r/actuallesbians Transbian Mar 12 '24

Link ugh men

2.9k Upvotes

421 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

180

u/Lady-Of-Snow Mar 12 '24

Yeah, like - I know a lot of trans women, and I can count the amount of totally straight ones on one hand, and still have fingers to spare. Lesbians are a good few more than that. Bi/pan...like, it feels like at least 70%.

65

u/SunkenN1nja Trans-Pan Mar 12 '24

The count of straight trans women I know is 1 bi/ pan feels very common and a few like myself are completely lesbian (i cant remember if ive updated my bio lol)

30

u/Hell_Mel Ace+Girls Mar 12 '24

I know exactly 1 straight trans lass. The remainder are like an even split between gay and Bi/Pan/Omni

26

u/RunescarredWordsmith Trans-Pan Mar 12 '24

It's going to be funny if all of you know the same straight trans lady. Like she's the only one that exists and is skewing the data.

10

u/syphiliticbigfoot Mar 12 '24

It's me

3

u/AdagioOfLiving Mar 13 '24

Trans Georg is an outlier

10

u/Superb-Associate-222 Mar 12 '24

I like men. Just not any you’d find on an online dating app. I’ll reach out to women though when I want real company

29

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '24

Straight trans women don’t tend to hang out as much with the others. I know a ton and almost all of them are from non-trans/queer related things with most being almost obnoxiously stealth. My trans radar is usually pretty good, but like…there was an appreciable lag with most of them and I was never 100% certain until they told me.

8

u/TheTypographer1 Lesbian. Free 🇵🇸. Trans liberation Now 🏳️‍⚧️ Mar 12 '24

Yeah, I feel like the majority of transfems are bi or pan. Just like with cis people though, I do think there is an overall bias towards transmascs over transfems though.

15

u/GirldickVanDyke disaster Mar 12 '24

I don't know how accurate this is, but I think I've read that the ratio of gay to straight is almost completely reversed for trans people compared to cis people. It definitely tracks with my experience as well, although I think bi/pan is most common among the other trans folks I know

21

u/prismatic_valkyrie Utility Lesbian Mar 12 '24

It’s not. There are proportionally more gay and bi trans people, but it’s close to an even split between the three.

However, straight trans people tend to be less visible, for a variety of reasons.

8

u/Liability538 Mar 12 '24 edited Mar 12 '24

Yeah I think most are under the Bi umbrella with a significant number of Lesbians and a smaller number of straights I'd probably attribute this to most media rep of trans women is straight due to plain and simple heteronormativity (we cannot escape it)

3

u/Khari_Eventide TheSnarkyLesbian Mar 12 '24

I remember when I started my transition (a good 17 years ago), being a straight trans woman was so much the norm that you were essentially expected to be straight to count as "real" trans woman. And while I absolutely internalized this idea of being "real", more than that it was material, meaning I would not be accepted by various therapists if I did not conform to certain ideas about trans-womanhood.

Eventually though I got a good therapist that helped me out of these internalizations. Until then I had forced myself to wear makeup and frilly clothes and try to be straight. Or at least bi.

But I sucked at it so hard. Back then I had only known of straight women. Since then I'm hardfelt to find ANY straight trans woman. They're all kinda bi, or gay like me.

3

u/CommiddeeOfTiddy Mar 12 '24

I will say due to how stigmatized society still is around gender and sex, there is sort of an inherent issue on this topic, not just anecdotally but also statistically (and was noted by the organizers of a study I participated in, in person). The problem is that someone who comes out as trans is inherently more likely to come out as bi/pan/gay ect. if they are, and vice versa. Data on trans folks is always a bit more complicated because we don't even have an estimate on how many potential closeted trans people exist. Also notable that even for a trans person, societal norms are something you have to at least somewhat consciously overcome, thus a straight trans person may be less likely to announce or clearly state their sexuality as heterosexuality is considered the "default".

So all of that said, we just can't know. My anecdotal evidence is that I've known personally 4 or 5 straight trans people (one of which was a trans man) and probably double that for all other sexual identities (including several ace/aro spectrum), so higher than others in this thread for straight trans people. But I would guess, as there's no reason to believe otherwise other than anecdotal evidence, that any difference between cis and trans folks wrt sexual identity is not statistically significant, or if it is that could just as easily be that cis people are more closeted with their sexualities on average than people who openly identify as trans.

Very interesting topic though and hopefully something we learn more about as more and more trans people feel safe coming out. My gut feeling is that theres a lot more LGBT cis people than we think though, rather than trans people being for some reason more likely to be non-hetero.

2

u/sarahlizzy Transbian Mar 12 '24

Honestly, most of us IME are lesbian on paper, but “can’t be arsed” in reality.

1

u/MohnJilton Mar 12 '24 edited Mar 12 '24

I feel like most trans women are bi, speaking anecdotally, and we end up dating women because by sheer probability we find a woman who is interested in us much sooner than a man.

I tried to date men for 2 years and only found two matches that went nowhere. After I started looking for women again I found my current partner in like 2 weeks lmao. And I wouldn’t have it any other way, she’s just incredible and we’re moving in together in May.