Hi Yana!
I’ve been struggling a bit for the last few weeks. I’m a little bitty trans guy who recently had top surgery and I somehow managed to get it bad for my surgeon. Fantasizing about her is one thing (I should also mention that I’m a sub), but it’s grown into this almost active search for older, powerful and dominant women looking for someone like me (submissive trans guy).
Mostly I feel kinda hopeless. To no one’s surprise, it’s all too common to find cis gay men actively searching for trans bottoms, but where are these women I dream of? Do they exist?
Where do I start?
Just Try to Top Me
Dear Top Me,
If nothing else, writing into the sex column is a hell of a way to place a local personal ad. I mean, if anyone fits the bill out there, shoot me an email and maybe we can make a love connection happen, eh?
Sex researcher and writer Zhana Vrangalova recently wrote a piece for queer news and culture blog Them about studies that have supported the idea that it’s quite common for trans people’s desires and attractions to shift post-surgery and/or after starting hormones.
Always a thorough and impressive researcher, I highly recommend reading Vrangalova’s article itself, in which she talks about several studies — one of which was done in our fair state of Massachusetts in 2015 that reported desire and attraction changes post-social transition in 49% of trans masculine and 64% of trans feminine individuals in a 452-participant study.
As Vrangalova is clear to state, sexual orientation is undoubtedly a universally fluid concept, and so shifts in attraction could be no different in the trans population than in the cisgender population, though Vrangalova also cites studies showing that the rates of this attraction-shift tend to be higher in trans populations, “suggesting there are likely other factors at play among trans folks.”
Studies or no, here you are, having it bad for your top surgeon and actively fantasizing harder than before about older, dominant women. For what it’s worth, it sounds like you’re at least not alone in noticing a sizable shift in your desires post-surgery, but what do you do with them?
Are there older, powerful, dominant women who are seeking out younger trans guys to consensually dominate (bonus points if they’re into donning a doctor’s coat)? Oh, I’m sure of it. If there’s anything a decade of being a sex educator has taught me, it’s that if there’s a desire or kink out there, there’s someone out there who’s into it.
But where do you find these foxy, bossy, badass women (bonus points if they’re handy with a scalpel)? I mean, maybe I’ve been oversaturated, but honestly your request doesn’t really seem that far out there to me. Consensual power play of all kinds is getting more common and less bogged down by social shame. Dominant, feminine women are becoming more visible and countering the stereotype that all sexually dominant folks are masculine and/or wielding masculine power.
I’m actually not that convinced, Top Me, that you’ll have to search much further than Tinder, FetLife, or any other kink-friendly dating app that lets you safely clarify who you are and what you are and aren’t looking for. Want to avoid cis gay men as potential suitors? Stay off Grindr. Instagram @personals_ runs a national personals-posting account for the LBTQIA+, gender non-conforming, and non-binary communities that boasts some real darling IRL matches made and over 45,000 followers available to view your specifics.
No matter how you proceed, keep going down the path that acknowledges that your fantasies about your top surgeon should likely stay in fantasyland and aren’t likely to become a reality. However, pulling from these fantasies to find the aspects that can be applied to real-life, more accessible partners such as feminine dominance, consensual power-over, caretaking, and super gender-affirming dynamics is certainly a helpful exercise in getting these erotic boxes checked for you in the real world. Good luck and congrats on your surgery!
Yana Tallon-Hicks is a relationship therapist, sex educator, and writer living in the Pioneer Valley. You can find her work and her professional contact information on her website, yanatallonhicks.com
