Transamorous Misogyny: Masculinity,Heterosexuality,and Cis Men’s Sexist Desires for Trans Women

Abstract

Little sociological research has examined how cis people might be accepting or not of trans people on an intimate level. To begin to fill this gap, the author analyzes over 200 online discussion board posts and threads on Reddit by cis heterosexual men who discuss their romantic and sexual desires for trans women. The author coins the concept of transamorous misogyny to capture the paradoxical process of how cis heterosexual men’s desires for trans women is in and through their contempt of all women. Specifically, the author shows how the cis heterosexual men expand ideas of sexual identity as attraction toward gender expression. However, the men expand the definition of heterosexuality in ways that construct trans women as hyper-feminine, hyper-submissive, and as not real women. The men also discursively work to reassert their cis heterosexual masculinity through discussing how trans women are better than cis women. Ultimately, transamorous misogyny works to devalue all women and allows cis heterosexual men to desire trans women in ways that help the men invest in their own cis heterosexual masculinity.

Transgender people are gaining more visibility in society. TIME magazine has called this moment “The Transgender Tipping Point” (Steinmetz 2014). Simultaneously, 2021 marked the introduction and passage of the most anti-trans laws in U.S. history (Feliciano 2021). While larger structural shifts in society are happening around trans visibility, little sociological research has examined how trans antagonism – the hostility, opposition, and/or violence towards trans people – operates on an intimate level. This gap is critical as dating, sex, and relationship formation can reveal ideas about prejudice and inequality and how societal attitudes shape intimate life (Blair and Hoskin 2019). Recently, a study found that 87.5% of people would not date a trans person (Blair and Hoskin 2019). While trans antagonism can shape why many cis people will not date trans people, there is a dearth of sociological literature investigating cis people who desire trans people, especially cis people who desire trans women. To address this gap, I analyze over 200 online Reddit discussion board posts and threads to examine how mostly cis heterosexual men discuss their romantic and/or sexual desires for trans women. ¹

In a society rife with trans antagonism, many cis heterosexual people may understand that their desires for trans people challenge heteronormativity. Indeed, heteronormativity partly constructs heterosexuality as the norm through cisnormativity – the structures and ideologies that construct cis people (including desires for other cis people) as the norm and that often erase and subjugate both trans people and desires for trans people (e.g., Schilt and Westbrook 2009). While a cis person who desires trans people can be heterosexual, desires for trans people can challenge heteronormativity, playing an often underacknowledged role in shaping how cis people understand and navigate their gender and sexual identities. Furthermore, dominant notions of masculinity also rely on heteronormativity (Connell 2005). As such, cis heterosexual men who desire trans women may not only have their heterosexuality but also their masculinity called into question. Given this context, I ask: How do cis heterosexual men who desire trans women discursively construct their sense of masculinity and heterosexuality? A critical understanding of cis heterosexual men’s desires for trans women can help us to understand not only the relationship between masculinity and heterosexuality, but also how to continue to address the challenges trans women face.

In this article, I introduce the concept transamorous misogyny to capture the paradoxical processes of cis heterosexual men both claiming to desire trans women while simultaneously disdaining and policing all women. Transamorous is a term used to describe attraction toward trans people, especially trans women (Tompkins 2014). As I show, cis heterosexual men who desire trans women are expanding ways of thinking about heterosexual identity beyond gender to a focus on gender expression and desiring femininity. However, I argue that trans antagonism and heteronormativity shape this expansion of heterosexual identity, as the men also work to reassert a sense of their cis heterosexual masculinity in the face of their non-heteronormative desires.

The men in this study accomplish this reassertion through both transmisogyny and misogyny – through hyper-feminizing and hyper-sexualizing trans women and through their disdain of the vagina and not being able to relate to or sexually please cis women. The men also invest in notions of gender essentialism such that trans women are framed as partly male, and hence, the cis men claim they can relate to trans women more than they can relate to cis women. This gender essentialism and the men’s over-focus on trans women’s femininity deny trans women as women and reinscribes the gender binary. Ultimately, cis heterosexual men who desire trans women may challenge heteronormativity through expanding notions of heterosexual identity to include gender expression. I found, however, that these men are also reasserting heteronormativity and cisnormativity through trying to bolster their own sense of their cis heterosexual masculinity in relation to their desires for trans women. The reassertions of heteronormativity and cisnormativity leave trans women still objectified, marginalized, and only desired through misogyny – leaving most, if not all, women oppressed and subordinated through the process.

Men, Misogyny, and Transamory

Misogyny is the policing of women and gender and enforcing the norms and expectations that maintain patriarchy (Manne 2018). Misogyny does. It exists in the acts that preempt or control the behavior of others and threatens hostile consequences against girls and women who challenge patriarchal norms and expectations (Manne 2018). In this digital age, misogyny also takes on specific digital forms such as gendertrolling, whereby online users use gender-based insults to humiliate women online (Sobieraj 2020; Mantilla 2013). The internet has also allowed right-wing men’s rights activist groups and incels to form communities and connect with one another. The “manosphere” gives space for cis men to posts their misogynistic viewpoints and blame women and feminism for the collapse of society (Ging 2019; Schmitz and Kazyak 2016).

Transmisogyny captures the intersection of trans antagonism and misogyny and how trans women and trans feminine people experience unique forms of misogyny and the policing of their gender (Serano 2016). Historically, medical professionals, psychologists, sociologists, and other social scientists expected trans women to be hyper-feminine or “120% woman” and heterosexual to gain access to medical interventions and treatments and as a formal “approval” of their transition (Vidal-Ortiz 2008). While through misogyny all women are policed by people enforcing hegemonic beauty norms and dominant notions of femininity, trans women often have their womanhood called into question and can be denied medical procedures and access to transition for failing to perform femininity (Vidal-Ortiz 2008).

This hyper-femininity expected of trans women can shape cis men’s desires as well (Petterson and Vasey 2022; Key and Brooks 2020). In a previous study on cis men attracted to trans women, researchers found that certain men desired hyper-femininity (Operario et al. 2008). Cis men who desire trans women also can engage in transmisogyny, especially through fetishizing and objectifying trans women. This group of cis men is sometimes referred to as “chasers” (Hood 2020; Tompkins 2014). And some work shows that many of these cis men often hyper-sexualize trans women and construct trans women through a pornographic sex objects lens (Chamberland 2016).

While transamorous emerged as a term to describe cis men who do not objectify or fetishize trans women, it has been noted how transamorous is basically just the “gentleman’s chaser” (Hood 2020). Indeed, the term transamorous still marks transness as a remarkable feature of the person’s desire; hence, in some ways, it still objectifies trans people as objects of desire (Smilges 2020). Some scholars have argued, though, that trans can have an erotics that should not be denied, and these scholars call for a sex-positive understanding of trans sexualities (e.g., Tompkins 2014; Jones 2021). In other words, to always read desires for trans people as fetishizing or as someone being a “chaser” can deny this sex-positive trans politics and can stymie discourse and our understanding of desire and attraction to trans people (Tompkins 2014).

This article relies on data from online discussion posts at Reddit.com to map misogyny, including transmisogyny, in digital spaces. Distinct from existing scholarship on the “manosphere,” this article examines how various forms of misogyny unfold not among incels or online men’s rights activist groups, but from cis men who are seemingly not explicitly misogynistic – that is, from cis heterosexual men who desire trans women. In examining these men’s discourses and desires, I document how transamorous misogyny plays out on Reddit. This concept builds on Ward’s (2020) “misogyny paradox” – how men devalue women and femininity, and yet men are supposed to also love and desire women, the very people they devalue. I build on this paradox but center trans women. My analysis also moves beyond the chaser/fetish/objectification discourse and examines these cis men’s desires for trans women as part of constructing a dominant type of cis heterosexual masculinity built both on and through misogyny. Like the misogyny paradox, I argue that these cis men may love and desire trans women, but they do so in ways that devalue and police all women, including in transmisogynistic ways that dehumanize, objectify, and devalue trans women in particular.

Masculinities and Heterosexualities

Recent work on the relation of men, masculinities, and heterosexualities has examined how men negotiate, navigate, and expand the meanings attached to these gender and sexual processes and identities. For instance, men and boys, especially cis men and boys, often discursively construct their sense of masculinity through heterosexuality and talking about women’s bodies, often in objectifying and violent ways (Norman 2011; Pascoe 2007). Cis men may also enact violence against LGBTQ people, especially when the men feel that their heterosexual masculinity is being challenged in sexualized situations with other men or trans women (Kelley and Gruenewald 2015; Schilt and Westbrook 2009). Cis men engage in discursive and material practices, including violence, vis-à-vis women and LGBTQ people as ways to navigate and assert heterosexual masculinities.

Other studies, though, have examined how men are expanding notions of heterosexuality. Studies have documented straight men who have sex with other straight men, whereby certain men decouple sex acts and desires from identity (Robinson and Vidal-Ortiz 2013; Carrillo and Hoffman 2018; Persson et al. 2019; Ward 2015). Some cis men even partake in homosexual acts to uphold their white heterosexual masculinity, partly through engaging in misogynistic rhetoric while hooking up with each other (Ward 2015). Other scholars have theorized about heteroflexibilities – how straight cis men who have sex with each other reveal the elasticity of heterosexuality (Beasley 2015; Carrillo and Hoffman 2018). Nonetheless, while this fluid or elastic heterosexuality may challenge heteronormative understandings of heterosexuality, the cis men do still often invest in heterosexuality itself as a way of understanding their masculinity, and hence, the men preserve a sense of privileging heterosexuality and masculinity (Persson et al. 2019; Ward 2015).

The meanings of heterosexuality and masculinity are constantly changing. Examining how heterosexuality and masculinity do not conform to heteronormative standards can reveal partially how this change is occurring. In looking at these fissures of non-heteronormative heterosexuality, or of heterosexual masculinity, scholars can find ways of thinking about social change and moving beyond static notions of gender and sexuality (Beasley 2015). This article addresses this crucial issue through an examination of configurations of heterosexuality that might ostensibly challenge heteronormativity – cis heterosexual men desiring trans women. I build on this work about the elasticity of heterosexuality and on the work of how men discursively construct heterosexual masculinities (e.g., Norman 2011; Pascoe 2007; Persson et al. 2019; Ward 2015; Carrillo and Hoffman 2018), especially in relation to women and femininity. As I show though, the cis men in this study do so in ways that have the effect of reasserting their own cis heterosexual masculinities in ways that leave women, including the trans women they desire, marginalized and subordinated.

Methods

For this study, I analyze a large sample of Reddit discussion posts, threads, and “subreddits.” Reddit is an online community or “a community of communities” (Massanari 2017, 331) comprised of forums, discussion posts and threads, “subreddits” devoted to specific community posts and topics, and a social news aggregation Web site (Maxwell et al. 2020). As of September 2021, according to Statista – a market and consumer data company – Reddit was the 19th most visited site in the world and the 7th most visited site in the United States. A study by Pew Research found that YouTube and Reddit were the only two online social media platforms that saw statistically significant growth since 2019, with Reddit being the 10th most used online platform as reported by U.S. adults (Auxier and Anderson 2021). Since everyday life is increasingly intertwined with technology and digital worlds, online forums are important sites to study, especially since people may say and reveal information online that they may not in face-to-face settings (Farber 2017). Moreover, online forums enable interaction between people who might not ever interact offline (Farber 2017).

Notably, while online comments might be performative (Preston, Halpin, and Maguire 2021) and who people say they are online might not be who they are offline, all identities are performative, and studying online forums can document one way that people manage, negotiate, and reformulate their identities and desires (Robinson and Vidal-Ortiz 2013; Ward 2008). The internet has also become a tool for both cis and trans people to learn about trans-related issues and policies that they can apply to offline interactions (Tompkins 2014). As this scholarship attests, Reddit is an apt place to study cis men who desire trans women and how they discursively construct their gender and sexualities.

For this study, I examined Reddit posts from April 2021 – June 2021. I used search terms such as “transgender,” “dating transgender,” “sex transgender,” and “transamorous” to find posts. I also explored subreddits such as r/asktransgender, r/transpersonals, r/t4m, r/m4t, r/chasersrisseup, and r/transamorous. I also often clicked on posts and threads related to the thread I was reading and explored Reddit in a way that users would. Through this process, I created a data set of over 200 downloaded posts and their threads. This sample of posts and threads were the entirety of posts and threads that I could find during the 3-month period of data collection that were either on the subreddits and/or were posts I discovered from my search terms. Many posts were recent (i.e., within the past year). But some posts and threads were started over 5 years ago. Some posts in my sample had no comments. Others had around 20 comments. A smaller group had hundreds of comments, and one post had over 10,000 comments. I do not anonymize the usernames as the posts are public and the usernames are another form of data and mean-making.

Similar to Taylor and Jackson’s (2018) study about masculinity on a Reddit forum about pornography abstinence, I began with close readings of the selected posts and threads to become familiar with the patterns of how users talked and engaged. From there, I analyzed all downloaded posts and threads in MAXQDA. Following a grounded theory analytical approach, I coded the close readings of the selected posts and threads following a line-by-line coding (Charmaz 2006) to get an analytical grasp on how people were discussing masculinity, heterosexuality, and desire. From there I moved to a flexible coding (Deterding and Waters 2021), whereby I used the analytical insights from the initial coding to then code larger swaths of posts and threads. Through this iterative process, I generated over 100 codes (e.g., chaser, femininity, masculinity, misogyny, submission). Notably, the analysis is not trying to reveal some “truth” about masculinity, but rather, to see how cis men construct their sense of cis heterosexual masculinity discursively in relation to their desires for trans women (Taylor and Jackson 2018). As I show, cis men do so through what I call transamorous misogyny.

Findings

In these findings, I map the contours of transamorous misogyny. I show how transamorous cis heterosexual men are expanding ideas of sexual identity away from attraction toward gender and moving sexuality identity to attraction toward gender expression. However, the men do so in ways that maintain their cis heterosexual masculinity such as through reinscribing gender essentialist ideas about the gender binary and through constructing trans women as hyper-feminine and hyper-submissive. From there, I also document how these cis heterosexual men construct their desires for trans women vis-à-vis misogyny toward cis women. That is, transamorous cis heterosexual men think trans women are better than cis women and discursively construct trans women as superior in ways that have the effect of shoring up their own cis heterosexual masculinities. Ultimately, I argue that transamorous misogyny works to devalue all women and allows cis heterosexual men to desire trans women in ways that help them invest in their own cis heterosexual masculinity and that maintain heteronormativity and cisnormativity.

Attraction to Gender Expression and the Hyper-Feminization of Trans Women

On Reddit, I found that certain discourses about desires for trans women shift discussions around sexual identity away from attraction to gender (e.g., woman/man) and toward attraction to gender expression (e.g., femininity/masculinity). To note, some posters did focus on gender. For instance, PM_ME_SOLES_OR_TOES said he is attracted to trans women, “‘Well because trans women are women’ Lol like I used to question it but I have no doubt about it now, I’m straight. Label me whatever you want but I don’t really care.” Similarly, coleslawmilk said, “I’m attracted to girls. Trans girls are girls.” These types of posts could potentially allow for attraction to butch and masculine trans women and other types of trans women, as the posters did not elaborate on what types of gender expressions of trans women they found attractive. They stated that “trans women are women,” and as heterosexual men, they found women attractive.

However, most of the posts on Reddit by transamorous cis heterosexual men elaborated on their attraction to trans women with a discursive focus on femininity. For instance:

I like women and still do but in recent years I started finding trans women attractive as well. Thought I was turning gay for liking girl with a penis. Then realized that a penis is just a tool to get a different job done and that’s it. Hell I have one so why should I be afraid of it. Its more about what’s attached to it that matter in my opinion. I still don’t find men attractive, and I wouldn’t be ashamed if I did. I think its just the feminine form that does it for me. Penis or no Penis. –JUGGERNUGGS

This poster expands heterosexuality beyond heteronormative definitions – which are based around attraction to the socially constructed “natural” binary sexes of female/male (Schilt and Westbrook 2009) – to being about attraction to “the feminine form.” Discursively, JUGGERNUGGS delinks his sexual identity from being about genitals, calling the penis “just a tool.” Scholars have noted how trans people have decoupled body parts from gender, whereby a penis, for instance, does not necessarily signify manhood (Edelman and Zimman 2014). Certain cis men attracted to trans women engage in a similar discursive practice in relation to reasserting their heterosexual identity. Nonetheless, with heterosexuality becoming about attraction to “the feminine form,” trans women may only be seen as women if they embody and enact certain forms of femininity.

Indeed, some cis men who date trans women want them to look like a specific kind of woman:

Trust me, the two women I dated were gorgeous and had been transitioned for a while and started relatively young, had some surgeries, hormones etc… the only way anyone could even possible “clock” them was they were tall. But they were gorgeous. We clicked on a lot of levels. I would not date a fat ugly chick, whether she was cis or trans. But i would date a slim attractive woman, doesn’t matter if cis or trans. If that makes sense? Does that make me fatphobic? No! That’s just my preference. Everyone has a preference. Same that I mostly date women that are also white (I am open to any race, just what I like is usually pale skin, light eyes etc…). Does that make me racist? NOT at all! Just a preference. You shouldn’t be shamed in to dating someone you are otherwise not interested in. -BigBearSD

Notably, BigBearSD’s “preference” is bound up with a history of colonialism, white supremacy, fatphobia, and capitalism, whereby looking like a woman and being gorgeous is often in and through middle-class white notions of femininity (Strings 2019; Buggs 2020; Smilges 2020). Moreover, in U.S. society, beauty is rewarded while ugliness is not (Kwan and Trautner 2009), and all women are held to hegemonic beauty standards. Society values “fit” bodies over fat bodies (Robinson 2016). Feminine products, too, are costly. Beauty norms, then, are a form of social and cultural capital less available to some groups, like women of color (Cottom 2018).

This discourse of being attracted to a particular type of femininity excludes many women, especially many poor trans women of color, who may not or cannot live up to dominant white, middle-class expectations of what “looking like a woman” means or who cannot access surgeries and hormones. And while BigBearSD uses the discourse of “personal preference” to dismiss claims of exclusion and discrimination, research has shown that personal preference discourses operate to mask the ways racism, fatphobia, and other structures of oppression shape desires (Robinson 2015; 2016). As such, in BigBearSD’s comment, misogyny, beauty, and the discourse of “personal preference” work together to reproduce dominant white middle-class expectations and configurations of femininity.

This desire for femininity also often gets discursively linked to the men constructing and seeing trans women as hyper-feminine and hyper-submissive. One example connects this perceived hyper-femininity of trans women to the historical concept of passing:

I am attracted to feminine features and mannerisms. Trans women really seem to go all out on that. So providing they are passing, I would be cool with it. –[deleted]

“Passing” is a term tied to medical and sociological understandings that trans people had to “prove” they could live their life as their gender before getting medical access to transitioning. Cis people were seen as just being their gender, while trans people were “passing.” Passing, then, is a term that delegitimizes trans people and constructs them as deceivers who are not really the gender they are. The concept also holds trans people to higher standards of having to be “120% woman” – whether to pass to get access from medical or social science gatekeepers or, in this case, to be desired by certain cis men (Schilt and Lagos 2017; Vidal-Ortiz 2008). Similar to beauty ideals, passing – a term already rooted in a history of certain Black people passing as white in order to try to survive white supremacy – is also often tied to dominant notions of middle-class, white femininity, whereby trans people of color are often positioned outside of this possibility of passing. Today, trans-attracted cis men insisting on femininity and passing from trans women both works to uphold the men’s sense of their dominant cis heterosexual masculinity and marginalizes trans women who cannot or do not adhere to these standards (Gercio 2015).

Two other poignant examples of cis men discussing their desire for hyper-femininity and hyper-submissiveness of trans women include:

I sound much like you in that most masculine things I don’t like…I dislike muscles, Leather, tattoos, boots, and beards. I like smooth skin and someone who is a feminine teaser who looks good, smells good, wears lingerie for me, and is somewhat on the submissive side. But I still like penises…A nice-looking cock really gets me aroused. But I can’t really see being gay or having a boyfriend. It’s kind of a difficult position to be in, don’t you think?? –luvyourstockings

To me it’s the ultimate in masculine superiority, this person has given up on masculinity and tried to become sexually pleasing in the feminine role. I want to be the one to complete this transformation sexually. –gw_acc_1337

As these posts attest, the cis men profess an interest in a trans woman who is “a feminine teaser” or who has taken on the “sexually pleasing” “feminine role.” Similar to previous studies, posters erotically construct trans women as hyper-feminine, hyper-submissive sexual objects (Operario et al. 2008; Chamberland 2016). Objectifying women’s bodies is often a central element of how men construct a dominant sense of heterosexual masculinity (Norman 2011; Pascoe 2007; Ward 2020). Misogyny and transmisogyny both operate in and through the discursive constructions of women and femininity in relation to being submissive to cis men and subordinate to masculinity (Manne 2018; Serano 2016).

For cis heterosexual men attracted to trans women, the men have to navigate that although their desires for trans women are heterosexual desires, under heteronormativity, their desires and identity are in a “difficult position” (Schilt and Westbrook 2009). Some cis men assert, then, an “ultimate” masculine superiority to try to resolve this “difficult position” vis-à-vis positioning oneself as the masculine man to help trans women “transform.” This discursive maneuver establishes trans women as different from cis women, as it essentializes trans women as inherently having had some type of masculinity that they have now given up. Under this gender essentialist logic, cis women do not have any type of masculinity to give up (as masculinity gets linked with bodies assigned male at birth); as such, cis women cannot fulfill this position for these cis heterosexual men to reach their ultimate masculine superiority – a superiority that appears rooted in helping someone else supposedly relinquish masculinity.

Importantly, people on Reddit often respond to these posts to push back and offer alternatives. As UKKasha2020 wrote in response to the men’s hyper-feminization of trans women:

So you like feminine women, not sure where you get the idea trans women are more feminine than cis women (not ‘regular women’), feminine is about gender expression...even cis dudes can be more feminine than some women. Doesn’t sound like fetishism, but a stereotype based on some limited interactions with trans women.

This poster challenges the transmisogynistic hyper-feminization stereotype of trans women (Serano 2016; Vidal-Ortiz 2008). This challenge not only allows for the possibility of feminine “cis dudes,” but also butch trans women and other trans women who are not or do not want to be feminine. UKKasha2020’s post further pushes back against the gender essentialism and stereotypes of gender, gender expression, and trans women in many of these men’s posts and desires, providing an alternative to thinking about how cis heterosexual masculinity and desires could possibly challenge heteronormativity without reinforcing the gender binary and transmisogynistic stereotypes.

Comparing Trans Women to Cis Women

A dominant topic of conversation among the posts in this study was cis men explicitly discussing their desires for trans women in relation to cis women. I found that the cis men posters worked to reassert their cis heterosexual masculinity by arguing that trans women are better than cis women. The men say that trans women are more feminine and more submissive than cis women; the men also assert that they can connect better with trans women and please and satisfy trans women better as well. This binary and comparison of trans women to cis women has twin effects. First, the strategy works to effectively devalue cis women. But I also argue that it works to recast trans women as different from cis women, whereby cis women are still used as the reference point for womanhood. Building on the last section, I show how cis men’s discursive construction of their desires for trans women shore up both misogyny and transmisogyny, while simultaneously maintaining heteronormativity and cisnormativity.

A primary way cis men posters constructed trans women as hyper-submissive and hyper-sexual was in and through comparisons with cis women. Consider two examples from my data set:

I think it’s because they get the best of both worlds: the good rutting man-sex without all the female courtship rituals and complications. It’s the same reason bored husbands turn to visiting gay men for side-sex. –intelligentplatonic

You are more feminine then girls, hotter, often wear much more sexy, better sex, more kinky, trans gir i can fuck few times in row, i love to fuck asses and 70% of girls don’t like it.. I don’t really know why, but i just get much faster horny with beautiful trans girl then with girl. Maybe because i fucked so many girls, and i got bored. Maybe dominance because fucking someone ass is kind of dominating that person… I was also always asking myself why, even i ve been with only 5 trans girls in my life i definitely like you beter… –Adicted

The posters both mention boredom, constructing trans women as objects to sexually entertain cis men (Chamberland 2016). This hyper-feminization and this hyper-sexualization of trans women are nothing new, as these processes have historical roots in the criminalization of trans women and often viewing them as sex workers (Robinson 2020) and in trans women having to overperform femininity for medical gatekeepers to access medical care (Vidal-Ortiz 2008). On Reddit, this hyper-feminization and hyper-sexualization is relational – both in comparing trans women to cis women but also in cis men’s efforts to reinforce their cis heterosexual masculinity through discursive claims to power and domination. Importantly, misogyny does (Manne 2018). As such, in these posts, misogyny works to police women and femininity through comparing women to each other. Misogyny, though, seems not only about policing women, but also works through men asserting cis heterosexual masculinity and dominance – even through sexual practices such as “fucking someone ass” (see also Norman 2011; Pascoe 2007). That is, misogyny is not only about policing women, but also about asserting cis heterosexual masculinity as the dominant position in society. Moreover, although gendertrolling is often about explicit gender-based insults to humiliate women online (Sobieraj 2020; Mantilla 2013), another way misogyny adapts to new media is through these discursive comparisons of women in online discussions of desire.

Similar to the “without all the female courtship rituals and complications,” another comparison of trans women to cis women appeared in patterned ways in cis heterosexual men discussing having an easier time connecting and interacting with trans women. For instance:

At the end of the night, it’s kind of like hanging out with a friend. Try as they might to be women, some things remain. A male sense of humor, and a willingness to talk about sex in a super honest way. I have open conversations with TGs that I think would scare away most women. TGs usually have a harder trek in life and that builds character. Makes for a wonderful evening. At least until you both get horny and decide to jump each other again. –Under_score

Besides the physical attraction though (which is pretty minor thing anyways, I like cis women just as much, physically), I think that at least the one I’m courting/dating […] is a lot easier to relate to because she spent most of her life acting and developing as a male. It gave her a lot of experience and perspective that a cis woman wouldn’t have gotten. I’ve been saying for a few years that I wish I was gay, because it’s hard to find girls I can relate to and really connect with, but this works great. –_fortune

…when I’m with a trans girl I feel wanted because they make comments about looks, clothing and other stuff. There’s this mutual attraction that seems more proportional… With cis girls it’s sometimes a hit of miss things where I don’t really know what’s on their mind. Sometimes I feel like they are just doing me a favor or they are just using me as today’s dildo or they are holding back because they don’t want to be the sluty girl. It’s hard to guess and when I ask directly I sometimes get an honest answer and sometimes I don’t. A trans girl will be direct and honest (usually). –AdrianTapes0

Gender essentialism is often used by people who want to deny trans people their rights and existence (Broussard and Warner 2019). On Reddit posts like the ones above, I found that gender essentialism is also used by the men to try to understand their supposed “natural” connection with trans women, especially in comparison to cis women. A discursive contradiction occurs: trans women are framed as having to be hyper-feminine, but these cis men’s comments still frame them as having some biological elements of manliness that trans women supposedly possess when it comes to sex. This narrative constructs trans women as inherently different from cis women through a discourse upholding some supposed essentialized “truth” to sex – that men are naturally more sexual than women and that trans women supposedly still have this aspect of “male biology.” These narratives re-invest in a natural gender binary, which maintains structures of trans antagonism (Stanley 2021). Posters also hint at cis women being more complicated, especially in engaging in “the female courtship rituals,” pointing to the misogyny paradox that cis men and cis women are different and incompatible even though they are supposed to desire each other (Ward 2020). Some posters on Reddit seem to turn their desires toward trans women to attempt to solve this paradox. This relation and attraction are seen as “more proportional,” which works by reinforcing the cisnormative, trans antagonistic notion that trans women are male. The misogyny paradox is discursively resolved through desiring trans women, but desiring them via gender essentialist discourses denies that trans women are women.

Furthermore, building on Under_score implying that cis women do not talk about sex in a “super honest” way and AdrianTapes0’s posting that sometimes cis women do not give honest answers about sex, the misogynistic discursive construction of cis women as not honest also gets connected to cis women lying and faking displays of sexual pleasure. In turn, cis men construct their cis heterosexual masculinity through notions of being able to better please and satisfy trans women. millieyonnillie and _mitchconner_’s comments are illustrative of this larger pattern:

As a straight guy who has dated a couple of trans women, on the one hand, a woman is a woman. If she looks like a woman, acts like a woman, and identifies as a woman, it’s literally the same as dating a GG. Additionally, not to fetishize too much, but with a trans woman, pre-op of course, I feel that I understand their pleasure more than when I’m with a GG. I’ve learned through experience how to pleasure GGs, but I’ll never know how it feels for them. With a trans woman, I can understand to some extent their pleasure, and that is a turn on. Just my two cents. –millieyonnillie

Because they’re hot? Wasn’t sure I needed a different reason. I find women attractive in general, cis and trans. But sexually speaking, I find being with a transwoman to be more interesting and exciting, especially non-op transwomen. I find they are more excited about sex than the cis-women I know. I like how the non-op women I prefer have the same equipment as I do, so I have a better idea of how to satisfy them (I don’t have to worry about them ‘faking.’) And I find their confidence in expressing as women while still keeping the aforementioned equipment intact especially awesome. Having said that, I definitely consider myself straight, even though I know most other people wouldn’t. Never been interested in men, trans or otherwise. Not interested in bottoming either - I basically want to do the same stuff with transwomen as I would want to with a cis. I’d go down on a transwoman because I’d do the same to a cis. And yeah, same thing with giving her the d. And I'm definitely not gender-fluid or any of that, very much a dude (although a skinny nerdy one). –_mitchconner_

Relying on notions of biological essentialism and relating to someone sexually through this essentialism, posters say they can understand trans women’s pleasures more than “genetic girls’” (GG) or cis women’s pleasure. This biological essentialism reduces trans women to their genitals through assuming that cis men and trans women have the same genitals and supposedly experience the same pleasure through sharing the same genitals. This biological essentialist framing of pleasure also has some men believing that they can understand and satisfy trans women more, which turns the cis men on. Indeed, women’s orgasms often function as a masculinity achievement for men, whereby men who have sex with women felt more masculine when they imagined that a woman orgasmed during their sexual encounter (Chadwick and van Anders 2017). Another user on Reddit even stated, “A lot of times I’m able to bring them [trans women] to orgasm. No hands, only intercourse. This is a wonderful validation of my manhood. I’ve rarely brought women to orgasm this way. Sex with TGs is just easier.” Misogyny constructs cis women as “liars” and transmisogyny constructs trans women as hyper-sexual who can serve as cis men’s objects to resolve their experience of the misogyny paradox of not being able to sexually relate to or please cis women (Manne 2018; Ward 2020; Serano 2016). All women are devalued in and through these processes.

While some of the men on Reddit may care about women’s sexual pleasure, I found that the majority of transamorous cis heterosexual men Reddit posters routinely make misogynistic comparisons between trans women and cis women. These posts may discursively authenticate the men’s sexual desires as heterosexual, but do so by leaning on misogynistic, including transmisogynistic, rhetoric that shores up existing systems of power and inequality.

Discussion

In this article, I develop the concept of transamorous misogyny to capture the paradoxical processes whereby certain cis men’s desires for trans women work in and through their contempt and policing behaviors of all women. This misogyny, at times, unfolds qualitatively differently for trans women and cis women, though it constructs all women discursively as objects used by cis men to bolster their cis heterosexual masculinity. Nonetheless, in mapping these processes, this study answered the call to explore the elasticity of heterosexuality in relation to cis men desiring trans women (Beasley 2015; Carrillo and Hoffman 2018). Cis men challenge heteronormativity through desiring trans women, as heteronormativity relies on the gender binary and the “naturalization” of the supposed two sexes (Schilt and Westbrook 2009). The cis men in this study discursively shift heterosexuality away from desiring gender and toward desiring gender expression.

At the same time, some cis men state that they know that heteronormativity does not endorse this shift in thinking about heterosexual identity to being about attraction to gender expression. Therefore, while the cis men in this study might challenge and expand heterosexuality, I also found that they simultaneously hyper-feminize trans women in ways that might bolster their own sense of their cis heterosexual masculinity. This hyper-feminization works to uphold the gender binary and puts a burden on trans women to be hyper fem to be considered desirable (Chamberland 2016; Vidal-Ortiz 2008). That is, this shift to being attracted to gender expression and away from being attracted to a person’s gender works by partly denying trans women as women, as the cis men focus more on their femininity as proof of their womanhood and not on them just being women.

Considering the intersectional consequences of the patterned discourses identified in this study, this hyper-femininity can be a high bar, especially for trans women of color, as dominant notions of femininity are tied to middle-class whiteness (Buggs 2020; Collins 2005; Smilges 2020). This desire for hyper-femininity and putting the burden on trans women to “look like a woman” ought to be seen as a form of transmisogyny that would push most trans women, especially poor trans women of color, outside of being understood as worthy of desire.

I posit, however, that we should not just see these desires just through the lens of fetishization. Notably, constantly calling these acts fetishizing and objectifying can make it seem like these acts and desires are exceptional, missing how they are quotidian parts of how cis men construct and understand their cis heterosexual masculinity in everyday life. Furthermore, these trans rhetorical strategies around objectification construct a kind of trans exceptionalism, as though trans women are the only women subject to pornification, being fetishized, and the sole women made discardable by the hands of men (Hood 2020). Instead, we might also see these sexist desires as rooted in misogyny and how misogyny shapes cis heterosexual men’s desire more broadly and how most cis heterosexual men understand and reassert their cis heterosexual masculinity (Ward 2020). In this study then, and similar to some previous studies, the supposed flexibility of heterosexuality remains invested in and upholding misogyny, heteronormativity, and heterosexual masculinity (Persson et al. 2019; Ward 2015).

Moreover, by analyzing cis heterosexual men’s discourses surrounding their desires for trans women, I document Ward’s (2020) misogyny paradox in new ways, exposing how misogyny, gender difference, and the unequal gender binary are part of how transamorous cis heterosexual men understand and construct cis heterosexual masculinity. That is, I document the misogyny paradox through cis men’s discourses of loathing cis women for not performing femininity and submissiveness well enough, while discursively positioning trans women as hyper-feminine and hyper-submissive and constructing their desires for trans women as the ultimate masculine superiority. The cis men, though, also still reconstruct cis women as the unmarked norm by comparing trans women to “women” as though trans women are not also already women. Furthermore, to partly resolve the misogyny paradox in relation to cis women, the cis men in this study turn to trans women in patterned bioessentialist ways that deny trans women womanhood. The cis men in this study discursively frame trans women as male, at least biologically and sexually. I argue that the cis men engage in this work to navigate contradictions inherent to Ward’s “misogyny paradox,” whereby trans women are framed as better than cis women, but they mobilize this discourse through a cisnormative understanding of trans women as still biologically male in ways that just help transamorous cis men explain their comfort relating to and satifying trans women more.

Importantly, misogyny is something one does to police and enforce patriarchal norms and the people who deviate from them (Manne 2018). To bolster their cis heterosexual masculinity in relation to desiring trans women, the cis men in this study assert that trans women are better than cis women (i.e., easier to please, aren’t liars like cis women, and are more feminine and submissive than cis women). Trans women must be the best woman, whereby the best woman is the eroticized femininity constructed in and through the unequal gender binary (Ward 2020). That is, the erotic attachments to the unequal gender binary that is part of heterosexuality gets exacerbated through cis men needing to hyper-sexualize and hyper-feminize trans women, whom they also frame as hyper-submissive, to both retain and attain a sense of cis heterosexual masculinity. Cisnormativity is maintained through this process in that cis people, especially the cis heterosexual men in this study, are repositioned as the norm against which everyone else is compared.

A central and rightful concern with research like this is that it recenters men and masculinity, further erasing the voices of trans women. Future research should explore resistance to transamorous misogyny. Indeed, even on Reddit, many trans people pushed back against these logics and discourses. There is even an entire subreddit r/chasersrisseup that is a satirical forum mocking and subverting transamory. This resistance can point us to other possibilities. Researching cis heterosexual men who talk about their desires in non-misogynistic ways, such as some men who just said they were attracted to trans women because they are attracted to women and left it at that, should continue to be explored as well. Interviewing trans women about how they navigate these discourses and transamorous men is also needed. Likewise, we can think about trans people only pursing other trans people romantically and/or sexually as a way that trans people resist dating or having sex with cis people (Zamantakis 2020). Future research should explore trans men who desire trans women. Are they also invested in heterosexual masculinity and if so, in similar or different ways? Or do their desires offer us alternative, better paths to think about loving trans women outside of misogyny? Future work should also explore how transamorous misogyny may operate transnationally and whether it is tied to men in the West treating women in the Global South and Eastern Europe as an exoticized alternative to mainly white cis women in the Global North (e.g., Hoang 2015; Meszaros 2017).

This research exposes some of the logics through which transamorous misogyny operates in order to change and get rid of this violence, to rethink cis heterosexual masculinity, and to actually work toward trans and gender liberation, which is not happening through these current discourses and desires. Ultimately, we need new ways of relating and desiring one another that do not rely on the reproduction of gender difference and on the erotic attachment to gender inequality. New ways of relating outside the straight gaze, the cis gaze, and the male gaze are needed for all women to become full subjects and to experience liberation and freedom. As long as misogyny is a root of heterosexual desires and how cis heterosexual men construct their cis heterosexual masculinity, all women remain marginalized and subordinated. Alternative possibilities to love and desire are needed, including possibilities that are rooted in valuing and loving women, especially valuing and loving trans women.