If dating is a shit show for queer men, then dating for people of the trans experience is a shit opera. Every time I talk to trans people in my community about their romantic lives, I learn there are hurdles they have to navigate that never even cross my mind. For one, it’s not always a given that they’ll be affirmed in their gender identities by someone they’re dating — aka the bare minimum. In fact, a University of Michigan study published last year found that trans youth not only reported high instances of being misgendered by romantic partners, but also said they encountered rampant transphobia on dating apps and experienced high instances of intimate partner violence, according to Them.
Although we live in a time when attitudes toward the trans community are improving, many continue to see trans folx as a threat to our social fabric and no one has borne the brunt of that animosity more than trans people of color. Movies like Billy Porter’s Anything is Possible are finally affording visibility to the ways in which cultural attitudes about a group of people have a tendency of spilling into the most intimate parts of our lives, and yet, listening to trans people talk about their dating experiences makes me think we don’t talk about it nearly enough.
