One of the best moments of my life was when I suddenly found myself flat on my back, knees in the air, and I didn't want to struggle any more. I pushed aside all fears and succumbed to I'm-Not-Telling, who kept driving home the realization that I was hungry. Really ravenous.

Until then, I'd blamed my stone femme-ism on my transsexuality. I became a thorough top, often making up in stamina what I lacked in finesse. I took care of my own business on my own time. The trouble was that for a long while I barely knew what to do with myself -- nothing worked the way the manual said it should, and the manufacturer's help desk wouldn't take my calls. I figured I'd have to wait for my favorite rich uncle to keel over before I could get the surgery necessary for me to get properly fucked. (Surgery as foreplay -- I should have known from the get-go that I was sowing rubber on my plantation instead of vanilla.)

I suppose nearly everyone who doesn't start out bottoming goes through similar crises, but in my case, there doesn't seem to be much of a recorded precedent. Trans-related erotica -- until very recently -- has been chock full of repression and misogyny. And while this is beginning to change, the market is still dominated by material which seems to have little to offer me, or most other feminists. On top of all that, there's the Big Obstacle Downstairs, Yo. Too many folks have talked to me about what's in my Hanes Her Ways without buying me a drink, see, and while I'm the one who's asking for it by doing so many fucking workshops, I've really been wishing for some fucking workshops in which I could discover a decent "workaround solution," as we'd say back in the dotcom days. I wanted a workshop which could convince everyone that it doesn't matter what folks say about my crotch, 'taint necessarily so.

My friend Hanne is a well known sex-positive author. One of her articles contains a celebrant scene of reciprocation, between partners heading south.. Hanne wrote: “I love getting my cock sucked as much as I love sucking cock, (and) I love fucking my partners regardless of their sex or gender.” This passage turned up on one of Hanne's feminist email discussion groups. One person posted her speculation (sic), based on this cocksucking scene, that Hanne had to be a bisexual MTF transwoman, and that she wasn’t sure how she’d feel if she’d heard someone speaking this truth out loud at a feminist conference, regardless of what her “natural” gender is. Hanne’s credibility as a woman and as a feminist had become suspect.

Hanne is many things, but she’s not a transwoman. Her opinions are so valid that they're true, and she's definitely a feminist. I've seen her library as well as her tea collection. She’s earned the right to have her whatever sucked by anyone she chooses, and to call it what she pleases; and anyway, hasn’t feminism long been about finding ways for women to empower themselves? I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but when I step up to the microphone, I tend to feel pretty empowered; and I think this should be a universal truth, even though it is not now. Foucault be damned.

Hanne responded, defending her right to have her girl cock sucked by her partner as well as the right of transwomen to inhabit feminist space. The respondent graciously accepted the defense, admitting the tone of Hanne's email suggested that a real live woman was behind the words. While we're basking in the glow of this happy ending, I'm left to wonder, what about that partner of the piece, the one that would have had to figure out how to suck a girls' cock? What about the fact that the unnamed, ungendered partner also had a cock -- girl or boy or otherwise -- which got to go first? Why exactly is there so much contempt and disregard for the folks who are performing some of the most skilled and necessary labor in the world?

I’m suddenly reminded of a host of stories. The one where my then-boyfriend is talking with his gay dad. Dad is castigating someone for using the word "sucks." Dad says,"You know who is insulted when you say something sucks? Gay men." Boyfriend says, "You know who else has to do the sucking? Women." See how easily these things get overlooked? A feminist’s work is never done.

And the one where this other friend began saying that things that positively pleased him “sucked,” while very pleasing things "sucked him." I won’t go so far as to say that this individual was making this tiny linguistic revolution with anything resembling a feminist intent, but it was novel in that it actually seemed to confer a little respect for those of us who do tongue strengthening exercises to help pass the time in our office cubicles.

And the one where we’re in college still and Consolidated puts out a song with the Yeastie Girls called “You Suck” which pokes fun at how straight boys have this “thing” about going down on a girl. All us feministas got our tee-hees out at the time since the song was so funny and so true, but it wasn’t one of those things that was gonna, you know, change anything. We were all dykes and stuff. We didn’t have to worry about the repression of straight boys. Right?

Well, maybe. I mean, being that we all got raised up under a heterosexist patriarchal system, and that some of us (I’m not naming names) were expected to actually turn into straight boys, certainly some of that repression got absorbed -- which might account for part of my own early frustration, my compulsion to being stone and on top.

Back before I came out, when my little transsexual secret heart’s desire was mine and mine alone, I really believed that when the truth came out, finally, the bottom would drop out; the earth would split right open and swallow me whole.

It took a while – years – but it finally happened. It knocked my feet right out from under me, and something tells me that I’m going to stay down here a while. You could come on down, but you better be careful not to boss me around – too much.

Rahne Alexander is a Strawberry Tart with a heart of bitter, dark chocolate and a website of pure gold.