I washed my dishes in the morning and thought about yesterday. I walk up Bank street, and recalled an infatuation in November of 2023. A man took me on a date and treated me like a person. It was a new experience.

Things ended poorly. I went off the rails. It’s quite embarrassing. I made things worse by reaching out last summer, two years later. I had to twist my own knife I guess.

But what was that infatuation?

Analysis

I said “it’s quite embarrassing”, but it’s complicated. This infatuation was embarrassing in the same way childhood obsessions are embarrassing.

I don’t criticize my childhood fixations. I didn’t have the experience or mental capacity to critically engage with or rip apart things as I do now.

I’ve retained a fair amount of my interests from my youth, but I like their residual complexity. My attraction to men fits in the same bucket as these childhood interests.

Recently I’ve gained the experience and mental capacity to critically rip my attraction apart. I’ve started to assess whether I want to keep entertaining men.

Embodied ick

As a teenager, I would try to explain a social attraction to boys as opposed to a physical one. Physical attraction and testosterone puberty are almost synonymous in our cultural imagination. I would need a couple feminist frameworks at my disposal—which I certainly did not have during my youth.

I developed my first crush because he treated me kindly. It didn’t go beyond that. The idea of anything beyond holding hands rarely crossed my mind. The most intimate fantasy I had of him was a hug.

The dissonance between my external body and my internal state pushed me into isolation. I placed down fine lines between school and home. I played a character outside of my room, and unpacked myself inside my room. As a consequence, I avoided the reality of how physical boys (and men) tend to be in their concept of things.

Tumblr, anime, and video games contributed to the cocoon that blocked out the light of life. In its void, I painted my own image of reality. The idea that my body would be involved in that which I love never took root. My psychology unfurled without structure and left me detached from my body.

Yaoi: sedation and fantasy

I understood my attraction to boys as feminine early on. I saw my attraction reflected in yaoi.

Yaoi is a genre of anime and manga. “Yaoi” is a bit of a catch-all term, encompassing yaoi proper (much more explicit) and shounen ai (translated to “boys’ love”, essentially just romance). I use “yaoi”, but I almost exclusively mean shounen ai.

Yaoi is partially why I didn’t transition until I was 23.

Yaoi is written by women, for women. Yaoi can behave as an emotional exhaust for women who desire equality in relationships. Since the lovers are both men, the reader can ignore gendered dimensions and indulge in romantic fantasy.

Yaoi provided me with another veil to drape over my head as I huddled away in my cocoon. I sat still and quiet, waiting for my image of reality to start doing something. I developed with some atrophied limbs as a result.

Withering attraction

I have been “woman” for about three or four years. Men stare at me often. Sometimes they’ll hit on me. I have been sexually harassed on the streets and in the workplace. I had a boyfriend for two months. I was first truly intimate with a man in October of 2024.

I have had to chip away at my false image of reality. The light of life glows dimly—bright enough for me to analyze. I have had to ask myself uncomfortable questions.

For example:

Am I attracted to men?

I don’t experience sexual attraction. I don’t like when things touch my body—this includes my own hands, or when my clothing grazes my skin.

My attraction has a false structure. As I see the world around in the light of life, I understand how much I have lied to myself. Men are not what I’ve imagined them to be. My fantasy is just a fantasy.

A sedative loses its effect with exposure. Placebos lose their effect in the light of life. My fantasy has lost its density, and it doesn’t warp things as light passes through.

Imagination

I pulled yaoi into this discussion to launch a scathing critique at myself. I said “men are not what I’ve imagined them to be.” My theoretical frame for “imagination” comes from Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace, where she writes:

A beloved being who disappoints me. I wrote to him. It is impossible that he should not reply by saying what I have said to myself in his name.

Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this dept.

To accept the fact that they are other than the creatures of our imagination is to imitate the renunciation of God.

I am also other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.

I have objectified men by imposing imagination onto them. I have no excuse or explanation other than immaturity. I disrespected the men I’ve looped into my false sense of attraction and desire. Yaoi behaved as a rotten rationale to justify my behaviour. I convinced myself that something false had a root in reality. It did not.

I find my prior behaviour to be appalling and disgusting. I struggle to look at myself sometimes. I find solace, again, in my isolation, though now I stare and assess the light instead of draping myself beneath veils. There’s at least some peace and calm in consistency.

So no, I am not attracted to men. I am attracted to what I imagine them to be. That is unacceptable, and so I lock desire away, and focus on redirecting its energy elsewhere.

Am I attracted to anyone?

No. But the answer to this is a little more complex.

If the above seems damning, it’s because it is. But it also doesn’t capture the full picture of my attraction to people.

During my dreaming years, between 2017 and 2021, I developed intense feelings for my online friends. I would feel a sense of love towards them, though I had enough lucidity to recognize that whatever feeling I had wasn’t attraction, but another sort of love.

To use Greek terms, I don’t often experience eros, and when I do, I beat it down. I do, however, experience philia and storge.

I fall in love with the people that inspire me. The thought of them holds my spirit off the ground when I drag myself along asphalt. The depth of my love for the people who’ve helped me experience life—encouraged my passions, listened to me in earnest, supported me through my convoluted ways—threatens to drown me sometimes.

I am still alive because of my love for my family. When I was younger, I’d write about suicide and lament that my parents felt like a ball and chain holding me down to earth. That remains to be the case today.

I have a lot of love. My attraction to people anchors me to the earth—otherwise, I’d float away.

I am attracted to many people. That attraction just isn’t caught up in sexuality.

Emotional inertia

I don’t think many people use the ancient Greek interpretation of love. I only know some aspects from disparate sources

Philia and storge are not valid concepts outside of this markdown that I’m editing in vim. I am confronted with the social expectation of companionship—not helped by how I style myself both physically and socially. I think, to others, I appear to fall into a sort of emotional inertia as I crystallize my concept of love and read it against my psychology. I’m equal parts emotional and stoic, which must confuse people.

Men don’t make me feel anything anymore. In the chance that they do, I’m quick to correct. I’ve refactored how I process inputs, so to speak, and each emotion gets stamped with a fantasy property. If 1, I lower the emotion’s priority. I experience many emotions—many that I consider more seriously.

I still play with my fantasy. But I also still play Animal Crossing. I still play Pokemon. I still think about Madoka Magica. I just don’t take these things very seriously.

Similarly, I still play with the idea of men in my head. I just don’t take the thought very seriously.