Thread by @Potatopolitics

re: A vice article about straight men attracted to trans women, and some related discourse around that. This has *nothing* at all to do with any other YouTuber, this is specifically based on the discourse around the vice article. Don't fake drama.

Thread:

There is a culture of shame among men who are attracted to trans women. There is fear of being seen as "gay" or "not as manly" or whatever if you were to date a trans woman.

There is also a lot of transphobia directed at trans women.

So some men, sometimes, will murder or abuse trans women they meet for fear of being seen as "lesser" or a man, because trans women are often seen as a lesser form of woman.

This is very different from a chaser.

"Chaser": A person who fetishizes trans people specifically for their genitals. These people aren't just attracted to trans people, they are obsessed by us, often resorting to stalking and constant harassment.

For me, this has resulted in men *and women* stalking me, calling me at night to "worship my dick", people calling my friends, people trying to find me in real life. All so they can reduce me to a cock to obsess over.

This is a common phenomenon, common enough that trans people have for decades now called such a person a "chaser", based on "tranny chaser", ie someone that *specifically* wants to be with trans people.

Now, literally, no one in the fucking world has seriously claimed that any man attracted to a trans woman is by that default a chaser. That's because there is a difference between a healthy, normal attraction and the sort of person that calls you at 3am asking for dick pics.

Now, there are some people out there that claim that calling some people chasers, contributes to the harmful stigma of straight men dating trans women.

how this is possible, I cannot fathom.

Chaser specifically denotes an abusive behavior, a behavior that *should* be stigmatized. And that is how the term has been used.

Furthermore, this view is really odd to me, because it places significant blame of the stigma on trans people not wanting to be abused, and calling out said abuse with the term "chaser".

How this is contributing to our own stigmatization is hard for me to grasp.

There is, in my view, a pattern of trans people that want to assimilate so badly that they will gladly throw other trans people under the bus by, for example, blaming the transphobic stigma of dating trans women... on trans people themselves.

To me, chaser has the same intonations of "rapist", "abuser", "sexist". It's a term that denotes something specifically negative. It's not something you want to be.

So to defend the term, "reclaim the term" or to otherwise minimize the awfulness of chasers is almost delusional.

If any man that wants to date a trans woman is scared of by doing so, because of the possibility of being called a chaser, that man needs to sort out his priorities.

To me, it sounds like "we can't call rapists rapists, what if a man wants to date a woman and she potentially calls him a rapist! The term is too loaded, we need to scale it down!"

I'm saying that if someone calls someone a chaser, that's probably for a good reason.

When I was modeling, all my stalkers were chasers and it was honestly almost traumatizing to be objectified to that extreme.

It feels as if all of this is just to make cis straight men feel better about themselves. "oh, don't worry! You're a good one. You're not a bad one."

Like, the fault of transphobia, the stigma of dating trans people etc all stems from men. It's men that are the cause.

Trans women didn't create the patriarchy by calling out abusive behaviors against us. Men did. Men created the stigma, men created the patriarchy.

I don't see any point in blaming trans people for our own oppression, unless you're throwing other trans folk under the bus.

I deleted a previous thread on this, and I might have forgotten a few points from that. I deleted it because I was very angry at some takes I've seen from *several* people just now and that wasn't fair.

If anything, calling out abusive behaviors is a good thing. If anything it *should* make men more careful with how they flirt with trans women.

Hell, all men should do better on that front, why are you trying to let them of the hook with chasers?

Cool, I had like 5 more tweets in this thread but new twitter just deleted them instead of sending them, good great

anyway, why are some trans women defending abusive behavior by trying to claim it's equal to normal healthy attraction?

Ask yourself why the term is used before you think you can come in and think that maybe it was the transes fault all along

and maybe, for the life of god, ask yourself why we should fix a stigma that men created for them.

We didn't create the stigma, chaser is about abuse, not healthy attraction and *even if it was* we don't have the power to create a social stigma on the scale of this

Why are men scared of dating us?

Whatever the answer, it's not our fault. And it's not our responsibility to fix the issues of the men that wanna date us. And it's definitely not our responsibility to help the cis people that fetishize us to the point of abuse.

Anyway, stop defending chasers and stop shifting the blame for patriarchal norms away from men and on to trans women.

Strange how everything is always our fault, huh. cis people can do no wrong, but we do wrong when we call them abusive.

odd take but surprisingly common in this awful community it seems.

It almost looks like you're selling out trans people to gain cis favor.

almost