Context
This text was the first Assignment I wrote for my ‘Intro to LGBTQ-Studies’ Class at NEIU in Chicago (2024). It consists of two Parts, the first being an academic, sociological inquiry of the issues at hand (sexualization, objectification and dehumanization), while the second is more of a personal reflection/meditation on the topic.
Introduction
“Any LGBTQIA+ expression – our existence – is to be legally categorized and charged as pornography,” [Rockathena] Brittain says of Project 2025’s objectives. “They want to remove any anti-discrimination protections that are afforded to the LGBTQIA+ community in terms of employment, housing, lending, and all other aspects of public life.” (Gentry)
“We could create definitions of what pornography is. We could create standards to evaluate books by. Where it’s getting confused is that people are making up their own definitions of what they consider to be inappropriate or pornographic. Anything LGBTQ+ automatically becomes pornographic. Toni Morrison sharing her real, lived experience becomes pornographic. Any mention of anatomy becomes pornographic […] The goal is not to actually solve a problem. It’s to remove information about LGBTQ+ and BIPOC populations and certain religions.” (Abby, in: Bouranova/Heyer)
These two quotes appear as just passing remarks in two of the articles we read in class, although they entail a plethora of implications for the positioning of LGBTQ+ subjectivities within our current political and cultural system. It hardly needs to be explained that the ongoing sexualization and objectification of queer identities serve as a tool of oppression and control. Their main source of power is rooted in dehumanization. The inquiry of this essay shall thus not be an analysis of the structures of domination at hand but rather one of psychological consequences for the individual under attack. Furthermore, its main focus is centered around trans identities specifically, and since this text cannot be separated from its writer, it will circle back to trans feminine experiences in particular. In the following I will try to sketch out certain particularities of the trans experience in connection with these processes of politicized sexualization, objectification and dehumanization based on a range of sociological studies (Part I) and personal experience (Part II).
I. Sociological Framework
The ways in which trans identities are subject to objectification are manifold. Anzani et al. focus a 2021 study around the specific function of sexual fetishization by using objectification- and minority stress theory, stating that “objectifying a person means to consider them as an object, a mere instrument for the attainment of a personal goal1 […] which leads to their denial of human dignity. Thus, objectification can be considered a form of dehumanization.” In the case of trans people, Anzani et al. explicitly name the importance of the trans body as a sphere of objectification “established primarily on the basis of their physical appearance”, which in turn manifests a peculiar sexual dimension: “Sexualization occurs when someone is reduced to their body parts or sexual functioning.”2 Expanding on this study, Cascalheira and Choi (2023) explicitly state that objectification and discrimination are usually co-occuring phenomena which lead to “internalization processes” informing “affective/cognitive responses” which then result in “adverse mental health outcomes.” They further argue that
when objectification and microaggressions […] occur in a transgender person’s environment, then self-objectification and internalized transnegativity are probable internalization consequences which, in turn interact with and stimulate feelings of shame and result in poorer mental health.
They also clarify that the typical forms of microaggressions “frequently include the exoticization or fetishization of the transgender body” and state a “significant pathway from dehumanization to internalized transnegativity”, since it possibly leads trans people “to feel uncomfortable disclosing or embarrassed about their identity.”
A result of these cultural, political and psychological processes might be self-objectification in the form of “internalizing an observer’s perspective.” This can lead to “treating the body as the self”, a lack or heightened difficulty to “value internal characteristics”, as well as “body shame” in the form of feeling un-desirable and in constant comparison with cisgender people, as well as the need to proof the validity of one’s gendered identity towards them. “Because shame involves feelings of being helpless, ridiculous, and disgusting”, Cascalheira and Choi say in their study, “transgender people who are dehumanized may feel about their gender identity or believe that their worth derives from their potential as sexual objects.”
Anzani et al.’s study quotes a participant saying that
you start to just settle for being the fetish. You start settling for being a waste bin object of desire for a night. Eventually you realize you may as well get paid for your troubles. I’m starting to see why all my sisters are in the sex trade now.
Other quotes are centered around the feeling of being “a potential ‘fun experiment’“, relating to an Interview-Article by Eva Reign (2018): “Instead of becoming a significant other, trans women are treated as cis men’s easily dispensable toys”, and: “In the realm of sex and dating, my body does not belong to me […] I’m just an object for men to derive pleasure from, only to be discarded immediately afterwards.” Other responses point towards more extreme experiences of violence and abuse, saying “many understand that they can rape me with no legal recourse, unlike cis-women” (Anzani et al. 2021), something described by Rose Montoya (2023) as the “‘desire to cruelty’ pipeline.” In her article she not only points towards the fact that “trans people are four times more likely than cisgender people to be a victim of violent crime”, but also that “20% of transgender Americans […] have done sex work, and 72% of transgender sex workers have faced physical assaults and physical violence.”
In another 2023 study, Anzani et al. investigate typical stereotypes surrounding trans identities – in other words cultural narratives which are being used to fuel their dehumanization – and point out that the “most frequently generated stereotype for trans people was ‘deviant’ followed closely by ‘sexual’”. The study continues with looking at the different sub-themes of sexual stereotypes: “(1) promiscuity, (2) kink sex, (3) sex work, (4) deception, (5) fetishization of transition, and (6) sexual pathology or deviance.” Some of the answers encompassed in these sub-themes include that trans people are assumed to be generally outside the (hetero-) ‘sexual norm’ (vanilla sex), that they willfully deceive potential sexual partners3, or that they “transition with sexual or paraphilic intentions rather than affirming their gender identity”, and thus should be considered as a case of pathology. Also “trans individuals are often viewed as being so undesirable that they must accept any form of sexual attention from others.” Furthermore, the pathological category is not restrained to the trans individual itself, but can expand to their potential partners as well, since they are “also stereotyped given that attraction to a trans person is considered pathological.” Meanwhile it is noteworthy that “a difference in stereotype content between transfeminine and transmasculine individuals is often reported”, typically proclaiming that “trans women […] are attributed more stereotypes related to hypersexuality, and trans men […] get more stereotypes about being sexually inactive.”
II. Personal Meditation
The following passage might be considered a personal meditation on the previous overview. Primarily as (fragmented) thoughts about the complexities of conceptualizing the ‘Self’ as a sexual being with the discursive backdrop that has been briefly sketched out. It can be seen as just another voice adding content to the many statements gathered in the qualitative studies and articles cited above. It is also an invitation to think about the incriminating interactions between the personal/inside and the range of outside narratives the self has to engage in. One might think, for example, of the difficulties of asexual or demisexual trans women who constantly have to navigate the ways in which their personalities are overwritten by the outside eye. A form of demand for constant disclosure on top of other disclosures, a bunch of disclosures all the time (which reminds us of Foucault’s notion of the confessional society).1 Or, on the other hand and maybe on a more personal level: The intricacies of having to navigate a sometimes hypersexualized but more often branded fundamentally undesirable trans female identity in correspondence with the symptom of hypersexuality diagnosed within the framework of Borderline Personality Disorder.
Sexuality turns into a minefield, maneuvered with insecurity, fear and constant second guessing about every move at hand. Paralysis, or over-compensation? Cascalheira and Choi talk about this in their study, stating that “transgender women may interpret hypersexualization as affirmations of gender identity.” I would definitely lie if I stated that I never fell or continuously fall into this trap. I vividly remember moments of boundary crossing and sexually aggressive behavior exhibited by men, and me allowing them to proceed further than I maybe should have because it soothes the feeling of not being wanted for just a brief moment in time; the little kick of dopamine that is tied to this particular situation. Sometimes it is hard to understand the difference between “being the object of sexual desire, something that many people aspire to, and being sexualized” (Anzani et. al. 2021). I can also subscribe, quoted in the same study, to Serano’s distinction
between sexualizing experiences of when she is perceived as a transgender woman and as cisgender woman. When perceived as the former, Serano reports far more intrusive experiences, such as male strangers immediately engaging in a conversation about their sexual fantasies or desires.
Then there’s the form of self-objectivication as “a strategy for transgender people to protect themselves from overt discrimination by emphasizing body appearance to pass as cisgender” (Cascalheira and Choi 2023). Observation of the body, the will to discipline it, to work on it harder and harder, to see oneself fail, to curse oneself out, to get obsessed with all the little details that might be right one day and tragically wrong the next. No, most of the time my other traits don’t matter. I don’t care about my creativity, intelligence, empathy, curiosity or wit: The body overshadows them since it seems to be the only thing that defines me in the eyes of a stranger. It doesn’t even have to be other people themselves: My own projection of what they might think is enough to make this the only matter of importance. My implanted outside eye is always ready to become the eyes of everyone around me and it’s doesn’t matter if this a ‘realistic’ assessment or not at any given moment. But it’s always there. Wherever I go, whatever I do, it’s always there, the implanted outside eye(s) cruelly judging me, putting me inside some hierarchical ranking system – and I can only ever lose in this inner dialogue.
There is a level of helplessness involved. The feeling of shame is clinging to every movement of desire. Now one might think of Blanchard’s infamous and outwardly hostile concept of Autogynephelia2 (Anzani et. al. 2023), the idea of a secret fetishization of the own (aspired) identity that renders every possibility of conceptualizing one’s own sexuality pathological. One does not have to subscribe to this idea to feel its impact on one’s interpretation of the self. There’s an impossibility to conceive of it as something free of guilt. With it comes a level of self-deprecation, deprivation of one’s own desires from within. It’s this feeling of belonging to some cast of untouchables within the realm/rules of desire/desirability: Not worthy of approaching cis women (the idealized caste), not worthy of being approached and generally distrustful of cis men (the ruling caste).3 The feeling of never being treated the way you might wish for, of either being embodied pornography or abject monstrosity, sometimes both, but never just a body, being, subject just like anyone else. Now think of the ways how rejection anxiety, another key symptom of BPD – the trauma of rejection by the family many of us encounter – interacts with societal frameworks of rejection that are being stacked on top of that constantly. Imagine the ways in which the symptom of splitting – the polarized ways of thinking only in idealization and devaluation – reaps these social factors for its purpose of self-hatred: Society providing a framework for my own inner abuse, me devaluing myself in a way I could not towards anyone else. Trauma-related mental illnesses like Borderline Personality Disorder, (C)PTSD, Anxiety Disorder etc. are rampant within trans populations and not without reason. We are getting prepared for it from early on and it does not stop. These are the “results in poorer mental health” I’m talking about (see above).
With all of this hovering above our heads as well as in our bodies, many of us tend to be grateful for crumbs, which in turn makes us especially susceptible to abusive relationships and exploitation. We experience a constant erosion of trust, on the interpersonal as well as the personal level – the trust within and for ourselves, the way we feel able to trust anyone and anything at any given time, trust in our strength and trust in the possible tenderness and love of/for others. Frost and Meyer (2023) describe “minority stress” as such:
The foundation of minority stress theory lies in the hypothesis that sexual minority health disparities are produced by excess exposure to social stress faced by sexual minority populations due to their stigmatized social status (relative to heterosexual populations) […] Collectively, these minority stressors constitute the excess stress burden that places sexual and gender minority people at greater risk for negative health outcomes compared with cisgender straight people.
The trauma inflicted by this stress is insidious. A daily experience, nestling within the body’s micro-structures. It implants observer’s eyes all over us, locking us into prison cells of self-control, torture and the need to be in line with a performance made of rules we don’t set for ourselves, even if there’s no one else around but us/me.
Access to sexuality is seen as something granted by (cisgender) people to trans people only through fetishization or sexual objectification. The stereotype that lies beneath the explicit message of this sentence is that trans people are not seen as “deserving” of romantic or sexual attraction but can only get that attention from “chasers” or fetishizers. (Anzani et. al. 2023)
Within this logic, sex work – as oppressive and dangerous as its structures in this society might be – can serve as a counter-narrative. It can be a way of re-claiming agency and turning crumbs into profit for the means of empowering oneself, though it might be a perilous act of balancing a slippery rope.4 In many ways it is a field in which oppression and emancipation intermingle, spill over into each other. The path towards an emancipated and self-empowered sexuality is bumpy. This is a problem trans people share with cis women (and queer men) within the framework of patriarchy. But on top of this primary oppression we are confronted with the fact that many roads for cis women to take seem locked or at least heavily barred for us.
I do not intend to end this essay on such a hopeless note. After all there is a reason for Bergman to state that “queers and trannies, as a group, have better sex” (199) – which is just one of the points mentioned in this speech that is pointing towards “what’s great about being trans” (194). Every site of trauma contains forms and systems of knowledge, possibilities of relating to the world differently. One might think about Anzaldúa’s concept of “La facultad” (Borderlands/La Frontera 38-39) and the symbol of the “Shadow-Beast” evoked by her as a container for the “unacceptable, faulty, damaged” which is pushed “into the shadows […] But a few of us have been lucky – on the face of the Shadow-Beast we have seen not lust but tenderness; on its face we have uncovered the lie” (20).
Conclusion
This essay tried to sketch out the many ways in which this Shadow-Beast is created within trans people by a society feeding it, condemning it while creating it in the first place. Within this text I tried to map out the territories within, the traps we are confronted with and the pain stemming from them. It is a witnessing of structural, systemic violence and its insidious effects. It is me inscribing my own voice into a bunch of studies I’ve read just to, once again, revisit everything I already know. This was an emotionally demanding process of developing a text, but not in vain, I hope. To uncover the lie and embrace the tenderness of the condemned, one must become aware of the narratives which feed this particular beast. I tried. A reasonable conclusion would be to move on to another text, one that points towards a different direction, one that turns the wound into resilience and resilience into hope, creativity and self-assertion, because there are way more things to uncover than just the pain.
Footnotes (Part I)
1 Obviously there is a connection to be drawn between the objectification of trans identities in current conservative and far right political discourses, in which the trans subject becomes an object in favor of reaching a political goal that must not have anything to do necessarily with their specific lived identity/experience as such.
2 This must be described as a field in which cis women and trans people are indeed confronted with similar patterns of objectification within patriarchal frameworks. Structurally, the ways in which these oppressions work often tend to be synonymous (e.g. restrictions of health care, subjection to/normalization of assault etc.), though they differ in the specific details in which they’re acted out. While structures of patriarchal control reduce women to sexual objects and child-bearers and the madonna/whore binary, cis-sexist (e.g. anti-trans) structures call into question the whole existence of an individual as abnormal and worthy of scrutinous investigation.
3 An argument that is “related to the so-called trans panic defense. In legal terms, the ‘trans panic defense’ refers to a legal strategy where a male defendant charged with the murder of a trans woman victim claims that upon discovering the victim’s biological ‘male’ status, they became so disturbed that they panicked and lost control of themselves” (Anzani et. al. 2023).
Footnotes (Part II)
1 Famously analyzed in his books Discipline and Punish (1975), and more detailed in The History of Sexuality 1: The Will To Knowledge (1976).
2 See also: ContraPoints – Autogynephilia (2018).
3 There is a whole other essay to be written about the realm of trans- and non-binary attraction, love and desire unfolding alongside its own laws – a realm that can feel utopian as much as surreal, a ‘not-fully-real’ (rendered unreal) dream world placed outside/beneath/within/beyond that of patriarchal binarism.
4 Let us not forget that in the realm of sex work, as in every other social realm, there’s a special place reserved for trans people. We are not meant to be ‘mid- to high-end’ escorts, not the eye-candy someone might order for a business dinner preceding the hotel room. We are meant to serve as ‘low-end’ fetish workers to be met in secret and every other form of sex work we might want to engage in is seen as a transgression, as our whole life is perceived as this. A constant transgression.
Works Cited:
Anzaldúa, Gloria: “Borderlands/La Frontera – The New Mestiza”. Aunt Lute Books: San Francisco 1987.
Anzani, Annalisa et al.: “Being Talked to Like I Was a Sex Toy, Like Being Transgender Was Simply for the Enjoyment of Someone Else”: Fetishization and Sexualization of Transgender and Nonbinary Individuals.” In: Arch Sex Behav. 2021; 50(3): 897-911.
Anzani, Annalisa et al.: “From Abstinence to Deviance: Sexual Stereotypes Associated With Transgender and Nonbinary Individuals“. In: Sexual Research and Social Policy. July 2023, Vol. 1 (27-43).
Bergman: “Sing If You’re Glad to Be Trans”. Delivered on Trans Day of Remembrance, 2008, at University of Chicago LGBTQ Resource Center.
Cascalheira, Cory J.; Choi, Na-Yeun: “Transgender Dehumanization and Mental Health: Microaggressions, Sexual Objectification, and Shame.” In: Couns Psychol. 2023 May; 51(4): 532-559.
ContraPoints: Autogynephilia. Youtube, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6czRFLs5JQo
Frost, David M.; Meyer, Ilan H.: “Minority stress theory: Application, critique, and continued relevance”. In: Curr Opin Psychol. 2023 Jun; 51. Link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10712335/
Montoya, Rose: “The Oversexualization of Trans Bodies.” In: Time. November 12, 2023.
Reign, Eva: “Trans Women and Femmes Speak Out About Being Fetishized.” In: Them. Juli 21, 2018. Link:
All online sources have been checked for the last time on Sunday, 14.10.2024.