Many of us have heard the refrain “If he wanted to, he would” in response to relationship troubles with seemingly withholding men. It’s a phrase that says, “he’s just not into you.” But what if there’s a little more to the story? Though it’s certainly still a sign to move on, it does point to a missed conversation about the treatment of women.
"He does neglectful or bad things to you because he doesn't like you" ignores everything we've learned about abuse, control, trauma, and intimate partner violence. People's level of interest is not directly correlative to the treatment of their partners. It's actually a reflection of their inner state. In a world where misogyny exists, the increasingly poor treatment of women is not a coincidence or evidence of desire.
It is an expression of belief about how you engage the feminine. In the context of misogyny, how others engage women is often about power.
"If he wanted to, he would."
This is certainly true, but who is speaking to the broader culture and trend of neglectful men? What happens when men never seem to “want to” as a means of normalized engagement?
Are there benefits to men for not “wanting to,” such as creating a dating culture where they have to do less work?
Did it ever occur to you that, in many cases, he may actually be grooming you for cycles of abuse using “pick-up tactics” and/or it is his own fear that keeps his heart small? That many men are taught to continuously deliver low so that the bare minimum feels very big? That cold selfishness is taught to men in capitalist society as a means of survival and identity? That the denial of your own heart's desire is on purpose? That it's not about want, but fear and control? That many men are only taught to relate to women by withholding?
We’ve all been there, men who make us jump through rings of fire for extremely “mid” or even abusive relationships.
Most of us have experienced partners who refuse to acknowledge our needs and humanity because it keeps us small and them in control. Even in cases where carelessness is not intentional, society rewards men for careless behavior. Instead of sanctioning that behavior as undesirable, we label the women as “not desirable enough” to elicit care from a man. Instead of collectively raising the bar of poor behavior and communally calling men to task who exhibit poor behavior, we place the burden of desire on women.
This is not an isolated experience. Men everywhere seem to have collectively created a standard of lack.
Women increase our level of care, hoping that it will eventually lead to better treatment and intimacy while withholding men rest and dangle an emotional carrot on a stick.
They benefit, while women are pressured to constantly perform desirability to men’s tastes because it’s linked to our humanity, survival, and the care we receive. Then it’s taken for granted that for some women, those deemed beneath the patriarchal valuation of “worthy,” men rarely ever seem to “want to.”
Tiered kindness in dating treatment is a method of control.
It says that some people are more worthy of care, depending on how much they inspire our desire. It says that others are merely for our pleasure and therefore deserving of a denial of resources while we engage them. Those with more societal power can pull back positive treatment at their own whims and give it to those they deem “worthy,” as opposed to honoring women they engage as a value system. (Even when those women fall outside the realm of their “desire.”)
Practicing a system of care as a broader social value means that it can no longer be apportioned according to the ever-changing whims of men and their patriarchal standards. Poor or careless treatment is often used to damage a woman’s self-esteem so that her partner can remain in control and not have to show up entirely. Sometimes, the carelessness is the point. It’s an entry point into manipulation by manufacturing desperation and establishing a low bar. It’s a way of re-establishing and reinforcing existing power dynamics and reminding women of “place.”
A partner who has been careless with others is not in the practice of love, so where one suffers, all do.
This practice rarely springs up for the “right woman” in a way that is sustainable over a long period. Selfishness towards anyone you date will appear elsewhere because "liking" people is something that fluctuates. We can make the mistake of thinking we are above the dangers of misogynist dating culture because we are too smart, pretty, or societally celebrated, but this is ultimately a house built on sand and others’ ever-shifting desires.
Where systems of care as cultural norms are absent, all eventually suffer.
We are often all too quick to blame women for whatever happens to us in the space of our innocence and learning. Not "liking" someone isn't an excuse to treat people poorly and for society to then put the blame on the recipient of the behavior. Many of us are trained from an early age that to be a woman means to do the labor of deciphering emotionally unavailable and cryptic men.
Men are taught to shut down and withhold their feelings, and women are taught to do the work for them and adjust.
Establishing a “normal” or a baseline to judge what is happening around us can, in fact, be very difficult, especially when the world does its best to keep us disconnected from our own hearts, and “normal” is often really bad. It’s especially difficult when everything women do is scrutinized and quickly punished. When we “see it coming” and state our case, women are accused of being harpies that are overly critical of men. When we don’t, we are blamed for whatever happened to us and asked, “Why didn’t you know better?” People say you should see everything coming as a woman when it comes to men.
A better analogy is that you always have to navigate some tricky territory as a woman. You're wading through the river, and it suddenly dips off into a deep current, and the water is over your head. You thought you had it, but you ain’t got it. Others are quick to tell us all the ways we are inferior for failing to avoid the violence of others, often in the guise of tough love. Sometimes you fall in the river when you are learning how to swim.
A lot of “tough love” is actually just people’s frustration with your process. Which is just frustration with their own process and the process of life in general. Abuse and withholding in relationships with men can be a deeply ingrained issue that actually has little to do with the person on the receiving end. Sometimes it’s just easier for others and ourselves to say, “he’s not into me” to expedite the stickiness and complication of feeling stuck. We lash out with our own feelings of helplessness and convince people, especially women, it’s for their own good.
The point here isn't the person's level of interest, it’s that this is the way they behave relationally as a human being. They believe the standard of care and humanity for those you deal with is based on the amount of pleasure you can currently extract. They have a tier system for humanity. Often, even within these societally constructed tiers, every person has their own code.
You can never truly know "why" someone is treating you poorly and SEEMINGLY showing care to others, but you can acknowledge it’s a reflection of their own inner state and not you. From there, you can begin to take steps that ensure your own well-being, whatever that looks like for you.
The journey to that care can be a long one.
People often trivialize the journey of being and becoming a woman. It’s a remarkable and complex experience. We can’t pretend anyone has all the answers to avoid heartbreak or survive patriarchal cultures because they don’t. No one’s cracked the code.
After being left so cold by men and the world, so many of us are in need of healthy, generous, patient, and warm lovemaking.
Women and the feminine everywhere are starving for genuine connections and intimacy. We are in need of a return to self, based in radical love and community and lovers that reflect that process. The path there is not to slam women down for misreading the behavior of others but to acknowledge that their behavior does not define us.
We are courageous, fearless, gorgeous, and vital, even despite the best attempts to thwart our divine becoming.
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This is a dating guide for trans girls becoming women quicker than it feels like their hearts can survive the journey through the hands of men. As a young trans woman, the world has already taken so much from you. It has tied your wings even before you learned the feeling of flight into the world and your lover’s arms. You would think that men would be gentle with women who have had so much taken from them. You would think that they’d recognize your vulnerability to the elements of the world and put themselves in front of you, as protectors, instead of leaving you to weather its storms alone. You would think that others would not feel the need to create competition with girls who are most often not considered “real” women and who are killed in the act of un-naming them.
Even with these hard truths forging you in their fires along the way, there is hope. Your journey is one that ultimately fashions a passionate, resourceful, and fiercely self-loving woman. There is however the issue of survival against destructive forces. The intimate space that young trans women navigate in the exploration of romantic love with men is often a high-stakes game of minesweeper.
These are some of the trials and characters you may meet along the way:
Lipstick Alley Headline
Things may often seem very unfair. Cis people love to pass Black trans women's photos around the internet as a "warning" to men. They love to pass around a trans woman’s photo and perform a ritual to tear apart her beauty, nitpick her face and try to destroy her reputation and image. I pray for spiritual protection for all trans women. Pray with me. Our beauty is not defined by the cis tribunal. You do not have to feel shame for your desire and others’ desire for you. Do your best not to allow others' behavior towards you to define you.
The Vibester
An unending party of vibes and vaguery that never ends. There are many men who will not create safety for you or openly express their feelings for you, yet will try to push a sexual agenda on your body and place you in a dangerous space of ambiguity. They will try to turn a “vibe” into sex, without any communication or admissions of romantic affection. This can be extremely dangerous for a trans woman. It may work for cis people, as a moment of fleeting pleasure, but often you may find it just feels scary and unsure. Allow them to do the work for you. All girls deserve an admission of desire and an allowance of care. Allow him to establish a context of safety as a beautiful bridge into the erotic.
The Casual Criminal
It’s no big deal. Nothing is a big deal, even when you need it to be. There’s not much room for intimacy, only vibes. These are men who see you as one of the world's many buffet offerings for his perusal, as opposed to honoring your unique needs and vulnerabilities as a trans woman. You’re considered the same as everyone else in his circus, the only problem is you’re not. You’re not for men who don’t have the time to consider you, the offering of your vulnerability, or your safety. He may be using the idea of “sameness” to avoid intimacy and accountability and considers all of his work done for being “cool” about you being transgender.
Sometimes cool can be too cool. So cool, it becomes lukewarm, stale, and tepid. You don’t want boring. Hold out for a little passion. Be a big deal. You are one and you deserve it.
Houdini
Completely disappears after the slightest moments of intimacy. Reappears when the chemistry fizzles out to keep the cycle going. Cycles of intimate rejection and painful revolving doors rarely end in the love you seek. You are the magician and your magic is in the craft of your heart, not disappearing it.
The Therapy Bill
Not sure why but you feel terrible after every interaction. He doesn’t create or encourage a context of safety or transparency. The longer they know you, the more increasingly psychologically complex they become in their emotional terrorism of you. You keep waiting for things to let out into peace and clarity, but instead of an ocean, it's a drain circle. If you have to ask your friends for too much advice to feel “okay” or if at every turn you are more disturbed and confused than the last, it's likely a negative cycle, not a deepening intimacy. Hold out for a man who is a friend to your mind.
The Chaser
You deserve more than men who target vulnerable women and use them as a kink. You are not a kink. You are a woman. You are easy to love and therefore you do not have to worship a man for finding you beautiful. Men who move through vulnerable communities of women for their own emotional and sexual pleasures are simply a different type of misogynist. And no one deserves an award for loving you. You are alarmingly beautiful and unconditionally inspiring of love.
The Activist
There are men who talk a good game about liberation and fill their bookshelves with the self-righteousness of their own literacy. Do not be surprised if they never apply any of it to relate to you. There are men who will learn just enough emotional depth and get in touch with their feelings just enough to use them against you. There will be sensitive poets and writers who ultimately only understand their own pain and the desire for their own freedom, while yours largely remains a theory or a cudgel to use against others. There will be many who define their own liberation as the right to quiet you.
When you explain your sufferings and ask for a reprieve from your pain, they will talk about how it's really them that's suffering. These men rarely actively address their own sufferings, merely use them as reasons why they should be able to abuse freely. Your job and your labor of love as a trans woman are to live the freedom he can only ever read about in books. Walk out of the pages and away from his hands.
The Enigma
Is this a date? Are we friends? Are we attracted to each other? What is happening? No one involved has any idea and so you float until there is finally heartbreak to free you. There are men who have no idea what they are doing and in the space of ignorance, they keep you at arm's length, while using you for whatever desires randomly emerge during a drunken night. There are men who are far too afraid to face their desire for you, yet they can’t let you go, so they keep exactly the information you need to make the best decisions for your own life. There are men who are criminally casual. In the face of stagnation and emotional poverty, pray and walk steadily from these lands until you find love.
Dangerous Liaisons
There are unfortunately men willing to kill in order to preserve their sense of self and enact power over vulnerable women. Develop a practice of safety that serves your unique circumstances, honors your truths, and practice not sacrificing your own safety and body in the pursuit of romance or pleasure.
The Clockers
There is often someone trying to “clock” and “check” your womanhood. There is an impossible standard of beauty imposed upon trans women. Nothing short of perfection is ever enough for the naysayers and even a few of the well-meaning. No one has to be as beautiful as you to be loved.
Therefore, it may seem like everyone else but you can be loved. You will wonder what is the formula to be considered “human.” A change of hair, more hips, boobs, a bigger ass, lighter skin. When it comes to the dominant cisgender values on beauty, rarely is anything ever enough. You are always one shifting goalpost away from “enough.” You are always one hair out of place from being unmasked as “unreal.” The beauty that the dominant messaging tries to impose on trans women is a beauty of surveillance. You will often find eyes searching for a reason to unmask what they see as “the trick” of your womanhood. Especially if you are Black.
You may look around while you are hungry and notice a lot of instant noodle romance: Images of love that promise to feed you, but lack what you really need to feel nourished. Everyone seems to have come with the right ingredients in their cup to be instantly loved, ingredients that never seem to include the things that make up women like you. Love may seem instant for others, while yours seems like a longer reach from God. There are many men who may fight their feelings for you because you are far from a woman who is convenient to the status quo. Others may seem to have an easier time in love than you. It may reach them quicker, with fewer obstructions and more open desire. Yours is not a quick plate love, it is a slowly opening one. God’s love for you is flavored to the bone.
The Chicken
Your success in romance, will not come from contorting yourself to a man’s fantasy and avoiding his disapproval by trying to manage his emotions with a tireless performance of femininity. You are not responsible for a man’s emotions and feelings about his attraction to you. Men will often lay this burden at your feet and create a dynamic of constantly courting their approval. They enforce this dynamic through intimate partner violence, from the emotional and psychological to the physical. Men who date trans women often develop a habit of making their fear your problem.
Don’t let a man’s fear of you define you. There will be many men who are too afraid to openly face their desire for you. They will often see you as a shameful desire, like a porn category they can shut their laptop on when they’ve had enough. When they are ready again and the blood rushes to their head, they reappear. They are not reappearing for a better relationship with you, they are appearing for another hit. Repeated behavior without deepened intimacy does not get better, it’s a compulsion, not a relationship.
Men who act on compulsion for you, instead of connecting to you are adversaries to the self-realization of your own humanity. This is always the goal of a trans woman. Our goal is not to prove to others that we are worthy of love. Our goal is not to save the world, it is to remove the projections of inhumanity that society has placed over us and to constantly ritualize our own humanity back into our focus. Our goal is to recognize that we are beautiful, not because we align with images of what is “allowed,” but because we walk the path of life’s wild and unpredictable beauty itself. We are nature unfolding in the personal truth of rare shapes and intoxicating bloom.
The Glitch in the Matrix
Be wary of men who loop. When men perform repetitive cycles of shallow engagement, they are tuning into you as an object of erotic fetish, not a human being. They are extracting pleasure as a means of avoidance and ego, rather than engaging in acts of care and protective love. You will likely find a certain type of guy who enjoys the attention of young trans women but withholds deepened relationships with her.
When asked to clarify attraction, commitment, or intention, this man will withdraw and make the trans woman feel punished. He will reappear when enough distance has been created to restart the cycle and enough time has passed to “forget” your needs. You may think the reappearance means that he is prepared to meet those needs. It does not. He repeats the cycle of rejection and reappearance if you ask again. Over time, the trans woman learns that asking for her needs to be met will be met with withdrawal and abandonment.
When the black cat of a man’s ego appears twice, choose yourself.
The Backseat Driver
There are many who will demand perfection from you that they do not even demand from themselves. There will be people who will say that we deserve to die for not navigating relationships with men according to their idea of “perfection.” Always choose your own safety as you learn not to open where you cannot reveal the truth of your body and your own experiences. Having access to you is a secret menu that many just cannot afford and they do not have the special passwords.
“Perfection” will likely be a huge theme in your life. Lack of perfection for a trans woman can sometimes mean harm or even death. It is not your job to be perfect, it is your job to be “love.” It is your job to live, according to your own needs, not the projections of others. You may face many disappointments in love and with them will come learning. A lot of women struggle with self-blame when relationships end or become destructive. I think a better way to approach a painful relationship is not “what did I do wrong?” but “nothing in that relationship was conducive to me succeeding.” You likely were not set up for success. Dispense with guilt and shame. When you are set up for success, you don’t have to be perfect.
There is room for you and your learning. This includes your romantic life. If you are not supported away from the self-blame of overthinking and being invited into care, you mistake performance of goodness for connection. If you have to fix things all on your own, by lashing yourself with a constant demand for your own perfection, the connection demands too much of your own blood and suffering to be safe for you. If the connection dissolves when you discontinue this practice, it was not of love.
The One
There will be many men who are just not for you. Even if they want you, they ultimately just cannot make the leap across what society tells them they can and cannot have. Only the one can make the jump. Hold out for a “Neo.”
The Concern Trolls, the Bad Faith Actors and Finally, You
There are many people who wish for you to remain in pain and for sadness to reside permanently in your heart. As an act of political and intimate necrotism, like when Colombus set dogs upon queer Indigenous people as his first act of setting upon their land. You do not have to live that way. You do not have to live in competition. You do not have to live in fear. You do not have to waste time fearing for your life, merely let go of the loves that do not become you. You do not have to live in lack, you simply have to practice sumptuously in your prayers. You do not have to argue talking points about your humanity, you simply have to orgasm in the privacy of your templed hands.
If the men do not show, as often they do not, make worship of your love for life in the approach of their death. My advice to you is to live and always forgive yourself for the hard acts against you. Dear young, Black trans woman, we used to follow the stars and night for freedom. Now we follow the Sun.
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I am a foreign woman, in every definition of the word. I am all of the things that it evokes in feeling, memory and sound. I am a womanhood that exists on the outside of history, record, country, marriage and love.
In this blank space, at the edge of the world, I peered over. This is where I began my journey into more than womanhood, but into the creation of a new world, a place where women like me are loved.
The chasm in between the two is where I found myself, though it required a bit of a fall. I grew up thinking that the world was a place of great freedom. I came of age thinking that the world was one of great lack. How did we get here? Girls and little queer kids with eyes full of bright possibility at the wonder and mystery of life turn to women who recoil from living. If I had a daughter, how would I save her from the brutality of being shamed into acts of humility that deny her life?
I vastly underestimated that some people use a deeper understanding of you, not to love you more efficiently, but to hurt you more intimately.
When I first embraced myself and openly embarked on the journey of womanhood, albeit a queer one, I was excited about the prospect of what a more modern world would have to offer a Black trans woman. I kicked off the weight of my teen years -- experiences that rendered me both invisible and hypervisible -- and fearlessly led with exploratory pride in my multilayered identity. I truly believed that the only barrier the world had to loving women like me was a lack of understanding and misplaced memory. I believed that if I spoke truthfully enough that I could help set the world on the course of miracles. There was a robust history of women who had done the same and now was the turning point. This wasn’t untrue, however I vastly underestimated that some people use a deeper understanding of you, not to love you more efficiently, but to hurt you more intimately. And therefore, I learned to use discretion in where I place my energy.
This is a lesson I learned both romantically, professionally and in my own personal activism. Slowly, I began to realize that there is no convincing someone to love you and anyone who pretends that there is, by demanding the education of your pleading, is exploiting your need.
Whether it be people who love to watch you labor for love in the interest of their own validation, at best; or collective movements that are hellbent on misunderstanding you for nefarious political ends, at worst. You especially cannot convince the many people you meet as an “othered" woman, who waffle back and forth between obsession, desire, need and refusing you their heart because you are the "wrong type" of woman. Ultimately, there is freedom in not being able to convince anyone to love or accept you. Only then can you put down your arms and allow love to blossom wildly, where it wishes, rather than trying to bend the earth where its brutality denies you.
Venus, in fact, was teaching me: How not to pour my offerings into the plates of other people and their gods, but to pour the best of myself first in the temples of love in my own heart.
For so much of my life, it really felt like Venus, the Goddess of love herself, was really coming down to tell me, “You are just not that girl.” Slowly, I learned that Venus, in fact, was teaching me how not to pour my offerings into the plates of other people and their gods, but to pour the best of myself first in the temples of love in my own heart. Within this temple, I found my heart atop an altar rather than trying to find value within romantic relationships that finally validate the social markers of my womanhood. It is a grueling lesson in love, but one that each of us must learn in the journey back to our own humanity.
The biggest lesson I learned was that not even a legacy of colonialism and its present imperialism can deny my humanity. It can create material conditions that threaten my life and disrupt the systems that are for my survival, but it can not move me out of my own body and lay claim to my soul or birthright as a divine being on this planet. I do not have to fight for love. It endures within me. I do not have to shrink from desire, it is an expression of my hunger for living and emboldens me to be more alive. I do not have to carve acceptance out of my own blood, because I am never forgotten or alone, as long as I do not forget or abandon myself.
I do not have to fight for love. It endures within me.
Now, as a slightly more experienced woman, my values are the same. They are just more embodied. Being Black is more about the moments of private comfort that I truly embrace myself and find peace, instead of trying to bend the world to my will and shout it into loving me. Being a transgender woman is more about the recognition of what it means to be alive, instead of forcing myself into a static and restrictive ideal, and therefore receptive to the mystery of the feminine; to be trusting enough in that mystery to remain open, while confident enough to enforce boundaries without the fear of being abandoned for expressing human needs and desires. In this space life gives to me, though I don’t always understand or know what the final fruit will yield, I give life back with my offerings of creation in response to it.
My moments of embodied womanhood and humanity are now about looking at myself, not through the eyes of what is considered to have social value, but through my own eyes before I learned any of those things.
In the blossoming of this new world and in the creative act of opening its door, I invite you into more love. I invite you into seeing yourself, not through an imagination of lack and competition, where you “are” because others “are not.” I invite you into new eyes. I invite you into a feeling of “enoughness.” I invite you into strangeness, a place that never denies the contradiction of your need in response to the harshness of the world. I invite you into embodied being, a place where women like you are always loved because it is an undying act that will always find its way back home.
Read all of the stories in the Issa Rae: She Comes First editorial series here.
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