As I talked about in a previous article, the alternative porn website Suicide Girls has a surprisingly shocking history of excluding transgender women as models if they had not had genital surgery.
As is not surprising there is a great many websites that have a similar frame of mind, that unless trans women have had surgery to alter their penis into a vagina then they cannot be included as 'women', only being able to be marketed as 'trans women' (though most websites use much more insulting language than that to describe trans women).
Thankfully, there are a number of sites that do not feel the need to separate or 'other' trans women, and are perfectly happy to include them as being no different than cisgender women.
One such site that has been brought to my attention is called GodsGirls, and offers very similar content to Suicide Girls, though seems to be a lot more inclusive, and not just of transgender women. They have flat chested women, overweight women, and they're not afraid to show a woman with a cock.
This might not seem like much, there's no shortage of porn that features trans people on the internet, but when a website doesn't focus on trans people specifically yet includes them with little to no fanfare it makes it a little more special and a lot more important.
It helps towards letting people see that trans women are regular women, that we don't need to be our own category of female and that if you like looking at pictures of naked cis women there's nothing wrong with looking at pictures of naked trans women.
From what I've seen of GodsGirls so far, and granted it's not much yet, they've included the trans porn actress Chelsea Poe in a photo set. Just like their other sets it begins with Chelsea clothed, and she gradually loses more and more clothing until naked. Where they could have chosen to take a half hearted approach to including a trans woman and only had her in poses that hid her genitals they instead chose to embrace who she is, and don't shy away from the fact that she's a woman with a penis.
Where Suicide Girls chose to distance itself from the trans community GodsGirls seems willing and ready to embrace it. And that kind of progression can only be a good thing.
Amy.
xx
Could it be they know their market? They've been around what, 14,15 years? I don't know if you watch porn but people tend to be very specific about what they like. What would you like to see? Maybe two trans women giving each other blow-jobs 69 style? Maybe a cis guy doing a pre-surgical trans woman taking it in the ass from a hung young stud? Is that what you want to see? If you want to be an activist do something besides write about dumbass things like equality on a fetish porn site. There is know shortage of trans porn. Why not work for employment equality for trans people?
ReplyDeleteOr you could try insulting people on the internet...
DeleteOr you could try insulting people on the internet...
DeleteInternships, part time work and insufficient health care doesn't pay enough to buy milk, bread, and hormones combined
DeleteHow is anything Joanna posted insulting? You don't show someone looking for gay porn a vagina. You don't show someone looking for lesbian porn a penis. You don't show someone looking for pregnant porn lesbians unless one or both of the women are pregnant. I could keep going but time doesn't permit.
DeletePaying customers have certain expectations. Odds are that if they're browsing through the Suicide Girls models they're looking for breasts and/or vaginas. They do not want to see a penis no matter how big the breasts on the girl its attached to are.
You don't gain acceptance by shoving yourself into every nook and cranny of society. There are some places where we should be applying pressure, but not everything has to be *-inclusive. The GP (meaning she treats men, women, and children alike) I go to is a woman with an exclusively female staff. All of the nurses are women, the receptionists are women, the office manager is a woman, the only men you ever see in the building are patients or delivery guys. Should she fire some of the women so she can bring in some men? Right now she's not being very inclusive.
The strip clubs around here won't let me dance for them because I'm fat and the doctors mistook me for a male when they filled out the birth certificate. Even if I had everything a woman should have, they wouldn't let me dance because I'm fat. Should I stage protests until they let me strip?
Part of the backlash against us is because we're trying to force ourselves on everyone. That's not how things work. You don't integrate by charging in. You present yourself, let people get use to you, and gradually you can inch in. It's like taming a feral cat. Move in trying to grab it and cuddle it and you end up bleeding. Put out a can of tuna, step back, watch it eat, and repeat every day and before you know it it's rubbing up against your leg.
Taking a privately owned brand and demanding that they become trans-inclusive is the "charge in and grab it" approach. That's a bad idea when there are 16 claws and a set of teeth waiting to fight you off. God's Girls, however, is the can of tuna approach. Put it out there, let them approach it instead of forcing it down their throat, and before long we'll be able to walk out the door without getting hissed at. Not long after that they'll be rubbing up against your leg.
Now that goes for the entertainment side of things, but when women are out on the streets because people won't hire them it's time to charge in. While we're charging into areas where we should be setting out cans of tuna we're using up energy that would be better spent trying to charge into offices, banks, retail stores, and every other place that would keep us off the streets without turning our backs on who we are.
Tiffany, that was an absolutely perfect reply.
DeleteJust because you’ve given up on being accepted and fighting for your rights doesn’t mean everyone else should.
Deletewent to the God's Girls site and sorry, I am not impressed. The women who qualify as God's Girls all are well within the bounds of conventional attractiveness, albeit with a queer/alternative vibe. I do not like the "purgatory" thing and the need for approval. It is just another goddamn popularity contest, where people like me usually end up losing. Fuck that shit.
ReplyDeleteMy answer is going to be really surprising to you.
ReplyDeleteI've been a paid subscriber of SuicideGirls for half a decade (if not more) and I don't think I would like to see transexuals in the site.
But here's the plot twist: I like to watch transexual porn every now and then. I'm a big fan of Bailey Jay for example. Sometimes I even look for more hardcore stuff like Sabrina Suzuki, it just hits the spot you know.
But if I'm watching SuicideGirls I'm usually drinking coffee, relaxing on my couch, it's just not the time to watch girls with dicks.
PS: God's Girls just looks trashy, sorry, it's not my kind of thing.
It’s not like you have to look at every girl on the site. I doubt every model is your “type”.
ReplyDeleteI think the point of this article is that trans women should be treated like normal women because we are, and be afforded the same opportunities. We shouldn’t only be seen in modeling sites and porn that is separated off into a section often labeled “shemale”, which specifically fetishizes our transness instead of just letting us be another type of hot girl.
Like personally if I do porn, my top might come off but my panties are staying on because I don’t like that part of me being fetishized. That’s another thing. A lot of trans models wouldn’t even be showing their dicks in underwear shoots, so your argument is kind of irrelevant (there’s this thing called tucking, not sure if you’ve heard of it.) Not that there’s anything wrong with women who don’t tuck, it’s just noteworthy that this idea you have of trans women modeling being a 100% girls with bulges is unrealistic, since many women don’t like showing off their dicks (but power to those who do).
It’s also important to know that getting pushed out of the mainstream means having to model for smaller, sketchy fetishizing modeling agencies (and porn companies for that matter) who often get away with mistreating, abusing, and preying on their models even more than the industry standard which is already bad, because they have less publicity, less regulations, and less models to vouch for or come out against them.
If you think Gods Girls is so trashy, don’t you think we deserve better?
But if your fingers so damaged from jerking off to trans porn that you can’t manage to scroll past the girls you don’t prefer while drinking your coffee, I guess that’s a priority.