The struggles of dating online as a trans man
Image: THE ubiquitous issue is that guys often can't understand that not all trans people are trans women and the rest are weird fetishist trans chasers.
“I forgot to ask whether you’ve been with a trans guy before?”
He hadn’t.
“Well, you’ve been with a guy before? And you’ve been with a woman before? All right then,” I told him, “you’ll be fine.”
Steve* from Grindr is an extremely decent lay and hasn’t once been weird to me about being a trans guy. He’s the exception rather than the rule, unfortunately.
My Top Five Grindr Messages
1. I love TS! Will you dress up in lingerie for me? How are your new breasts coming along?
2. So you have a pussy? I don’t understand.
3. So you have a dick? I don’t understand.
4. hey
5. Are you having The Surgery?
I’m still getting used to navigating the world as a guy. (Must get out of my old habit of doing flirty eyes at straight dudes in the street before it gets me in trouble.) Dating as a trans guy who is into cis guys is especially fraught.
I’m lucky enough to have partners from before transition who are still into me. Beyond that, I tend to limit my dating and hookup pool to online, where I can be upfront from the start about my gender and anatomy in my profile. Of course the ubiquitous issue is that guys often can’t understand that not all trans people are trans women. The rest are weird fetishist trans chasers, or 19-year-olds who ‘don’t care’ but have thirty invasive questions ready to go.
I’ve made poor judgement calls before on whether a guy is trans-friendly enough for me to tolerate his company for an hour or two. One guy did not understand the situation at all.
“Good girl,” he kept saying, unsolicited, during sex.
“Uh, I’m a guy though,” I corrected him, while not orgasming.
“Good boy,” he amended, baffled, while failing to be remotely good at fucking.
I blocked his number before he’d left my place.
Saunas are a different situation entirely for me. I love me some anonymous casual sex, but how the hell do you know when and how to broach the subject of your junk? Fortunately, being 90 per cent orally fixated, I can have a perfectly good time with another guy or four without taking my pants off. No awkward conversation and everybody leaves happy.
If you’re going to hook up with or date a trans guy, do ask us what we’d like to be called. I prefer to just be referred to as a guy, and he. Plenty of us are also non-binary and might have other pronouns such as they.
Terms like TS/transsexual and shemale are not ok for most people. And while you won’t particularly offend me by calling me something exotic like a t-boy or a cunt-boy, I don’t dig it.
Please ask what we call our bits too. I’m not packing a lot of inches but I assure you it’s a dick. I haven’t spent endless time and money on hormones and whatnot to have you call it a clit. Other trans guys will have other terms they do and don’t like for their junk.
Speaking of junk, one thing I hear a lot in dating that grinds my gears is that trans people are ‘the best of both worlds’. I understand the sentiment, but it’s unoriginal and a bit objectifying. That said, I never stop soliciting dick pics, so I’m in no position to point fingers about objectifying.
See you online, guys.
*Not his real name
