Foreshadowing

Often, after a breakup, I can look back and see that some of the stuff we broke up over was there right from the beginning – I just glossed over it or it didn’t get really bad until later or something.

I was just remembering how, before TA ever contacted me, I knew of her existence from a personal ad she posted on FetLife that I was tentatively interested in, but decided not to respond to.

See, I’ve been noticing lately that queer folks will throw the words “masc” or “femme” into personal ads when describing what sort of person they’re looking for, and from context, I think sometimes it means “I want someone who dresses like this” and sometimes it means “I want someone with these particular secondary sex characteristics” and sometimes it means “I want someone with this type of genitals.” But usually people don’t clearly explain.

And the ad I saw from TA said that she preferred “masc people” or “people on the masc side” or something like that. And although I’m on testosterone and my gender leans a bit masc-of-centre maybe, I’m still read as a woman, have a vagina plus a big ol’ set of tits that I don’t bind, and don’t necessarily dress in a hugely butch/masculine way (listen, I’d like to see what I look like in a suit, but I can’t be spending that kind of money right now. So I wear whatever still fits me from before I started T. Which, at the time that TA and I first met, was sometimes dresses). Conclusion: this ad is Not For Me.

But then TA found me on FetLife somehow and wrote to me first. And a relationship developed. And when I later confessed that I’d assumed she wouldn’t be into me because I don’t have a dick or come off super manly or anything, she was like “what? Nooooo! None of that was even what I meant by liking masc people!” I think she might have said that she meant people with testosterone-based bodies, because she loves the way they smell. And she did love my mighty, mighty stink. But I still suspected that she was lying to me and/or herself and that men – cis men – were what really turned her crank; that she clicked with me emotionally but my physicality was a compromise, for her.

And then over the course of our relationship she:

• Told me she’s not attracted to my chest.
• Told me she’s not attracted to my genitals.
• Became obsessed with obtaining cis dick to a point where it was clear I couldn’t offer her anything nearly as interesting.

Welp. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯