My Sexuality
How I became bisexual with an Ace up my sleeve
Today I am going to take a rare departure into Logan Silkwood territory and write about my sexuality. Why? I actually decided not to publish this column because it is the very epitome of self-absorbed oversharing on the internet. However, with the ever-mounting attacks on transgender people coming from the political right these days, I made the choice to put this out for Gay Pride Month.
If you spend your precious time reading it, I hope you find some benefit in it, being perhaps reaffirming, feeling superior, or just prurient. Or, to learn something of the complexity of human sexuality.
Whatever your reason for reading, enjoy!
We’re going to have to take this in three phases: pre-transition (heterosexual male), early transition (heterosexual female), and today (Ace).
Pre-transition
If you don’t know, “transition” refers to the process by which I changed my sex and gender presentation from male to female. My transition was a period of a few years starting at the turn of the century. (This century! I may be old, but I’m not that old!)
I was judged to be male at my birth, so I grew up socialized as a male. I really had no idea about transsexuality in general or my transsexuality in particular until late in life.
My sexuality as a male was straight cis-gender heterosexual. In other words, I was a boy who liked girls. And boobs. Mmmmmm, boobs!
I never, to my knowledge, even met a gay person until I was in my twenties. I had the usual opinion about homosexuality for the 1960s: that it is weird and basically unacceptable. And besides, yuck!
I was raised Catholic (twelve years of Catholic school, alter boy, and all that) but I never really associated homosexuality with sin. Homosexuality just wasn’t much in my awareness at all. But the idea of men having sex with men, and especially me touching a man sexually, seemed rather disgusting.
However, I was not very good with women, either. Basically, my sex life sucked. I never had a girlfriend until after college. Or sex. I married basically the first woman that I seriously dated. I felt that I escaped being a total loser because I was married before I turned thirty—beat it by a week!
The marriage lasted less than five years. We didn’t have kids.
Between then and the end of the twentieth century, I had two or three other girlfriends. One quite serious, right at the end. We lived together and lasted five years, but then she caught me cross-dressing and that was that.
I had told her about my proclivity for cross-dressing, but she was never meant to witness it. It was one of those ugly, embarrassing scenes. Oh yeah.
Still no kids. Even today, still no kids. (That I know of. Haha.)
Early transition
In my late thirties/early-forties, I started to give in to a strong urge to cross-dress as a woman. Looking back on it now, it is hard to remember how viscerally compelling that urge was. I suppose that when I dressed as a woman and slapped that wig on my head, I got a glimpse of my true self in the mirror.
In my despondency after my divorce, I figured, what the hell, I might as well begin to indulge my cross-dressing fantasy. I gradually ramped it up until was brave enough to go out cross-dressed in public.
When I “passed”—when someone called me ma’am or a dude opened a door for me—it felt incredibly satisfying. Conversely, when I was “clocked”—typically by hearing someone tell their companion while passing by me, “Hey, that was dude!”—it was terrifying.
Eventually I found my way to the local transgender community. I would often meet friends at gay bars where trans women hung out. There I also met “tranny-chasers,” men who are attracted to transgender women. (They like dick, but only when it comes in a feminine package.) I started to like the attention of men and began flirting with them and sometimes fooling around sexually with them. But only when I was in my female persona. I was still not comfortable with man-on-man.
My transition went pretty quickly, as these things go, and I soon made my full-time social transition, living and working as a woman. After the mandatory one-year waiting period, referred to as a “real-world test” or “real-world experience”, I transitioned surgically and became fully the woman I am today.
During these transition years, I was primarily interested in men for relationships and sexual congress. My sexual preference had flipped 180 degrees: from heterosexual male to heterosexual female; that is, from being attracted to women to desiring men.
So much for “being born this way”? Well, I wonder whether, if had I not been socialised so strongly heterosexual, might I have been interested in men earlier in my life? It is impossible to say.
During my transition years, I learned brutal lessons about most men being uninterested in, or just disgusted by, the idea of being with a transsexual woman.
I did have two boyfriends during this period. One was with a tranny-chaser, when I still had a dick. He was an older gentleman, a lawyer, and he treated me respectfully and generously, even lovingly. The other boyfriend came after my surgery. It was (as far as I know) a typical girlfriend/boyfriend relationship. He was the one guy who did not run when I explained about being transsexual. He was not a tranny-chaser, just a nice, open-minded guy. What did make him run in terror was when I made a joke about marriage. I was totally joking, but it was his safe word to get out!
Today
After some experimenting and sexual experience with guys, and some with other trans women, I realized I had become asexual. My body is totally unresponsive to any type of sexual stimulation. Whether this is a result of my surgery, or a psychological response to the brutal shock of numerous rejections as a trans woman, or maybe just my age as a post-menopausal woman, I don’t know. But what I do know is, I like it that sex has been completely removed from my life!
What a great amount of time and energy we put into sex!—mostly looking for it, and, depending on how “lucky” you are, engaging in it. What a lot stress! Yes, a life without sex lacks that certain spice, that excitement. But, at my age, I’m happy for the inner (and outer) peace.
Now, when I see a sex scene in a movie or TV show, it just seems weird to me. Why would anyone want to do that? I fast-forward through the scene.
By the way, there is an asexuality community, and we sometimes say we are “Ace” for short. Dating as an Ace can be very tricky, as you can imagine.
Fortunately for me, I am no longer in the dating pool. Some years ago, I met a guy at a dinner party that was a regular social gathering for the local transgender community—cross-dressers, trans women, the occasional drag queen, and some allies. It turned out to be this guy’s first venture out in public cross-dressed.
We hit it off and began dating and soon moved in together. Before long she also transitioned. I supported Misha through her transition, but I wanted to break up afterwards because I was (and am) more interested in a relationship with a guy. However, she talked me into giving things a try, and we are still together to this day, fifteen years later.
As far as we know, Misha is not asexual like me, so I guess she is incel (involuntary celibate). I’ve actually urged her to go have some sexual experiences and see where she’s at, but she places a strong value on monogamy and chooses not to. (…as far as I know. Good on her if she is having sex and not letting me know about it!)
So here is where I’ve wound up: not sexually attracted to man, woman, non-binary person, animal, or self. If Misha were to disappear tomorrow, I would be open to dating any of the above. I would be open to trying sex with any of the above (no, wait, not an animal), but I doubt that anything would come of it. If I were to date or live with a man, I would think of it in terms of a relationship. However, if I were to date or live with a woman, I would be more likely to view it as friends. But who knows, anything is possible. Therefore, I am bi-sexual socially. Sexually, I guess I am bi-sexual with an Ace up my sleeve.
And I’m just fine with that.
— Lannie Rose, June 2023
preferred pronouns: she/her/hers
If you want to know more about my sexuality and adventures, search Amazon books for “Lannie Rose” or go to my moribund website lannierose.com and download ’em for free.
