Is It Really All About the Dick?
Working on a recent Himeros.tv set, I watched Stevie Trixx, a transmasculine performer, fuck a handful of cis gay guys with a strap-on. The performers were having a really good time exploring dimensions of their eroticism not dependent on biological cock. It was playful and sexy, affirming for everyone involved. The film's takeaway: bio-dick doesn't have to be the gatekeeper of good sex.
Don't get me wrong, I do LOVE biological cock, but more and more, I think I understand the degree to which we have all been deeply conditioned to center the phallus in sex. How could we not? It is a widely accepted physical metaphor for masculinity as crafted by the Western mind. And I use this word, phallus, because of the energy behind it rather than its physical correlate: the biological penis. But culturally, we get hung up on the physical level of the object, equate surrender as a condition of lesser value, and as a result, we prioritize an appendage that can force us into receptivity. We get stuck in a mindset of "functional fixedness," reducing body parts like cocks and vulvas to specific roles like fucker and fuckee. These two roles don't even begin to describe the myriad ways that people can and do enjoy sexual pleasure.
Personally, I experience deep satisfaction seeing a really big dicked guy be a total sub—even better if he doesn't want his cock acknowledged. Or a muscle man gleefully bottoming for a trans man. And I'm pretty sure I know some dykes that can fuck better than a lot of the tops out there getting priority treatment by gays who, based on an image alone, hand their power right over to the embodiment of masculinity as honed by patriarchy and capitalism. Sure, I love those types, too, but a beautiful body and a big, beautiful cock can never offer what must come from within my own self: wholeness. And to be whole, we must also prize surrender, receptivity, softness, being penetrated, smallness, femininity (whatever that means), and being a hole. Can we elevate these states of mind and body alongside bigness, penetrating, masculinity—cock?
I invite you to explore the ways in which these assumptions are part of your own erotic imagination. Here are some questions to get you started:
How do you feel about the ways in which you may or may not line up with cultural expectations about gender and orientation?
Where can you take power back within yourself and expand how you express yourself erotically?
How honest are you with yourself about what turns you on?
How do you reconcile your desires with your preferred self-image and values?
What are some ways you can begin loosening the grip around fixed notions about masculinity?
If you had no dick, how would you express yourself sexually?
Watch this NSFW trailer for Trans Guys In Sweatpants, a parody on a popular porn site. The intent of this scene is to play with the genre and to subvert ubiquitously held notions about masculinity—and the centrality of biological cocks.