the third sex

I received this e-mail the other day from Michelle in Spokane, USA:

Your piece, “Coming in Cardiff,” immediately triggered personal feelings invoked when I began to dissect Beardsly’s fantasia imagery of the early 1900s when I was an art student during the 1970s: androgynous boys and girls. The grand illusion of undeveloped bodies occupied by non-formed innocent minds.

To males but not females, there exists a level of sexual excitement in viewing such persons. Females prefer either males or females; sometimes both and sometimes both in the same body, but wholly functional with minds that understand sex.

For males, it would seem that the more innocent appearing, the greater the sexual excitement. Perhaps that’s the primordial thing of conquering; certainly it has a lot to do with controlling.

Of course I must also examine my own feelings and rememberances of when I began to venture into sexuality as a quasi-ladyboy myself. It seemed that my minimal makeup and only a hint at breasts (tissue paper stuffed into a bra!), long bare legs in a short skirt and heels, along with painted nails and a wig, turned guys on more than when I paid attention to my makeup – sometimes though like a drag queen or female impersonator – with long-sleeve blouses and longer skirts. And I found that high heels were mandatory or no matter how I was dressed, men wouldn’t pay attention to me.

A curious thing though that I have noticed in your personal experience postings as well as the postings of others here at third-sex.org: participation of the ladyboy as an active partner. Here in America, TGs and TSs rarely get into that role as the men who have sex with us prefer that our erections not interfere with their sexual pleasures (not that I have that ability anymore and even when I had that organ, it was quite infrequent that it ever rose to any input).

I guess one of the reasons I wish that you could come here to visit, is to see and experience for yourself how different American male perspectives are regarding gender and sexual identity.

I recently listened to a black American male describe his experiences in Bangkok with the ladyboys. Derision was paramount in his tone! Finally I ventured that his comparisons with American drag queens, female impersonators, transgendered and transsexuals, was skewed due to his inability to separate in his mind the vast differences in the gender and sexual identity apparent and those implied, in this country and that applying those standards to Bangkok was wholly unfair to all concerned.

You could almost literally hear the gears grinding and clashing in his mind! You could certainly see it in his face! Finally he blurted out, “who … what are you?”

I told him that I was a post-op transsexual (I hate that term! Transsexual! It was created by the news media and not the medical or legal community!) and that I had made the acquaintance of many ladyboys in Bangkok before and after my SRS, and that I had a good friend who had two web sites devoted to Thai ladyboys. I went on to say that in Thailand and for most of Asia, the concept of ladyboy was less the phenomena it is here in America and more of the day-to-day reality of both ancient and present day societies in Asia as a whole.

Of course during his rant and then during my own dissertation, I was watching his body language; especially his crotch, which was a little hard to miss as he grew a great bulge as he was busy putting down ladyboys!

And therein lays the crux of the whole matter from an American viewpoint: sex isn’t any fun unless one can feel guilty about it! To minimise the guilt, one then is compelled to put down the things that bring both pleasure and guilt. We can blame religion for this. But I think that’s enough from me for now!