My Trans Identity Is Not A Fetish

Identity — gender, sexual orientation, or the connection to one’s own race or ethnicity — plays a pivotal role in all our lives. But it is especially crucial to those who have to earn the right to express it.

The right to one’s own identity is something still being fought for in many marginalized communities, and when something so precious is reduced to a thing, a thing desired solely for sexual pleasure, it hurts in a very deep way. This is what can happen when a transgender person encounters a “chaser” — someone who has a “fetish” for transgender bodies.

Those who fetishize transgender bodies are participating in a culture of transphobia that deems our bodies as important solely when they’re sexualized. The act of “chasing” is, indeed, rooted in a cultural assumption that the only reason someone could want to be with a trans person is because of a sexual fetish. When cisgender male celebrities like rapper Tyga and NFL player Hank Baskett have been “caught” with trans people, it’s been treated as a “scandal,” with the media and public assuming it must be because they have a “thing” for trans bodies.

In the aftermath of the Tyga “scandal,” Mia Isabella, the trans woman who he was allegedly with for three years, said:

“It’s very sad that the idea of a man loving a trans person has to be considered a scandal…