Transgender trailblazer, Laverne Cox, made some very questionable comments about dating a blue-eyed, white, conservative MAGA-voting NYPD officer and… I have thoughts

This video is, rightfully, causing a lot of anger around various corners of the Internet, with many people asking how exactly a Black transgender woman, and an activist at that, ends up in a relationship with a MAGA conservative who is quite plainly perhaps her most significant and most dangerous foe. However, I think much of the shock around Laverne Cox’s dating history comes from people distinctly separating trans women’s dating patterns from cis women’s. If many of the people having these conversations understood that straight trans women can and often do fall for the same traps as cis straight women, I think this conversation would start making a bit more sense.

One of the significant things that complicates conversations about transgender dating and even life is that there are a lot of people who do not understand that the visible transgender people are the transgender people who choose to be seen. For most of my life as a trans woman, I’ve understood the danger of visibility. I’ve understood that being known as a trans woman comes with the pressure to be a good representative, and I’ve also understood that being known means that I may have less success in relationships. A lot of men don’t want anyone to know that they’re dating a transgender woman. I’ve known many trans women who had relationships with men that relied on how well they could conceal their gender. Many of my relationships in the early years were like that. For some people, this sounds like a prison, but for others, it may be precisely what they want, or rather, what they feel they can get.

Contrary to popular belief, not all trans women identify with queer sensibilities and desire relationships where their transness is widely celebrated, known, and focused on. There’s an entire layer of transgender women who choose to simply and quietly live their lives, allowing society to accept them simply as women without any prefixes. Typically, but not always, those women are invested in maintaining very rigid gender roles, and that’s where their compatibility with cis heterosexual conservative men begins.

I’ve spent most of my life living in conservative, predominantly white communities. For the longest time, I would say that I’d only ever dated conservative men, but this was never something I intentionally sought out. I was raised very religious and sheltered, and for obvious reasons, this has meant that I’ve frequently been the archetype of woman some of these men feel they should pursue. So I’ve found myself in more than just a few scenarios with them. I’d say I didn’t have much experience with left-leaning men until I moved to the city. Most of the conservative men I’ve dated would say that they “weren’t political.” It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize what that means. For a while, I thought it meant they kept their heads down and worked without paying much attention, and thus lacked education on the issues. I hadn’t recognized that many men are aware of the fact that the more liberal women, whom they tend to prefer over conservative women, do not want to date conservative men, so often they will hide or deny their politics, essentially until you’re in love with them.

Make no mistake, I don’t think anyone who’s marginalized right now should be dating a MAGA voter. I believe that if you love yourself, you will liberate yourself from it as an expression of respect for yourself. I also think it’s telling that she specifically dated a police officer from New York. 40% of law enforcement officers report themselves that they have been involved in domestic violence. I think it is unwise to date a cop, and fawning over a white man in his twenties with blue eyes is cringeworthy. That said, she likely dated him… because he showed up. And as many people seem to be baffled by conservative men who date trans women, I wanted to speak openly about my experiences with them as someone who’d never do it again.

In conversations about transgender women’s dating prospects, trans women are often encouraged to accept society’s premise about how repulsive their bodies are to people who’d want to be with them. Cissexism is the idea that cis bodies are superior to bodies that are transgender. The idea that a cis woman’s body is more valuable than mine, for example. It’s why we are often pressured to be gracious when we are being rejected because some people may simply prefer “natural” cis bodies. A few weeks ago we were having conversations about TS Madison and her experience dating straight men. Many people were eager to bust into the conversation to tell TS Madison, who dates transgender women despite them being neither transgender nor experienced with dating them. Society seems convinced that the ideal and common partner for a transgender woman would be a bisexual man with liberal politics, but the reality is quite different.

I have long accepted that society will never quite understand this, but straight men dominate my dating pool. At 34 years old, I believe I can identify who is and isn’t attracted to me and who tends to pursue me and who doesn’t. My experience with bisexual men is often that they see me as “the best of both worlds”. They frequently view my body as a collection of parts that can satisfy them instead of seeing me as an entire human being with my motivations and desires. The last bisexual man I attempted to connect with was very clear about what he wanted. He wanted children, so he wanted to marry a cis woman. Still, he enjoyed trans women’s bodies sexually, so he wanted to continue having sex with them, even as he built a family with a cis woman. I like bisexual men. I’ve found they are often better lovers and are more likely to have examined toxic masculinity. However, they do still frequently choose to pursue cis women when seeking long-term relationships. I know a lot of bisexual men who like trans women, and I’ve never seen them date anyone other than a cis woman long-term. It’s hard to ignore that in the face of how straight men often pursue trans women.

What a lot of people don’t often understand is that, while it’s true that many, hell, even most heterosexual men reject transgender women, the ones who don’t are often more invested in placing you into a box and treating you how they’d treat a cis woman. Straight men are more likely to see trans women as just women, not the best of a man and a woman. This is a significant, distinctive difference because it means that when trans women date bi men, they’re often dating men who are excited about them being transgender. In contrast, when they date straight men, they’re often dating men who are excited they’re dating a woman. From the vantage point of a heterosexual trans woman, what this means is that aside from all of the societal benefits that come with dating a heterosexual man, she’s also dating a man who shares her view of gender. My consistent experience with bisexual men is that if they know that I am transgender, they tend to place me into a “for sexual use only” category. In contrast, straight men often want to explore the connection beyond that. Through my romantic life, as I’ve raised my standards to only date men who are confident about their interest in me and being seen with me, I’ve found that straight conservative men are, as I’ve said, overrepresented in my dating pool, and I feel like society is shocked by that, but it’s a canon event for most trans women I know who only date men.

Trans women will often experience men who are interested in them but do not want to date them, respect them, or treat them particularly well. Contrary to popular belief, Black transgender women such as Cox aren’t typically murdered by white, conservative MAGA dudes. They’re usually murdered by Black men who, quite likely, have strong disagreements with white MAGA dudes. Society will have you believe that trans women are so undesirable and repulsive that no man would ever be consensually attracted to them, but if you look into these incidents of violence, you’ll find that more than just a few of them are the result of a man not being able to handle the world knowing that they were with a transgender woman. When we discuss these murders, we are encouraged to, again, accept the premise of how repulsive and unappealing we are. People eagerly imagine that trans women go out of their way to trick and fool men into their bedrooms, not understanding that these men make their way there themselves. But this premise that everyone grants, allows a lot of people to truly not understand just how commonplace it is for conservative men to pursue transgender women.

The last Republican I dated didn’t come into our relationship wearing a red hat. He came in wearing a suit, a well-manicured one at that. He was kind, he was respectful, he was polite, and he pretty immediately wanted to pursue a relationship with me. We went on really nice dates; I met his friends and some of his family. When I was dealing with a stalker, he decided to come over with the tools he needed to protect me. He was masculine, protective, and kindhearted. I was falling for him, and just around that time, after months and months of us dating, he revealed to me that he was a Republican. This shocked me… nothing he did was very Republican to me. Especially during his first administration, I’d built up this narrative about Trump voters as not just repulsed by me, but activel antagonistic towards me. But he wasn’t. I couldn’t really understand how the idea of a Trump voter in my mind didn’t register with what I had experienced from him. He didn’t treat me like he was repulsed by me or wanted to harm me. Frankly, he treated me much better than the DSA dudes I was attempting to date at the time. When I asked him about his politics, he said that he was “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” and mostly voted for Trump because he was rich. This baffled me because I thought I wouldn’t experience this again after moving to Los Angeles.

Something that I’ve had a hard time adjusting to in the city is the way that many men treat women. In a conservative community, I often felt not only safe but also wanted, desired, and protected. Because men in the OC subscribed to more traditional gender roles, they were eager to ensure that I always felt comfortable, was safe, and was taken care of. In the communities I’ve lived in, an unaccompanied woman is suspicious. If I was alone for a bit, it wasn’t long until I was being chaperoned by some man who was essentially attempting to take what he imagined to be an opening. Where I’ve lived, young women are supposed to be with men. Of course, this is patriarchy. It’s not a good thing, but it is something I’ve unfortunately become very used to. Living in a conservative community as a more sheltered person, these are norms you don’t exactly question if your referenc point is quite shallow. When you do not have a wider imagination of possibility, it’s hard to imagine a different experience.

For better or worse, I’m used to men wanting to be gentlemanly and protective, and that’s typically who I find myself attracted to. What I noticed immediately when I got to the city is that I was expected to carry myself in a way that I had sadly internalized as “masculine.” Men expected me to pay the bill; they expected me to find my own way to the date. They expect me to be ok with casual sexual relationships, and that was very odd for me to experience after living so long in communities where it often felt like men were looking for wives. Relationships formed faster outside of the city. People were more eager to bind themselves to a person than they are out here. In the city, I find that men only end up dating women long-term when they offer them social capital. If you’re from a conservative community and you’re used to conservative men, all of these things really stand out to you.

I understand why so many people are confused by the idea of a trans woman dating a cis man with conservative politics. Traversing gender in a patriarchal society is indeed quite radical. However, what a lot of people miss is that the sensibility in a lot of conservative communities is one where assimilation is celebrated. What straight trans women and cishet conservative men have in common is an adherence to rigid gender roles. Trans women often internalize their treatment as misgendering. They often imagine, quite naively, that men treat them differently than they do cis women because they are transgender. To some degree it’s true that cis men will often treat trans women differently from cis women, but the older I’ve gotten and the closer I’ve become to women (after many years as a pick me who “didn’t have women friends”), the more I realize that these men treat us all the same, they just milk some of us for social capital. Men who mistreat cis women also mistreat trans women. Men who abuse trans women also abuse cis women.

In my experience with conservative men, it’s all roses and chocolates at first, then it slowly becomes needling about how you don’t deserve roses and you should put the chocolate down so you don’t gain more weight. Conservative men who date trans women like Laverne Cox often view them as the exception. When I was still dating these men, they’d tell me that one of the only reasons they were dating me was because I was “passable” and because I was feminine. Keep in mind, most of you have only known the very liberated version of me. I used to idolize the idea of playing a traditional role in a relationship because that’s what I saw growing up. As I burried my mother and went through her things, it became very clear to me how similar we were, and that my femininity was an extension of hers. My mother idolized being a mother over almost anything else and I think for a while, that’s what I also wanted. Some trappings of traditionalism. Safety within the suburbs bound to a man who provided for me. It’s funny to think of this now because I’m quite different. Many of the men who met me in my youth met a very compliant, agreeable version of me that was desperate for validation. Conservative men will love you as long as you’re compliant. For trans women who assimilate their genders in a very binary way, it’s easy to imagine how they’d align quite well with a straight cishet man who expects gender assimilation from his partner.

As you get closer to these men, you also realize that their identity is a symptom of them simply being followers. His suits are crisp, but he’s been wearing them since his father told him to do so as a child. These men typically have very underdeveloped politics but a central point of patriarchy and misogyny. They put on a good show, and while they may have worked through some of their ideas about trans women, they’ve thought of very little else. Their politics are about them getting what’s theirs and hoarding power they believe reflects their greatness. They follow the Trumps of the world because they think they’ll make more money under them. They date a very narrow type of woman, and when they date trans women, they are always very narrow in their interest and the standards. Sure, some of these men may explore their sexuality with the accessible crossdressers near them, but if they were ever seriously to date a transgender woman, she’d have to pass. She’d have to be beautiful. She’d have to be desirable to other men. Conservative men reward compliant women who put their needs second to those of a man. They capitalize on pick-me sentiments, and that’s the common trap many transgender women fall into. When you’re used to people either fetishizing you or being hesitant to pursue you, it can be incredibly refreshing to meet a man who is direct and sure about their attraction to you. Many transgender women will ultimately end up in a situation where they view men making an exception for them as desirable, when the alternative is often being limited to just a tool for sexual exploration. It can be a very tempting scenario if you’re still granting society’s premise that you are repulsive, no one wants you, and you should be understanding of people’s exclusion of you from their dating pool.

As I gained a lot of my voice with age, I found that these men became less interested in me. They tend to see me as arrogant and self-involved because I like myself and no longer shrink myself. Conservative men still pursue me quite a bit, but my politics always turn them off. I had to learn the hard way that I must be aligned with my partner politically.

When I first moved to LA, I dated a man who was an Elon Musk fanboy. Red flag, but I continued. This was before he did his little Nazi salute, but he was still already being open about how much of a shithead he was, especially about trans folks. This guy was a liberal Jewish dude who opposed Trump but supported Musk’s innovations. He was inspired by them. He’d whiz me around in his Tesla like a teenage boy showing off. I was the first Black trans woman he ever dated long-term. Much of our relationship was predicated on how I was so unlike most of the women he’d date. Red flag, but I continued. When Trump started becoming scary in his first administration, he began to feel like this was all getting a bit too familiar, and he decided to pack up and leave the country to avoid genocide…and of course, he made those plans without me.

I’d spent years with this man, often debating political topics and trying to get him to understand how much of a shithead Elon Musk was. He didn’t really handle quarantine well, and he dipped as soon as he could. That was a turning point for me. I realized that at this point in my life, and this point in the country, the men who do not have politics that align with me will indeed get me, if not killed, left unprotected. I gave him grace. I gave him patience. I held his hand as he struggled to accept my body, my race, and my size. I had shared my body with this man, who was unwilling to use the power he had to protect it. Frankly, I think he probably made the right choice in getting out when he did, but it was interesting that I wasn’t part of the planning. For as much as I stuck my neck out for him, I’d expect it, but the ultimate conclusion of his politics is that I was not valued enough to protect. That was such a clear statement. He was a liberal Jewish dude who was far from MAGA. Still, his desertion of me made me realize that I needed a man who could punch Nazis, not men who are going to make excuses for them like a liberal or be indifferent to what they’re doing like so many MAGA with dissonance around what’s happening, even as they build internment camps.

I do think it says something about you if you can very comfortably date a MAGA conservative man. I think people are right to criticize Laverne Cox for her dating history and see it as perhaps a sign of low self-esteem. I think when you love yourself, you’ll want to be with men who are willing to defend your body beyond the bedroom. Sleeping with someone who is voting for someone who wants to take away your rights is not a flex. That said, I choose to meet people in this position with grace because they are doing exactly what our society is pressuring them to do. In a patriarchal society where gender is supposed to be binary and Black women are masculinized, a traditionally masculine white man who votes against your rights but makes an exception for you can feel quite validating when you’re starved. But that source of validation is polluted with patriarchy, which will naturally poison you and result in your dehumanization. That said, I think it’s tough to be attracted to men as a woman and not date at least one man who has bad politics.

In this discourse, I decided to poll my audience and ask, of the people who date women who are being critical of Laverne Cox right now, how many of them have ever dated a Black trans woman, and would they if they could? The overall answer I got from people with overtly left-leaning politics was no. Many of them said that they would if they could. Plenty of them said that they were in monogamous relationships, so they couldn’t. I asked that question because trans women are frequently placed into a position where they are being criticized at all angles, every step of the way:

• If we acknowledge ourselves as desirable, we have autogynephilia.

• If we state that men find us desirable, we’re delusional.

• When we narrate our experiences with straight men, people insist that we are delusional; those men aren’t straight.

• Then when we talk about being harmed by straight men, we’re told we should have expected to be mistreated by them—they’re straight, and we should be focusing on bisexual men.

• If we say that bisexual men sexualize us, we’re biphobic.

• When they mistreat us and murder us, we tricked them. Men are right to have genitalia preferences.

• If we acknowledge how we are dehumanized because of cissexism, we are told that we need to accept the reality that no one finds us attractive.

• When we DO narrate the reality that, quite often, the men who accept us, are attracted to us, desire long-term relationships with us, and don’t exclusively sexualize us, are frequently straight conservative men, we are told to stop chasing after Nazis, as if most of these men wear their politics on their sleeves instead of hiding it the way we know conservative men have been known to do.

There is so much projection around the imagined realities of trans women who exclusively love men, and it makes these conversations quite challenging to have. I certainly understand why so many people are repulsed by the idea of fawning over a white man with blue eyes, a man likely working directly with ICE to remove brown people from the streets and put them into camps. It is indeed repugnant, and I’m certainly not going to blame anyone for being turned off by it. However, what I see in this discourse is how many people were simply waiting for the chance to take a shot at Laverne Cox, which feels like an exact symptom of the very thing that places her in a position where she welcomes a man like this with open arms. To my understanding, she was in this relationship for 4 years, and it ended ultimately because of their political differences. Our society shames minorities for sticking up for themselves. It rewards catering to white supremacy, and many women have internalized lowering their values and committing to a man. Being so immensely dehumanized often means that you are isolated. Being isolated usually leaves you starved for positive reinforcement. To me it isn’t hard to understand how these things all conclude with many trans women choosing to be with conservative men who affirm them.

Because these conservative men rarely lead with their politics, people in Cox’s position often end up weighing the pros and cons. It feels like a big thing that he shows up for you and affirms you, and a small thing that he marks red on his ballots every once in a while. When you have a scarcity mindset around men, you’re more likely to accept the premise that a man’s politics aren’t a big deal, but frankly, they are. A man’s politics are everything. I suffered greatly in the relationships I was in with more conservative men. I spent years of my life not asking myself what I wanted or who I was, but wondering who I needed to be to satisfy whichever man I was with. I changed myself to meet their expectations and made a point of pandering to them, all because they treated me slightly better than the last guy. It’s easy to fall for that when you have very little sense of what could be. I accepted less because I lacked the imagination. People think that because Laverne is older, she’s no longer dealing with these feelings of fear around being alone and being unloved. People often assume that because someone is good at projecting themselves, they are also good at protecting themselves, but it can take a lifetime to truly understand what protecting oneself means.

The truth is that often we are drawn to things that are objectively bad for us because of how good they make us feel. You can tell from how Cox describes this man that, aside from his politics, he made her feel good… and that’s sad. What I want trans women in their position to understand is that there are indeed men out there who have politics that are deeply invested in your protection and survival, who are also classically masculine and unashamed of their attraction to you. I’ve managed to find four of those men. The quality they all share is a profound amount of empathy for others and a complete disconnection from the very disempowered desire to act macho. They don’t get their masculinity from how small I make myself or how beautiful I am to other people. They’ve defined it for themselves. They don’t need women to be weak to feel strong. They don’t need a racial hierarchy to feel powerful. They measure themselves by their good deeds to others. Their masculinity is in their usefulness to those who need help. Empathy is a central part of who they are. Those men exist, and you will struggle to find them when you waste your time trying to convince a MAGA that you’re worthy. Love yourself enough to see good politics as a basic requirement, and continue to not share your body privately with men who wouldn’t claim it publicly.