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Sexual attraction to transgender people has been the subject of scientific study and social commentary. Psychologists have researched
sexual attraction Sexual attraction is attraction on the basis of sexual desire or the quality of arousing such interest. Sexual attractiveness or sex appeal is an individual's ability to attract other people sexually, and is a factor in sexual selection or m ...
toward
trans women A trans woman or transgender woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity and may experience gender dysphoria (distress brought upon by the discrepancy between a person's gender identity and their ...
,
trans men A trans man or transgender man is a man who was assigned female at birth. Trans men have a male gender identity, and many trans men undergo Gender transition, medical and social transition to alter their appearance in a way that aligns with th ...
, cross dressers,
non-binary Non-binary or genderqueer Gender identity, gender identities are those that are outside the male/female gender binary. Non-binary identities often fall under the transgender umbrella since non-binary people typically identify with a gende ...
people, and a combination of these. Publications in the field of
transgender studies Transgender studies, also called trans studies or trans* studies, is an interdisciplinary field of academic research dedicated to the study of gender identity, gender expression, and gender embodiment, as well as to the study of various issues o ...
have investigated the attraction transgender individuals can feel for each other. The people who feel this attraction to transgender people name their attraction in different ways.
Cisgender The word ''cisgender'' (often shortened to ''cis''; sometimes ''cissexual'') describes a person whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth, i.e., someone who is not ''transgender''. The prefix '' cis-'' is Latin and ...
men attracted to transgender women primarily identify as
heterosexual Heterosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between people of the opposite sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions ...
and sometimes as
bisexual Bisexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior toward both males and females. It may also be defined as the attraction to more than one gender, to people of both the same and different gender, or the attraction t ...
, but rarely as
homosexual Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between people of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" exc ...
, and may also regard their attraction as its own sexual orientation. Transgender individuals often call their attraction to other transgender people '' T4T'' and may consider it both a sexual identity and a form of
political identity Political identity is a form of social identity marking membership of certain groups that share a common struggle for a certain form of power. This can include identification with a political party, but also positions on specific political issues ...
.


From cisgender people


Overall

A 2019 study asked 958 online participants, mostly young adults in Canada and the United States, which gender identities they would be interested in dating. In the sample, 3.3% of heterosexual men, 1.8% of heterosexual women, 11.5% of gay men, 28.8% of lesbian women, and 51.7% of bisexual,
queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are non-heterosexual or non- cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against LGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to ...
, and non-binary people (grouped together for analysis) reported they would be interested in dating a transgender person, and the remainder were not interested.


Trans women

In their sociological study, Martin S. Weinberg and
Colin J. Williams Colin John Anthony Williams (born 1941) is a sociologist and retired Professor of Sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. He served as Research Sociologist at the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research from 1968 to 1980.St ...
interviewed 26 ''men sexually interested in trans women'' (MSTW). 13 identified themselves as heterosexual, and 13 as "bisexual or probably bisexual". The authors opined "These labels only superficially describe their sexual interest," and noted that the expressed interest in trans women was sometimes used as a basis for denying a more stigmatized self-identity. As an example, they described a case who "said that he was 'bisexual' rather than 'gay' because he was able to think of the trans women as women". As part of HIV prevention research in 2004, Operario et al. interviewed 46 men in the San Francisco area who had sex with transgender women, but found "no consistent patterns between how men described their sexual orientation identity versus their sexual behavior and attraction to transgender women". Of the sample, 20 of them described themselves as being straight or heterosexual. Some men were definitive about this declaration, while others were hesitant and wondered if they should consider themselves bisexual. A Northwestern University study recruited 205 men interested in trans women. In that online survey, 52.9% identified as straight, 37.3% as bisexual, and 2.6% as gay, and 7% as something else. Also, 55.9% said their ideal partner would be a cisgender woman, and 34.7% said it would be a trans woman. The study authors concluded that "The interest in trans women appears to be a distinct sexual interest separate from heterosexual men's attraction to women for the majority of men, but there is a substantial minority who may experience it as their sexual orientation." A 2016 study that used the
penile plethysmograph Penile plethysmography (PPG) or phallometry is a measurement of blood flow to the penis, typically used as a proxy for measurement of sexual arousal. The most commonly reported methods of conducting penile plethysmography involves the measurement ...
demonstrated that the arousal patterns, genital and subjective, of cisgender men who report attraction to transgender women who have "female-typical physical characteristics (e.g. breasts) while retaining a penis" are similar to those of straight men and different from those of gay men. The study showed that these men are much more aroused to female than to male stimuli. They differed from both the groups of straight and gay men, however, in also displaying strong arousal to stimuli featuring trans women, to which they responded as much as to the cisgender female stimuli. Of the men attracted to trans women, 41.7% identified as bisexual, with the remainder identifying as straight. The bisexuals among them did not display significantly more arousal to male stimuli than their heterosexual counterparts, though they did report a higher number of male sex partners.


Trans men

In 2015, ''The Palgrave Handbook of the Psychology of Sexuality and Gender'' described a lack of research exploring others' attraction to trans men or nonbinary FTM persons. This is because much of sexual research often centers the "experiences and perspectives of heterosexual males," who generally have sex with trans women rather than trans men. The traditional understanding of lesbian does not convey attraction to trans men. A lesbian whose partner transitions to a trans man generally identifies as
queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are non-heterosexual or non- cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against LGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to ...
rather than lesbian. Similarly, a heterosexual man whose partner transitions to male would generally use the "queer" label as well. Erotic materials created for people attracted to trans men have become more visible, especially due to pornographic actor
Buck Angel Buck Angel (born June 5, 1962) is an American sex educator and former pornographic film actor and producer. He founded the media production company Buck Angel Entertainment. Angel is a transgender man. Angel served on the board of directors o ...
.Richardson, Niall (2010). ''Transgressive Bodies: Representations in Film and Popular Culture.'' Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Trans activist
Jamison Green Jamison "James" Green (born November 8, 1948) is a prominent transgender rights activist, author, and educator focused on policy work. Green began living openly as a trans man in the late 1980s and is considered one of the few publicly open tra ...
writes that cisgender gay men who are partnered with trans men "are often surprised to find that a penis is not what defines a man, that the lack of a penis does not mean a lack of masculinity, manliness, or male sexuality". Gay author
Andrew Sullivan Andrew Michael Sullivan (born 10 August 1963) is a British-American political commentator. Sullivan is a former editor of ''The New Republic'', and the author or editor of six books. He started a political blog, ''The Daily Dish'', in 2000, and ...
has criticized the idea that gay men should necessarily be attracted to trans men, arguing that
sexual orientation Sexual orientation is an enduring personal pattern of romantic attraction or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. Patterns ar ...
is based on biological sex, not gender identity.


Terminology

A variety of casual terms have developed to refer to people who are attracted to transgender people. These terms include ''trans-attracted'', ''trans-oriented'', '' transfan'', ''trans admirer,'' and ''trans catcher''. The terms ''
transromantic {{Short pages monitor