Two myths about relationships with ladyboys

Originally posted 2021-02-21 14:41:58.

There are many myths about relationships with ladyboys but they are, for a man, little different from those with women. Obviously, in the case of an intact transsexual or transvestite, there is her penis to deal with, but this amounts to something around 1% of her; the other 99% is more important.

There are subtle nuances of difference but no more than one might encounter  in a relationship with someone from a different cultural background.

I think the most damaging of the myths, regarding ladyboys who retain their genitalia, is that they will want to use it in the way that a man would. Outside of sex work, this is rare; most just won’t. (I do know some who do, for pleasure and in private but they are unusual, likely well under 10%.)

Amongst others, who maintain their penises, some are strict that it is a no-go area. These may seek vaginoplasty at some time, but the numbers who do so are small and if anything have reduced over the last two decades. Others are more fluid; they enjoy the physical pleasures available from their penises but will not indulge in activities they consider masculine, meaning, penetration. Ladyboys come equipped with a hole that can be used to give enormous sexual pleasure to both the girl and her partners, so they really don’t see why they should incur all that expense, go through all that pain and take the risk of becoming unorgasmic, just to get a second one.

Everyone is different and this has an awful lot to do with trust. Ladyboys are often concerned that the man they are dating might be gay, and most will see a desire to be penetrated as indicative of that. All the ladyboys I know have loads of gay friends and they won’t go near them sexually.

I know of one girl who specifically had her vaginoplasty, quite late on, because her long-term partner kept asking to be penetrated. She loved him but performing this act made her feel that he was actually a gay and she was not prepared to be in such a relationship. In order to settle the matter, she made the option impossible. Since her boyfriend was a cock-hound, the relationship did not survive.

One of the other huge myths and perhaps the most damaging, is that the relationship between a man and a ladyboy must be homosexual: it isn’t. It is a normal heterogender one between a man and a woman and thus stands outside the LGB spectrum. To be fair, it also stands outside the usual male-female spectrum and this has historically caused issues.

Homosexual

The term ‘homosexual’ was coined in the 19th century. In the West, male homosexuality is defined as a desire for other males.  However, in most of the world and certainly for thousands of years, the definition is by practice: one who desires to be penetrated. To put that another way, a male with female sexuality is  Homosexual. This is found in two forms: congenital and acquired Sexual Inversion. The former is present from birth and likely results from hormone delivery anomalies in utero and the latter is the result of some sort of social or sexual behaviour. Often this begins with anal play around puberty.

Having a sexuality which is not aligned to sex, like this, called Sexual Inversion, turns the male into a girl, no matter how that person presents in terms of gender. In other words, just because you wear a suit and tie, if you take cock inside you or even desire it, you are no longer a man, but instead a Not-Man; in other words a ladyboy. That’s right, it is commonplace to be almost completely masculine in presentation and still qualify. The concept of a ‘gay man’ is as absurd as it gets.

Inverted males in such cultures see themselves as ‘women inside’ but not ‘real women’ a neat piece of nuanced thinking that appears beyond the wit of most Westerners. However, they all desire to be penetrated and since only men can penetrate, they are by definition attracted to men. But understand that it is not so much the gender identity they are attracted to but the sexual role such a relationship affords: it allows them to play the woman’s role in sex.

Gender is the set of signals, both innate and therefore evolved, and culturally conditioned, that advertise a person’s sexuality to others. Why do women have breasts and large buttocks and men body hair, beards and deep voices? These are not functional qualities, they have evolved as visual signals that identify us as male or female. We build on these through cultural norms.

In the West this view is considered ‘old fashioned’ notably by some USicans; but that is another of the myths. It is perhaps appropriate to remind them that they are but 4% of world population and they don’t get to say how things are for the rest of the world, either through their propensity for violence or domination of media.

Heterosexual

So when a man penetrates a ladyboy — and the term is just as valid in the West as elsewhere — he remains a man and his partner becomes a girl, even if she were presenting as a man, because of the sexual roles they are playing. This is because in penetrative sex, the penetrator is always male and the penetrated is female. Think bolts and nuts.

The above leads to a gender inversion taking place if a ladyboy penetrates a man, because she has to become a man to do it, and he a girl. An excellent, well researched and sensitive description of this phenomenon can be found in Prof Don Kulick’s ground-breaking work Travesti. In this case,  the gender roles are reversed.

However, it is unusual to meet ladyboys who will do this outside of sex work,  so it isn’t really a normal part of ladyboy-man relationships in general.

.It’s worth mentioning that Autogynephilic transvestites, through the act of being penetrated by men, become girls too, through a mechanism that Prof Blanchard called ‘Pseudo-bisexualism.’ However, these are not true bisexuals.

More myths about relationships with ladyboys

Another of the popular myths  concerns the ‘tranny chaser’ a pejorative for men who are attracted to ladyboys, invented apparently by Autogynephilic transvestites and often used by feminists.  This occurs because these transvestites, in the West, have been conditioned by the toxic levels of homophobia and masculinity-revulsion that are endemic there. They are horrified by the thought that they might themselves be Homosexuals and as a result they reject any approach be men. This appears to contribute their well-known elevated neurosis.

Ladyboys, whether they are Homosexual at root or Autogynephilic, always identify as ‘gays’ (or whatever the local term is,) so relations with men are an integral part not only of their lives but also of their self-validation.  They are almost always delighted to meet a  man who likes ladyboys and is prepared to be intimate with them. The last thing they would say to insult him is that he is a ‘chaser’ though they might, in extremis, call him ‘gay’ or pejoratives of that meaning, especially if the man has abused them. But by the time we got there, the relationship would already have failed.

This is in part a confirmation of Blanchard’s profiling: ladyboys relate to men exactly as women do. In part it differs from Blanchard in that no distinction is drawn, in ladyboy and equivalent cultures, between Homosexual and Autogynephilic ladyboys. This doesn’t mean they’re not present. they definitely are, it’s just that the culture conflates the two. They are not generally perturbed to know that a man has had relations with other ladyboys, any more than women are by a man having had former girlfriends. (They might be if the man were revealed to have been with other men, however.)

Autogynephilic ladyboys relate to men as a part of their sexualised construction of a female self. In other words, men are sexual props who prove the their femininity. In the West, however, most are both gynephilic and androphobic, that is to say they are attracted to women and repulsed by men. Only about 20% in the West are androphilic, though this may be changing as Autogynephiles begin hormones at younger ages, before their male sexuality has crystallised. These, the ‘pseudo-bisexuals’ always retain their initial desire for femininity, though it is now complemented by a desire for sexual validation from men. Interestingly, where two ladyboys form a romantic relationship, one at least is almost certain to be Autogynephilic.