I expressed to my friend that I had had enough of this kind of media treatment. Whether it was the pathetic creatures conjured up by the writers of Ally McBeal or the cartoon freaks of Ace Ventura and Scary Movie, I was done with seeing trannies reviled. I asked him not to see it, but my friend told me he'd probably go see the film anyway, and that he'd probably enjoy it in spite of himself. Call me petty, I silently sneered, just don't call me the next time you need to go the emergency room.

Given this sort of media attention, nothing has been more consistently shocking to me than when someone expresses their attraction to me, finds out that I'm a tranny, and then doesn't throw up. I think a lot of trannies can relate to this feeling.

One evening, this fabulous dyke kissed me. I had not had the opportunity to razor away the few fuzzies which had appeared on my chin that day. Suddenly, I teetered on the brink of emotional and spiritual disaster, and as my gorge rose to meet my shame and embarassment, she said, "I think a little facial hair on a woman is kind of sexy." Gadzooks! My feelings of inadequacy scurried like cockroaches returning home to the dark crevices of my heart. And then she kissed me again.

If you're taking notes at home, here's a handy tip for dating a tranny: if caught in an awkward genderfuck moment, acknowledge the moment, and let your tranny know that you're not going to trip about it. And then don't trip about it. Forget everything you've seen on tv. If you need to, chant my new motto: "Don't trip, don't hate, take a tranny on a date." Kiss your tranny again. Meticulous research has shown that we like being kissed as much as normal people do.

Overcoming all this transphobia - internal as well as external - is going to be a long haul, and we're going to need all the support we can get, especially in one particular arena: erotica. Porn, if you must.

I'm a feminist who experiences dissent with many modes of capitalist production. This means, in part, that I am very concerned about how persons are exploited, especially those of us who are women and those of us who are in sex work. Porn can be exploitative, but it is rarely simply so.

I also bear a firm belief in the importance of finding oneself through erotic experience, and that we can learn a whole lot from sharing our fantasies and experiences. Many cultures have done a marvelous job of suppressing erotica, and there are certainly segments of Western culture which have found it easier to overcome this suppression. Regardless, there is a near-revolution any time one of those segments chooses to step outside the lines of, shall we say, social decorum. The feminist and gay movements of last century helped paved the way for queer and women-centered erotica, for instance. It's time for trannies to break our chains and start using them to our advantage.

Fortunately for all of us, my new pal Hanne Blank recently co-edited an anthology called Best Transgender Erotica (Circlet Press, 2002). (Order your copy from your local independent feminist queer bookseller today!!!) The introduction claims the submissions for the book included plenty of really good, hot stories involving FTM folks, but there existed "a desperate dearth of stories involving male-to-female transsexuals in actual sexual relationships…few authors seemed willing to delve into what it was like to function in a non-objectified way as an out-and-proud transwoman." (p. 9).

Best Transgender Erotica really does live up to its name, but the introduction is spot-on - comparatively, the book does not feature as many MTFs as it does FTMs. This turnabout is kind of nice, in a way - FTMs have played second fiddle within trans communities for years. But if MTFs have all the tranny resources, how come we don't have any decent erotica?

Type the words "transgender" and "erotica" into any web search engine, and you'll get pages of "shemale" pictorials. If you're really lucky, you might stumble on a narrative porn site which is ostensibly about transwomen - but is actually about a bunch of dudes being force-fed femininity. Borrrrrrrrr-ing. This material hardly represents my experience; in fact, I spent most of my formative years forced away from femininity. I'll take a deeper look into this material in a future column, but believe me, the erotica which is supposed to be about transwomen sucks. And not in a good way.

It's already bad enough that popular films and other media present us with a hyperbolic, inauthentic picture of what it means to be a woman; when the lens of the camera widens to accommodate transwomen, the landscape starts to look really bleak. It's enough to make me want to be a nun, and not just for a play party.

But while we wait for the Church to induct trannygirl nuns, I think it's imperative that the feminist, sex-positive transwomen among us (wherever we are) get busy - in every sense of the idiom. Write about it. Publish it. Make movies about it. We've got nothing to lose but our virginity.