FTM Porn Star Buck Angel Speaks @Yale

The event, “an interdisciplinary sex education program designed to pique students’ interest through creative, interactive, and exciting programming,” originally started as a Jewish event Kosher Sex Week, which soon attracted the attention of other student groups who wanted to join. Thank goodness for the Ivy League—while stuffy and pompous at times, the leading American schools are incredibly liberal places, offering legitimacy to a dialogue that is not always taken seriously.

The last letter in our PC-identified acronym, transsexuals have often been grouped in with lesbian, gays and bisexuals as a matter of convenience: general logic would place all non-heteronormative folks into one category. While drawing this line is helpful, it doesn’t help us understand transsexualism any better, because while being gay is a sexual identity, being trans is about gender.

In some ways, FTMs are the “final frontier” in terms of gender identity that the American public doesn’t really understand (not to say, of course, that once we get over it there will be something new and confusing that pops up), but their presence is becoming greater and greater. People like Buck Angel are both pioneers and risk-takers because he invites the world in to see him as he truly is: a man with a working vagina.

Like any underground culture of the 21st century, FTMs benefit from the internet in terms of community building and trading information and opinions. For example, some hold the view that FTMs are the victims of misogyny because the the surgeries developed to create functioning penises are much less advanced than what MTF (male to female) transsexuals have available—that even if it’s becoming a woman, a man has more options than a woman. Another belief that circulates throughout the community is that “the ‘mones make you gay,” meaning that the hormones FTM’s take sometimes  release an attraction to men that didn’t exist previously, whereas before they were attracted only to women.

Buck Angel is anything but a woman—he’s a cigar-smoking daddy who is more butch than most men I know, period. His videos allow us to understand what it means to have sex as an FTM, and how diverse, psychologically, people are. Perhaps in the biggest mindfuck of all for America, Buck appeared in Allanah Starr’s Big Boob Adventure, where he has vaginal sex with porn star Allanah Starr, an MTF transsexual.

Everyone should watch at least some clips of these at some point in their lives. Talk about questioning what “normative” sex really means! The irony of our conservative right’s total ignorance of human gender and sexuality is hilarious. Because their refusal to recognize the fluidity of either of these characteristics, a couple with two vaginas—or two peninses—can marry, as long as one of them identifies as an opposite gender as the other. How ridiculous is that? And how pointless does the same-sex marriage debate sound after that. If only one of our politicians would grow some balls (just a metaphor!) and say that out loud.

But more important, as gay men we have to check our own conservatism. And believe me, honey, we have plenty. Gay boys can be mean-ass bitches, so when an FTM is looking to date another guy, the last thing we should do is be grossed out by the idea. Indeed, some people love the idea—and nowadays, it’s not unlikely to run across a couple profiles of FTM guys in dating websites that present themselves very honestly.

Dr. Perry Halkitis, a Professor of Applied Psychology & Public Health at NYU who specializes in AIDS studies and the behavior of gay men, is also involved with a committee on gay, lesbian, and transsexual concerns in the American Psychological Association. He feels that our society’s understanding of transsexuals is only just beginning to form and that we have a lot to learn.

“We added transgendered to the name of the APA committee—now why isn’t transgender psychology a whole separate area?” he said in a recent phone interview.

“Because you’re conflating the two things, yeah I guess sexual orientation and gender identity are related sometimes, but they are separate constructs.” He added,  “I don’t even begin to believe that I know anything about transgender folks. I don’t!”