Margaret Cho is a chaser? Tranny chasers in dyke communities

Tranny chasers seem to be getting some attention these days. Well, as someone in the trans community, I hear about them all the time, but it seems that the conversation is getting wider. I encountered a post on feministe today (which was linked to from several trans communities I’m on), which is about a San Fransisco Chronical article by Violet Blue interviewing Margaret Cho. In it, Blue writes:

I also discovered her new fetish, what she thinks is “the newest hottest thing to happen sexually”: transmen and trannyboys. Giddily, Cho gushed that she’s a born-again tranny-chaser — of the FtM (female-to-male) variety. “For me, it’s transmen. I’m doing a few things, like working with Ian Harvey. It’s not even FtM — it’s FtX. There’s a band from Toronto called The Clicks that’s all transmen, and it’s like a hot boy band. The girls just go crazy and scream for them — it’s like Beatlemania, but for queers! And packing, and the politics of packing, that’s, like, so hot.”

I find this exotification odd and frustrating because Violet Blue and Margaret Cho are both people I really appreciate. I’m almost expecting some excuse or mistake to be revealed, but it’s probably more likely that they’re simply picking up on and repeating a sentiment that exists throughout queer women’s communities without taking time to think about what they’re saying. If you want to know the details of why that kind of exotification is bad, check out the post at Feministe. What I want to talk about is a little more specific and has less to do with Cho and Blue. I want to focus on the way that this dynamic get’s gendered.

First of all, I can’t touch this subject without going over the differences between chasers who typically go after transwomen and chasers who typically go after transmen. Transwomen communities have a long and difficult history with chasers. With a few exceptions, chasers are generally straight men who are recognized as exploitative if not dangerous. The queer women who are transmen-chasers seems to be a slightly newer phenomenon, and is often seen as forward thinking or radical – even if the same exploitative dynamics exist. There appears to be a coming from an assumption that women are not capabably of such exploitation. Then there are a few who are consciously aware of these dynamics and take on the label of tranny-chaser themselves. While generally viewed with skepticism from the trans community, I think it’s more important to look at their behavior than their label. And if they want to reclaim “chaser” go ahead. Just keep being very careful to explain to people what it is you’re doing.

That said, the big issue I see coming out of this article (besides exotification of course) is that it isn’t discussing an attraction to transpeople, but an attraction to transmen, in a community that is often openly transwoman-hostile. Cho is quoted above refering to this as a phenomenon in the terms of “a hot boy band” or “Beatlemania, but for queers!”. And in many ways that seems, unfortunately, to be the case. There are a lot of queer women who are willing to proclaim an attraction to ciswomen and transmen, and explicitly not to transwomen. Many such people will call themselves trans-sensual. And while attraction to transpeople is generally great, there’s something really wrong about defining trans-sensual in a way that specifically identifies transwomen as a group of people that you refuse to date. Not to mention that that kind of catagorization is coming awfully close to saying that transmen are really women and transwomen are really men.

Historically, transwomen have been excluded from queer women’s spaces while transmasculine folk have been celebrated. The sexism and misogyny inherent in this is somewhat baffling considering the communities longstanding connection to feminism. I think this is often informed by some rather innacurate stereotypes of transwomen, in addition to the community’s valuing of butchness and masculinity and the community’s devaluing of femmeness and femininity. Queer women are often exposed to transmasculine people in the community, but how often are transfeminine folks present to counter these stereotypes. If you think that transwomen are all handbag toting high femmes from the 1950’s housewife era, well, those characteristics aren’t exactly valued in queer women’s communities. But those are just stereotypes. And often it’s these stereotypes that are used to justify why someone is defining their sexuality as not attracted to transwomen — because they’re just attracted to masculinity and butch-ness (which apparently is a quality that cismen don’t have).

There are transwomen out there who are butch. There are plenty of transwomen out there who have the same “dyke” sensibilities that often gets read as masculine. It’s just that many of these women don’t get read as transwomen. Because transwomen are suppoesd to be all feminine, those of us who aren’t become invisible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard queer women complain about “all the butches turning into men” and I’ve wanted to yell out “what about all the transwomen taking their place?” So you’re only interested in short-haired, tatooed, stocky, dyke-daddies? Don’t assume that there isn’t a transwoman who will fit the bill.  And if everyone in your community is only interested in the same, maybe you should start a femme-phobia discussion group.

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