Transmen as a sexual preference

Labels.  I can’t get away from it.  In my own head, I can’t.  Labels are so deeply ingrained that even to talk about them is practically a cliché.  I don’t mind, I like clichés. 

I thought about the line I originally settled on, that maybe I just happen to be generally attracted to girls who are so androgynous that they are actually boys.   This line … could be offensive to some.  It could belittle their identity and existence in this world as male.

Maybe it was a transition label or theory for myself.

So I am thinking.  I am thinking that my whole life possibly, I am generally attracted to “trans-men”.  And maybe really pretty boys in general.  Maybe?

I feel like a large portion of my own identity is being stripped away.  I am swimming, I am confused, and people want short and simple answers.  So do I.  I don’t have it yet. 

------Rambling train of thought and background information, begin:

Changing a label is hard.  Changing a label BACK?  Might be harder.   And in my situation, it is both ridiculously complicated and simple at the same time.  No matter the label, there is no confusion or change in my relationship with Kaden.  Name and pronouns … that’s really it.  A generally happier boyfriend who is learning and preparing to finally love his own body.  Simple, nothing else changes between us.  But for me…?

So let’s just go through this.  Growing up, I guess you could say I identified as heterosexual.  Only, I just wasn’t very sexual in general.  I had some boyfriends, my most “successful” relationship was based online during high school and turned out to be a bit abusive in really stupid ways.  A lot of things about that relationship were wrong and were mistakes.  Everyone makes high school mistakes, Eddie happened to be by biggest one.  He was my last male-female relationship, until about a month ago (ten years ago?).

It was around the time I turned 16 or 17 that I began to identify as lesbian.  I had a couple of girlfriends I was mildly attracted to, and at first there was little to no sex.  Then the one girlfriend who turned out to be very not gay (I think we all have one of those stories, right?).  Then Kaden (at that time, Katie). 

So the entirety of my adult life, I have identified as gay female attracted only to other females.  Dealt with all the issues that come with that.  Being gay ten years ago was hard.  No as hard as twenty years ago, but a heck of a lot harder than it is now (yay, progress!).  A person has to really hold onto that label, and almost prove themselves in certain ways, to really “claim” it.  It takes courage and conviction to live life against the norms of your society, of your own family.

What I am trying to say is that over time, being gay became a part of me.  As much as being straight is a part of anyone else.  Once it is confirmed and acknowledged it just IS.  It’s just there.  Move along, living life over here.

But now things are changing.

------End background rambling (I really considered deleting all of that as non-essential and boring, but in the spirit of open honesty, I am leaving it in)

I don’t want to belittle Kaden’s identity (even if he doesn’t see it as such) by continuing to identify as lesbian.  That would be like saying, yes, Kaden is male and I accept that but I still only date girls (so really he must be a girl in my mind?).

So.  I guess I’m not a lesbian.

Hello world, my name is Alison, and contrary to what I have been saying and gently correcting people on since I was a child, I am not gay.

(reading that last part, inside my mind is a big evangelical I’M HEALED ad, haha funny.)

Maybe I haven’t figured out what I am.  Kaden says maybe bi (and even still gay, but we’ve covered that).  I have always hated the term “bisexual”.

Here’s the whole point of the rambling (procrastinating?) of this whole entry.

I think I am specifically attracted to FTM people.  Part of me wonders if that is weird.  A bigger part of me wonders if that is offensive.  Because to see a trans man as anything different than just a MAN is possibly belittling their identity and I would never want to do that.

Perhaps I just see trans-man as a specific state that is, to me, the perfect interpretation of a man.  And therefore, my personal preference.