Trans 101

CHASERS AND THE FETISHIZATION OF TRANS WOMEN 1: EXPLANATION AND EXAMPLES

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Today’s topic is a very real problem trans women have to deal with. Cis folks, specifically cis men, especially white men, especially heterosexual men, super especially cishet white men, please pay attention. Here comes CHASERS AND THE FETISHIZATION OF TRANS WOMEN 1: EXPLANATION AND EXAMPLES.

This is a serious and really important topic, but before we get into it I have a warning for you. In order for you to truly understand what we trans women go through, I’m going to show you what it’s like for us. Every day, everywhere we go, no matter what we do. Especially online, but it happens in person, too. A bit less so, though, because the perpetrators don’t want to out themselves as attracted to trans women (because heaven forbid).

I’m splitting this into two parts, because to accurately hit you with the reality of this, you need to experience the flood, which makes this installment rather long. 

So this week we’re going to talk about what chasers are and what they do, and next week we’re going to talk about the origin of the entire chaser movement, and how people react when you call chasers out.

There will be many horrible, uncomfortable, and sometimes explicit things discussed. 

I’ll be talking about them in a purely non-explicit way, but I’m not censoring the examples themselves (beyond hiding some of the screennames, for reasons I will explain).

This is your official and only warning. Mountains of horribleness follow.

And it’s important for you to get a taste of what it is we go through.

A “chaser” is someone (almost universally cis men, almost universally white) 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. Quiiiiiiite the opposite, in fact. They are, often, gigantic transphobes.

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

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. See the essays on THE 2022 US TRANS SURVEY RESULTS part 1, 2, 3, and 4, to see exactly how many trans people lose homes and jobs after coming out, how many of us live beneath the poverty line (so many), and how many of us have been unhoused (thirty percent!).

With transphobic laws somehow at a new all-time high every year, with discrimination against us legalized in ever more horrible ways, for many trans women sex work is all that’s left open to them to survive. And nobody should be forced into sex work for any reason, much less just to be able to eat!

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

Feeling forced into sex work as the only way to survive and be “accepted” (by certain awful parts of society), and what that does to a person, and how it can only ever be a temporary solution at best (because the patriarchy values youth over age and many will invariably age out of being able to support themselves via sex work), is examined in stunning depth in The Matrix films. Yes, really. It’s what The Merovingian is all about. See my book Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix for more.

I personally know trans ladies who’ve felt forced into sex work because they had no other option. It’s the one thing one very bad portion of our society has decided it’s okay for us to do: exist as nothing more than sex objects for cis white 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 anything other than “trans women” that I’ve not even listed here. It’s remarkable the lengths that have been gone to in order to dehumanize us as nothing more than sex objects, based on our genitalia and gender.

And that’s extra harmful when you realize for a lot of trans women it’s that very external genitalia that is the biggest source of gender dysphoria. 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 (see MISGENDERING AND PASSING) are sometimes called “traps,” as in “you think they’re a cis woman and then when they get naked they’re not! It’s a trap!”

The “trans women are tricksters and deceivers!” trope still pops up in our media a lot, sadly, and it’s still perpetuating this horrible nonsense. See 2025 TRANS REP IN MEDIA parts 1-4 for a particularly egregious example of this from season two of Poker Face.

This all 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 white dudes who fetishize us can get their rocks off, right?

So let’s talk about what it’s like being a trans woman on the internet. We’re not even going to talk about the bigotry we have to deal with on top of all this right now (though we will next week, for reasons you may be surprised to learn).

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? Or that we’re more vulnerable to anyone suddenly using our correct pronouns? You bet they do.

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. 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 even that didn’t deter them. Can’t stop because maybe I’m not a bot and am a trans woman they can harass!

These may look innocent to you, but babes, we’re only getting started. I know those guys are chasers because I know chaser behavior, because I cannot ever escape it. I’ve got years of experience to drown in. Keep reading.

I’ll now give you a window into what my DMs, replies, and mentions across social media look like. Most examples will be from Instagram, because the user base there is particularly awful and they have some of the worst controls to moderate your experience. But know that it truly happens everywhere. I mean, they do it in the Scrabble app, so.

I’ve blocked some usernames and handles, but left some others. Again, I’ll discuss why that is later on.

What you’re about to see is like one percent 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 actually important for trans people in PHOTOS AND REFLECTIONS and PHOTOS 2: 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 the clothes I am wearing, the next time I log in my DM notifications look like this. All of these accounts are strangers:

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 ever posted, often within the same hour, also often within the same minute.

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

Do note that 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, Tilly, what’s wrong with that? Haaaahahaha. Just like the dudes on Scrabble who aren’t even deterred when I act like a bot, they don’t take no for an answer.

I want you to know, for all these following examples where I replied to the chaser: I usually don’t. I specifically replied to these guys to show you what they’re like. Because I know some other cishet white guys out there will claim it was all innocent, or I’m just imagining things.

Yeah sure. So let’s see about that, why don’t we?

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

So let’s take a peek into my actual DMs! Think it gets any better there? As you saw 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”.

The “hi” over and over again is a known chaser thing, believe it or not. 

And then there’s the guys who just jump right in without even a hello, presuming I’m going to like what they say 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 trans women are here to answer every explicit sex question on their mind. Because, as nothing more than a sex object to them, surely we have the answers and are happy to talk to strangers about sex.

Never mind that I’m not even into dudes and have never, and will never, have sex with one.

And of course, everyone’s least favorite chaser, the dick pic-er.

“How do you know it was a dick pic, Tilly?? It only says it’s a photo, it could be anything!” 

Come on. 

“Why don’t you just report it then??” 

To report it I have to know it’s actually a dick pic. So I looked. Guess what it was? So I reported it.

Do you… do you think it worked?

I’ve got news for you.

This is also your reminder that Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads) have recently changed their terms of service to explicitly allow slurs and hate speech against trans people, while not allowing it for any other group.

And then there’s the scammers. 

If you think these dudes don’t specifically target trans women, who often have no money, I don’t know what to tell you.

One time my birthday selfies 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.

Annnnnnd then I got what may be one of the creepiest chasers yet.

“I still think it’s somehow all innocent, Tilly, because I am dim and have bad opinions! Maybe they’re nice guys who just don’t know they’re being creepy! Why don’t you explain and try to educate them?”

Like, that is not my job, but also:

And the denial? It runs deeeeeep.

I don’t even want to know what the hell this one is about.

A good deal of these dudes (on Instagram, anyway) likely would have a harder time finding me if I didn’t tag many of my photos with things like “trans, trans woman, trans girl,” etc. But I don’t want 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 (trans people who don’t know they’re trans yet), 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 a lot. 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 them 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 sexualizing and fetishizing trans women is the only 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 eggs who don’t even know it yet.

If you make it so people can only see trans women when we’re fetishized in porn, then fetishizing us in porn is the only way trans women eggs can see people like themselves.

If that’s the only option, where else are they to go?

Again, see my 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 TRANS REP IN MEDIA reports from the past four years to see how nearly non-existent good representation for us in media really is.

And the insidiousness is that then teaches those trans women eggs that being a fetishized sex object is the only way they can exist in society, and it reinforces the horror. It works an implicit bias into them (and also into cis people who only ever know us through that fetishized exposure) that that is all we can be, and all we are.

See IMPLICIT QUEERPHOBIA if you don’t understand how society does this to all of us, about people from every marginalized community.

Do I wish these eggs would be less creepy about my photos? Fuck yes. 

But I’m not going to block them because this world makes it so incredibly difficult for us to even realize we’re trans, much less transition and self-actualize. My photos could help them, like other trans women’s photos helped me.

It’s an awful line to walk, because I definitely don’t want harassment, and could certainly do without all the worthless trash messages from cis men who are as lovely as gas station hot dogs. 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 way too hard on us all as it is. 

Please come back next week, as we look at the way people react when you call out chasers, and the origin of the entire movement to fetishize and sexualize trans women in our society. It’s gonna sound wild, but I’ve got receipts.

But please, you have to realize it’s fine to be attracted to us, you can and should be! We are hot! And 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, please fling yourself into the sea forthwith.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com

Part 2 is here.

ADDENDUM 4/30/26

Literally one day after this was posted, I saw the below on BlueSky. No. Stop. What the hell are you doing. There are so many trans women programmers, if this was a thing we wanted, we would have made it by now.

And he clearly didn’t “know how this lands,” given the way he was absolutely roasted in the comments and quote posts.

Cis men take the “I should not act like I know what’s best for trans women” challenge (impossible).

Because it’s certainly not building an app that functions as Chaser Central.

THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE (that we’re trans)

Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re going to take a personal look into my past to look at THE SIGNS THAT WERE ALWAYS THERE EVEN WHEN WE REFUSED TO SEE THEM. There’s no other way to say this than… this is gonna be embarrassing. For me.

Actually it’s making me a little uncomfortable, because I feel like this is going to expose me a little more than I’d like. Expose me as what? A trans woman? OH NO. Obviously this is not a surprise to anyone at this point. I talk about it a lot and am proud to be trans.

And it’s not like I don’t get personal in these. I get detailed about my past in many of them, like you can see in my thread on The Past, and Why it Haunts Us.

And also my thread on Parents Who Will Never Know the Real You, aka My Dad.

There are certainly more, I try to be as open and transparent as possible because I know that can help people. But this is something extra personal that was never intended to be seen by anyone but my amazing wife Susan, but that’s only part of it.

I guess what’s most embarrassing about it is that you’re going to see just how very blind to my own transness I was. And I know that’s not unique to me… in fact, it’s so common there are entire memes about it. See How Do You Know if You’re Trans (Still Cis Tho).

For some background, I’m going to suggest you read the thread on Fear of Embracing Your True Self as I explain in there how very terrified I was of things like makeup… and why. To get the full impact of what you’re about to see, truly… read this first.

Okay enough context, which is probably in some small way me stalling because… well, let’s just get on with it. A while back, Susan made me a scrapbook of things from our life together, and it’s beautiful and sweet and delightful.

Some of what she included were letters and notes I’d written her, and one of them included this:

A photo of part of a note I’d written to my wife, in my horrible, uncomfortable, tight, pre-transition handwriting. It reads: I wanted you to have something to have with you… for those times when I’m not there and you can’t call me, but you need some reassurance and love and hugs and… kisses!

Okay, a brief pause for full disclosure… just seeing my old HANDWRITING gives me dysphoria. It’s as cramped and tight and uncomfortable and awful as I felt all the time pre-transition, and I didn’t expect that to spike my dysphoria! How incredibly weird.

I talked about how my handwriting has changed post-transition, and why, along with a whole host of other things I never anticipated in my thread on Unexpected Bonuses of Transition.

And though I link to this one most often, I never know when new folks are coming in to their first one of these, so if you need more info on Gender Dysphoria.

Okay, right, so… Tilly, what the heck? I hear you. You look at that snippet of a note and think… that’s some uggo handwriting, but what of it? You wanted your wife to know you loved her when you couldn’t be with her and couldn’t talk, what’s wrong with that?

Nothing at all! Except that I cropped out the truly incriminating part. How do you think I was sending her kisses to keep while we were apart? HOW?  

A larger snippet of the same note as before, only below the writing there is… a red lipstick kiss mark.

Okay listen-

No, it’s fine, get your laughs out now, go ahead. You’re not laughing at me, it’s okay, because I assure you I’m laughing too.

I couldn’t yet consciously give myself permission to explore, to find myself, to play with gender and see what I really was inside. And so… I found a way… to do that anyway… without even consciously realizing it.

I did a whole thread about finding ways to giving yourself Permission to Experiment and find your true self.

Okay, but as you read in my thread on the Fear of Embracing Your True Self, I HATED lipstick and lip balm (because of the terrifying feelings they gave me, even though I didn’t know that was why). And I’m not kidding about that. Look:

More of that horrid handwriting from the note. It reads: OH MY. THAT WAS REALLY WEIRD. SO MUCH SO I’M NOW WRITING IN CAPS?? That was… minty. WTF? How do you wear that stuff? Blech. Um… yeah.

Siiiiiigh. See, this is why I feel exposed and embarrassed. It’s SO CLEAR TO ME, looking at that, exactly what I was going through, and why I had those feelings. And I’d done it to myself by concocting a “reason” I could put lipstick on when I was home by myself.

I’ve said so, so, SO many times how looking back at my life, there were signs everywhere that I was trans. Signs that I willfully ignored, pretended I didn’t see, pretended they didn’t mean EXACTLY what they actually meant. And this is abso 100% one of them.

I’m not saying if you’re a cis man and you do this one thing that you’re trans, BUT y’know if there’s DOZENS of these, HUNDREDS… maybe you’re not as cis as you think.

Anyway it gets worse (better?), because this is how I closed out the letter:

It’s that same old awful handwriting. It reads: PS – I think I ruined your lipstick. Sorry! At least you know I haven’t been wearing it while you’re at work.

Tilly. Girl.

GIRL.

WHY WOULD ANYONE THINK YOU WERE WEARING YOUR WIFE’S MAKEUP WHILE SHE WAS AT WORK? WHAT A SUUUUUPER RANDOM THING TO THINK PEOPLE MIGHT BE WONDERING ABOUT YOU…

As you’ve no doubt seen in plenty of my selfies, I now love wearing makeup and lipstick, because I gave myself that permission to explore, pushed through the fear of embracing my true self, and figured out who I really am.

When I said the signs were always there, I did not remember this note. I had no idea it existed. So when Susan found it and put it in that scrapbook, it was an embarrassing and somewhat hilarious slap to the face.

It said “damn RIGHT the signs were always there, just LOOK, you fool!” Yeah yeah, okay, sure. My Morpheus was always there hammering away, trying to break through my shell and get me to see what was really inside. And if you don’t get the reference:
Twitter, Facebook

Push through the fear. Do it scared. Give yourself permission. The signs have always been there… and it’s okay to recognize and accept them. You may be surprised at the joy you find waiting for you on the other side. (lipstick!!)

Me with curly bangs and two curly pigtails held with light blue hair ties, eyeliner, pink-framed glasses, a dark pinkish-purple lipstick in a v-neck top with light blue, dark green, orange, dark red, and pink horizontal stripes.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com