#I suppose the discussion would logically extend to nonbinary people and/or transmascs but I am not qualified to speak of such things

[wet-from-water-water-from-wet]

I have been trying to understand what it is a "chaser" is (in the context of dating trans women) and I am having some difficulty. I see people using the word a lot in a multitude of slightly different contexts and the word seems a little too wiggly for it's own good

to my understanding, the most common definition of a "chaser" I see is someone who is attracted to women with penises in a fetishistic manner, with a general air of "it's rude to fetishize a part of our bodies we don't want"

but like, clearly this isn't a perfect definition. plenty of trans women enjoy having penises, I am one of them. so does it only apply then to trans women who don't want to have them?

I have heard people say things along the lines of "people of this variety tend to not think of trans women as women and instead as femboys or 'sissy boymoders'", and I don't know how I feel about that.

I'm generally not a fan of claims of this variety linking an attraction or fetish to a specific negative behavior, it feels a little icky to do that to me. you can't control attraction, we know this, so I don't think it's fair to establish this sort of, what would you call it, association? prejudice?

this has a variety of other bad vibes to me as well. if you're asserting that the only reason you'd be attracted by a woman's penis is because you don't see her fully as a woman, you're associating attraction to penises as attraction to masculinity, and isn't that just a complicated way of saying that having a penis is an inherently masculine trait? I don't see my having a penis as masculine. it's fine for someone to feel that way about themselves I suppose, but a definition that hinges on it is an imperfect one.

beyond that even, if this were the problem, then it wouldn't make sense to use "chaser" to negatively refer to a variety of person, the actual bad thing would be the other thing that's only associated with the title, making the word "chaser" kind of pointless. just have a word for the thing that is actually supposed to be bad instead of an arbitrary extra layer of obfuscation.

I have heard people say that the problem lies in how it specifies an attraction to a difference between trans women and cis women, implying them to be fundamentally different somehow

thing is, I don't think it does imply that. if the fundamental difference is the presence of the penis, then that doesn't apply to trans women who don't have penises. hence, it's not actually implying a distinction between trans women and cis women, it's a distinction between women with penises and women without penises.

that's not a meaningless distinction the same way trans vs. cis is. sex with a woman with a penis will be different than sex with a woman without one, and that's the distinction being made here. I don't think that distinction is a necessarily transphobic one to make, even in the case that it's a specific fetishization of women with penises.

and I mean, cis women can have penises too if they really wanted them, right? it's certainly not a likely occurrence but trans women aren't the only kind that can have them

this may be where my understanding reaches a limit, as a demisexual I have a difficult time deliniating between what's supposed to count as "healthy" attraction and what is "unhealthy" or "superficial" attraction when it comes to these kinds of nonspecific public attractions

to me to have these kinds of fetishistic attractions directed towards me is cool I think. I enjoy it. makes me feel powerful. to me it is a perk of being a trans woman with a penis

ultimately my main gripe with the word chaser is that it boils down to "any kind of fetishization of women with penises", but that's not like. a problem, unless the woman in question doesn't want that. any and all of the above things can be rude and hurtful when directed at a woman who does not wish to have a penis, but that isn't all trans women, so such a universally applied word doesn't make sense I don't think.

the real issue is just one with boundaries innit, it's "don't fetishize things about people if they don't like that." all the extra stuff that chaser implies seems to obfuscate the actual point to me, arbitrarily demonizing attraction to trans women. being trans isn't all about misery