This is a hard one, and I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit but can’t reach a coherent conclusion. First off, I hate the word “crossdressing” — it ignores the fact that clothes are clothes and anyone can wear what the hell they want, and creates a stigma around dressing the way you want.

But it is a pretty prevalent fetish, and more often than not in kink spaces it lives in the realm of cis male pleasure, and not self expression.

I get very anxious in kink spaces, partially because I’m still quite a newbie, but largely because I can’t turn off the part of my brain that questions how people see me. I navigate the world as a woman, but in kink and sex party spaces, I worry that I will be seen as a crossdressing cis man, full of male privilege and dtf anything that moves. This is clearly not the case, but you try telling that to my anxiety.

I have noticed that this is way worse in spaces where crossdressers are welcomed, and I don’t think it takes a psychology degree to work out that this is due to my worry that I’ll be pushed into the category of “TG/TV” rather than “woman”. I have also had experiences of people assuming that I was a crossdressing male, which doesn’t exactly help.

This all sounds a bit poor-me, but there’s a point here. By celebrating self expression and squashing kink-shaming in all forms, the kink community has been created as a space that is inherently transmisogynistic; in attempting to create a “safe space” we’ve ended up with two conflicting bad things. And, unsurprisingly, kink-shaming trumps transmisogyny in such a way that upholds the cis patriarchy.

Trans women are expected to shut up and accept the “TG/TV” label, because it makes cis people feel more comfortable having the freedom to explore their crossdressing and trans sex fetishes.

I have one point of wariness — that all trans people have their own journeys, and some wouldn’t be able to explore their gender feelz without the freedom to do so in a fetishistic context. I desperately want to scream “ban all crossdressers” from the rooftops, but I worry about doing a disservice to those trans people that need that space.

It’s a hard one. I don’t think I’ll have a satisfactory answer anytime soon beyond “man, cis people make me hella uncomfortable”.