[originally posted on my Dreamwidth blog in March 2024]
For the sake of clarity, I am writing this piece only about gay trans men.
By men I mean those who lean more binary [by my definition: identifying as a man, which usually includes wanting to look male and/or be perceived by others as male] rather than non-binary [meaning: not specifically or exclusively identifying as a man/boy, but masc-adjacent/other/none/"a big question mark"/etc].
And by gay I mean "dude into other dudes", male-attracted [whether primarily or exclusively].
So: This is not a guide for writing MTF erotica or non-binary erotica or erotica about het trans men. Our experiences are like apples and oranges. That doesn't mean you're not valid, but for example I've seen a lot of people act like being a binary trans man and being an enby are interchangeable/exactly the same when our experiences and perceptions of gender are often radically different so it's an inaccurate equivalency.
I am also writing this MAINLY FOR people who are not trans men, who write or want to write erotica about gay trans men. Some trans men aspiring to write erotica about our demographic may find some tips useful [like the note about genitalia terminology] but for the most part I feel this is preaching to the choir with other trans men.
On sharing this post: if you are putting together a roundup of "how to write trans erotica" posts from different sources, it's OK with me. However, because of my ongoing experiences with being cyberstalked and facing targeted harassment and not wanting yet another fucking mob at my virtual doorstep putting me under a microscope for weeks, I do NOT consent to this post being shared as a standalone link, especially not places like Tumblr, Discord, etc where I am not present to defend myself against whatever garbage is inevitably going to be spewed with response-to discourse. Thanks for understanding.
My qualifications for writing this
Hi. My name is Jon. I am AFAB intersex and have been living as male since November 2013. However, I began insisting I was a boy in 1984. I was diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder in 2004 but instead of explaining what that meant [I would not even hear the word "transgender" for another four years] and getting me any kind of transition care, I was put in conversion therapy [it wasn't called that, but I was suddenly transferred to a lesbian therapist who tried to convince me how wonderful it was to be a woman and "embrace my moontime" instead of doing anything useful like helping me process adverse childhood experiences and learn coping skills]. That didn't make the feeling that my brain didn't match my body, go away. It just got worse. It eventually ended two relationships I had - one of them violently - when I confessed to my partner I would rather be a man.
I'm gay [into dudes, both cis and trans]. Unfortunately, queer guys [both cis and trans] tend to reject guys without penises, so I have been single for some years now.
I live in a red MAGA-controlled state where I cannot access the trans healthcare that I need. To cope with my ongoing severe dysphoria [e.g. I still menstruate] and keep from unaliving myself, I write erotic fiction about my headmates in some configuration [dyad, throuple or quad]. In the early years of my writing [2016-2021] I wrote cis M/M to help with the dysphoria, though I also leaned into Omegaverse [focusing on heats/mating rather than pregnancy itself] because the thought of a body indistinguishable from cis male but pregnancy-capable made me feel slightly less dysphoric about menstruation and so forth. In late 2021 into 2022 I began to write FTM fic because my headmates wanted to show solidarity with me. And unfortunately in 2022, I had bad experiences with transphobia from cis queer men and a self-hating trans person, and my dysphoria horseshoed and in 2023 I discovered that writing cis M/M [including Omegaverse] was now a source of dysphoria, but writing FTM T4T or cis-on-trans M/M erotica was euphoric - it was comforting to write trans men confident and happy in who they were, living their best lives, having hot gay male sex with someone else acknowledging them as male [often, a fellow trans man - since we often tend to judge each other more harshly than cis people do, FTM4FTM acceptance is a beautiful, nourishing thing].
So I have a lot of experience writing fic about trans guys getting it on with cis guys and/or other trans guys.
Why I'm writing this
I actually wanted to start writing FTM fic sooner than I did [both to help with self-esteem as well as there being a need for authentic representation], but I got discouraged from doing so - I didn't want to offend my fellow trans brothers by making a faux pas [and if this sounds ridiculous considering that I have lived experience as a trans man, it's because of all the infighting in the trans community - see also, the great trans vs. trans* debacle of the early-mid 10s] so through 2016-2018 I consulted a few "how to write FTM erotica" guides. And they pretty much all said the same thing:
Years later, I feel this is gatekeeping bullshit, and this only appeals to a certain segment of trans men and not the entire population or even the majority.
Flash forward to 2022-2023 when I ran some unofficial statistics on fanfiction involving FTM guys having queer sex [mostly with cis men, T4T was still rare at the time], and the pendulum had shifted to the extreme opposite of this.
Upon further examination, I found that the overwhelming majority of these fics - and especially the FTMpreg fic - were being written by non-men [women and nonbinaries] who, because it's not their lived experience, were making some very uncomfortable assumptions about trans men. This is part of why I mostly cannot read fanfiction unless it's written by friends [the other part is my history with fandom] because instead of being "representation yay! I feel so validated!" it's "omfg you see me/people like me as 'fancy women', ick dysphoria".
Now, I don't believe that only people who fall into Demographic X should write about Demographic X. I think that writing about people who belong to different demographic groups than yourself can be a good writing exercise as well as cultivating more empathy for others.
That said, for similar reasons to why it helps to have a sensitivity reader if you're white and writing a Black main character [because if you've been racialized white, you still have an outsider perspective on Blackness no matter how much research you've done], I also feel that if you are not a trans man [note my explicit, specific wording there] it would be a good idea to get a binary trans man to beta your fic. But considering that there are fewer of us out there than trans women and non-binary/agender/etc people under the trans umbrella, and it's rude to just go up to random trans people like "hey, can you please educate me?", I know this is easier said than done. So I decided to write a guide that might help you if you're not a trans man and you want to write about us getting our fuck on with other guys.
Before you write us fucking, unfuck your perceptions
Here is the first and most important thing: trans men are not a monolith.
🍑Not all of us have the same transition narrative. Some of us knew from childhood, some of us only figured it out as an adult. Not all of us were tomboys or jocks growing up, and not all of us were lesbians prior to transition. Not all of us have had top surgery or are on T, some of us still menstruate. That still doesn't necessarily mean we want to read about getting pregnant or how great FTM boobies are. It's not inherently a bad thing to rep non-op guys, and some may indeed find it validating to read about/see art of their chests as desirable, but many of us non-op guys have severe, self-harm-inducing chest dysphoria and don't want our tits touched and some of us keep our shirts on during sex for that reason; the fic/art will be a painful reminder of said dysphoria. Also, if you are not a trans man and you are emphasizing trans man tiddies in most/all of your fic/art, it comes off like a creepy fetish rather than trying to create body positivity for non-op guys.
🍑We pass by varying degrees. Some of us can be stealth, some of us get "what are you?" even if we try to present masc as much as we can. Some of us are short, some of us are tall. Some of us are twinks, some of us are muscular, some of us are fat. One of the most common things I've run into with cis-on-trans M/M fic is a Meet Cute setup where the cis guy can immediately clock the trans guy because he's short/dainty/"pretty"/whatever. If you are not a trans man and you are writing this, you may think that you're helping us feel better about ourselves if we don't pass well, however the insta-clocking is more likely to cause a dysphoria reaction because it just kind of emphasizes we're "a different sort of man". The guy can be short/"pretty"/etc, but maybe don't make that an insta-clock and have the love/lust interest not know right away, find out some other way [like stumbling across the dude's menstrual products or T kit] or be surprised or say "I couldn't tell" when the trans guy reveals he's trans? ["I couldn't tell" is my favorite.]
🍑Some trans men have qualities society assigns as "masc" [they like sports, dress like a basic guy, etc]. Some trans men have qualities that society assigns as "fem" [liking pink and flowers, being domestic, dressing in clothes usually associated with women]. Some have both - many people of any gender, IMO, have both "masc" and "fem" tendencies. A trans man who enjoys wearing lingerie/makeup/skirts is still a guy - if we don't make cis gay guys with a more flamboyant gender presentation jump through hoops to prove they're guys, we shouldn't do it with trans guys either. Gender is complicated and involves more than just clothing preferences and your hobbies/interests [and it's sexist and regressive to define gender by focusing on these things as a gender marker]; in my own case, I feel like I'm in the wrong body. Different trans guys have different answers to the "why do you identify as male?" question [including "fuck off, I don't need to justify myself to you" which is a perfectly good answer].
However, I think the ubiquitous feminization written by non-trans-men is problematic because it assumes we ALL UNIVERSALLY are fine with this, when the fact is in my years of interacting with people across the trans spectrum, it is my experience that binary trans men overwhelmingly want to pass [look indistinguishable from cis men at least with clothes on] and be perceived as male and go quietly about their business, and thus tend to dress in a masculine manner to comply with gender performance expectations. Fem trans men exist, but are still a minority compared to masc-leaning guys, and yet in fic fem trans men are the norm and this can be really offputting, both because many of us not only don't feel represented but it also comes across like the non-trans-man author is treating us as "still female but with he/him pronouns" which is invalidating.
It's not that you can't write a trans dude looking hot in lingerie, and some trans dudes will thank you for it, but if you're not-a-trans-man and the only stuff/most of the stuff you're writing with us is when we're looking like this, and the cis guy isn't, you really need to ask yourself if you see us as actual motherfucking dudes or not.
🍑Different trans guys have different comfort levels with what they call their genitalia and what they do with said genitalia.
Some trans guys are dysphoric about bottoming in PIV sex, or have other reasons why they don't [like trauma or physical reasons, see further below for an explanation of the latter]. Some trans guys are thirsty bottoms. Just like cis gay men don't have to explain why a preference for bottoming doesn't mean they're really a girl, gay trans men shouldn't be bottom-shamed. But don't assume that we all only want to read bottoming all the time. You can write FTM bottoms, but it helps if you have the cis guy at least ask the trans guy if he wants to top or bottom instead of just assuming because we have a vagina we want to use it to get fucked. [I say this as someone who has trans!Sören bottoming to cis!Anthony but they do other stuff in addition to PIV sex, not solely/exclusively PIV sex. And one of the reasons why I like writing T4T with trans guys is because one of them can be a top/dom and the other can be a bottom/sub and it's a different range of sexual expression with trans dudes.]
I have interacted with enough queer trans men who call what they have downstairs a clit/pussy/etc to know it's not just me [and indeed, my experience with having cisgay bottom friends from the 90s-00s means "pussy/cunt" isn't gendered for me the way it might be for other people]. Also, it's been my experience over the last 11 years interacting with dozens of other trans guys online and offline that I can say most of us don't have/don't want meta/phallo jobs because they don't look or perform the same way as a factory-equipped cock does [no offense to anyone who's had it done]; bottom growth is good enough. There are some trans guys who shame other trans guys over this and insist you have to want/get bottom surgery to be "a real man", but this is just assholic gatekeeping.
Having said that, individual people have individual preferences. So what one reader might be fine with may give ick to another. Just like I didn't appreciate the guides I read around 2016 telling me "you can't ever use the word pussy", I also don't appreciate people assuming we're all universally fine with the word, either. What I think is preferable to a blanket "don't use this word/use that one" ban re: terminology is just to put a note up-front with whatever genitalia terms are being used, whether you're exclusively using cock/front hole or cunt/pussy/clit, or a combination thereof, so someone doesn't get into your story and then is slammed with SURPRISE DYSPHORIA over the word clit/cunt/pussy [or conversely, like me, gets turned off by the phrase "front hole" enough to hit the back button].
🍑For the record, I don't think a trans guy fails a maleness test for being into mpreg. That said, my decade plus of interacting with lots of other trans guys online and offline, I have only encountered a couple trans dudes who were NOT tokophobic and were fine with the idea of getting pregnant [or even found FTMpreg hot].
Yet, because most FTMpreg fic is being written by non-men where it's not their lived experience, the authors don't seem to have a good grasp on the fact that not only are most trans men tokophobic, but there are some practical considerations which make it unsexy to most of us even without the tokophobia:
1. A lot of trans men who have been on T for a certain length of time experience vaginal atrophy, where penetration with anything larger than a couple fingers can potentially be painful even with lubrication. [And some non-op guys who are intersex and have naturally higher T levels may have narrow vaginal canals and so on.] So: not only are gay trans bottoms not as common as you think [while still valid!], but when PIV sex is pain rather than pleasure it also makes gay FTM pregnancy a rarity.
2. For a trans man to get pregnant and safely carry to term, he has to stop testosterone [if he's on it] and go through at least 1 menstrual cycle to ovulate in order to conceive. For many of us, myself included, experiencing menstruation is as dysphoria-inducing as the thought of pregnancy.
3. FTM health care is already difficult enough to access without throwing pregnancy into it - for example, many of us cannot go for a basic pelvic exam without hearing someone in the office call it "well woman exam", especially those of us who live in red states. Trans men who get pregnant almost inevitably run into misgendering with their care, further adding to the dysphoria.
4. The bodily changes associated with pregnancy + being reminded of functional differences with cis men + being perceived as female [or potentially perceived as female] in public, especially if one already did not pass well, means that even a trans man who wants to have his own kids is likely to find pregnancy an unpleasant, triggering experience, rather than erotic joy; some may be willing to endure this as a sacrifice, but more of us are not.
5. It's worth noting that in the FTM + cis female [or FTM + AFAB enby] couples I've personally encountered/known over the years that have had kids, all of them had the woman [or enby] getting pregnant, not the dude; gentlemen like Thomas Beattie are the exception, not the rule. Out of the FTM-and-cis-male couples I've known/encountered over the years, I have met exactly two FTM guys partnered to men [cis or trans] who got pregnant during the relationship, one of whom had kids pre-transition, the other of whom was transitioned [and went through the whole cessation of HRT to conceive, etc] and later detransitioned because the experience was so dysphoria-inducing they had a crisis about "not being a real man" and they also got divorced and didn't want the kid to be taken away by theocrats.
...And yes, Captain Obvious, I know there's more than two gay trans men in the world who've gotten pregnant and carried it to term, but what I'm saying is, it's a small percentage in real life and being overrepresented in fiction.
Even if you're writing in a fantasy/sci-fi setting where none of the above conditions apply because of non-human biology, magic, or both, it is unfortunately still going to be unsexy to a lot of us because suspension of disbelief/being able to think outside the box of "human biology/Earth rules" only works so far.
Once again, it's not that you can NEVER write this, and there are some trans men who would enjoy and appreciate it. But the overrepresentation of gay trans mpreg, written by non-trans-men, feels like you don't see us as men and fetishize us [which is dehumanizing]. So if ALL or MOST of what you're writing about gay FTM guys is us getting knocked up, really do sit down and have a think about what you're writing and why.
🍑FTM4FTM sex often involves practices like oral, grinding, etc, but this doesn't have to [and shouldn't, IMO] read the exact same as lesbian sex. One thing I like to do in my fic is have the guys compliment each other's bottom growth. Another is to have the oral scene be more analogous to a blowjob with mostly-sucking. Two FTM guys grinding together saying stuff like "I love your cock" can be powerfully euphoric. Clit penetration can also be euphoric/hot and avoids the vaginal atrophy pain with larger objects.
🍑Important: if a cis guy who identifies as gay fucks a trans guy, THAT DOES NOT MAKE HIM BI/PAN. Trans men are men. If you write the cis guy being like "this turned me bi" [or the trans guy saying something like "I guess you're bi now"], you are committing transphobic fail because you're saying the trans guy isn't actually a dude. Seriously, don't do this.
🍑Trans guys into other trans guys are not "really lesbians". Trans men are men. Again, don't do this.
[Note: I am not talking about people who identify as transmasc dykes here, once again this essay is about trans men who identify as gay/queer men.]
In conclusion
No, art doesn't have to teach morality/values/whatever. Smut for smut's sake is OK. Transgressive fic has its merits. But I keep seeing gay FTM sex being called "a kink" by non-trans-men authors.
Here's the bottom line: reducing our gender to "a kink" is treating us like a fetish, on par with monsterfucking, tentacle sex, vore, and other kinks. It's similar levels of ick, but [obviously] not the same as calling an interracial relationship some sort of "kink". It's not wrong to find trans men hot and fuckable, but calling my gender one's "kink" is dehumanizing and because it's so offensive to trans men, using it as a "kink" comes across as writing for an audience that isn't even us [which in turn comes off as using tokenistic "representation" to get kudos/clout from non-trans-men, whether they praise you for "being inclusive" or they share your fetishization].
It's not so much the WHAT you write but [if you are not a trans man and are writing about us] the how, and the how often [like if most of your fic about trans men involves pregnancy], and who you're writing for/why. If you don't treat us as men and you're "just writing a kink", you are not writing "representation", you are not being an ally.
We trans men have enough to deal with, without others reinforcing potentially harmful stereotypes/perceptions, and without us trying to read fic for comfort and stumbling into someone's writing-like-you-don't-see-us-as-actual-dudes microaggressions ["death by a thousand papercuts"].
Thank you for reading, and I hope this helps. Happy writing!