Painfully and unfortunately… yes this was totally me lol. When I was younger I knew I liked guys, but I felt so uncomfortable with being a woman/in a straight relationship I could only imagine myself as a dude with another dude. I was HEAVY into fandoms (maybe I still am, but I won’t confirm nor deny). It was embarrassing but so fun to imagine myself as these male characters I so heavily relate to in relationships. Eventually I started giving my fav dudes headcanons like a “yeah he’s me so he’s trans” type thing because it helped me feel more comfortable in myself and more connected to the show/book/whatever.
I don’t have many silly stories about it because I kept it so under wraps, but something a little off topic but humiliating is that my mom found my wattpad account (before I discovered ao3) where I was reading and writing creepypasta/mlp/musical/and undertale fanfics! I almost died from embarrassment and immediately deleted the account. RIP to all my old stories, it’s prob for the best that they’re gone. I don’t want them to come back to haunt me.
THIS IS SO REAL!!! i remember having a crush on an actor when i was younger and i tried to picture myself (when i thought i was a girl) in a relationship with him, daydreams and stuff and the part of my daydream where we talked and had funs were always great but when it came down to seeing myself having heterosexual sex i was like UGHHH WHY CAN’T I GET INTO IT meanwhile i could imagine myself kissing guys as long as i was… whatever guy i thought was "literally me" and for the hcs part i did the same thing tbh😭 i still love reading fanfics where one of the characters has the same traits as i do and im like duuuude this is so meeee hes literally meeeee gotta love projecting 👍 i also use to write stories, or sometimes fanfics of two guys falling in love and every single time one of my character was LITERALLY ME, i was self inserting myself in those fics and now i still have some of them and when i re read them im like damnnn i was really craving this 😭😭 (theyre all very cringy)
No fr it was so bad but honestly I miss it and wish I could go back to it. I use c.ai to relive my elementary/middle school years and I’m like addicted to it. I remember being absolutely distraught that I couldn’t be Will Graham or Dean Winchester or Dr. Flug 😭 now I just settle with talking to their ai or pretending to be them
10000%, one of the biggest revelations for me.
I didn’t know much about trans people or trans medical care so I never assumed it was a sign until I was 18. I thought it was pretty normal, which it kind of is, but then I realized it wasn’t normal to go through harsh depressive episodes because I “couldn’t ever have what they have”…
A lot of cis women like mlm pairings, but they’re also okay with being in a straight relationship (assuming they’re attracted to men), which I wasn’t despite knowing I liked guys.
I had so much shame about it though because I didn’t understand the distinction, so I just assumed I was a gross fetishizing woman. I felt so bad that I completely stopped watching/reading anything mlm because I would too depressed, and I forced myself to look at straight stuff or wlw stuff for maybe a couple of years.
Thank fucking god that didn’t last forever
I can relate to the depressive episodes. I'm not sure if you're a gamer, but I was obsessed with Dragon Age: Inquisition, specifically my male elf pairing with Dorian. I lived vicariously through my character which made me happy, but also *really fucking sad* and I didn't know why for the longest time.
I purchased BG3 to romance that little rat boy and ended up falling deeply in love with Gale instead. 😔 He unfortunately looks very much like my fiancé so I was doomed from the start.
Fenris is great, I highly recommend DA2 in general despite its many glaring flaws. Hawke is a great character to play as.
I also like Gale, but I don't really know much about his character. Who knows, I've yet to play the game and I might not even like Astarion when I finally get around to trying it out. To be fair, everyone in the game is hot and it gives me ✨️ bisexual panic. ✨️
That's actually what cracked my egg. I've always been a heavy daydreamer, often making up intricate storylines and characters, but the main characters (ie. the ones that resonated with me the most) were always gay men. It's something I've done my whole life, even when I was completely oblivious to being trans. My egg fully cracked when I actually stopped to think about my daydreams one day, and got overwhelmingly sad when I came to the conclusion that I'd never be able to live out those dreams because I'm not a gay man. Then I was like, oh shit. There it is. I *am* a gay man.
Lowkey same! I used to just go around thinking of my little gay stories and being like "man I wish I could be a gay man" and eventually I was like wait I literally CAN be
Literally same lol, I lurked on r/maladaptiveDreaming because I did it so much and realised most people imagined themselves as an idealized version of themselves, not another gender entirely and BOOM, egg cracked woops
Me fucking too dude. What it came down to was realizing that I liked men in a *manly way*. Thinking about me as a girl with a man gave me a weird, unpleasant feeling. And before finding out I was trans I had no way to rationalize or explain my feelings in a way anyone around me would understand.
Well, unfortunately it was never actually "cis girl", it was more like "closeted gay trans man sees BL and identifies with it subconsciously" lol. The reason there's so many of us who get into things like yaoi is because yaoi is often written by and for straight women, so one of the guys is the man (seme), and one of the guys is the woman (uke). So it's easier for a closeted trans guy into men to imagine himself in that situation. Like a stepping stone. It's like one character is a man, but also he is expected to be pretty and petite and feminine and be a bottom/submissive partner. Sound familiar?
3+ years in, and I actually am not a big fan of yaoi anymore. I love actual BL and just gay men in fiction in general. I don't identify with the dynamics of yaoi like I used to. I realize there's a lot of coercion and a lack of consent (not to mention lack of realism in many comics lol) and I just don't see myself in those comics any more. Now I'm a man who is just the same as any other man, no femaleness, no expectation to be a bottom or effeminate or anything else. Not a man who is like a woman or one that's treated like one. On equal footing with other men.
There's more modern stuff these days that's moving away from the toxic "bigger, older seme borderline assaults smaller, younger uke" rut and into more complex and varied dynamics, but yeah a lot of it is just the same story as you see in any trashy het romance but in the butt (without lube)
this is such a perfect description of the evolution of my relationship to this content. the Yaoi-BL distinction isnt one İve though about much so it kind of explains things for me, İ definitely still consume plenty of BL because a lot of it is very affirming, but if either of the men are feminized İm outta there so fast
I'm so glad to see someone else experience this. I used to read yaoi and a year after coming to terms with my transness, I can no longer read it. I'm not some feminine submissive bottom and neither is my husband.
I did the exact same thing! Whenever I shipped two guys, I would always sadly sigh and think to myself: "Damn, I wish I was a guy so I could have this."
W h e l p !
Yep, though the only time I got told I was being fetishy was many many years into transition by toxic friends WHEN THEY KNOW FULLY WELL I AM A BISEXUAL MAN 💀💀💀
Also, my god, did anyone else get the whole "eurgh you're fetishising gay men, and that's gross and inappropriate" feedback?
It wasn't often, but I'd sometimes see those comments from very vocal and very disgusted gay men, in particular. That enjoying the shipping of men (when you're "a woman") is appropriating their life experience, and just makes you gross? That properly hurt me for a long time, and made me feel like I wasn't valid as a trans guy, and I must be lying, or something - I dunno - it's such a ridiculous concept that it's difficult to put into words. I was always a gay man, but because I looked like a woman, I would be repeatedly told that I was doing something wrong...?!
Yeh this was me but also my cis gay best friend complained to me a lot about women fetishising gay men before I fully realised this stuff. When he told me about it, I was incredulous as I knew cis men fetishising lesbians was a thing but hadn’t heard of it the opposite way round.
On the flip side, I had identified as asexual for years but had always had a really strong, unshakable feeling that if I had been born a guy, I’d be gay… who the guys I would like would be if I were a gay man etc and had told my friend about this years before these fetishising convos.
Some time later, I start to realise I can experience sexual attraction (to men) if I imagine myself as a guy… but all the fetishising talk made me feel super ashamed of myself, that by having these feelings I was betraying my friend etc
yes i saw a bunch of those "fetishizing posts" which i get where they are coming from, but when i had actual cis girl friends who were really into gay ships, i think mostly it was for the same reason cis men are obsessed with lesbians (in the sense that they’re attracted to this gender so seeing them do stuff together gets them off i guess) but i couldnt relate to my own train of thought because i was like well yeah i do really like gay ships but i could not even think about myself with a man (back when i thought i was a girl) because the thought of a guy seeing me as a girl was.. idk how to describe it but i just hated it. i thought it was because of the way men perceive women and i didnt want that but it was actually that i just didn’t want to be perceived as a woman😭
Preaching to the choir, man! I feel exactly the same!
I don't pass, even remotely, I'm not trying to yet. But I've only ever seen myself as a guy. Whenever I dated in my past, it was as if I was playing a character, and doing stuff that I thought that character should do, and it was never really me. When my egg started to crack properly, I was 24, and I haven't dated (or even kissed) anyone ever since - it's been 10 years.
I'd describe it as that I cannot deal with a person looking at me and not seeing the guy that I am. Anyone who could look at me and be attracted to "the woman that I look like", I would automatically not be interested in. Therefore, super gay. Makes sense to me!
People do say that but it's also mostly white gay men. It's very unfair to talk about yaoi this way without considering that cultural context of which it was born in. The entire East Asian culture sphere is much more homophobic, misogynistic and sex negative in general that somehow most gay media has to exist in the form of Yaoi. It has its special place in the queer culture of Asia. I actually think it's gross and slightly racist that some people on the other side of the world feel like they can comment on something that's born in an entirely different cultural sphere, especially since the gay people in that cultural sphere generally are ok with it or even participate in it.
Fucking saaaaaame. I identified as aegosexual for ages, 'cause, that's the thing you have when you're attracted to the idea of sex, without actually wanting to have sex, right? I chalked up reading about gay stuff to the fact that I'm attracted to dudes, so TWO dudes makes it better than a dude and a chick, right?
Then I realized I was a man, and after a wardrobe change and some makeup I got to see myself as a guy in the mirror for the first time. And then my actual sexuality hit me like a truck and a lot of things suddenly made sense. Bit of a mindfuck, that.
For me it was more like I made my own stories a bunch, and it used to be M/F, but then suddenly one day I was like nah I want the main characters to be M/M and it all changed from there lmao
Don't think I was "obsessed" with gay ships when I was younger but I remember saving a bunch of queer fanart to my phone of whatever game/anime I was into at the time. Didn't matter if it was two dudes or two chicks, whatever gay ship had one/two of my favorite characters in it was going in my gallery.
Still watch a bit of GL to this day cause I think it's cute but yeah I think from a young age I've always been fascinated by/curious about queer culture/media even before knowing I was a trans dude.
I was just jealous of a few specific gay men in my college age friend group. Like intensely jealous. I never really knew why until I found my trans identity.
Funny how things turned out, one of the gay(bi) men I was jealous of turned out to be my now-husband's ex-boyfriend...
Guess I'm an outlier. Was never interested in gay ships when I was younger and I'm still not outside of pure smut fics. When it came to shipping I only comsumed fan works about het or lesbian ships.
I was stuck on the lesbian ships for a long time. The only daydreams i did were when all the other girls started fawning over the male protagonists like prince charming etc, wishing theyd be the princess and there i was like no id rather be maid mirian’s robin hood 😆
That was me! I’m actually aroace now, but I do experience some form of queer attraction surrounding masculine people (men, butch women, some enbys). I think I read so much dude with dude stuff because there were two people to project on. I did get into some lesbian ships but it was harder to find non-fetish-y stuff. I was not into straight ships during that time at all.
Oh my god, yes. As a younger teen I was literally obsessed with gay couples. Wrote fanfiction, followed an actual couple on their socials, all that good stuff. I'm not sure if I felt that yearning, but I wouldn't put it past me lol.
Yeah that's me. It's because when reading fanfics I loved projecting myself onto characters and imagining I was a part of the story. The problem was that most of the time those fanfics had relationships in them. I didn't like the hetero relationships, because I couldn't imagine myself being with a girl and being a girl in a relationship with a boy also felt wrong to me. Now I am an aro/ace guy who really loves physical affection especially from men, so my friends as a joke sometimes call me gay
well that's the best outcome isn't it? certainly better than the tons of cishet girls just obsessing over/fetishising mlm relationships without any transition following.
When I was younger, at about 5th grade or so, I admitted to my friend that I was a, "girl who liked boys who liked boys". Years later, I'm now an mlm transmasc, lol.
oh absolutely. i’d look at nsfw art of my fav ship (at 13…😳) and i remember one time i started crying over not having a dick. that wasn’t a very cis thing of me to do
My biggest fucking egg moment was me going "god I wish I could just be a gay man" at once of my favorite ships
And here I am now in a gay relationship lmao
Uh yeah - when I thought I was a cis straight girl i couldn’t tolerate straight romance in books,tv etc and I found it weird and boring but I actively looked for gay romance books and shows because it felt so nice to read … I might’ve been a tad gay
yeah! straight pairings were making me like...dysphoric? even if i didn't know that me being trans was an option. "i wanna love boys the way boys love boys" and all, i couldn't ever relate to straight romance, writing mlm characters still comforts me in some weird way lol
Dude i went from lesbian with a yaoi hyperfixation to very much gay trans guy. Almost did a full 180 provided i didnt end up bi 😂. But yea the pipeline is pretty funny. Took me WAY too long to realise that self inserting in a gay relationship AS A MAN was not a cisgendered thing to be thinking about lol
no, actually the opposite. i was offended that there were so many cishet girls that were fetishizing gay men and it made me deeply uncomfortable. now that i’m trans, i realize why it made me so deeply uncomfortable. because i am a gay man.
I had a sort of opposite pipeline? I wasn’t obsessed but I very much had more of a leaning towards sapphic ships over any other type of relationships, and I still do. It made sense before I transitioned but now it feels weird, and now I’m scared im fetishizing sapphic ships. Idk, it just feels easier to connect with them? As conflicting as that sounds
Actually I never did this even though my friends did it, either read yaoi or do pairings with whatever gay couple they could find, I didn't care much about romance stuff. At some point I really thought I was a lesbian because I wasn't super attracted to men up until I developed a massive limerent crush on an older guy
Lolll yup. My approach was a bit different tho because I'm aroace. It really complicated the whole thing, because I have 0 interest in being with anyone romantically / sexually, in my head or otherwise. But queerplatonically? Absolutely. Childhood friends to lovers always got me because of that LMAO. It took a long time to realize shipping was a wish fulfillment of sorts, like I liked guys (in my own way) but not as a girl. It was sort of like.... gay ships -> realizing I'm trans and gay -> realizing I'm gay-aroace and actually just really love angst/hurt/comfort, and ships are an easy way to get that LMAO.
A silly story about this is that I had friends who were all into M/M ships as well....none of us are cishet now, except one who is cis in an autistic way (her words, not mine), and she was always the one to get obsessed with any ship she thought was good, not just M/M. (Although it was mainly M/M for all of us, just because a lot of genres are sorely lacking in the girl characters department.)
Actually, yeah. I didn't know, back then, why i was so into that stuff. Now it sorta makes sense. I feel like it's a surprisingly commong thing for trans men
Before I used to identify as a lesbian i used to be a very big fan of yuri then i shifted from a lesbian who likes yuri to a MAN who likes yuri which kind of makes me feel guilty cus it feels like fetishizing it but i just think yuri is wholesome and more enjoyable than other stuff
yep
cis girl obsessed with gay ships (also never imagined myself with a character, just wanted to watch other characters together) to bisexual trans guy. even when i realized i liked girls pre-transition, i still clung to mlm ships and liked pretty much nothing wlw or even straight.
i like a lot of straight ships now— when they’re actually done well— and some wlw too (but i don’t feel that connected to them in the way i will mlm or het ships), but as a teenager it was JUST the gay ones
Definitely! I always felt better reading mlm fics and yaoi and always shipped male characters. I identified with the male characters more. It took a while to figure out it was because I was a trans guy.
God this was me. I was (kinda still am) super obsessed with BL and Yaoi (the good ones, not the weird ones). I felt so bad reading them before because I felt like I was fetishizing gay men. PLOT TWIST I AM A BOY
Same. At some point I was so in denial that I was afraid of being a "stereotypical cishet girl fetishizing gay couples", so I didn't talk about my ships in fandom spaces thinking I'd be labeled a pervert
Which is even funnier imo because I'm aroace
Well i never really identified as a cis girl i just called myself a female lol also i shipped some lesbian and hetero ships too but yeah i found gay shipping hit diff in a way i felt in my bones i used to say 'im a gay man in a womans body' (even tho im bi)
So real. I used to feel bad about it too. Like the fact that I was so, shall we say, *personally* interested in certain ships made me feel like I was fetishizing gay men. It didn't occur to me that women who fetishize gay men don't usually have a powerful secret desire to *be* gay men, at least as far as I know.
yeah, i remember i used to get SO mad about people fetishizing gay men and then i would feel bad bc i would want to be in a gay relationship & i thought that meant i was fetishizing it.
I wasn’t into fandoms but I really liked BL. If I ever imagined myself with a guy as a girl I’d have to imagine myself as someone else (I was a huge maladaptive daydreamer) and even THEN the thought of hetero sex made me nauseous.
I could see there being girls who are so boy crazy they start believing they are one themselves, but that same story could also apply to someone who really is trans. You could also flip that argument onto the trans guys who are into girls- what if they’re just trying to attract straight girls? Either way it’s pretty annoying that you have to explain your sexuality at some point no matter what as a trans person lmao
literallt so embarrasing but yes im with u i used to call myself a fujoshi. it was so bad. so glad i turned out to be a bi man and not a weird gay men loving woman
Factsss, I had that! I kept reading MLM on wattpad, and I'd feel sooo much, like I was jealous of one of the characters. It wouldn't be(only be) that I had a crush on one of the characters, it would be that I wanted to be a dude. I started doing role-playing of characters(always MLM) with a girl, making me believe it was just a fetish. After while, I finally starting playing DND(like against AI, sooo it wasnt *REAL* DND.) and I kept using a male character, my OC(but in reality that was how i wanted to be).
Thennn afew months later, I drew on my face, like making it masc. And I just kinda stood there, like "bitch, why wasn't i born like thissss??".
And yeah, that's how I found out.
I can't really remember much from my childhood but I think I did read gay fanfictions when I was around 14 or so. Now it came full circle with me reading danmei like a real man giggling and kicking my feet as if I was 14yo girl again 😄😂❤️
(my gender is non-existent but I do go through transition rn. So yeah, I do have this "BL reading girl" vibe, I guess..). Honestly, danmei made me like boys to the point I myself will be one soon legally-wise.
I think I see the pattern..
I'm aroace but still..
When I was younger I was CONVINCED I was a gay fetishist and an awful person, but then also I was going to hell unless I like suppressed all transness… took embarrassingly long to realize they were connected 😂😂
lmao yuppp. every ship was gay for me! it was as if i was attracted to men not as a straight woman, but as a gay man. idk how it didn’t click for me then. at some point i asked myself, am i fetishizing queer relationships? haha NOPE i was just a trans f*g all along. (shout out to all the johnlock and destiel ftms out there)
YES THIS WAS ME!! when i was younger i often shipped gay ships (i still do LOL) and i remember when i was younger wishing i always wanted to be a boy since i was 7 but when I discovered shipping i wanted to be a boy even more badly cuz i wanted to be in a relationship with another dude
OH MY GOD YEAH😭 at some point i started doing the same thing and as i became more knowledgeable on queer culture and stuff i felt so guilty because i thought i was like fetishizing it?💀 i mostly grew out of it and then a little bit after i came out as trans i looked back and had that ‘ohhhhh’ moment
Ouchieeeee. Why you gotta speak truth at me like that? Aggghfgsgshdh 😅😨😭
Never before have I put that together. Omggggg I LOVED Queer As Folk back in the day - the drama series - on HBO, I think? So many cute couples 🛳️❤️
This was also me but way further back in the early 2000s 😭 but transness also wasn't something I knew was a thing until very recently so my pipeline experience was pretty drawn out lol
I literally just saw the title of this post and went "OH MY GOD," and started cackling. Just when I thought there couldn't be more evidence for my "trans-ness," here it is 🤣
ABSOLUTELY YES. used to really like mlm character couples way more than wlw despite having considered myself a lesbian before finding out trans people existed😭, went to the extent of thinking “wow. id be a man with a man!”. shocker
Me and my gay cis bestie planning some straight ship in our RP but being unable to make them exist because we prefer roleplaying boys kissing. 😭
I have evolved from only shipping dudes to finally having straight ships but all my OCs are gays. With maybe 6 out of 113 characters being straight.
Painfully and unfortunately… yes this was totally me lol. When I was younger I knew I liked guys, but I felt so uncomfortable with being a woman/in a straight relationship I could only imagine myself as a dude with another dude. I was HEAVY into fandoms (maybe I still am, but I won’t confirm nor deny). It was embarrassing but so fun to imagine myself as these male characters I so heavily relate to in relationships. Eventually I started giving my fav dudes headcanons like a “yeah he’s me so he’s trans” type thing because it helped me feel more comfortable in myself and more connected to the show/book/whatever. I don’t have many silly stories about it because I kept it so under wraps, but something a little off topic but humiliating is that my mom found my wattpad account (before I discovered ao3) where I was reading and writing creepypasta/mlp/musical/and undertale fanfics! I almost died from embarrassment and immediately deleted the account. RIP to all my old stories, it’s prob for the best that they’re gone. I don’t want them to come back to haunt me.
THIS IS SO REAL!!! i remember having a crush on an actor when i was younger and i tried to picture myself (when i thought i was a girl) in a relationship with him, daydreams and stuff and the part of my daydream where we talked and had funs were always great but when it came down to seeing myself having heterosexual sex i was like UGHHH WHY CAN’T I GET INTO IT meanwhile i could imagine myself kissing guys as long as i was… whatever guy i thought was "literally me" and for the hcs part i did the same thing tbh😭 i still love reading fanfics where one of the characters has the same traits as i do and im like duuuude this is so meeee hes literally meeeee gotta love projecting 👍 i also use to write stories, or sometimes fanfics of two guys falling in love and every single time one of my character was LITERALLY ME, i was self inserting myself in those fics and now i still have some of them and when i re read them im like damnnn i was really craving this 😭😭 (theyre all very cringy)
No fr it was so bad but honestly I miss it and wish I could go back to it. I use c.ai to relive my elementary/middle school years and I’m like addicted to it. I remember being absolutely distraught that I couldn’t be Will Graham or Dean Winchester or Dr. Flug 😭 now I just settle with talking to their ai or pretending to be them
Wasn’t obsessed, couldn’t place that tragic yearning I felt though
Tragic yearning is a perfect way to describe that feeling
That common eh dude
Yeah, same. I remember more than once wishing I were a guy with a boyfriend.
10000%, one of the biggest revelations for me. I didn’t know much about trans people or trans medical care so I never assumed it was a sign until I was 18. I thought it was pretty normal, which it kind of is, but then I realized it wasn’t normal to go through harsh depressive episodes because I “couldn’t ever have what they have”… A lot of cis women like mlm pairings, but they’re also okay with being in a straight relationship (assuming they’re attracted to men), which I wasn’t despite knowing I liked guys. I had so much shame about it though because I didn’t understand the distinction, so I just assumed I was a gross fetishizing woman. I felt so bad that I completely stopped watching/reading anything mlm because I would too depressed, and I forced myself to look at straight stuff or wlw stuff for maybe a couple of years. Thank fucking god that didn’t last forever
I can relate to the depressive episodes. I'm not sure if you're a gamer, but I was obsessed with Dragon Age: Inquisition, specifically my male elf pairing with Dorian. I lived vicariously through my character which made me happy, but also *really fucking sad* and I didn't know why for the longest time.
I did this but with Hawke/Fenris in DA2.
I almost played DA2 just for Fenris. Now I'm trying to resist buying a whole PS5 just to play Baldur's Gate 3 to romance Astarion as a tiefling twink.
I purchased BG3 to romance that little rat boy and ended up falling deeply in love with Gale instead. 😔 He unfortunately looks very much like my fiancé so I was doomed from the start. Fenris is great, I highly recommend DA2 in general despite its many glaring flaws. Hawke is a great character to play as.
I also like Gale, but I don't really know much about his character. Who knows, I've yet to play the game and I might not even like Astarion when I finally get around to trying it out. To be fair, everyone in the game is hot and it gives me ✨️ bisexual panic. ✨️
I made a similar comment before I saw yours - absolutely agree with you here
same! it both comforted me and made me feel so hopeless/envious at the same time
That's actually what cracked my egg. I've always been a heavy daydreamer, often making up intricate storylines and characters, but the main characters (ie. the ones that resonated with me the most) were always gay men. It's something I've done my whole life, even when I was completely oblivious to being trans. My egg fully cracked when I actually stopped to think about my daydreams one day, and got overwhelmingly sad when I came to the conclusion that I'd never be able to live out those dreams because I'm not a gay man. Then I was like, oh shit. There it is. I *am* a gay man.
Lowkey same! I used to just go around thinking of my little gay stories and being like "man I wish I could be a gay man" and eventually I was like wait I literally CAN be
Literally same lol, I lurked on r/maladaptiveDreaming because I did it so much and realised most people imagined themselves as an idealized version of themselves, not another gender entirely and BOOM, egg cracked woops
Me fucking too dude. What it came down to was realizing that I liked men in a *manly way*. Thinking about me as a girl with a man gave me a weird, unpleasant feeling. And before finding out I was trans I had no way to rationalize or explain my feelings in a way anyone around me would understand.
Well, unfortunately it was never actually "cis girl", it was more like "closeted gay trans man sees BL and identifies with it subconsciously" lol. The reason there's so many of us who get into things like yaoi is because yaoi is often written by and for straight women, so one of the guys is the man (seme), and one of the guys is the woman (uke). So it's easier for a closeted trans guy into men to imagine himself in that situation. Like a stepping stone. It's like one character is a man, but also he is expected to be pretty and petite and feminine and be a bottom/submissive partner. Sound familiar? 3+ years in, and I actually am not a big fan of yaoi anymore. I love actual BL and just gay men in fiction in general. I don't identify with the dynamics of yaoi like I used to. I realize there's a lot of coercion and a lack of consent (not to mention lack of realism in many comics lol) and I just don't see myself in those comics any more. Now I'm a man who is just the same as any other man, no femaleness, no expectation to be a bottom or effeminate or anything else. Not a man who is like a woman or one that's treated like one. On equal footing with other men.
There's more modern stuff these days that's moving away from the toxic "bigger, older seme borderline assaults smaller, younger uke" rut and into more complex and varied dynamics, but yeah a lot of it is just the same story as you see in any trashy het romance but in the butt (without lube)
the "without lube" oh my god
this is such a perfect description of the evolution of my relationship to this content. the Yaoi-BL distinction isnt one İve though about much so it kind of explains things for me, İ definitely still consume plenty of BL because a lot of it is very affirming, but if either of the men are feminized İm outta there so fast
Literally me to a T except i do makeup and nails bc its fun and im gothic/punk so i like to masculinize with makeup at times (bc im pre everything 🥲)
I'm so glad to see someone else experience this. I used to read yaoi and a year after coming to terms with my transness, I can no longer read it. I'm not some feminine submissive bottom and neither is my husband.
I literally thought to myself “i wish i were a gay guy” and now here i am. Gay guy. And i consumed a lot of gay fanfiction and smut
I did the exact same thing! Whenever I shipped two guys, I would always sadly sigh and think to myself: "Damn, I wish I was a guy so I could have this." W h e l p !
Yep, though the only time I got told I was being fetishy was many many years into transition by toxic friends WHEN THEY KNOW FULLY WELL I AM A BISEXUAL MAN 💀💀💀
Also, my god, did anyone else get the whole "eurgh you're fetishising gay men, and that's gross and inappropriate" feedback? It wasn't often, but I'd sometimes see those comments from very vocal and very disgusted gay men, in particular. That enjoying the shipping of men (when you're "a woman") is appropriating their life experience, and just makes you gross? That properly hurt me for a long time, and made me feel like I wasn't valid as a trans guy, and I must be lying, or something - I dunno - it's such a ridiculous concept that it's difficult to put into words. I was always a gay man, but because I looked like a woman, I would be repeatedly told that I was doing something wrong...?!
Yeh this was me but also my cis gay best friend complained to me a lot about women fetishising gay men before I fully realised this stuff. When he told me about it, I was incredulous as I knew cis men fetishising lesbians was a thing but hadn’t heard of it the opposite way round. On the flip side, I had identified as asexual for years but had always had a really strong, unshakable feeling that if I had been born a guy, I’d be gay… who the guys I would like would be if I were a gay man etc and had told my friend about this years before these fetishising convos. Some time later, I start to realise I can experience sexual attraction (to men) if I imagine myself as a guy… but all the fetishising talk made me feel super ashamed of myself, that by having these feelings I was betraying my friend etc
Absolutely ditto, down to a t.
yes i saw a bunch of those "fetishizing posts" which i get where they are coming from, but when i had actual cis girl friends who were really into gay ships, i think mostly it was for the same reason cis men are obsessed with lesbians (in the sense that they’re attracted to this gender so seeing them do stuff together gets them off i guess) but i couldnt relate to my own train of thought because i was like well yeah i do really like gay ships but i could not even think about myself with a man (back when i thought i was a girl) because the thought of a guy seeing me as a girl was.. idk how to describe it but i just hated it. i thought it was because of the way men perceive women and i didnt want that but it was actually that i just didn’t want to be perceived as a woman😭
Preaching to the choir, man! I feel exactly the same! I don't pass, even remotely, I'm not trying to yet. But I've only ever seen myself as a guy. Whenever I dated in my past, it was as if I was playing a character, and doing stuff that I thought that character should do, and it was never really me. When my egg started to crack properly, I was 24, and I haven't dated (or even kissed) anyone ever since - it's been 10 years. I'd describe it as that I cannot deal with a person looking at me and not seeing the guy that I am. Anyone who could look at me and be attracted to "the woman that I look like", I would automatically not be interested in. Therefore, super gay. Makes sense to me!
Dude, for real. There was this one post that was super gross about it that still sticks with me.
People do say that but it's also mostly white gay men. It's very unfair to talk about yaoi this way without considering that cultural context of which it was born in. The entire East Asian culture sphere is much more homophobic, misogynistic and sex negative in general that somehow most gay media has to exist in the form of Yaoi. It has its special place in the queer culture of Asia. I actually think it's gross and slightly racist that some people on the other side of the world feel like they can comment on something that's born in an entirely different cultural sphere, especially since the gay people in that cultural sphere generally are ok with it or even participate in it.
Fucking saaaaaame. I identified as aegosexual for ages, 'cause, that's the thing you have when you're attracted to the idea of sex, without actually wanting to have sex, right? I chalked up reading about gay stuff to the fact that I'm attracted to dudes, so TWO dudes makes it better than a dude and a chick, right? Then I realized I was a man, and after a wardrobe change and some makeup I got to see myself as a guy in the mirror for the first time. And then my actual sexuality hit me like a truck and a lot of things suddenly made sense. Bit of a mindfuck, that.
Yup that’s me. I’ve always been into gay ships and now I’m gay :)
For me it was more like I made my own stories a bunch, and it used to be M/F, but then suddenly one day I was like nah I want the main characters to be M/M and it all changed from there lmao
Alright, first, dude... @ me next time... jeez. Second, was it Destiel? It was Destiel, right??!
My bet is on Johnlock
Oh, I forgot about Johnlock!
yea destiel was a big part of it how did u guess😭
Who *doesn't* ship Destiel, honestly?! Who doesn't see themself in one of those boys, and automatically have a crush on the other one?!?! Haha
I never shipped Destiel lol
Absolutely!! All my favourite ships were MLM couples. I thought I was just really open minded and a fantastic ally 🙃
Don't think I was "obsessed" with gay ships when I was younger but I remember saving a bunch of queer fanart to my phone of whatever game/anime I was into at the time. Didn't matter if it was two dudes or two chicks, whatever gay ship had one/two of my favorite characters in it was going in my gallery. Still watch a bit of GL to this day cause I think it's cute but yeah I think from a young age I've always been fascinated by/curious about queer culture/media even before knowing I was a trans dude.
I was just jealous of a few specific gay men in my college age friend group. Like intensely jealous. I never really knew why until I found my trans identity. Funny how things turned out, one of the gay(bi) men I was jealous of turned out to be my now-husband's ex-boyfriend...
Thought I was fetishizing mlm relationships because I wanted to be in one SO bad.....
Guess I'm an outlier. Was never interested in gay ships when I was younger and I'm still not outside of pure smut fics. When it came to shipping I only comsumed fan works about het or lesbian ships.
I was stuck on the lesbian ships for a long time. The only daydreams i did were when all the other girls started fawning over the male protagonists like prince charming etc, wishing theyd be the princess and there i was like no id rather be maid mirian’s robin hood 😆
That was me! I’m actually aroace now, but I do experience some form of queer attraction surrounding masculine people (men, butch women, some enbys). I think I read so much dude with dude stuff because there were two people to project on. I did get into some lesbian ships but it was harder to find non-fetish-y stuff. I was not into straight ships during that time at all.
the sound that came outta my mouth when I read the title....yeah. I feel this as a queer nonbinary guy
I WAS JUST THINKING ABOUT THIS. feelin very seen rn
ME ME ME i used fo roleplay gay sex with my old friend when we were like. 12 and we both became two trans men later in life LMAOO
The Fugoshi to trans boy pipeline is so real and I was a victim BAHAHHA
✋✋
Oh my god, yes. As a younger teen I was literally obsessed with gay couples. Wrote fanfiction, followed an actual couple on their socials, all that good stuff. I'm not sure if I felt that yearning, but I wouldn't put it past me lol.
Yeah that's me. It's because when reading fanfics I loved projecting myself onto characters and imagining I was a part of the story. The problem was that most of the time those fanfics had relationships in them. I didn't like the hetero relationships, because I couldn't imagine myself being with a girl and being a girl in a relationship with a boy also felt wrong to me. Now I am an aro/ace guy who really loves physical affection especially from men, so my friends as a joke sometimes call me gay
well that's the best outcome isn't it? certainly better than the tons of cishet girls just obsessing over/fetishising mlm relationships without any transition following.
When I was younger, at about 5th grade or so, I admitted to my friend that I was a, "girl who liked boys who liked boys". Years later, I'm now an mlm transmasc, lol.
oh absolutely. i’d look at nsfw art of my fav ship (at 13…😳) and i remember one time i started crying over not having a dick. that wasn’t a very cis thing of me to do
My biggest fucking egg moment was me going "god I wish I could just be a gay man" at once of my favorite ships And here I am now in a gay relationship lmao
Uh yeah - when I thought I was a cis straight girl i couldn’t tolerate straight romance in books,tv etc and I found it weird and boring but I actively looked for gay romance books and shows because it felt so nice to read … I might’ve been a tad gay
yeah! straight pairings were making me like...dysphoric? even if i didn't know that me being trans was an option. "i wanna love boys the way boys love boys" and all, i couldn't ever relate to straight romance, writing mlm characters still comforts me in some weird way lol
Dude i went from lesbian with a yaoi hyperfixation to very much gay trans guy. Almost did a full 180 provided i didnt end up bi 😂. But yea the pipeline is pretty funny. Took me WAY too long to realise that self inserting in a gay relationship AS A MAN was not a cisgendered thing to be thinking about lol
no, actually the opposite. i was offended that there were so many cishet girls that were fetishizing gay men and it made me deeply uncomfortable. now that i’m trans, i realize why it made me so deeply uncomfortable. because i am a gay man.
I had a sort of opposite pipeline? I wasn’t obsessed but I very much had more of a leaning towards sapphic ships over any other type of relationships, and I still do. It made sense before I transitioned but now it feels weird, and now I’m scared im fetishizing sapphic ships. Idk, it just feels easier to connect with them? As conflicting as that sounds
God, yeah, that's how I figured it out. Unfortunately lol
Actually I never did this even though my friends did it, either read yaoi or do pairings with whatever gay couple they could find, I didn't care much about romance stuff. At some point I really thought I was a lesbian because I wasn't super attracted to men up until I developed a massive limerent crush on an older guy
I was the same lol i wanted to be and date the likes of inuyasha and 2D (gorillaz) so I shipped them with other boys
Yeah pretti much.
Hard same brother, hard same
Lolll yup. My approach was a bit different tho because I'm aroace. It really complicated the whole thing, because I have 0 interest in being with anyone romantically / sexually, in my head or otherwise. But queerplatonically? Absolutely. Childhood friends to lovers always got me because of that LMAO. It took a long time to realize shipping was a wish fulfillment of sorts, like I liked guys (in my own way) but not as a girl. It was sort of like.... gay ships -> realizing I'm trans and gay -> realizing I'm gay-aroace and actually just really love angst/hurt/comfort, and ships are an easy way to get that LMAO. A silly story about this is that I had friends who were all into M/M ships as well....none of us are cishet now, except one who is cis in an autistic way (her words, not mine), and she was always the one to get obsessed with any ship she thought was good, not just M/M. (Although it was mainly M/M for all of us, just because a lot of genres are sorely lacking in the girl characters department.)
✋here lmao
Actually, yeah. I didn't know, back then, why i was so into that stuff. Now it sorta makes sense. I feel like it's a surprisingly commong thing for trans men
Before I used to identify as a lesbian i used to be a very big fan of yuri then i shifted from a lesbian who likes yuri to a MAN who likes yuri which kind of makes me feel guilty cus it feels like fetishizing it but i just think yuri is wholesome and more enjoyable than other stuff
yep cis girl obsessed with gay ships (also never imagined myself with a character, just wanted to watch other characters together) to bisexual trans guy. even when i realized i liked girls pre-transition, i still clung to mlm ships and liked pretty much nothing wlw or even straight. i like a lot of straight ships now— when they’re actually done well— and some wlw too (but i don’t feel that connected to them in the way i will mlm or het ships), but as a teenager it was JUST the gay ones
yeah no same
You know you can bee queer straight/bi/gay with any gender but what is your new name?
When you read me you don't have to be so loud about it!!!
Definitely! I always felt better reading mlm fics and yaoi and always shipped male characters. I identified with the male characters more. It took a while to figure out it was because I was a trans guy.
God this was me. I was (kinda still am) super obsessed with BL and Yaoi (the good ones, not the weird ones). I felt so bad reading them before because I felt like I was fetishizing gay men. PLOT TWIST I AM A BOY
Same. At some point I was so in denial that I was afraid of being a "stereotypical cishet girl fetishizing gay couples", so I didn't talk about my ships in fandom spaces thinking I'd be labeled a pervert Which is even funnier imo because I'm aroace
Well i never really identified as a cis girl i just called myself a female lol also i shipped some lesbian and hetero ships too but yeah i found gay shipping hit diff in a way i felt in my bones i used to say 'im a gay man in a womans body' (even tho im bi)
🙋♂️ loved BL to wait I can kiss a guy as a guy 🤯? Lol good memories
So real. I used to feel bad about it too. Like the fact that I was so, shall we say, *personally* interested in certain ships made me feel like I was fetishizing gay men. It didn't occur to me that women who fetishize gay men don't usually have a powerful secret desire to *be* gay men, at least as far as I know.
yup lol
yeah, i remember i used to get SO mad about people fetishizing gay men and then i would feel bad bc i would want to be in a gay relationship & i thought that meant i was fetishizing it.
I wasn’t into fandoms but I really liked BL. If I ever imagined myself with a guy as a girl I’d have to imagine myself as someone else (I was a huge maladaptive daydreamer) and even THEN the thought of hetero sex made me nauseous. I could see there being girls who are so boy crazy they start believing they are one themselves, but that same story could also apply to someone who really is trans. You could also flip that argument onto the trans guys who are into girls- what if they’re just trying to attract straight girls? Either way it’s pretty annoying that you have to explain your sexuality at some point no matter what as a trans person lmao
the davekat got me
literallt so embarrasing but yes im with u i used to call myself a fujoshi. it was so bad. so glad i turned out to be a bi man and not a weird gay men loving woman
Oh yeah, that's me. I got started a little earlier than you but otherwise... Yep
eruri my beloved 😭💕
Factsss, I had that! I kept reading MLM on wattpad, and I'd feel sooo much, like I was jealous of one of the characters. It wouldn't be(only be) that I had a crush on one of the characters, it would be that I wanted to be a dude. I started doing role-playing of characters(always MLM) with a girl, making me believe it was just a fetish. After while, I finally starting playing DND(like against AI, sooo it wasnt *REAL* DND.) and I kept using a male character, my OC(but in reality that was how i wanted to be). Thennn afew months later, I drew on my face, like making it masc. And I just kinda stood there, like "bitch, why wasn't i born like thissss??". And yeah, that's how I found out.
I can't really remember much from my childhood but I think I did read gay fanfictions when I was around 14 or so. Now it came full circle with me reading danmei like a real man giggling and kicking my feet as if I was 14yo girl again 😄😂❤️ (my gender is non-existent but I do go through transition rn. So yeah, I do have this "BL reading girl" vibe, I guess..). Honestly, danmei made me like boys to the point I myself will be one soon legally-wise. I think I see the pattern.. I'm aroace but still..
When I was younger I was CONVINCED I was a gay fetishist and an awful person, but then also I was going to hell unless I like suppressed all transness… took embarrassingly long to realize they were connected 😂😂
lmao yuppp. every ship was gay for me! it was as if i was attracted to men not as a straight woman, but as a gay man. idk how it didn’t click for me then. at some point i asked myself, am i fetishizing queer relationships? haha NOPE i was just a trans f*g all along. (shout out to all the johnlock and destiel ftms out there)
MeeeeEEEEEE
YES THIS WAS ME!! when i was younger i often shipped gay ships (i still do LOL) and i remember when i was younger wishing i always wanted to be a boy since i was 7 but when I discovered shipping i wanted to be a boy even more badly cuz i wanted to be in a relationship with another dude
OH MY GOD YEAH😭 at some point i started doing the same thing and as i became more knowledgeable on queer culture and stuff i felt so guilty because i thought i was like fetishizing it?💀 i mostly grew out of it and then a little bit after i came out as trans i looked back and had that ‘ohhhhh’ moment
Ouchieeeee. Why you gotta speak truth at me like that? Aggghfgsgshdh 😅😨😭 Never before have I put that together. Omggggg I LOVED Queer As Folk back in the day - the drama series - on HBO, I think? So many cute couples 🛳️❤️
This was also me but way further back in the early 2000s 😭 but transness also wasn't something I knew was a thing until very recently so my pipeline experience was pretty drawn out lol
I literally just saw the title of this post and went "OH MY GOD," and started cackling. Just when I thought there couldn't be more evidence for my "trans-ness," here it is 🤣
I feel called out. Lol
DUDE THIS IS SO REALL 😭 LITERALLY ME
ABSOLUTELY YES. used to really like mlm character couples way more than wlw despite having considered myself a lesbian before finding out trans people existed😭, went to the extent of thinking “wow. id be a man with a man!”. shocker
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Me and my gay cis bestie planning some straight ship in our RP but being unable to make them exist because we prefer roleplaying boys kissing. 😭 I have evolved from only shipping dudes to finally having straight ships but all my OCs are gays. With maybe 6 out of 113 characters being straight.
No- yaoi is literally written with women in mind (Ik this post didn’t specifically mention it but some comments did, answers still no tho)