trapqueenkoopa:

gallium-core:

millenniumfae:

I don’t know why, but the idea of sexuality with sentient and intelligent nonhuman beings is so much more appealing and less stressful than what’s accepted as normal. And just recently I saw people pointing out the huge percentage of aces and trans people in the teratophilia tags and beyond. Obviously something about fucking a monster with sixteen eyes and three rows of teeth draws us to it, but it boggles my mind??

You’re definitely onto something, I feel. Like, transness and monster narrative is a trend to the point of prediction. Trans people (like me) affiliate themselves with the fictional concept of sapient monsters for much the same reason why these monsters exist in the first place. Werewolves, for example, can be seen as a literary symbol of ‘transforming’ into a bestial state of mind that people fear/repress. It’s easy to take that line of thought, and relate werewolves into a fictional symbol of something trans people can’t express easily through words in our daily lives.

Even lowkey monsters/aliens like Steven Universe’s concept of gem fusion fall neatly into trans/ace fascination with monsters. It’s hard to explain the concept of a relationship built on physical intimacy and constant communication/coordination that also has the potential to be chaste/platonic. By making a visual representation of a gem fusion, we get an intimate act that creates something that transcends ideas of sex and gender identity.

When aces express ourselves sexually, there’s always this inescapable connotation with sexual attraction. And it can get really annoying or even traumatic. One of the most common questions we get at Fuckyeahasexual is ‘am I still ace if I masturbate’. The answer is, of course, yes. But it’s easier said than believed. 

So a trans person explores the concept of sexual intimacy by way of an alien who lives by non-human standards of gender identity, who fucks with a penile ovipositor that dispatches eggs into the corresponding canal of their partner that fertilizes them internally, and boom, we have a quick and imaginative method of coming to terms with our bodies and our comfort with our sexuality. 

It’s the idea of interacting with associates, friends, and loved ones who are free of the expectations that bind us in the real world. Sure, we could just struggle through the dating world and try to find someone who understands the concept of platonic sexual stimulation. But it certainly would be easier to be creative with the idea of a sapient being who knows our boundaries right off the bat.

Discussing queer sex culture has always been difficult. The world is perfectly find with the concept of a guy spilling his genetic material over his partner’s face because it portrays the idea of them being ‘owned’, but if we talk about sex as platonic communal building, or sex with diverse genitalia? Oh no, that’s too much, how gross and disgusting.

Aces and trans people are the friends of monsters. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Not to mention, you can’t ignore the societal ‘norm’ of queercoding monsters. It’s been hounded into us from Day 1, so in a sense, it offers a platform both familiar and safe in it’s ‘otherness’.

Also the fact that the social rules for what is attractive and what is a flaw go out the window when you are dealing with fantasy creatures.

Which is relevant bc while I’m not cis my issues with dysphoria have nothing to do with gender dysphoria but everything to do with struggling to be seen as beautiful in a flawed body and struggling to have to name my gender in a society that..doesn’t know what the fuck. I for one don’t care to BE the monster or to explore through them, but to be able to feel sexual attraction because my ace-ness is also odd in that I find NOTHING wrong with sex nor do I find it repulsive, I just cannot functionally imagine having sex with anyone and therefore certainly can’t/don’t want to initiate it. But when it’s not real and not a person those sexual desires are more active and functional, so that’s where they go.

I myself do love the idea of sexual interaction with beings that don’t need trans/ace 101, but even with sex interest aside, there’s a lot more on the table.

Another brand of questions I get as a mod are along the lines of; ‘if I like the idea of sex in fiction/art, but not in reality, am I still ace?’ Which is, again, a yes. Aces aren’t the only ones who can sometimes question their identity when they find themselves infatuated with fiction that might conflict with their sexual orientation. It’s common enough to find other queer/lgbt+ people who’re in a panic about how they like the idea of their OTP or that they like to read certain fanfiction and is that ok or that they had a wet dream about (this) and so on and on.

Fantasy is a careful construction of all that’s good and beautiful about romance and sex. It’s literally taking the reality out of the situation, and instead creating a self-indulgent fabrication that perfectly matches what we covet. In asexuality in particular, we’re taught that any and all experiences with physical intimacy is only when we give ourselves up sexually. That definitely leads to problems, but if we put ourselves into some fantasy situation where everything is written to be ok, and everyone’s happy and nothing’s going wrong and nobody ate Chipotle? Obviously we’d be comfortable with the real thing.

My sex repulsion doesn’t rev up when I see silicon-looking shaved anime 3D vaginas waving at my face, lit in perfect ambient lighting and completely free of any and all body imperfections. It instead activates when I actually smell a person’s real scent and see the freckles on their skin and feel the warmth from their body. Libido goes from 10 to 0, any possible relapse of hypersexual tendencies lose their drive. The break from fantasy to reality is easy enough to capture.

Many months ago, I wandered upon a porn artist’s blog that specialized in explicit monster OC imagery. At the top of the bio, she introduced herself as lesbian, and there was this thread of posts where some putz was ‘questioning’ her gayness because all her OCs had triangular silhouettes, and sported penile sexual organs.

Her response was graceful enough. At first. She began by explaining how her monsters are monsters, they don’t exist within our gender binary, they’re based off of Satanic demigods that represent witchcraft and therefore the power of women, and so on. And then she continued by describing how her OC’s penises differed from the human ‘male’ penis, and that these changes make all the differences in terms of how she’s possibly attracted to the idea of these phallic organs. Her ending word was something along the lines of ‘the closer a fictional organ grows to a human penis, the less I’m attracted to it. My designs are on the fringe, sure, but they’re still visually apart from a male’s organ, at least to me.”

Obvious transphobia/enbyphobia/cissexism aside, that artist’s scrap with an aggravator was my first introduction to monster culture as a sexual release from social boundaries. She clearly had trouble seeing penises as anything but ‘men’, so she chose to express that by making these penis organs into something she could disassociate from men. And her choice of expression? Monster porn.

If I was dysphoric, I’d probably have another reason why I like the idea of being the mate of an ancient Chinese dragon that guards a well of wisdom while I manage a small witch apothecary nearby. If I wasn’t ace, I’d probably have more reason to like the idea of being some divine father-mother to a race of supernatural demons. Every aspect of me being trans, ace, and hell, brown even – considering how its all about our real-life aversion to the social boundaries – attributes to this specific and nasty sex culture.