Article is 2 years old, but it's a happy article and I wanted to post it anyways.

EDIT: For anyone curious, here's a link to her Douyin page: https://www.douyin.com/user/MS4wLjABAAAAC-deOgCmNN2bIugq3od6LBI-Ws7Pn8EuLwWBjZg-ghg It says she has 11.151 million followers and 170 million likes, which is awesome.

  • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Is this chasing or just how any woman would be talked about who is attractive and famous? Not defending it per se, just curious if it's on the kinda misogyny or chasing side. Or is all chasing of trans-women also tinted by misogyny? Probably a book about this if I googled well enough

    • WayeeCool [comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      She is undeniably cute. Hot male celebrities get talked about the same way except it's terms like rugged, handsome, chiseled, broody, easy smile, and whatever else is used to describe a himbo.

      • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Still find it weird, don't get me wrong. Like that's a thing that I just kinda prefer not to be said outside of contexts where the goal of that person is to look cute or in personal/non-weird conversations. Just was wondering if it's chasing, the weird horny shit, maybe misogyny, or a combo.

        • Othello [comrade/them, love/loves]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I think thats how they talk about cpop and kpop idols, in like press stuff. its weird but not as weird as we probably think?

          • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Ahhh I just realized that I was also confused about something. I thought she is an athlete actually, but she's just an internet celebrity. Less weird then already. Still skeptical but much less

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          outside of contexts where the goal of that person is to look cute

          I don't enjoy people talking that way but, as a popular public figure whose appearance is part of her brand, is this not the case?

        • GaveUp [love/loves]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          If we're gonna be honest she's definitely making content to try and appeal to the audience by looking cute and people are watching because she's cute (you can verify if you can make it past the captcha haha)

          They just transparently put out an honest assessment of an uncomfortable truth

    • AcidSmiley [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      How to define chasing is a difficult subject. For example, atm i date other trans people exclusively (which is known as t4t), that doesn't make me a chaser. It just means that i find myself emotionally most comfortable among people who have the same experience, intuitively know needs of mine that cis people will always struggle to understand and that we can give comfort to each other naturally, with the smallest efforts. I also find it liberating for myself and healing for my self-image to experience the bodies of other trans people as beautiful and desirable, to recognize that we can be cherished the way we are, that there is a unique wonder in being part of each others' transformative years. There's a very strong tendency in the trans community for t4t dating and while there's some idealization to it, i can generally say that it helps us a lot to have that kind of bond.

      With prototypical chasers, it's a wholly different issue. There is no respect for our experience, only a manipulative exploitation of our needs, playing on our vulnerabilities, treating us as disposable objects. Or these approaches are so unbelievably rude i can't call them anything but sexual harassment. That's hardly surprising, as chasing is often heavily interlinked with transphobia, i'd go as far as to say that almost all transphobic men are secretly chasers as well. There is a strong fetishistic aspect to it that disregards our interests and completely subjugates them to the sexual impulses of the chaser. For example, a lot of them are only interested in unoperated trans women, ignore the massive amounts of dysphoria many of us have around our genitals and around things like topping a partner and taking on stereotypically masculine roles in sex. This is vastly different from a t4t attitude towards unoperated or pre-operated trans people, where there's widespread acceptance of and affection for all kinds of transfeminine genitals that places the well-being and comfort of our lovers over anything else.

      When we look at society at large, how trans celebrities are seen usually falls somewhere inbetween these extremes, but it's almost always at least a bit problematic. There's always some kind of othering and exoticizing involved in how we are portrayed, but i think there's also a genuine and heartfelt fascination with us, even though it's often strongly transmedicalist and overemphasizes efforts to be as cis-passing as possible. The quote you provide is a good example for this, for the surprised, wide-eyed wonder how much one of us can look hyperfeminine. I get that, i've seen tons of transition timelines and many still make my jaw drop, but it's a fine line to walk. We tend to suck up compliments like a sponge, but it's obviously very harmful to set celebs like this as the standard we all have to live up to.

      I also wouldn't ask where the mysogyny starts and the transphobia ends, these are almost always interlinked when we're talking about transfemmes. Transmysogyny is an actual field of study among trans scholars and has been since Julia Serrano first published Whipping Girl.

      • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Thanks a lot for this explanation. There's obviously much more going on than just can be simply understood and I will continue reading, especially knowing there's more studies in the field. Whipping Girl goes next in my list rat-salute