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Sex Question Friday: Why Are So Many Straight Men Into Transsexual Porn? - Sex and Psychology
www.sexandpsychology.comEvery Friday on the blog, I answer people’s questions about sex, love, and relationships. This week’s question comes from a reader of the blog who was curious about why so many heterosexual men are pleasuring themselves to pornography featuring transgender and transsexual performers.I run a porn blog and I keep getting messages from men wanting to see tranny / shemale porn. I'm assuming these men are all straight-identifying, but maybe that's just my gay-identifying bias. I'm wondering what, if any studies or knowledge is out there about men who are attracted to and watch this kind of material or even look for them in real life? It does absolutely nothing for me, but this particular fetish is unavoidable if you frequent any kind of porn social network and it seems a lot of people are into this. What are your thoughts? Why might this be a turn-on for some, and what does it imply, if anything, about their sexuality?



I thought “trans” was short for transsexual? Could someone bring me up to speed here?
In what way is it outdated?
It used to be transsexual, but now it’s transgender owing to the differences between sex and gender.
What I’m reading when looking it up is that “trans” is an umbrella term for both.
Are there any good references for this?
Also seems to be that you could be transsexual without being transgender. What if you identify as internal male but feel like your body should be female? Is that not possible? Maybe I’m overthinking it.
I think that’s probably possible but I don’t think transgender or transsexual would be the way to describe that? I don’t know, I like language and think I’m up to date on terms but I’m probably not compared to those inside those spaces. But then again with threadiverse as my main social media I might as well be lol.
And before that wasn’t it “transvestite”?
Eh, sort of. Transvestite refers to someone who wears clothes of the opposite gender (trans = across, vestir = to clothe, to wear), and really that mainly applied to men wearing women’s clothes, because a woman wearing pants is questionable, but a man wearing a dress? There’s clearly something wrong with them!
As clothing “norms” became more old fashioned, that word fell into disuse.
Thank you. That made me remember [this video](https://youtu.be/Szn21n1iWdw? T=3m19s) by Matt Baume and after rewatchijg I should have known that.
trans is short for “transgender.”
Is this incorrect, then? (See: “Etymology 2”)
It is correct, but the former has become a slur over time, nor does “transexual” match because it’s not about who you desire, it’s about who you are. Heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, finsexual are all about what kind person(s) you desire sexually. It’s a mismatch and it is now a slur.
So it means transgender. Unless you’re an asshole.
Huh, I would think the “-sexual” was referring to your sex. Odd. I guess it became guilty by association with those other, similar-sounding words.