This article is a short, and personal, reflection. Despite being personal, I’m sure it is not unique; I have no doubt that stories like mine abound. To synopsise: Before dipping my toes into the adult industry, I had identified as vaguely nonbinary for years but had done nothing in terms of transition beyond occasionally wearing ‘genderfucked’ outfits; by the end of my first year I had gotten an estradiol prescription. I had gone from vaguely preferring ‘they/them’ while resignedly accepting ‘he/him’, to asserting myself – even going so far as to be referred to as a ‘she’ on occasion. Within a few months I had tits, within a year my hair was long. A couple years on, I’m in speech therapy and have gotten on progesterone.
What happened?
Now, I won’t go so far as to say that it was the adult industry alone that kicked me off my dysphoric ass and got me actively taking charge of my gender. Many other factors – the terrifyingly rapid approach of my 30s, the example set by a college acquaintance’s immaculate transition, feelings evoked by the Barbie movie (don’t laugh!) – were involved. But it was in large part by immersing myself in the colourful, dramatic, sleazy, heartfelt world of pornstars and content creators that I gained the courage to define and embrace myself.
And why was that? In retrospect, I chalk it up to three factors: confident femininity, trans sisterhood, and sensuous acceptance.
What most struck me, at my first adult convention (AVN 2023), was the sheer, unabashed, fierce, cunty, confident femininity about me. Near-everywhere I looked, motherplanes were being flown into the World Serve Centre and the Cuntagon. To wit, baddies were baddying. The lack of shame and of self-doubt inspired me. The way these women carried themselves – whether posing in theatrically-practiced performance, or lounging about and idly vaping in languid boredom, or excitedly yapping with their friends and goofing off – mesmerised me. While not every aesthetic was necessarily up my alley, the cunt was aspirational. And the sheer, unexpected diversity! All manner of body types, both conventionally-attractive and non-; hair of every colour; piercings and tattoos in bewildering arrays; Dommes and painsluts; home-grown bodies and bodies proudly, unhiddenly moulded by surgeries. Sapphicism overflowing beyond the much-decried male-gaze confines, genuinity seeping through. Women being women, being women unabashedly, being women in a hundred differently-feminine ways. I was in awe. And that awe has never left.
Now of course, diligence behooves me to not overly-romanticise things. There are of course under-the-surface pressures and sources of stress, when one’s livelihood depends on performing gender a certain way; I’m quite aware that, for many of the models, the performance is insincere. But as a soon-to-be transsexual grappling with guilt over the desire to be feminine, the surfacedly-apparent confidence was euphoric to experience. And, as I’ve developed and deepened friendships within the industry, I’ve mainly (though by no means exclusively) found myself forming ties with people who embody this cuntiness throughout their lives, off-camera and on. And so, while my view of things is more nuanced – and perhaps more cynical – now than in my mesmerised early days, the fundamental takeaways remain. Amongst the porn baddies, I find a sisterhood of unapologetically fierce women.
As for the second factor: this sisterhood, I might add, is not limited to cisterhood. I had never met so many t-girls in one place – many of which immediately took warmly to me, and I to them. I need not repeat myself listing off the awe-inspiring femininity and confidence I encountered; just know that encountering it emanating from so many in-the-flesh trans women – trans women openly inhabiting womanhood on an equal footing with any other woman I encountered – most definitely awoke something latent within me. To this day, I have encountered no other space where so many trans women stood together with cis women, without distinction, unquestioned.
Thirdly, it’s one thing to take in all this cuntiness and sisterhood from a distance; quite another to be immersed into it. I found nothing but wholehearted acceptance of my androgynously-dressed body and fruity mannerisms – an acceptance that was not only verbal, but carnal, sexual, sensual, embodied. The sensuousness of this acceptance was, of course, most dramatic on-camera; but it extended beyond filmed sex into the quotidian: the tight hugs, the platonic caresses, the dancing at afterparties, all those ‘little’ moments where the edges of souls touch. I had found people who effortlessly drew out of me that which had been struggling to take form, and embraced it. Sensuous, tactile acceptance grounded me, and helped clear the fog I had unknowingly been languishing in.
Looking over these three factors, perhaps I am in fact looking at one single theme. All gender is performance. Some perform from a script handed to them at birth; some fumble about and build their role from bits and bops blindly grasped in the dark; some notice the stagelights and resignedly muddle through their lines. And some deliberately craft their act, balancing the demands of the stage and the sincerity that lies at the heart of every great performance, sensuously embodying their role with deliberate, conscious skill and panache. The divas of the adult industry are in this latter class. Is it any wonder that a transsexual might feel at home?
Article by Vladicoff
Twitter/X: @Vladicoff_NSFW
Instagram & Discord: @Vladicoff
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