Hi, I'm Kai Cheng Thom, and you're watching "Ask Kai:
Quickies," a series of short videos in which I teach you
everything you need to know about sex, love
and relationships.
So
today's amazing question is: I'm a high
femme trans lesbian and I really want to play
with other high femme trans lesbians.
How?
So I think this is a really good question.
And I just want to say that I'm going to assume that the
word play here means maybe sex,
intimacy... some kind of erotic exchange.
Like if you want to play softball
with high femme trans lesbians, then I assume there's
like a Reddit meetup for that. So I'm just going to let you
figure that out on your own.
But when it comes to sexuality, intimacy, kink, dating,
social dynamics in the queer community tend to pigeonhole
high femme trans women and femmes.
We tend to assume that high femme
trans feminine folks are, first of all, heterosexual,
meaning into men.
We sort of dismiss the idea that there are trans feminine
lesbians at all.
And where there are trans feminine lesbians, then there are
social dynamics in lesbian and bisexual
women communities that sort of
try and force femme folks to date
butch folks or non-femme folks.
There's some left over ideas
about mimicking heterosexuality
or there being a compulsory butch femme dynamic
that then prevents people from expressing the fullness
of the range of their sexual interest.
So I want to say that's a real thing.
And when you're a trans feminine person out there in the
world looking for sexuality in the first place, I mean,
first of all, everyone is sexually obsessed with us.
But then second, people feel like they have to keep it a
secret because there is still a social stigma that
that surrounds trans feminine bodies, which is horrible and
unfair and unjust.
Side note: For the non trans feminine viewer
watching this who is like "Cis heterosexual men on Grindr?
What do you mean? I thought that was for gay people." Well,
like, yes. So generally Grindr is
like full of hot, sexy gay men meeting other hot, sexy
gay men and, like, good for them.
But what people don't know about Grindr pretty often is
that there's this whole, like, semisecret not really secret
side of it. That's like for trans feminine people
and cis hetero identified
or like semi straight identified, hetero flexible
identified. I don't really know men
who want to have sex with us. And so if you are a trans
feminine person floating around on grinder, one is usually
confronted with is hundreds upon hundreds of men who tend
to identify as straight or hetero flexible,
like straight ish, often who
are semi closeted or discreet,
maybe who are married or have cisgender girlfriends.
There's usually no photo in the profile, and they're
looking strictly for trans women or trans feminine
people to play with, often with such
charming monikers in their profile as "No femmes,
no men, hairless only." If
you are trans, you don't have to have a map.
So it's a little glimpse into the secret side
of Grindr for you non-uninitiated folks.
I'm happy to note, however, that it is 2022
at the recording of this video, and that means that there
are some options that are available in terms of dating
apps. I particularly enjoy Lex.
My producer and I did a little field research right before
recording this video. We just went on Lex and we found that
there were ads of high femme trans lesbians
looking for other high femme trans lesbians.
And there were just generally ads of trans
lesbians looking for trans lesbians.
So that's really exciting to see.
I'm also happy to note that within the trans community,
as our question asker may or may not already know, there is
this growing "T for T" movement, which
is this like reclamation of the glory
and joy of trans on trans sex and love.
So if you're not already part of the movement, you know,
come and get in on this.
I think there's more and more folks who are realizing that
we just want to love each other up.
I've also heard good things about a relatively new dating
app called Field.
And like I said, like, Grindr tends to be oriented
around the needs and desires of cisgender
men. But there's no reason one can't put up a profile
that, you know, loudly declares looking
for a trans lesbian, looking for other high femmes.
And I mean, I think the only thing is women have to wade
through a sea of unwanted attention.
But there are gems in that sea, to make it a metaphor,
are there pearls? There are pearls.
There are high femme trans pearls in the ocean
of undesirable, cisgender, straight men.
Oh, I love a good metaphor.
And there is, of course, always the old fashioned way
of meeting people in person.
And I really like to link this to the idea
of connecting with and building more trans
community. Like the more trans people know other trans
people and hang out with trans people, the more
opportunities there are for us to.
Organically meet intimate and sexual partners and
invite them into our sexual worlds.
And a big part of this, I think, is being bold enough to
say to one another, "Look, I find you really hot.
And even if there isn't, like, a sexual script for us to
follow, I would really like us to experiment and see if we
can figure things out. If you're wanting to do that with
me." What I mean by these sexual scripts is, you know, it's
sort of automatic for us to think of like, oh,
there's a butch and a femme in a lesbian dynamic, and the
butch does this or the femme does this, or there's a man
and a woman and the man does this and the woman does this.
There's a top and a bottom.
The top does this and bottom does this.
And when you bring two bottoms together or two femmes
together, then it's like, "Oh my God, it's impossible."
There's this horrible joke that I heard a little
while ago about like, you know, what do two families do
in a bedroom with one another? Each other's hair!
And then it's this sort of like, ha ha, you know, femmes
could never be sexy with one another, but of course we
could. And also, it's hot to do one another's hair.
That's like the prelude to some interesting foreplay, I
just want to say.
We can invite each other into a sexual
realm without knowing explicitly or exactly what's
going to happen.
What's important is that we are expressing interest,
inviting consent, not just consent in the sense of
like, "Oh, I guess I'll do that," but like, "Oh, that's
exciting, that's interesting, that's hot." And then we
become erotic explorers, erotic adventurers.
I'm thinking about like us being like, you know,
metaphorical, sexy scuba divers jumping
and diving deep into the ocean of unknown sexual
waters. But, you know, I don't think that any
particular genital has to go into any other particular
genitals. I don't think that we need to particularly have
top bottom dynamics that are really strict.
Like if we are high femme trans
people wanting to play with other high femme trans people,
it begins with hello.
It begins with invitation, it begins with touching.
And then we just follow the pleasure.
Pleasure itself is a compass and pleasure itself will
make the map. And if we release the
idea that sex has to look in any particular way, then I
think that makes us a lot more competent, more bold to
invite other people to experiment with
us.
All right, kids, that's my rant for today.
You've been watching "Ask Kai: Quickies." Don't forget to
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Be weird. Be queer.
Get messy. Have fun!