CHASERS and THE FETISHIZATION OF TRANS WOMEN

Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today’s topic is a very real problem trans people, especially we trans women, have to deal with. CIS FOLKS, specifically cis men, please pay attention. Watch out, here comes CHASERS and THE FETISHIZATION OF TRANS WOMEN.

A “chaser” is someone (almost universally cis men) who fetishizes trans women. They flood our DMs and follow us around the internet and generally hound us as objects of desire, while simultaneously not seeing us as people, human beings, or supporting trans rights.

Before we go further let me make this clear: I am sex-positive and there is nothing wrong with anyone being attracted to trans people (you should be, we’re awesome). For that matter I also support sex workers who choose that line of work for themselves.

But there is a very real issue for trans women where many feel FORCED into sex work, because it’s one of the only ways our society has said it’s okay for trans women to exist. Well, a portion of our society anyway, as a large part of it still shuns sex work and porn entirely.

My point is this is not meant to be a discussion on the merits or drawbacks of porn or sex work. It’s about how trans women are routinely fetishized and so many feel forced to lean into that fetishization.

I’ve mentioned (so so so many times) how often trans people lose our family, friends, homes, and jobs when we come out. When you lose all that, and you face discrimination at every turn, and it’s tough to even get a new job due to people’s conscious (and unconscious) biases…

…where do you have left to turn to survive? Sex work. I personally know trans ladies who’ve felt forced into it because they had no other option. It’s the one thing one portion of society has decided it’s okay for us to do: exist as nothing more than sex objects for cis men.

We’re routinely one of the biggest and most popular porn categories. It’s getting marginally better in some places with them actually calling us trans women, but in many we’re not even that. We’re “shemales” or “dickgirls” or “chicks with dicks” or “girlyboys.”

There are so MANY terms they call us OTHER than trans women not even listed here, it’s kind of remarkable the lengths gone to to dehumanize us as nothing more than sex objects based on our genitalia and gender presentation.

And that’s extra harmful when you realize for a lot of trans women it’s that same external genitalia that is the biggest source of gender dysphoria for them. Can you imagine being valued ONLY for the part of your body you hate the most?

Some of the terms are actually even more harmful on their own. Trans ladies who can pass as cis are often called “traps,” aka “you think they’re a cis woman and then when they get naked they’re not! It’s a trap!”

This furthers the painting of us as deceptive manipulators and possible sex offenders, and increases the danger and violence we face. But who cares as long as cis dudes who fetishize us can get their rocks off, right?

I briefly talked about this in my threads on The Matrix Revolutions. You can’t really just dive into those without understanding what the previous Matrix movies meant in terms of their trans allegories, though. They’re now a book, BEGIN TRANSMISSION: THE TRANS ALLEGORIES OF THE MATRIX.

So let’s talk a bit about what it’s like being a trans lady on the internet. We’re not even going to talk about the bigotry we have to deal with on top of all this, mind you. We’re just gonna focus on the chasers and the way they fetishize us.

I mentioned in a previous thread how the WEEK I publicly came out as trans, the chasers found me and the DM flood started. They waste no time. Do they seek out newly out trans ladies thinking we’re not numb to it all already? Possibly.

It doesn’t matter what we post or where we post it, if we exist anywhere online the chasers will find us and make themselves known. I’ve mentioned multiple times how they hound me in SCRABBLE where I try to go for some downtime, but can’t even escape them there.

For a while I tried seeing what would happen if I pretended to be a bot. You can see how much of a deterrent that is to them.

Now I’m gonna give you a window into what my DMs, replies, and mentions look like. I’ve blocked a lot of the usernames and handles, but left some others. I’ll discuss why that is later in the thread. Also note these are not the sum total of everything I’ve received.

What you’re about to see is like 1% of what I get every single time I post a selfie (which I’m not gonna stop doing just to stop the chasers). You can read about why selfies are important in my post on PHOTOS 2 aka THE SELFIE APOCALYPSE.

So anytime I post a photo of myself, NO MATTER WHAT IT IS OR WHAT I AM DOING IN THE PHOTO OR WHAT CLOTHES I AM WEARING, the next time I log in my mentions look like this:

And then, multiple times a week, I will log on and discover chasers who’ve found my profile and gone through and liked EVERY PHOTO I HAVE POSTED:

This is not remotely uncommon:

They don’t even pay attention to what they’re liking because they’re in a blind lust frenzy. Look at this dude:

On a picture with my lovely wife Susan, in which the caption said we were married and it was our anniversary, he wrote: [DNA emoji] BFF sisters for life [100 emoji]… and then on another photo commented: [ring emoji] will make a good [bride emoji] wife some day [church emoji]

Creepy as hell, and also not remotely paying attention to what he’s liking as the flop sweat forms on his brow and he imagines I will see his ~amazing~ replies and, what… ask to meet up and have sex with him and eventually marry him?? It’s SO BAFFLING.

And it’s definitely what they all seem to want. Some of them don’t even try to hide it, and in fact just advertise it right in their usernames as if it’s somehow going to be a turn on to any living human being, and not as repulsive as thirteen week old cabbage?

Maybe they’re just interested and hoping to get a date, what’s wrong with that? Haaaahahaha. Just like the dudes on Scrabble who aren’t even deterred with me acting like a bot, they don’t take no for an answer.

It’s… constant. And absolutely none of them even have anything original to say.

So let’s take a peek into my DMs! Think it gets any better there? As you could see before from just the previews of my DMs, one of their favorite things to do is just say… hi. I guarantee you they’re all chasers, nobody sends a DM to someone they don’t know and says nothing but “hi”.

It’s a known chaser thing, believe it or not. And then there’s these dudes who I cannot even pretend to understand.

And then there’s the guys who just jump right in without even a hello, presuming I’m going to like this and… want more of it? Again, I cannot fathom what they’re hoping is going to happen by sending this to me. I’ve asked many of them but none will ever tell me.

And then there’s the ones who think we’re just here to answer every explicit sex question on their mind because, as nothing more than a sex object, surely we have the answers (never mind I’m not into dudes and have never and will never have sex with one).

And of course we can’t end this look at my DMs without a representative of everyone’s least favorite chaser, the dick pic-er.

“How do you know it was a dick pic, Tilly??” Come on. “Why don’t you just report it then??” To report it I have to know that’s what it was. So I looked. GUESS WHAT IT WAS? So I reported it.

Do you… do you think it worked?

I’ve got news for you.

A good deal of these dudes (on Instagram, anyway) likely would have a harder time finding me if I didn’t tag all my photos with trans, trans woman, trans girl, girls like us, etc etc. But I refuse to stop using those tags just to stop harassment that’s not my fault.

Because here’s the thing… those kinds of tags get used by eggs and people trying to figure out their own gender ALL. THE. TIME. I was one of them. I never went through someone’s entire profile liking all their photos because I was cognizant of how fucking creepy that is.

But I looked at photos with those tags all the time. Seeing other trans women that had transitioned and were happy and full of joy and life was so important to me. It played some small part in helping me think I could one day attain that, too.

And I’m not going to take that away from other eggs who need it as much as I did. And this kind of ties right into why most of the above usernames and handles were blocked out. I left the ones in for the blatant harassers, because if you’re gonna be gross people should know.

But the others? Remember how I said the one and only way a portion of our society makes existing as a trans woman “acceptable” is as nothing more than an object of fetishization?

That means that a lot of eggs who’ve been pretending to be cis find that’s the only acceptable way they can see us, learn more about us, and come to terms with their own gender. A non-zero number of those chasers ARE TRANS EGGS WHO MAYBE DON’T EVEN KNOW IT YET.

Do I wish they’d be less creepy about it? God yes. But I’m not going to block them because this world makes it INCREDIBLY difficult for a lot of people to even realize they’re trans, much less transition and self-actualize. My photos could help them like others’ photos helped me.

So it’s a weird line to walk, because I definitely don’t want the harassment and could certainly do without all the worthless trash messages from garbage people, but I know there are eggs out there doing the best with what they have and trying to learn… about themselves.

I won’t make it harder on them. It’s hard enough on us all as it is. Realize it’s FINE to be attracted to us, you can’t help who you’re attracted to. But you CANNOT forget that we are human beings first and foremost. If you can’t respect us, GTFO.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.

ADDENDUMS ON FOLLOWING PAGES.

great thing to wake up to

yep, there it is.

things have taken a turn (fess up if you had the twist figured out back in Act I)

ah yes, the old “it is your fault I am a creepy guy”

my birthday pics brought out a couple chaser varieties I’d not seen before. like this dude here, who I’m not even going to try to unpack.

and then what may be one of the creepiest chasers yet

maybe it’s all innocent, Tilly! maybe they’re nice guys who just don’t know! why don’t you explain and try to educate them?

Well.

I DON’T EVEN WANT TO KNOW

This is a remarkably good article on the topic, summing up a surprising increase in trans fetishization in 2022, with lots of good data. Check it out, and definitely read all the way to the end.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com