Decolonizing Love is a leftist platform dedicated to educating the poly-curious about non monogamy from a decolonized lens. Nick and Millie have been in a happily polyamorous relationship for over 14 years. Millie is a non-binary she/they Kenyan immigrant who’s been non monogamous their entire lives, while Nick’s non monogamy started once they began dating. Though they’re based in Toronto, Canada, their content has been celebrated world wide as it is one of the more accessible platforms dedicated to attempting to break down some of the commonly embraced aspects of colonization that appear within non-monogamous relationships; namely, hierarchy. As their platform is largely about criticizing the concept of hierarchy within non-monogamous relationships, it’s often been used as a resource for couples transitioning from monogamy to polyamory. Nick and Millie offer their followers peer support, while also selling a relationship contract for $149 that has apparently appeared in Business Insider. Make no mistake, Decolonizing Love is a business.

Recently, they’ve come under fire for some of their positions, namely Millie’s statements about transgender women and some of their comments about BDSM practitioners. As you can image, as a leftist, kinky, black transgender woman, I have a lot to say about these comments and you can watch my hour long video essay that goes over most of what I have to say on my Youtube Channel. However, in this post I wanted to focus on Millie’s comments about transgender women and expand on some of my thoughts about how these comments very naturally result in what I know is a contradiction to their stated politics of “decolonization”, and stance against hierarchical polyamory.

Before launching into my entire thoughts about this; a disclaimer. I have not, nor have I ever been invested in “cancelling” anyone. Even some of the people I’ve written about on this blog are people that I, at the end of the day, believe are capable of change. I never want to believe that people are completely immovable, which is why I make the work I do. In general, my problem with the way Decolonizing Love discusses many things is their very black and white way of viewing certain things. They often leave no room for nuance or practicality. Their content is primarily fixated around shame and greatly relies on their audience being ignorant, but drawn to do better.

Clearly, their audience grants Millie a lot of credit because of her African background and often times when criticized, Millie will say that it’s an attempt to attack her and subvert her points, specifically because of this background. I want to make it clear that I am especially not invested in tearing down black creators and those who I know are ultimately under a harsher lens of scrutiny because of misogyny.

Millie has… half heartedly apologized for what I’m going to be discussing in this post, but I’m writing it because this is an aspect of discussions around non-monogamy and hierarchy that I often feel is not just dismissed, but actively suppressed, largely because I feel that people do not want to face the harsh reality of the disconnect between their politics and their actions. Hierarchy is something I feel quite sharply BECAUSE I am a trans woman.

So what exactly did they say?

Underneath an Instagram post, Millie, who makes most of the posts for Decolonizing Love, discusses her preference for pre-op transgender women. She says she prefers them over cis women. Her reasons? Trans women with penises could potentially fulfill one of her sexual desires: being fucked by a woman with a functional and responsive penis.

This comment was made very publicly and that’s worth noting because for quite some time now, we’ve adjusted to a social norm where these conversations about cis bodies are fairly taboo. One time I was in a club with my partner Alexander, who is a tall white man. Another white man who that had been flirting with me for months saw us together and decided to launch into this very uncomfortable rant about how Alexander would absolutely love Asia. He’d recently traveled to Japan and found that Japanese women absolutely loved him! Why? According to him, Japanese women have tight, small vaginas that are particularly satisfying to, presumably, larger white penises. He said this to us in public and, yes, it was quite uncomfortable because it was such a disgusting, objectifying, and racist thing to say, but he said it very comfortably. Everyone around him was mortified.

Despite the right’s attempt to normalize “locker room talk”, we still tend to acknowledge that it’s very disrespectful to publicly discuss a women’s genitalia in a degrading way. Yet transgender bodies are often viewed as public domain. So when our bodies are described, they’re spectacles first that are either repulsive or seductive; either way they exist to be consumed. Being a transgender person often means accepting that most people will only ever humanize you if you’re able to closely mimic the gender you identify as, that you weren’t designated. Outside of that, you often feel like you must instead convince the world of your humanity, as to avoid objectification or stigmatism. You’d think a great ally to the trans community who has a decolonized perspective would be aware of the toll objectification has on transgender women especially. Millie speaks about transgender women’s genitalia as if she’s describing her favorite sex toy. And frankly, that’s how many poly folks view trans women: as toys to be taken out of the nightstand only when the fancy hits and no one else is there.

I’ve met so many people who “prefer” trans women and they’re almost never in long term romantic relationships with them.

When I first came into the poly world, I went to a little gathering that happens at a bar in the straight part of West Hollywood, the Sunset Strip. I was fresh meat, just getting out of my six-year, vanilla, more traditional relationship and I was eager to finally explore polyamory with the right people. I pretty immediately got the attention of a shaggy haired dude who I’d later discover had some what of a cult-of personality in the LA poly scene. This was my first time meeting him though and I was immediately taken by his seemingly aggressive statements about feminism and constant reference to his sexuality being less than straight. At the time, I’d spent a good years or so kissing conservative frogs in Orange County and here he was; one of them lefty liberal type feminist dudes from LA. Surely he’d be a better choice.

Because of his constant reference to his bisexuality, I felt like I didn’t need to rush to tell him that I was a transgender woman. At this time in my life, I had just started letting go of being stealth and I wasn’t quite comfortable being super open about being transgender. I figured that since he was bisexual, it wouldn’t be a huge deal. So before our first date, I let him know and I sensed a bit of hesitation. He explained to me that he’d never been with a trans woman before but he thought I was cute so let’s see where it goes.

This particular guy would have (and I’d bet does) absolutely loved Decolonizing Love’s Facebook content. He was an obnoxious Facebook male feminist who made post after post about political issues that would, of course, make him seem like a good dude. His wife was very openly bisexual and he would spend a lot of time making posts about desiring men, despite never actually having any romantic experience with men. He’d make a lot of comments about how certain popular male figures were attractive, but when I observed him, The poly community is, of course, full of an array of people of various sexualities, but I never really saw him give attention to anyone other than women and non transitioned non-binary people who were designated female at birth.

We dated for a few months, but he would often pull away when I attempted to initiate intimacy. It was hard for me to register this as he’d speak openly about his drive and desire and frequently made dates with new women, whom he would have some degree of intimacy with. We’d go out together or be at the same event at the same time and he’d make a point of taking a picture of us and putting it on Facebook, but privately, he avoided my touch.

Eventually, I felt like I was chasing him, which is a bit embarrassing to admit. He never seemed available for me, but was for his other partners. I obviously knew the reason why he went from overeager to performatively doing the bare minimum. While he never said this to me, I know that he was uncomfortable with my transgender body. For me, one of the main downsides of passing is that I’ve often experienced people making the assumption that I was female at birth, and then had to experience the disappointment when I share that I am not. And yes, often times, this disappointment has been from people who claim bi or pansexuality.

Being a transgender woman often means being an entity that inherently challenges a lot of the people you interact with. You may not even be trying to do so, but, frankly, people are so deeply propagandized that they engage in a lot of things without realizing that they are. In a way, I called his bluff. He had been presenting himself as a woke, inclusive, experienced guy, but in reality, he was someone that still had preferences and measured people’s value based on those preferences.

I don’t think there’s a way to ever state a preference without it sounding problematic. Frankly, I think if Millie is interested in well endowed, trans girl tops with functional pensies and doll-like bodies, that is her right. What I take issue with is the way certain people like to pretend they aren’t capable of engaging in behavior that reflects bias. My experience is that most people who include trans women in their dating pool only do so for sex, and many of the ones who desire long term relationships with them often have a preference for what I describe as the “Shemale Fantasy”.

A”Shemale” is the “best of both worlds”: a beautiful woman with sizeable breasts and a functional penis. If you look at a lot of the top selling transgender porn, that’s mostly what you’ll see, and it’s from porn that many people develop The Shemale Fantasy. A fantasy that one day a shemale will passionately penetrate you with her very functional, and large lady penis. Are there transgender women with big dicks that like to fuck? Sure. But typically if you’re a trans woman on HRT and your penis is functioning the way a cis man’s functions, you’re not yet at the point where HRT is truly feminizing your body.

In the early stages of HRT, one of the things people often check for is whether or not a trans woman is getting erections at the same rate as they were before they started. Over time, hormones will decrease the size and functionality of the penis as it’s working to suppress the things that would make your penis sexually functional. Does this mean it’s impossible for trans women to get erections? Absolutely not. In pornography, some transgender performers will take drugs like Viagra to make themselves functional again. Outside of sex work, some trans women will opt for a certain hormone regimen that leaves enough testosterone in their system for them to do so. But either way, it’s important to point out that while it’s completely valid for someone to have this sexual desire and there’s no wrong way for a trans woman to have sex, that for many transgender women, being feitshized in this way is particularly hurtful because of the dysphoria they experience, which I chasers who call themselves allies would understand is more common than not. Many transgender women want bottom surgery and being fetishized for their bodies can be quite traumatizing. Millie isn’t a trans woman so I’ll give her a bit of grace with her use of “pre-op”, but there’s a lot you could read into there.

A “pre-op” trans woman is typically a transgender woman who plans to have “the” surgery. Her ultimate goal is not to have a large and functional penis, but to feminize her body and eventually have a gender affirming surgery where her current parts function in a way that makes living in her body more liveable, as it aligns with her view of self. For many trans women who feel this way, erections are upsetting, not enjoyable. Many trans women who have severe bottom dysphoria that would encourage them to get “the” surgery aren’t interested in being sexually active at all until they’ve had it. For those transgender women, losing functionality of their genitalia is a good sign. It means that their hormone regimen is working correctly and feminization will be successful. Many transgender women will avoid masturbation just to avoid a spike in testosterone that would potentially clash with their hormone goals.

If you see a “pre-op” trans woman in a pornography, she’s probably trying to earn the money she needs to afford “the” surgery. It’s a surgery that will cost many trans women somewhere between $60,000 and $100,000 depending on where you are and your insurance. For many trans women, sex work is one of the only viable ways they’re able to earn enough money to transition. So the great irony is that trans women often end up needing to capitalize on their dehumanization and thus fetishism in order to survive in bodies they feel humanized within. Many trans women feel forced into doing sex work, and it’s ironic how that’s also how many people develop a desire for transgender women. A desire that often alienates us more than it validates us as it’s often based in the realm of fantasy. Few trans women do not have complicated relationship with their genitalia.

I think many people are used to understanding transgender women as being perpetually rejected, and while it’s true that many people reject us, what I wish more people understood is that many people accept us and desire us in the way we want to be desired. For Millie, it likely felt complimentary at the time to say what she said as very few people area willing to publicly state an attraction to transgender women at all; but it’s still objectification that only really happened because trans women aren’t granted their humanity as a baseline. What made her comments ironic to me is that they have a clear indication of preference and hierarchy that would indicate that she’d likely be less interested in dating a cis woman or a woman who DIDN’T have a penis that was eager to fuck her.

Decolonizing Love says a lot of things about hierarchy that I agree with. When a couple attempts to transition their relationship from monogamy to polyamory, I do find that they often operate more-so as an “open relationship”. To me, the distinction between polyamory and an open relationship, an open relationship is other people servicing the desires of the primary couple, the other is about people who all experience romantic love for each other. Romantic Love is something I’ve often found is gatekept from you when you’re outside of someone’s sexual preference or curiosity. Plenty of men I’ve attempted to date over the years explictly stopped trying to date me because I didn’t want to fuck them. For me, my desire to not top is two fold. Without getting into the gore-y details: I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to and if I wanted to, it wouldn’t be without having major surgery. That’s a me thing, not a trans thing though. Either way; for that reason, I’ve always taken issue with is that within an open relationship, you’ve got one couple that’s trying really hard to make sure their interactions with other people don’t have a negative impact on their relationship. This feels very reasonable and is a very common way that many practice non-monogamy, but if you wanted to practice polyamory, you’d need to add a bit of love to the dynamic. It’s my position that polyamory as a term really should only refer to people who love multiple people, not simply sleep with multiple people. Sleeping with multiple people is easy, but truly loving multiple people requires a capacity I find many monogamous people don’t have. Not saying that to sound all holier-than-thou. That’s just my observation. Polyamorous people have the ability and desire to hold more than just a sexual interest in a person. Of course not every relationship is about love, but within an open relationship, it’s off limits. Yet when you’re a trans woman, you often only find yourself on one side of this equation.

Before recognizing I was polyamorous, I had a lot of experience with men who were in open relationships. The situation would typically be a cis man married or dating a cis woman whom he loves very much and would never want to break away from. That cis man has a curiosity for trans women, often a Shemale Fantasy, and he’s gotten permission to pursue this desire with a transgender woman. These relationships were almost always about letting him get his tranny fix and then sending him back to his wife or girlfriend that he gains some sort of social capital from. No one could know that he was interested in me or that we’d had sex. It’s their little secret that must be maintained. I must maintain it, in order to protect their relationship. The sex we have is in service to their relationship. The idea being that because he’s able to get a bit of tranny sex on the side, he can love his woman all that much more. Unfortunately, this is something I also feel among some truly polyamorous folks.

When you’re still fixated on the Shemale Fantasy, it doesn’t really allow you to understand that it is just that; a fantasy. Like the white dude talking about how Asian Women just can’t take his huge white cock, there are probably always going to be a few Asian Women that confirm his bias. However, when you view people through that lens, it has the effect of not allowing you to understand their individuality. As a trans woman who can’t fulfill the Shemale Fantasy partially because I don’t want to, but also because I’m physically unable to, it has always been disorienting when people decide that this makes me a less valuable partner. Within polyamory, sometimes this has become a problem. In general, on dating apps, even vanilla ones, I have to indicate that I am a person who only bottoms because, yes, there are people who do desire long term relationships with trans women, but only as bottoms. Millie identifies as pansexual and even she has a genitalia preference when it comes to trans women.

When I’ve had conversations with people who cling to a sexuality label that suggests that they sleep with both men and women, many of them will dance around essentially acknowledging that the truth is, they don’t want to date a person with a penis unless they’re using that penis to fuck them. In their minds there’s not really see much of a point to dating a transgender woman unless she uses her penis in a very particular way. This may seem like a given, but like I said, a huge majority of trans women do not want to have sex in that way let alone have their genitalia focused on at all. For the fetishist, this may be confusing, but for people who grant trans women their humanity, they recognize that trans women can have a diverse way of feeling about their genitalia with many of them not even having penises. As I’ve written about on here a few times, I don’t really think there’s anything wrong with preferences, even if you could argue that they come from various isms, but let’s be honest about that. As a pansexual, if Millie says she’s primarily attracted to pre op trans women among all women, it’s not hard to imagine how she’d pull away from a post op transgender woman.

My point of contention here is that the natural result of a polyamorous person having this “preference” is that everyone who doesn’t fit it will fall to the wayside. What frustrates me a lot about conversations around hierarchy in polyamory is that the experiences of trans women are often never really introduced to the conversation. If we exist in a society where colonization has taken root and many people only have a very exotic understandings of who transgender women are and how their bodies work, when it comes to pursuing romance, trans women will often experience two very harsh sides of the same coin. They’re either embraced as a fetish or understandably rejected because we aren’t cis. What aggravates me is that many cis poly folks don’t want to be honest where they are in their journey of understanding their attraction to trans women. It’s as if being honest about it is something people are afraid to do in either direction. They’re afraid of outright saying that they exclude trans women from their dating pool entirely, or they’re afraid of saying they only like a select type of trans person that’s more tolerable based on which genitalia they have. I’ve known way too many “pansexual” men in the poly community who are only attracted to feminine people who have a relationship with womanhood; but will reserve romantic feelings for the ones designated female at birth specifically. Too many people clinging to labels because being honest about how they really feel would get them “cancelled”. Many people within the poly community refuse to be honest about how they feel about trans women one way or the other. They refuse to acknowledge that they are inexperienced with trans women and thus are unsure about whether or not they could date them long term the way they’d date a cis woman or that they have sexual feelings for trans women that don’t lend themselves to long term relationships or anything beyond fulfilling a passing sexual kink. None of these people want to be honest about where they are and the ultimate result is that time is wasted.

As I said, a lot of people don’t seem to register that there are indeed people who desire trans women the way they want to be desired. When I met Edward in a quiet little dive bar in K town, we were attracted to each other and he didn’t care that I was trans and he didn’t expect me to fulfill a Shemale Fantasy. He was just attracted to me as an individual; not the embodiment of a fantasy he’s had for a very long time. He, along with my other partners actually do very much appreciate that only one of us in the relationship is being penetrated. I’ve had so many debates with fetishists about how unreasonable it is for me to expect men who have an attraction to me to not want these things, but I’ve been able to find four partners that do not at all feel that way. With that in mind, I want people who feel like Millie to understand that we don’t need these vivid statements about your Shemale Fantasies to feel celebrated or embraced. Humanizing us the way you’d humanize a cis person goes a very long way; but why exactly does that need to be said?

What I found ironic about Millie making this comment from an account called Decolonizing Love is that one of the reasons I have the politics I have is because many years ago, I did a research paper about Two-Spirited people and how they experienced genocide at the hands of Europeans in the Americas. When the white man came to Indigenous lands and saw that there were people who existed beyond their own binary conceptions of gender, they wanted to put an end to them because these people conflicted with one of the main tools of colonization: patriarchy.

Through religion, capitalists have been able to instill this idea of submission to authority and the Christian conception of this places women beneath men, with men existing just beneath God, who is of course a man. While plenty of people are “naturally” monogamous, within a patriarchal society, monogamy matters because legacy matters. If a man is to spread his seed and bind with a woman, he wants to make sure that those children are his and for most of our existence, monogamy was the only way that could ever be ensured. To Decolonize monogamy, we have to also decolonize our conceptions around gender because these things are tied to one another.

There’s a reason why, despite several very well documented stories of pregnant transgender men, the idea that HRT will make you infertile is a huge talking point for those who are trying to dissuade trans masc folks from transitioning medically. There’s a reason why Elon Musk spends his days ranting about the white birth rate on Twitter and also happens to absolutely hate transgender people, including his own daughter; whom many of his fanboys see as a stain on his legacy. There’s a reason why Donald Trump, through is dementia is continuing to rally specifically against transgender people. Capitalists understand that gender is one of the main modes of control because patriarchy has been so instilled within us via colonization that people easily fall into line when they feel their gender is questioned. Telling men that they aren’t real men has encouraged generations of men to throw their lives away so that oil companies can have more oil. Telling women they’re not real women has encouraged many of them to allow their bodies to be used as vessels to birth workers who will slave away to make the Musks and Zuckerbergs of the world more richer as pregnancy continues to be the primary reason women experience poverty. Misogyny convinces many men that as long as they aren’t a woman, they’re doing just fine. Defying the gender binary means defying one of the most potent ways in which capitalists pull our strings; and they know that.

The presences of patriarchy in our culture is why so many people are both repulsed and excited by transgender women. In a patriarchy, if you are a man, it’s in your best interest to remain one and to maintain the small little box you’ve been assigned at birth. You’re shamed for rebelling against what has been repeatedly reinforced as the correct path for you to take. There’s a reason why “you can’t give birth” is such a potent argument against trans women for so many. It’s because that’s the understood role of a woman in this society. To essentialize gender is to embrace the narrative of patriarchy and a tool of the capitalism, which doesn’t care about these things beyond their ability to keep everyone in line.

If you watch my video essay, you’ll know that a good portion of it is dedicated to Decolonizing Love’s stance against BDSM. They reject it on the basis that it replicates the tools of the oppressor. They describe the minorities who enjoy it as having some great epigenetic need to give or receive violence. It’s a very sophomoric understanding of kink and BDSM and especially the community around it.

I organize a BDSM much in Los Angeles that is very well-attended by transgender women. Vanillas don’t tend to understand that for a lot of us in the kink community, we are there for reasons other than BDSM. More that just a few of my attendees started as one gender and I now see them in a new gender. I’ve seen many trans femme and trans masc people blossom over the four or so years I’ve been hosting what is, frankly, the most diverse BDSM munch in the city. While there’s certainly a range, Kinksters who are community oriented also tend to be leftists who are invested in creating an alternative space where mutual aid is commonplace and many of the pains of the vanilla world are intentionally subverted with the idea that we can exist and thrive beyond what the vanilla world accepts as the norm.

Many of our events feed right back into the political work we do. I’ve hosted four paid events where all of the proceeds went to people providing resources for queer and trans people in the city. The same exact resources that actually saved my life as a teen. We were able to raise $11,000 with the help of a local dungeon in Los Angeles. The work I do, and have done both inside and outside of the BDSM community has often been about providing a space for trans people to be themselves and be embraced, not as the fantasy, but as reality. I know that the events I’ve hosted have helped build confidence for trans people who often feel there are limited places for them to be themselves. Vanilla people who fetishize trans folks probably don’t know this, but that’s a fairly common thing within the BDSM community. Many of the leaders of our community are transgender, and that’s not because trans people are more perverse, but because most of us actually do intimately understand the need to create space for things that don’t typically fit into the neat boxes left behind for us after colonization.

It’s my experience as a both a trans woman and a kinkster that makes me roll my eyes at a lot of what I see Decolonizing Love post. While I am aware that their current belief is they are only receiving criticism from people because they are jealous of them or because they’re part of a government organized initiative to destroy their African, leftist platform, I want to make it clear that once again, I do not have any investment in “cancelling” them. There’s are a lot of good, helpful content that they publish and I’m not someone who likes to see anyone or anything as wholly and entirely bad, but that’s not really a grace they tend to extend to others. Their platform is particularly well-loved by the kind of person who likely wouldn’t have any the experiences that I’ve shared in this post, which is why I’ve decided to share it. I hope it helps someone recognize patterns they may not intend to repeat.

Each of us is touched by colonization; we can only work to ensure we don’t continue its legacy.