The Worst of Both Worlds
How Straight People Sexualize Queer and Trans People
Last month was the third anniversary of the release of my most recent book, Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back. The book tackles the pervasive problem of sexualization: when a person is nonconsensually reduced to their real or imagined sexual attributes (their body, behaviors, or desires) to the exclusion of other characteristics.
While most books on the subject focus primarily on how women are sexualized in our straight-male-centric culture (a vital issue that I cover as well), Sexed Up strives to connect that to the varied ways in which other marginalized groups (people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, people with disabilities, etc.) are sexualized. Over the course of the book, I propose a new Stigma-Contamination model that explains why all marginalized groups are sexualized to some degree and why being reduced to the status of a “sexual being” tends to have a delegitimizing or degrading effect on people. This model provides an alternative to the “sex-negative” framings and proposed solutions that some feminists have promoted in the past. You can learn more about the book by checking out my Sexed Up chapter-by-chapter preview.
For Pride month, I decided to release this video of me reading from the “queer chapter” (Chapter 8) of Sexed Up. It examines the many ways in which the straight majority tends to sexualize LGBTQIA+ people and the central role that anti-queer stigma and imagined “contagiousness” plays in their stereotypes of us. Toward the end, I highlight how past “gay rights” activism has largely sidestepped this important issue (much to our detriment) and argue that, moving forward, queer activism should challenge sexualization head on.
In the middle of the reading, I skip past the section on how trans people are sexualized, in part, to ensure that I had time to cover all the other main points in the chapter. But also because trans people (along with intersex people) are sometimes sexualized in ways that are rather different than cis queer people—I have come to call this “The Worst of Both Worlds.” Below, I will excerpt the Worst of Both Worlds passage from the book, as I think it is useful for understanding how sexualization sometimes plays out for sex/gender-diverse people.
But before sharing that, I want to place both The Worst of Both Worlds and my Stigma-Contamination model in the context of past feminist thinking on sexualization.
Contemplating Multiple Models of Sexualization
This may seem like a technical digression, but I believe it’s important: Within feminism, we often describe our proposals as “theories.” This suggests that they are testable/disprovable hypotheses and that, if the two of us propose different theories to explain the same phenomenon, then only one of us can be “right.” Furthermore, once people presume that any given feminist theory is “right,” they will often forward one-size-fits-all solutions that all people must supposedly follow in order for us to achieve gender equity or liberation. These sorts of “fixed perspectives” inevitably result in some perspectives and experiences (typically those of marginalized groups) being disregarded or demonized in the process—I discuss this at great length in my second book Excluded.
I’d argue that it is far more accurate and constructive to imagine what we are doing as building models: representations of how the world works that are imperfect, and which may provide useful descriptions and predictions in some scenarios but not necessarily in others.
When I began writing about sexualization in the mid-2000s, I found that past feminist writings on the subject generally failed to address many of my own personal experiences with the phenomenon. Specifically, these writings tended to adhere to what I’ve come to call (for reasons explained in Sexed Up) the Attraction-Objectification model of sexualization: Men (or Patriarchy as a system) view women as a sexual resource to exploit (for sex and/or reproduction). And objectification—reducing women to the status of “sexual objects”—enables or facilitates this end goal.
It is a reasonable model that does seem to explain many women’s experiences with sexualization. Although it has led some feminists to propose a one-size-fits-all solution that involves censoring or criminalizing activities that they believe contribute to the “objectification of women” (pornography and sex work being the most prominent examples).
However, this Attraction-Objectification model somewhat breaks down when considering trans experiences with sexualization. For instance, as I detailed in Chapter 14 of Whipping Girl (entitled “Trans-Sexualization”), I have found that men tend to sexualize me far more intensely when they are aware that I’m trans relative to when they presume I am cis. The overwhelming majority of these men did not want to engage in sexual acts with me, and they obviously couldn’t exploit me for my reproductive capacity, so what purpose was this sexualization serving then?
Furthermore, while some men will sexualize trans women as “fetish objects,” there are a lot of people (such as TERFs) who will sexualize us as “fetishists” (read: driven by imagined sexual motives, to the exclusion of other characteristics). Indeed, for every person who sexualizes trans women as “promiscuous” or “sexually available/disposable,” there are countless others who sexualize us as “sexual predators” or “groomers.” And still others vacillate between these disparate sexualized caricatures of us.
When writing the aforementioned “Trans-Sexualization” chapter, I came up with a slightly different model that seemed to explain both trans and cis women’s experiences with sexualization: the Predator/Prey mindset. Briefly, we are all socialized to view men as sexual initiators or aggressors (Predators) and women as mere “sexual objects” that men pursue (Prey). This formulation accounts for many cis women’s experiences with sexualization (as I detail in Chapter 4 of Sexed Up) but it also explains why trans women are so intensely hypersexualized: “we are viewed as enabling our own sexual objectification (by virtue of the fact that we physically transition from male to female) in much the same way that a woman who wears a low-cut dress is presumed to facilitate her own objectification.” (WG p.258)
Furthermore, if men (especially marginalized men) can be sexualized as “sexual predators” and women as “sexual objects,” then people who are construed as being “in between” or “combinations of both” genders (e.g., trans and intersex people) may be sexualized in both ways simultaneously. This is what I call “The Worst of Both Worlds” in the excerpt below.
While I think The Worst of Both Worlds model has a lot of explanatory power for trans and intersex people’s experiences with sexualization, it fails to explain why cisgender queer people, people of color, people with disabilities, etc., are routinely sexualized. It was only through trying to understand all of these scenarios that led me to my overarching Stigma-Contamination model of sexualization, which you can learn more about in the aforementioned video or in this essay.
The Worst of Both Worlds
Anyway, with that primer, here is The Worst of Both Worlds passage from Sexed Up (content note: discussions of physical and sexual violence and anti-trans prejudice):
As with other mindsets, this “sexual deceiver” narrative exists in perceivers’ minds rather than reflecting LGBTQIA+ people’s intentions. Most people I’ve talked to about this have said that they are open about being trans or intersex with their sexual partners, but nevertheless have been accused of being “sexual deceivers” at one point or another, typically by perceivers who have just learned about this aspect of their person and immediately jumped to that conclusion. The fact that this is a mindset that does not accurately reflect reality can also be found in sociologists Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook’s analysis of over seven thousand U.S. news stories covering trans-related murders (overwhelmingly cis male perpetrators and trans female victims). They found that the “sexual deceiver” narrative dominated this news coverage, noting that “even in cases where there is evidence that the perpetrator knew the victim was transgender prior to the sexual act, many people involved in the case, including journalists and police officers, still use the deception frame.” The fact that we are imagined to be inherently “deceptive” and “predatory” also explains why Hollywood creators (who are overwhelmingly cisgender and largely trans-unaware) relentlessly churn out villains and killers who are ultimately “revealed” to be transgender, intersex, or sexually ambiguous or duplicitous in some way.
There are at least two ways to make sense of people’s reactions to imagined “sexual deceivers.” The first stems from how seemingly “mismatched” sex/gender characteristics are interpreted via a Predator/Prey mindset. I refer to this interpretation as “the worst of both worlds.” It’s a play on the phrase “the best of both worlds,” which is sometimes applied to transgender people (especially in the context of pornography) to euphemistically refer to the fact that some of us possess anatomical features associated with both women and men. In contrast, “the worst of both worlds” refers to how, when cast as “sexual deceivers,” we become vulnerable to being simultaneously sexualized in ways associated with both men and women. Specifically, we are conceptualized as “predators” capable of violating and imparting sexual stigma upon others, but also as “prey” who attract and seduce others, often becoming violated ourselves in the process.
This “worst of both worlds” phenomenon helps to explain why reactions to imagined “sexual deceivers” frequently involve inflicting sexual violence upon the individual. Perpetrators of such sexual violence likely view it as comeuppance or punishment for the imagined “deception” or gender transgression. But these acts are also enabled by the fact that the “deceiver” is understood to be female and/or feminine (at least to some extent) and thereby susceptible to such violations. In the case of trans male/masculine individuals, this sexual violence may be construed as “putting them back in their proper place” (as “women”); for trans female/ feminine individuals, it’s often rationalized as “if you want to be treated like a woman, then I’m going to treat you that way” (via sexual violation).
This use of sexual violence to punish gender transgression and supposed “deception” is evident in the high levels of sexual violence that trans people face. Across numerous studies, the general consensus is that roughly 50 percent of trans people experience sexual violence, with many (in some studies, over half) reporting that they were targeted because they are transgender. Compared to cisgender experiences of sexual violence, transgender people’s tend to start earlier in life (often in association with school bullying), are more likely to be perpetrated by a stranger, and are more likely to be accompanied by physical violence.
Two prominent examples of trans people being subjected to both sexual and physical violence can be found in the high-profile murders of trans man Brandon Teena in 1993, and trans woman Gwen Araujo in 2003. Upon being discovered to be trans, both victims were sexually assaulted (Araujo had her genitals groped and exposed; Teena experienced the same and then was subjected to “corrective” rape) before being murdered. Factors that put trans people at increased risk of both sexual and physical violence include being visibly transgender, a person of color, poor, and/or a sex worker, with many victims falling into multiple (and sometimes all) of these categories. In a study entitled “‘Black Trans Bodies Are Under Attack’: Gender Non-conforming Homicide Victims in the US, 1995–2014,” Janae Teal found that Black trans people (and particularly trans women) not only make up the majority of victims (despite comprising a relatively small percentage of the trans community as a whole) but are also most likely to experience “overkill” (where “murder victims are destroyed or obliterated, rather than simply killed”) and to be depicted as “deceivers” in subsequent media accounts.
The rest of this chapter is covered in the aforementioned Why Do Straight People Sexualize Queer People? LGBTQ+ Stereotypes, Sexualization & “Contagiousness” video.
If you appreciate this essay and video, please check out the Sexed Up website and chapter-by-chapter preview. This essay was made possible by my Patreon supporters — if you appreciate it, please consider supporting me there! You can also sign up for a paid or free subscription here: