I was going to post this in the photos of sexy trans people thread in the sex talk group, but I decided to just make it a blog.
Let me see if I have figured out where a natural interest turns into creepy fetishization. Finding a trans person attractive demands more careful attention than, say, finding a redhead attractive, because trans people face a whole lot of shitty persecution that redheads don't face. I deliberately chose redheads in order to avoid making other comparisons, but in whatever case, relating to an actual person demands worlds more care than getting off on a posed and staged image. It's super fucking serious that no one confuse the two. I sometimes doubt whether people in general have what it takes to handle that task.
Fetishizing pictures doesn't directly hurt anyone. Failing to understand that a trans person whom you meet on this site or in your daily life has his or her own unique personality, needs, and preferences makes you an asshole or possibly a sociopath. Get some help for it, either way.
If I got that more or less right, then it should also apply to people of a particular national origin or skin color, as well.
I don't mean to sound like I directed my post at anyone. I'm fortunate to have been born privileged as fuck, and I have been thinking hard about all this stuff so that I can avoid hurting anyone else's feelings out of my abyssmal ignorance. To my mind, this topic certainly relates to sex at least as much as politics for the people who come here, as we wouldn't subscribe to this website if we didn't like looking at naked people who have various outward appearances.
As it happens, people in oppressed classes have started to say that they don't like being fetishized and I think that those calls deserve respect. Different people and groups have different demands, and I reserve the right to disagree with some of those demands and amplify others. I hope that we can all agree to emphasize the importance of knowing the difference between fantasy and reality, and the importance of always putting people first with all of their individual complexity.
