Can you sincerely, unironically, and non-sexually identify as (trans) female while also fetishizing femininity?

[Heather]

No worries, you didn't upset me. It's all good.

I figured, but I couldn't get a good sense of what you were asking there, separate from asking why we don't have to share every sexual fantasy with a partner. I can speak to that, and maybe we can just take it from there?

Our sexual partners don't own and aren't entitled to our entire sexualities and everything and anything that happens with them. In fact, they're not entitled to ANY of it. Instead having a sexual partner is having someone with whom we choose to share whatever parts of, or expressions of, our sexualities that we want to share, where and when we want to share them.

Too, when we have a sexual partner or partners, it's not like all of a sudden, our sexual life on our own stops existing or must be (or even should be!) transferred to them. We still will usually have sexual lives and existences that don't include them much or at all, like our solo masturbation and anything that involves, for instance, or, if we're with more than one partner, our sexual lives with other partners. Make sense?

[LightUpTheStage]

Yeah, I guess. I mean, it's a common thing even here on Scarleteen to hear about people freaking out that their partners watch porn, so I would personally be a little scared to do anything like that if I were in a relationship, but that's fine. I feel like all I really need is a partner.

Re me talking more about trust: the previous person had essentially talked about only sharing this with a partner I trust, but I have no idea what makes a human trustworthy, and so many people have more or less betrayed me who I thought never would, so I don't know how close you have to get to a person before I could trust them.

In the third paragraph, I was trying to refute what the previous person said, which was that people "thinking you're weird" isn't all that bad, when it totally. Is. People thinking you're weird gets you KILLED.

[Heather]

I think this is one of those things where when we're considering or choosing a partner, we can ask people how they feel about it and then make decisions together about if we'll be a good fit or not. For instance, we can ask someone, "How do you generally feel about your sexual partners watching for themselves, as part of their masturbation or other sexual lives without you?" And if that's something we want to do, and the other person is really not okay with, well, then we can see we're not a good fit and take a pass. I think when it comes to building the good stuff with other people, communicating about it is a much better way to approach it than avoiding something we usually do or want to do out of fear, you know?

I totally get that trying to nail down what trust is in the abstract is a tricky thing. I think it's much more something we just feel or we don't, and when we start to develop trust with someone, we can feel it. I can talk about what that tends to feel like, if it's helpful to you. I'm so sorry to hear you've experienced a lot of betrayal of your trust. That's so painful when it happens, and also very painful when it's accumulated.

For sure, we very awfully live in a world where when some people consider us to be "other" it can be unsafe, sometimes even fatal. But at the same time, there are also plenty of people who can think we are weird or different where it really is benign. It's sure hard to think about them, though, when we're living in such a scary time, particularly when it comes to transness and queerness, I get it. <3

[LightUpTheStage]

Hi, thank you for the reply! Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.

I think you may have missed a word in your quotation there, I’m not sure what you meant to say.

Random question: it ethical to masturbate (and/or watch porn or similar) without telling a partner?

I see what you mean about not avoiding things out of fear, but it seems to me like the only way to get people to like you (not just romantically, but also in the abstract) is to obsessively plan your whole life around the fear of others hating you.

Yeah, what DOES trust feel like? Because I felt trust with people and they screwed me over.

It’s not just about dying (I probably have it coming at this point - no, before you ask, I’m not considering suicide), I’m more concerned about living but having my life ruined, like being physically attacked or blacklisted from work or maybe even raped(?).

[Sam W]

Hi LightUpTheStage,

To your random question: no, there's nothing inherently ethically wrong with masturbating or consuming porn while in a relationship; honestly nearly anyone who experiences a desire for sex AND ends up in a sexual relationship is going to end up masturbating because they're aroused when a partner isn't around. Whether to tell a partner about that depends a lot on them and the relationship between the two of you. Some partners can be frank with each other about the fact they masturbated or used sexual media, while others prefer not to know what their partner gets up to in private. I will say that some people aren't comfortable with a partner consuming porn; that's a limit they get to have, but like any sexual want or boundary it's going to influence whether a certain person is a good fit for them as a partner.

On the topic of trust, I do think age might be playing a role in the difficulty of describing it or relating to Heather's assertion that it's often something we just feel. Not in the sense that people in their teens can't or don't form really trusting relationships, but that the amount of those you've had a chance to form is probably pretty limited. Trust, like a lot of abstract things, tends to get easier to identify the longer you're alive and have had to interpret your feelings and relationships. And goodness knows that having hard our trust broken before can make it harder to feel like we even know what trust looks like.

But in terms of how it feels, it can often involve the sense that you're safe, both emotionally and physically, around that person. The sense that they're being honest with you, and that you can do the same in return without anything bad happening.There's also often a feeling that even if you and that person disagree, or one of you messes up and hurts the other, your connection is such that you can work through what happened.

That's not a comprehensive definition by any means, but it's some of the qualities of trust that come to mind for me.

With your last comment, it kind of goes back to what Heather mentioned in that we do live in a reality where a lot of bad things could potentially happen to us. Sometimes there are things that could lessen our risk of those things, but there's also the fact that a lot of it is pretty arbitrary. Which is...not a comforting thought, and it seems like that fear of catastrophe is a pretty strong one for you.

But here's the thing: all of those scenarios you described, save for death, are survivable. And while for you they're all hypothetical, for plenty of people (including some folks who read this) they're very real things that they went through. And the truth is, people can and do keep living full lives after events that are "life ruining." So I wonder if some of managing those fears you're having might involve reframing the stories you tell yourself about the worst case scenarios.

(I just said a lot of stuff, and I don't want to pile on too much at once, but I do want to say that it tends to be much better for us, and less exhausting, in the long run if we focus on finding people who like us for us, rather than on making sure no one hates us).

[LightUpTheStage]

Hi! Sorry that it took so long for me to respond.

My issue with your definition of trust is that that’s exactly how I felt and then it was broken anyway.

And my issue with you saying that people live full lives after “life ruining” scenarios is that for me a full life would involve a degree of success impossible to attain if anything were to besmirch my reputation, and also given the state of the USA you ARE very likely to get killed either by the government or by an angry mob right now.

[Sam W]

So, the thing is, even when it's present and strongly felt, trust can still be broken. That doesn't mean those things I described aren't elements of trust; it just means that there isn't a way to be certain our trust will never be broken. Which can be a scary thought, because as you discovered having your trust broken can really, really hurt.

Trust, like anything that involves vulnerability on our part, will always have a degree of risk. That's why, ultimately, the choice about whether or not to trust someone is a deeply personal one, because we're each the expert on what risks, if any, we're willing to take.

I am going to have to push back on your final paragraph a little bit. I obviously don't know what that success you're picturing is, but I'm not being flip when I say that many, many people who face those scenarios you're afraid of can and do go on to attain success in their lives, in big and small ways. Too, being a survivor of a sexual assault or a physical assault isn't the kind of thing that automatically harms someones reputation (it shouldn't do harm to it, period, since they didn't do anything wrong, but we don't quite live in that world yet). It poses it's own set of often very big challenges, and those could include things like having to set aside or defer a goal, or the loss of something the person wanted but again, those things are ultimately survivable. That doesn't mean they won't suck or be hard or frightening, just that the person will find a life for themselves on the other side of them.

A big part of why I'm saying this is to offer a reality check, not only to you but to other people reading what you've posted. I guarantee there are survivors reading it, including some for whom the hurt and fallout from an assault is very fresh. And it just does not do anyone any favors to reinforce the idea that an assault or other violent incident is a thing from which they can never recover. It just feeds into fear, despair and narrow stories about what is and is not possible for survivors.

Speaking of fear, it does sound like your brain tends to go straight to catastrophizing when it thinks about this. The jump from "someone outs me as enjoying a certain sexual thing/having a certain identity" to "and therefore I will be murdered by a mob" is one that doesn't reflect reality. That's not to say that there isn't a noticeable increase in violence towards queer and trans communities. There is, and it's terrifying. You'll get no argument from me there. But I am an out queer person married to an out trans person living in a conservative, rural town where lots of people have guns. My house has rainbow flags on it.

I'm telling you this because I, like many queer people, have had to run the calculation of "how afraid should I be" and make decisions based on it. A lot of people who are open about their non-normative sexual desires have done the same. And if the world you're describing was the realistic level of risk, where we were routinely being murdered for it, far, far, far fewer of us would be revealing those things to the public. Obviously, I can't tell you how afraid to be, or what risks to take. But I also can't, in good conscious, not challenge thoughts that are freaking you out under the guise of protecting you.