Smashing taboos of trans desires

Photo by František Čaník: https://www.pexels.com/photo/monochrome-artistic-nude-in-bed-37183010/

This body of mine is a curious thing. It has seen and done licentious things in the depths of the night, experienced the absolute highs of rapture as it has been taken, felt the touch and caress of other bodies as they move in time in the heat. To be trans is not to discount desire, or to ignore that society makes our bodies inherently exotic and fetishised. It is to be complete with oneself, a set of slow keys turning until the renewed self is opened to all possibilities. Of course trans women desire, and in turn like to be desired, yet talking about such desires is taboo because many societies make our bodies taboo.

As someone who wrote about their first sexual experience as a women in an academic book chapter I am not ashamed of my sexuality. Indeed, the reason I am open about my experiences is to demystify trans bodies and trans desires. I also happen to be queer and have slept with every gender and body type. I genuinely do not have a preference, enjoying each body as they come, literally. Yet, there is always still a Victorian curtain that falls when I discuss desire because I still have those taboos rattling around in the back of my mind whenever I write about trans desires.

Of course many trans women fuck or are fucked, and no two trans women have the same sexuality, sex drive, desires, or proclivities. Nor do any other humans. Each of us has our own sexual landscape shaped through experiences and social mores that make talking about sex and desire require a map of the other person’s world to effectively navigate. To be trans in this navigation brings a different set of landmarks, especially if you have experienced sex as both genders and as you pass between both body types.

There is something indescribable about being a trans woman in that liminal space between starting hormones and having gender confirmation surgery, a tactile frission of getting to know your body all over again as hormones rewire sexual responses, signals, and inputs. The first full body orgasm, the last cum before it turns to liquid, the realisation that your personal sexuality shifts and opens up new opportunities.

Yet, to desire as a trans woman can be personally and legally dangerous. Far too many trans women have been killed by sexual partners due to their partner’s shame, and in the UK trans women have been prosecuted for not informing their male partner of their trans history. Trans women cannot simply be women alone, their bodies are forever weighed down by their personal history. All of which flows from those same taboos, the forbidden fruit that makes us both tempting and able to be crushed in the same night.

No matter what porn may portray trans women as, the reality is more layered, textural, and bespoke. For all those taboos, we are each alive with possibility and potential as hormones shift and change the bodies we inhabit. Like all women our bodies change over time, breasts grow and shrink, go from pert to gravity assisted. Our skin soft as velvet, electric to the touch, responsive. Our minds alert for the fetishist, the chaser, the abuser, those who crave or hate; it takes a lot to lower our barriers, disarm our defences, and truly get to know who we are.

None of which switches off our desires or those who desire us. A kiss lets loose a night of something more, a honied word whispered takes us off into spaces beyond, and that look in your eye as I undress tells me all I need to know. You had me from across the room, and when I straddled your lap as you sat on my sofa the look in your eyes ate me alive. Against my wall your voice was lost in that kiss as we pressed into each other, lost and found again as the night reclaimed us as two of their own.

You can feel them as they drift into you, your dress hikes a little higher as you pay close attention, letting their hand fall gracefully into yours as you walk through the chill evening air discussing everything and nothing. His hands wrap around your waist, drawing you in for that final kiss, knowing he has to go, but will call soon. He does, then soon enough family issues spring him free from this whatever you want to call it.

Desire is this dangerous, sublime, coiling thing that wraps itself around your very essence until it makes you feel liminal. Being trans does not stop that, nor does it prevent others from seeing you for the thing they assume you to be. This is not a mere lust, it is a compulsion, a drive, a motivation to connect. My body knows, craves, desires; it is this instrument of the taboo, a forbidden fruit because society deems me a curio only worthy of debasement on the yellow site. For the low price of a monthly subscription all the hypocrites who condemn us in the streets get to goon over us in the sheets.

Still here we are, lips kissed, bodies caressed, and intimacy expanded with full consent. Taboos are established to keep clean from unclear, holy from unholy, yet there is nothing dirty about my body. Nothing unholy about trans women that demands exorcism with knife or gun. Fuck us cynically if you must, but we are not cattle for the slaughterman’s barbarity. Our blood runs as red as any other, the tang of iron fills the air just as every other woman who is beaten and slaughtered simply for being a woman. Lust after us, watch us in the dark; do not let your desires become shame or taboo, for that too coils and curdles and then becomes the night of terror for innocent trans women.

Afterglow is this place of reset, knowing that you have shared something, broken down a personal barrier that can never fully be reset. I desire, I shatter taboos, I am the woman lusted after regardless of what some may say. I have felt the heat of her hands as she takes me, and his as he made me cry out his name. Her name lingers, an echo, his scent lost to time. I am desired, I desire. Being a trans woman is only taboo because some insist that my body is not worthy of such things, and as I shatter those lies whoever lies with me knows that the only taboo is the harm wrought onto trans women like me by men baring the shame erected by such taboos and lies. Desire me and other trans women guilt free, because we too are creatures of desire.