No Delicacy: Trans Women’s Dilemma with Disclosure and Desire
By: Juniper Yun
Tags: Feminism, Equality, LGBTQ, Dating, Transgender

pictured: woman whose face is held by hands, and whose mouth is hidden

“I just can’t get used to this,” he said, as he split his chopsticks in two, positioning them in a clumsy grip in his left hand. I followed suit, shrugged, and replied,

“It comes natural to me.”

It was our third date, it was February. We rendezvoused at the Chinese joint named “Huan Xi”. Roughly, happiness. He’d just flown back last month from filming in East Asia and craved hot-pot once I mentioned my own research a half-year prior in Yunnan. So, I stole him to the Eastside of the city, to a favorite restaurant that reminds me of a faraway place.

Settling in, I peeled my down jacket from my shoulders, brushed a loose feather off my sleeve. I tucked my hair behind my ear, adjusted my glasses, smoothed the fabric of my skirt. I looked up to an eager, hungry smile, and I shyly smiled back. His teeth were straight and so was he, like many of the men who fall for me.

To be a transgender woman and to date cisgender men is a venture in balancing one’s self worth. Like all other woman, we navigate whether or not to split the bill, however, #girlslikeus get the added experience of questioning if our paramour is going to split our head open. About half of the transgender women murder and assault cases in 2019 alone were connected to intimate partner violence.

To be a transgender woman and to date cisgender men is a venture in balancing one’s self worth.

The mundane ability to appear cisgender at a glance acts as a thick fog for any romantic navigations. This term in our community is known as passing. In many cases, yes, passing had saved me from theoretical harassment, but the flipside to a purposeful reveal brings its own tough realities. Alongside this catch-22, questions always floated in the haze of my headspace when vetting a new partner. The anxiety — do they know? What if they find out? The anticipation — how should I tell them? When is it safe? And, of course, the aftermath.

“So, you’re Korean?” he said, after a gulp of water, rubbing his nose with an already crumpled napkin. His cheeks and ears were flushed from the cold, and he leaned into the table intently. I nodded, lifted from the haze, while hiding my mouth behind my hand. I finished chewing, my face warm from the earnestness of his gaze.

“Yes, partly, my mother and I. My father’s from the Midwest, though.” His curiosity piqued, he took the opportunity to conduct a typical interrogation that happens when you meet a girl you’re interested in.

“Oh, so your father’s white?”, “You’re a military brat, then?”, “Do you have any siblings?”, “Are you close?”, “Why not?”

Why not? The heavy question incited a hard swallow. I looked away and laughed, a reaction so frequently practiced it came off as authentic. “Sibling rivalry!” I joked, then relayed a bit more honestly about how he and I used to get into too many scuffles. I omitted that my brother, being older and stronger and emotionally twisted from a tough upbringing, would wail against me, 4-years-younger. I kept out my brother’s frequent criticisms on my gender nonconformity. Dates are for un-shelling typically light-hearted family histories, and like many other trans people, my family history was a hard-cased grenade.

“Man, I can’t believe he would hit his sister,” he laughed with gravity, and touched his boot against my ankle, holding his chopsticks steady. “Where was your father?”

I felt this question dig further into the surface of my history, and I diverted with a shrug, “Off doing his military duties, school or work or dealing with something else, who knows?” My voice, though paired with a smile, colored the statement a shameful red. It signaled ‘stop.’ He tilted his head, gave a ‘tsk,’ and muttered ‘a shame.’ I took a quick sip of tea, the heat burning my lips.

Talking bodies on the first few dates is not my cup of tea, but for women like myself, we have to make decisions on when to disclose. Disclosure, for many trans women, can lead to two common avenues: outright rejection or immediate sexualization. So, as I tried to enjoy the sweet-sour of the food, I savored the faraway fantasy of him seeing my gender variance as nothing out of the ordinary.

Disclosure, for many trans women, can lead to two common avenues: outright rejection or immediate sexualization.

Despite the darker topics early in the conversation, I shined; I showed off the facets of myself I felt most proud of. But like any gemstone, I was formed under intense pressure. As much as I glimmered, I could sense beneath his excitement his confusion. Who was I, really? The rest of the meal was coated in this mystery, as I felt the sand run thin for my time to tell him.

When we finally exited the restaurant, our breath swirled out, the air itself heavy with unspoken words. We stayed close to each other, both knowing it was going to snow, with my apartment several blocks away. He reached out his hand and pulled mine into his coat pocket. My palm could feel the urgent heat from his pulse up from his fingertips. I leaned in and kissed his cheek. He followed my retreat with his free hand, turned my face towards his, and gave me a deep kiss. It tasted like the sugared bread we had for dessert, but left a bitterness in its departure.

Once we arrived at my house, we shuffled out of our winter clothes. With urgency, he kissed me again. Despite this, I lifted my hand to his face, holding it away from mine. His cheek burned hot against my palm. My glasses were half-fogged, and I took the time for them to clear to come back to reality. “Do you like me?” I smiled half-heartedly as I said this. Taken out of the moment, he nodded his head, and smiled, “What’s got you wondering?”

“I have something to tell you.”

Some said I was lucky to have laid with him that night. Others said I was lucky I made it out unscathed. The latter were often other trans women — women who felt it better to run than to trust in chance, who knew the dice were loaded and the table askew, who knew we were never really invited to the table in the first place.

“I’m really into Asian girls, and you got something extra.”

Following our visit to happiness, I never met him again. Some days, on the hard days, I see it in my mirror, the media, even my loved ones from time to time. What would it look like to receive empathy to my truth, in the place of stunted affection, in the place of fetishization?

In my early years dating as a transgender woman, I ran a gauntlet of these failed dates turned nighttime trysts. I realized I carried a stark lesson from my parent’s abusive marriage that fresh wounds needed to be kissed, and my longing for love had thus morphed into an open wound. I accepted the advances of men in the after-dark, regardless of their fetishization, in hopes it would make the pain fade. Now, I see this as symptom of a societal dilemma that feeds our own trauma.

With lovers, the trouble lies either in them, or in us. And we are growing tired of it being us. Carrying the weight of the blame, from family, lovers, and society, for what reason? Seeking happiness, understanding? Seeking love as humans do, in a lonely world. I realized that this experience was not limited to me or to trans women. It is something all women navigate in their experience of their coming into womanhood. A form of discrimination that thrives in patriarchal systems: that of consumptive desirability, of objectification. Once I could name it, I could deconstruct. It is through this loving lens that I began believing in my own worth. I began seeing beyond the societal walls in my pursuit of love, and built my own boundaries so that I knew loving men was not also hurting myself.

I began seeing beyond the societal walls in my pursuit of love, and built my own boundaries so that I knew loving men was not also hurting myself.

Many men, before they know of our identity, pin us as ‘beautiful women’, who have dreams, who work hard, and are compassionate; all things that fit within their structural ideal for what they believe they deserve in a woman. In that vein, they typically believe women to be something consumable, and the moment a woman’s visible narrative strays beyond the realm of what that man believes he wants, that woman becomes a failed fantasy he feels he can scrape off his plate.

For many trans women, the men who fetishize us and their ability to humanize us starts and ends at the idea of how we should exist for their own narrative. Our very humanity is second to their ability to consume us and our bodies in the way society says he can or should consume women. This means treating trans women as if we are simply an exotic delicacy. I am here to say: We are not the food on the table. We are seated right next to you, to be seen, to be heard, and to be loved.

In the same way these men are driven by shame to disqualify their loving of us, we are driven by shame to hide their actions of lovelessness. As such, unless these men do the work to tackle these pervasive ways of thinking, and unless we as trans women demand to be loved fully and in the light, this sad cycle will continue.