminded me in more ways than I ever expected it to that I probably shouldn’t see myself as a white person. 

[00:28:27] Callie: Tell me more about that. 

[00:28:28] Alyssa: Just, for all that, most porn in this genre is the pretty overtly for the male gaze, It’s also pretty overtly made by and for white people. Like I can count on one hand the number of stories I’ve come across that are about people of color in this genre. And I can count on a much smaller hand how many is them treat their non-white characters with any amount of respect 

[00:28:58] Callie: yeah, I was going to say I feel like in porn a lot of non-white content is fetishization of the non whiteness.

[00:29:06] Alyssa: So the same website where I found some of the wonderful stories, I just mentioned posted a story set in Colombia where literally every Hispanic person is involved in the illicit drug trade somehow. Another one set in Mexico where every non white person is cleaning staff for someone wealthier than them.

[00:29:26] Callie: oh no… 

[00:29:27] Alyssa: There are so many where cis white male protagonist number 613 gets transformed into not just a woman but a woman of some ethnicity and that’s part of the the fantasy I guess.  It’s just, what really drove it home was that there tended to be comment threads and fora that were associated with specific items on this site. Often just ways to communicate with whoever created it just to say “good job” or something like that.

[00:29:59] One of them hosted a poll about what they wanted the ethnic background of the characters in the next entry to be. And white won by a landslide, like it wasn’t even close. And just told me that the people making these things weren’t making them for me on a whole other level.  

[00:30:18] Callie: Yeah, well and I wonder, I don’t know about like, if it’s you know explicit or implicit, but I wonder if the, part of the transformation going from white to non-white is sort of the the same sort of like problematic thing of like fetishizing a moving down of the social ladder from man to woman also going from white to non-white if those things are like corollaries of one another in that. 

[00:30:49] Alyssa: The stories with Hispanic Transformations definitely felt that way. The others, I felt like it was meant more as subtext than text but it was definitely there. And that just got really uncomfortable really fast.

[00:31:03] Callie: Yeah. Being white that’s not something that I’ve had to consider. But that feels gross. I mean that’s nothing that I’d heard of before. Good God. 

[00:31:13] Alyssa: And I’ve had, I’ve had to develop this more complicated relationship with my own race, than I thought I would ever have. Just because of the specific experiences I’ve had in the places I’ve lived.

[00:31:27] And this was one of the things that drove home. Even people who walked past me on the street and never necessarily perceive me as “other” are, they do.

[00:31:40]Callie:  Yeah. 

[00:31:40] Alyssa: I am not among the white  masses at least in Canada. In Latin America, that’s exactly what I am, but not here.

[00:31:50] I want it out there more, first to make sure that every one of us who gets told that it’s just a fetish to being like they were, the appropriate response being something somewhere between “and? Shrug emoji” and “not really.”

[00:32:14] That it’s a super common experience for those of us that haven’t managed to bring our bodies into alignment with our sense of ourselves that imagining ourselves in bodies that fit is a profoundly sexy experience. That cis women get aroused by the thought of feeling beautiful too. So it’s experiencing this kind of you know, fetishistic transformation. It doesn’t mean that that’s the on the whole of what it is for a person. In fact, it might not actually be any of it. Because feeling beautiful is hot. 

[00:32:47] Callie: Yeah. I just I mean, I hadn’t even thought of it that way but I mean, it seems just glaringly logical like if you’re a person for whom sexuality is important.

[00:32:57] It’s not for everyone. But if you’re a person for whom sexuality is important, I mean that’s also an important part of your experience. If you’re experiencing yourself, you know your body, the outside of you your presentation to the outside world being more in line with the way you want it to be that it’s like super super logical that there would be a sexual aspect of that 

[00:33:27] Alyssa: exactly and it’s used to discredit folks like us all the time like 

[00:33:34] Callie: Yeah autogynephilia comes to mind. 

[00:33:36] Alyssa: exactly and also trying to insist that being trans is some weird fetish that kids have to be kept away from and insisting on this very sexualized framing of what it even means to be a trans kid.

[00:33:50] It’s creepy, It’s gross, and it’s deeply inaccurate, and I think it’s a equally gross mischaracterization of what sexuality is like for almost everyone and not even just us.

[00:34:06] Callie: Thank you for listening friend. If you want to support what I’m doing here, check out patreon.com/queersplaining and consider a donation to support the show. Every little bit helps, thank you. You can also share this episode around on social media. Most folks know about new podcasts because of their friends. So tell your friends how much you love me. Tell them they simply must check out Queersplaining!

[00:34:31] Before I go, I want you to know that if you’re lost, you’re hurting, you’re scared, if you feel like no one cares and no one understands. You need to know there’s a community out here that loves you, cares for you, knows that you’re capable of amazing things, and that you are worthy of love.

[00:34:46] If you’re struggling, please don’t be afraid to reach out. Until next time, friend – my name is Callie Wright, and this is Queersplaining.