I just had someone read “The Transformation Fetish” who left this comment:
transgender people aren’t a fetish are you out of your mind
No, I’m as sane as anyone doing a blog about transformation can be.
And I recognize that there are many people for whom transgender is not a fetish but a way of life. If you’re one of them, good for you!
But, I’ve also learned over the years that there are people who like to fantasize about TG, but aren’t interested in actually changing genders themselves. (Similarly, I’ve also read there are transvestites who are not gay. They’re men who like the feel of women’s clothing, but they like to experience it as men.)
There is a lot of fiction out there written by these people. And a lot of it is, let’s face it, spooge. The average story of this kind goes like this:
A big, dumb jock, usually a bully, picks on any guy he thinks doesn’t live up to the jock’s standard of manhood. And he just barely has any respect for women.
Then, he does something like pick on the husband or a brother or whatever of a woman. The woman has magical powers. And she turns the jock female. This may happen to him in the shower by the men’s locker room. He runs to his locker to get dressed, and finds all of his clothes have turned into lacy, frilly, “sissy” things. Some of his fellow jocks hit on him, and he starts to dress in sexy things to please them. Eventually he marries and moves in with one of them, his IQ drops even lower, he truly becomes an out and out bimbo, and he settles down to be a good little housewife and mother!
That’s a fetish, turning a man into a woman against his will and making him be treated as he has always thought a woman should be treated.
(Somewhere, I’ve got a story I was working on about a man, an aspiring comics artist, who is on his way to a comic book show. Along the way, he makes a wish to be the most noticed artist there. The wish comes true and, first day of the show, he wakes up to discover that he has not only turned into woman, he has become a Bill Ward drawing come to life! I ran into a block with it, but I had several people compliment me on it and tell me it did not follow the path of similar such stories. And they want to see me finish it. If I can find the draft so far, I may do so.)
Now, what is NOT a fetish is someone who feels they were born in a body that’s the wrong gender for them. They are the other sex and they want to be that gender physically. Not all of them can afford the operation, and some don’t want to go through with it. But some of them will have it done. One of the best examples these days is Nicole Maines, who plays Nia Nal on Supergirl, billed as the first transgender super-heroine on television. She is a wonderful character and I look forward to seeing more of her.
So, sometimes, probably most of the time, transgender is not part of the transformation fetish. But, sometimes, it is.
TransformationStation 