I work with a post-op male to female transexual who is now living her life as a woman. It's been interesting to see people's perceptions about what constitutes a man and what constitutes a woman.
Some people think that she's not female but instead a male without a penis. Therefore any man she sleeps with is necessarily gay. My opinion was that she's a woman who used to be a man. Her opinion, which I now subscribe to, is that she's always been a woman, but through some genetic quirk that no-one can really explain, she was born with male sexual organs.
There's some truth in all three opinions. What is it that makes someone a man? Just a penis? Is a man without a penis no longer a man? Is he/she a woman? Or is it something in the mind which determines our gender? Something different than our body? Something that allows this mismatch of feeling a different gender than your body is?
Are shemales men or women? It's difficult to say, which is I suppose why we use the term shemale. But if we can't determine a gender, how can we say the person attracted to a shemale is either gay or straight? Personally I don't think we can. There isn't really a term for people who are attracted to them, and perhaps their should be.
Technically, you could understand why someone would call you gay, but I don't think your friend is right. What if instead of a shemale, you were watching porn involving a woman wearing a strap-on? That wouldn't be gay and the only difference is that one penis is plastic and one is flesh.
Sexuality is a difficult enough concept to fully pin down. Where gender becomes equally difficult, perhaps we need to stop trying to pin these things down, need to stop labelling each other, and just need to get on with doing the things we enjoy with the people we enjoy them with.
Or perhaps sexuality is actually a triangle with points labelled male, female, and shemale. Each person is a dot somewhere inside the triangle where the closer they are to one (or more) of the points shows where their attraction lies. A point in the dead centre of the triangle signifies means equal attraction to all three points, whereas most straight gays would be fairly near the female point (and some, like you, skewed a little towards the shemale point).
Maybe that would be a good way of signifying it properly, but do we really need to? Why does it matter?
Is it normal to like shemales and women?
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I work with a post-op male to female transexual who is now living her life as a woman. It's been interesting to see people's perceptions about what constitutes a man and what constitutes a woman.
Some people think that she's not female but instead a male without a penis. Therefore any man she sleeps with is necessarily gay. My opinion was that she's a woman who used to be a man. Her opinion, which I now subscribe to, is that she's always been a woman, but through some genetic quirk that no-one can really explain, she was born with male sexual organs.
There's some truth in all three opinions. What is it that makes someone a man? Just a penis? Is a man without a penis no longer a man? Is he/she a woman? Or is it something in the mind which determines our gender? Something different than our body? Something that allows this mismatch of feeling a different gender than your body is?
Are shemales men or women? It's difficult to say, which is I suppose why we use the term shemale. But if we can't determine a gender, how can we say the person attracted to a shemale is either gay or straight? Personally I don't think we can. There isn't really a term for people who are attracted to them, and perhaps their should be.
Technically, you could understand why someone would call you gay, but I don't think your friend is right. What if instead of a shemale, you were watching porn involving a woman wearing a strap-on? That wouldn't be gay and the only difference is that one penis is plastic and one is flesh.
Sexuality is a difficult enough concept to fully pin down. Where gender becomes equally difficult, perhaps we need to stop trying to pin these things down, need to stop labelling each other, and just need to get on with doing the things we enjoy with the people we enjoy them with.
Or perhaps sexuality is actually a triangle with points labelled male, female, and shemale. Each person is a dot somewhere inside the triangle where the closer they are to one (or more) of the points shows where their attraction lies. A point in the dead centre of the triangle signifies means equal attraction to all three points, whereas most straight gays would be fairly near the female point (and some, like you, skewed a little towards the shemale point).
Maybe that would be a good way of signifying it properly, but do we really need to? Why does it matter?