About a year ago (yes, I’m very up on the news, in my defense I was doing other things at the time when this post was remotely relevant), there was a big flutter in the trans community about the “Cotton Ceiling.” Originally coined by transfeminist Drew DeVeaux, the Cotton Ceiling refers to how trans women are nominally accepted as women within queer communities, but treated as unfuckable and undesirable eunuchs when it comes to actually dating them.
(For the record: I’m a fairly masculine nonbinary trans person who was assigned female at birth and who almost exclusively dates and socializes outside the queer community.)
I am actually fairly sympathetic to a lot of the trans-exclusionary radical feminist critique (this is a fairly representative example) of the Cotton Ceiling. Because, yes, you should be allowed to say no to sex for any reason or no reason! “I don’t want to have sex with women with penises” is a perfectly valid reason not to have sex with someone! Facile “so you should have sex with any arbitrary trans woman you happen to come across” solutions to the Cotton Ceiling problem have the potential to get really nasty, social-pressure-y, and even coercive.
Where the trans-exclusionary radical feminists lose me is where they finish up the sentence “you should be allowed to refuse sex with people for any reason” with “NO LESBIAN WOULD EVER SLEEP WITH A TRANS WOMAN BECAUSE TRANS WOMEN ARE SECRETLY MALES AND NO TRUE LESBIAN FUCKS MALES.” Because that is, uh, treating trans women as undesirable and unfuckable eunuchs? Which is exactly what Drew DeVeaux was complaining about?
You have to be a very unique person to, in the course of arguing with someone, prove their argument correct.
I find it amazingly transmisogynistic that this conversation is happening about trans women. At this point, bottom surgery for trans women is much more advanced than bottom surgery for trans men is, and far more trans women get bottom surgery than trans men do. If you are not attracted to women who have penises or don’t have breasts, then there are lots of trans women you can fuck, while if you are not attracted to men with pussies, you’re going to be looking for a trans boyfriend for a long time. And yet trans women are considered unfuckable within the attracted-to-women queer community, while trans men are OMGTEHSEXY. Fucking transmisogynistic bullshit.
I’m really not sure if there’s a non-transphobic reason to choose not to date someone you’re otherwise attracted to just because they have a trans history. Maybe if you really value your partners being able to bear children? I dunno.
(Spare me the bullshit ‘socialization’ arguments. As if trans people get identical socializations to our cis counterparts. As if all cis women have identical gender socializations, regardless of race, class, religion, neurodivergence, ability, survivor status, region of the country, what their family was like, who they had as friends, what school they went to, or any other factor.)
Obviously, there are people who are repulsed by the mere fact of a woman being trans. (Or of a man or nonbinary being trans, of course.) And it is cissexist to do so. If you are attracted to women and really see trans women as women, you’ll consider the possibility of dating trans women who are attractive to you, the same way you’d consider dating any other group of women. Claiming that you won’t date any trans women, at all, ever, is a sign that you have some internal cissexism that you need to work on.
Ultimately, however, the Cotton Ceiling isn’t about fucking individual trans women; it’s about the community norms that treat trans women as unfuckable. (Here I want to link to Monica Maldonado’s excellent Hating Transsexual Bodies series, but unfortunately she took her site down.) The problem is acting like trans women just aren’t attractive or sexy at all; in fact, trans female bodies must be as much like cis female bodies as possible, or they’re gross gross gross forever! That is wrong.
I think it’s important here to point out that the toxic, transmisogynistic dynamic in the queer community is directly caused by the overall toxic, transmisogynistic dynamic in our culture. Queers didn’t invent transmisogyny, the elevation of masculinity over femininity, or the patriarchy. We just came up with exciting new forms of it. (Arty photos of teenagers binding their breasts with Ace bandages! “I date cis women and trans men”!)
Which, ultimately, is my problem with the concept of the Cotton Ceiling. If we are going to challenge people’s lack of attraction to trans women, we should challenge cis straight men’s lack of attraction to trans women too. Why are some cis straight men so repulsed by trans women, and others so creepy and fetishizing of trans women’s bodies? Why do some of them regard murder as an appropriate response to their being attracted to a trans woman?
I think that where this argument gets tricky is that you have to separate the culture-wide critique from the critique of individuals, which very quickly turns into policing someone’s desire. And I think the line is drawn exactly at the point in between “you should examine your reaction to the idea of [group of people] as potential sex partners because I think there might be some [group]phobia in there” and “you should have sex with [group of people] even if you aren’t attracted to them.” The former being something we probably all need to do about some group of people we harbor oppressive beliefs about, and the latter being something that is policing the sexuality of others in a really gross way.
The truth is, we’ll probably never be able to tease out which part of our sexual preferences come from 100% good places from those that come from oppressive places, both because of the kyriarchy we live in and because of the opaqueness of our own minds when it comes to things like knowing why we are sexually attracted to certain features/people. I think that the best we can do is try to examine and expel our own prejudices, and try to combat societal prejudices.
You know, I have ended up once in a cuddly event (contact dance?) wich happened to have 100% woman participants. My het self being one of them, I didn’t feel like participating. I was not proud of myself, because theoretically dancing touches should be nice, if it wasn’t for the internalized homophobia. BUT! Forcing myself into it is never the good solution. So I have left. I do try to make everything I can to get to the point where I respect everyone etc. ps: maybe cuddling being not-that-sexual doesn’t mean that I am not allowed to have gender preferences, either, because who would have written such a rule, and on what authority?, but let’s ignore that for a moment. … So what I wanted to say that even stuff one doesn’t agree with theoretically can influence tastes and desires, and I refuse any theory which says that sometimes you should shut up and think of England.
SFDGSDF:
That sounds … massively icky? To me. Casual cuddling culture is great but, just like dancing or spin-the-bottle or whatever, it is incredibly sexual. And you are allowed to have gender preferences about anything, even stuff that isn’t sexual at all (i.e. you are allowed to go to Smith College, even if “attending college” isn’t a sexual act). A community which is making you feel bad about expressing a dislike, particularly a dislike for a sexual activity, is OMGICKY to me.
I might well go to an all-male cuddly event. But as soon as someone suggested that non-attendees or attending non-participants are simply homphobes (rather than people with different boundaries re: sexual activity) I’m out.
It’s really interesting to think about, but also tricky. I do believe that our desires are shaped by our culture (since they otherwise wouldn’t vary through time and space), but at the same time obviously people don’t choose who they are attracted to (which becomes clear when you look at deviant sexualities). I guess what it comes down to is that people are saying “I don’t date trans women” when what they mean is “I don’t date people with penises” (if that’s whay they are not attracted to). Because the group of trans women are as diverse as any other group.
What I want to know is where gender preferences come from.
To me, a trans woman is a woman (or however she identifies) and a trans man is a man (or however he identifies), full stop. And the sexual anatomy doesn’t particularly bother me — if my (anatomically feminine) partner had a flesh-and-blood cock, I’d be fine with it — more fun things to do.
But why, then, do I shy away from a masculine-looking trans woman? I don’t think it’s anything to do with the funny bits. It’s not homophobia, because I know trans women are women (though maybe my gut is lagging behind my head on this one). Perhaps it’s a “what would the neighbors think?” reflex (I have an intense desire to fly under the radar of King Mob)? Or maybe it’s simply that I don’t find masculine features attractive?
If the latter: why? How does sexuality start? Where is it stored? How does it develop the way it does?
I realize that these are dangerous questions to ask, because the fundies would just love to know what makes some men attracted to men (and some women attracted to women), so they could burn it out of them.
My curiosity is more benign: I consider it a flaw that someone has to look a certain way for me to be attracted to them, and I consider it a flaw that what I find attractive is bound up in ultimately arbitrary internal narratives of beauty, sensuality, etc.
I know it’s okay for me to be attracted to what I’m attracted to, but at the same time, I feel guilty for dismissing someone who has a perfectly winning personality just because their face, their shoulders, their hands, their arms, their hips, are too masculine for me. =(
@Gaius: I don’t know a thing about your sexuality, so take this as the shot-in-the-dark that it is, but could it be that that it’s more about the masculine appearance than the trans-ness? I ask because, ignoring for a moment the specific subset of men I find myself attracted to, I know I’m generally more turned on by feminine body shapes than masculine ones. I can think of a few cis women with whom I’d probably be compatible personality-wise for whom the sexual attraction just isn’t there. It kinda sucks that something so arbitrary and hard to control is part of romance, though.
And I think the line is drawn exactly at the point in between “you should examine your reaction to the idea of [group of people] as potential sex partners because I think there might be some [group]phobia in there” and “you should have sex with [group of people] even if you aren’t attracted to them.”
Yes, this, and that’s overall, not simply trans/cis. Plus, [group of people] aren’t anyone’s involuntary sex therapists. I can’t imagine what it would be like for someone trans to find out their partner is sleeping with them primarily as some kind of aversion therapy.
Thanks, Eddy. What you said suggests that we have certain (socially?) predetermined expectations when approaching someone — as though there’s a spectrum of masculinity and femininity, and we expect men and women in whom we’re interested to fall within specific ranges on that spectrum (I’m aware that this is a HUGE oversimplification and maybe even a faulty analogy; my apologies in advance). If this statement is accurate, then it stands to reason that education and upbringing could be used to smooth out or nullify those expectations.
That said, my issue on the social engineering of sexuality is complicated.
With regard to other people, I feel that sexuality is not, and should not be considered, a choice, full stop. Furthermore, I’m strongly against tampering with that sort of thing in other people, to the extent that it is possible to do so; I find the notion disrespectful and morally reprehensible. Identity and sexuality are close to sacred, in my eyes.
On the other hand: I know that my own sexuality is subject to modification via the formation of intellectual-emotional habits, and I feel that my sexuality can and should be modified for the purposes of self-improvement.
For example: in high school, I basically said to myself, “Self, learn to find beauty in a wide variety of feminine body types: petite, fun-sized, full-figured, Rubenesque, etc” (nevermind my motives for doing so, which don’t bear scrutiny very well). So, I drew on the narrative tropes at my disposal (derived from my upbringing; it helps that, for me, arousal is an intellectual-emotional process as well as somatosensory process) and “found the sexy” in a huge variety of body types (I have limits, of course).
As I was able to modify my sexuality before, it stands to reason I could do so again. But it’s more difficult for me to do so with regard to masculine trans women, something I find quite vexatious.
Gr.
Gaius, I would say that perhaps there’s a disconnect between finding something, or someone (by something I want to clarify that I’m referring to a feature, like somebody’s shoulders, not a person!) beautiful, and finding them sexually attractive. Sometimes when you spend more time appreciating the beauty of, for example, curvy women, you might then find that you start finding curvy women sexy, whereas before you preferred slim ladies. But equally just because you don’t find masculine features sexy, doesn’t mean that you can’t learn to appreciate their beauty. I think I see finding something ‘beautiful’ more as a choice, whereas sexuality I would say is more of an impulse that it’s far harder to control.
I think that there’s an element of the concept that plays out differently in queer women’s communities than elsewhere, that is integral to the glass ceiling comparison (from which the name is derived). The glass ceiling idea is about women being present in companies in lower-level jobs in about equal numbers with men, right? but ~mysteriously! very few women occupy high-level positions in those same companies. The women are working there; they’re just not being promoted. So in the Cotton Ceiling idea, trans women are members of queer women’s communities. They’re organisers and activists and friends; they’re visible and out and often very well respected. They’re just not getting laid with the same frequency as their cis counterparts. ~Mysteriously~. It’s not something that’s even about radfems who don’t want trans women in their communities/movements/music festivals, let alone their pants; it’s not about straight cis dudes who’ve never knowingly met a trans person and don’t know what the fuck to do with that information when they do. It’s about people who otherwise consider themselves *totally cool* with trans women still somehow not seeing them as viable sex partners.
re:benthleman:don’t worry, the debate took place entirely in my own head
And I felt a bit impolite leaving just because I discovered that no guy turned up. But that’s what I have don. The funny thing is that I have once before participated in quite a cuddly workshop with women who were even more probably queer than these participants, it’s just that in the other case, the event was more structured, and the tasks were more interesting/specific (like walking with your eyes shut while being led). Thanks for the support nonetheless! <3
(ps: I am the same sfd….sdfs, I just forgot the gibberish fake email-adress I have written here the first time.)
(in the case it was not clear, I id enjoy that other thing.)
@Mythago – Yes, exactly. And I used [group] intentionally because it applies across the board.
@Duck – I think the big difference here is that 1) Qualifications for a promotion are somewhat quantifiable in a way that the reasons for being attracted to someone (or not being attracted to someone) are not. I can lay out Jane and John’s resumes and say “Look, Jane has basically experiences basically identical to John’s, why did you promote him and not her?” With sexual attraction, we are often not attracted to people who seem to fit our “type” to a T, but the why is sort of a black box. But more importantly, I think there is a world of difference between the appropriate responses to the two ceilings. I am totally fine making RandomManager promote women he doesn’t really want to, but I am really really not okay with making RandomPerson have sex with someone they don’t want. One of those things is a violation of bodily autonomy, the other is not.
So yeah, I get that the Glass Ceiling comparison works to an extent, but (as with most analogies) it breaks down if you try to take it far.
But more importantly, I think there is a world of difference between the appropriate responses to the two ceilings. I am totally fine making RandomManager promote women he doesn’t really want to, but I am really really not okay with making RandomPerson have sex with someone they don’t want. One of those things is a violation of bodily autonomy, the other is not.
I think the very first step in making (real, lasting) changes around the two systems *is* the same though, because the first step to solving a glass ceiling issue is not charging in and forcing RandomManager to promote all the ladies; it’s looking really closely at why the women aren’t being promoted. (Are they not being given big projects with high risk but lots of prestige? Are they not being mentored? Are they not being supported in coming back to work after having kids? Are they not being given opportunities to gain higher qualifications and experience? Are more masculine modes of behaviour and negotiation favoured in the workplace? Are they being sexually harassed and having their jobs made ten times harder because of it? All of these problems (and more) have really different solutions, and few of them are just “PROMOTE ALL THE WOMEN”.)
Similarly, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask as a first step for people to examine why it is that trans women aren’t considered sexy, or aren’t considered seriously as sex partners. Maybe attitudes that trans women are unsexy are so pervasive that folks who spend don’t notice they might be attracted to the trans lady they’re organising a march with because it never occurs to them to wonder about it. Maybe wondering about it actually makes the difference for that person. Maybe there are sexy art projects and events that could be improved by the inclusion of more trans women, and that inclusion would have an eventual effect on the subculture-wide view of trans women as sexual beings.
Maybe thinking about the problem for five minutes without yielding to panic about forced sexytimes with trans women would yield viable solutions, basically. I think it’s pretty alarming that people’s knee-jerk response seems to be to assume some sort of PC-enforced rape. Are people really still that steeped in the idea of trans women as trying to trick people into having sex with them? Can we maybe try to unpack THAT a little?
@Duck: *applauds* Well spoken! I’m a huge fan of finding ways to devoting our resources where they’ll do the most good, whether it’s women in the work place, treating trans women as sexy, or even (as an unrelated but instructive example) the effectiveness of treatment versus prison sentences with regard to drug abuse.
On the subject of finding trans women as sexy, I can think of some interesting questions to start off with:
1). What defines sexy? Yes, sexy is subjective, but surely there are some common threads!
2). Does a common definition of sexy disproportionately oppress or penalize trans women, as opposed to cis women or trans men? If so, how and why?
For example: I am a reasonably masculine looking cis male; my partner finds me sexy, but I do not consider myself sexy. Yet I have a complex and highly developed sense of sexy in women. Why?
Curiouser and curiouser.
@Duck
Duck, thank you ever so much. I have been quite unable to articulate my issues with such critiques of the idea, but you’ve captured them all nicely. Complex problems are still problems, but they don’t tend to respond well to superficial analyses like “Well, what are you gonna do, *force* people to consent?” Of course not, but that doesn’t mean it’s an end to the conversation — what’s really telling is that most of the blogosphere seems to have *stopped there*, and even many of the ones who haven’t take it as read that that reading of the original piece is a credible one worthy of consideration.
@Ozy
> I find it amazingly transmisogynistic that this conversation is happening about trans women.
I find it amazingly transmisogynistic that you assumed “The Cotton Ceiling” was even vaguely advocating the suggestion that people who don’t want to have sex with us, be forced to do so anyway because we’re upset about not getting laid. :\ It’s not even vaguely about entitlement denied; it’s about how even in the spaces that sometimes profess to actually include us, the “trans women are unfuckable, undesireable kinda weird things” meme runs rampant, and could we please examine that and discuss it?
You’ve said plenty of other things here too (I did read your whole essay) but I’m confused that “people shouldn’t be forced to have sex with folks they don’t want to” seems to you like a salient response to “The Cotton Ceiling” at all. As a trans woman it comes across to me as just weirdly out-of-place, like reading “The Glass Ceiling” and then taking pains to note that you don’t agree that men should be, I dunno, liquidated wholesale from the workplace and forced to reapply for jobs until there’s an even 50/50 split. It’s like, nobody was suggesting that they should, why does that need to be said?
Natalie Reed covers this far more articulately than I can, here:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/04/04/caught-up-in-cotton/
> If we are going to challenge people’s lack of attraction to trans women, we should challenge cis straight men’s lack of attraction to trans women too.
We, and by we here I mean trans women, do that plenty already. We do a lot of it, and more is always helpful and if it can come from other corners (ones that don’t face the same systemic disadvantages to getting heard and taken seriously) that’ll be even better, but you’re missing a key point: cis men don’t habitually create spaces where they profess to take us seriously as human beings and allow us to participate on ostensibly-equal footing! The two cases are *not symmetrical*, and a piece that deals cogently with the problems in one case is not going to generalize easily to the other because there are different dynamics at play here. Intersectionality much?
Your last paragraph kinda feels derailing in that light. Trust us, we know and care about the weird dichotomy of tacit, sometimes-murderous loathing/creepy fetishing of trans women. We *can’t bloody miss it*. That doesn’t mean it’s our only problem, or even the only problem we have with the “trans women are unfuckable” meme. You know chasers are savvy to that meme and use it against us too, right? But from the other direction — they try to capitalize on its prevalence (with varying degrees of awareness and success) to get sex with us. But while they’re using the same meme, they do so in very different ways, and that situation has to be addressed on its own terms.
“The Cotton Ceiling” is just a trans woman talking about one of our other areas of difficulty. If you feel personally more capable of dealing with the Weird Cis Guy Dichotomy, that’s fine, but when you try to conflate it with the Cotton Ceiling and insist that work is flawed because it doesn’t focus on the problem you’re comfy with, you’re not helping us any, and you’re using your visibility in ways that hurt us. I can’t make you stop, and I’ve no interest in a flamewar, but I hope you’ll at least listen to me here…
Do you think the difference in responses to transwomen and transmen in the queer community has to do with history? Because for ages very masculine presenting women have been part of queer female culture (like in Stone Butch Blues), so transmen don’t seem unusual because we are used to female-bodied people who present masculinely and maybe uncomfortable with female identification (I’m not saying butch presenting women are the same thing as transmen, but there are similarities and they certainly normalized the idea of female-bodied masculinity). It seems to me historically transwomen have been a part of gay male culture, but lesbian/bisexual transwomen were not so visible in queer female culture in the past. Maybe that’s why queer women are so comfortable sexually with transmen and not yet with trans women/
@Mariah:
This is going to sound pedantic and finnicky, so I apologize in advance!
I have been informed in the past that there is a distinct difference between “trans woman” and “transwoman” or “trans-woman.” The latter two suggest a qualifier, as though she is not a “real” woman (because you’re either creating a new word or using a hyphen to modify or qualify an existing word); the same goes for “trans man” vs. “transman” or “trans-man.” Or trans anything, really. =)
I’m not personally offended, but there are some folks out there who might be; just thought I’d pass it along.
Eek! sorry! didn’t realize there was a distinction, thanks for correcting me!
“I’m really not sure if there’s a non-transphobic reason to choose not to date someone you’re otherwise attracted to just because they have a trans history. ”
Is it transphobic to have a preference regarding your partner’s genital configuration? If not, then that’s one reason someone might want not to date a non-op or pre-op trans woman – if they’re simply not sexually attracted to a person who has a penis (of course, if someone is simply not attracted to a person who has a vulva, that might be a reason to want not to date a post-op trans woman or a trans man). I’m not saying that this is always or even often the case, just that it’s a potential reason.
“Why are some cis straight men so repulsed by trans women…? Why do some of them regard murder as an appropriate response to their being attracted to a trans woman?”
The way I see it, one of the major social functions of strict gender norms was to allow people to know the genital configuration of another person without actually being able to see their genitals (I shouldn’t even have to say this, but I am not here claiming that this makes gender norms good or defensible, nor am I saying that this function is one which is necessarily worth pursuing). Over the course of the last fifty years or so, this has gradually become less and less possible, so when someone assumes a person’s genital configuration based on their social presentation and turns out to be incorrect, it is embarrassing, even if only for a second; it is always embarrassing to be found to be factually incorrect in one’s assumptions.
When you combine cis het male homophobia (I’m not saying it’s universal, just widespread) with widespread transphobic misunderstandings (many people still think that a trans person is “really” the gender they were assigned at birth, as if I needed to spell that out on this blog) and with the socially required behaviour of an alpha male when embarrassed, insulted or challenged by someone he perceives to be a lower-ranking male, especially in any matter sexual, you get hatred, disgust and sometimes murderous rage directed at trans women by cis het alpha males, especially in groups. Note that none of this excuses harassment, assault or murder as a response – examining the social and psychological pressures behind an action does not excuse it – nor should any of this be used to blame the victims of any such attacks.
Notice that the third link in the above chain – the idea that violence or even murder is an appropriate response to being challenged by someone perceived to be a lower-ranking male – is rather common among social mammals, so I expect that there are more than simply social and cultural pressures keeping it in place.
That said, I have no proposed explanation for the clause I removed from the quote, which is the reason for the removal.
Yiab: “I don’t want to have sex with women with penises” =/= “I do not want to have sex with trans women.” Refusing to have sex with *any* trans women, no matter what they look like, simply because they’re trans, is problematic.
So yeah. Cis straight men need to work on their homophobia, their transphobia, and their apparent tendency to respond to things with violence.
(If you are cis and straight and male and not homophobic, transphobic, or violent, yay, you get to skip that step on the Road to Decent Human Being.)
@Ozy:
What about, “I don’t want to have sex with women, trans or not, if their features seem extraordinarily masculine to me, because I don’t find masculine features attractive?”
Here I don’t refer to sexual anatomy, which doesn’t bother me. I refer more to the lines of face and body.
@Mariah:
There was a time when I, too, didn’t realize the distinction exists. Fortunately, I was gently corrected on the subject. =)
In retrospect, it almost seems obvious: why should we invent a special word “transperson”) or modify an existing word (“trans-person”) when the existing word should do just fine?
It’s certainly instructive; I’m now inclined to examine words and meanings more carefully.
@Giaus: I think this is a case of getting all sorts of constituent axes of attraction mixed up and packaged up as a single spectrum. (The most functional model of attraction is actually more of a scatter graph than a linear spectrum anyways.)
“I have facial and bone structure preferences” is different from “I have genital preferences” which is different from “I have gender preferences” which is different from “I have presentation preferences”. They are all potentially problematic and non, though making them not problematic in practice, especially since they don’t really exist independently of each other or the wider cissexist, binarist culture, is an uphill battle that takes time, effort, and self-awareness.
All that said, I have a really hard time understanding how a preference for something as minor as a slightly less pronounced jaw could make or break a relationship. Like, seriously. I am married to a guy that I would have never expected to be attracted to in almost any way aside from the fact that he is male and has all the moving parts to go along with that. I have a lifelong paraphilia for giants and he’s freakin’ shorter than I am. I will never understand non-queers when it comes to sex and dating, like seriously. I’m starting to think I’m developing a case of heterophobia pride.
I don’t really understand the fetishizing complaint. Is it any worse for me to like ladies with dicks because of their dicks than it is for me to like dudes with dicks because of their dicks? I’m bi(pan, omni, whatever)sexual, I like tits, I like dicks. If somebody has a body that combines the two, that really gets my motor running. Is that bad? I also like big butts and feet with delicate arches. Is that bad?