The first time I hooked up with the gender-expansive gay guy from the chorus, he said to me just twice, “You’re a hot guy”, and it felt extremely affirming to me. I don’t see myself as a “hot guy” but hearing it explicitly from a gay man is validating of my gender-identity. At least in some ways, in small doses.
When we hooked up again last week, he said to me many times, “You’re so hot”, and a couple times, “You’re so sexy”.
That doesn’t feel good to me. And even the phrase “hot guy”, which was repeated to me also by a transguy friend who visited me yesterday, can bother or upset me.
When, instead, the gender-expansive gay guy from the chorus said to me, “… I feel attracted to you… ”, that felt good.
One of my ex-boyfriends from almost two decades ago, used to say to me that I was so beautiful that he wanted to sketch me (he could draw really well) and that my eyes looked like something out of a painting by Tiziano (the great Venetian artist). A friend’s husband in California once said to me that my profile looked like one of those male profiles you can find on Grecian coins. A couple friends in California used to say I reminded them of classical sculptures of boys or young men.
All of those comments felt really good to me.
What’s the difference between those types of comments?
Said to me once, the phrase “you’re a hot guy” can be affirming because I can focus on the gender-validating aspects of it contained in the word “guy”. Repeated many times, it starts to make me feel objectified. “Hot” or “sexy” by themselves, instead, just feel sexually objectifying and thus upsetting to me. I feel a sexual charge in those words that I don’t know how to deal with, I cannot understand or relate to, and therefore almost make me shut down. Even the “hot guy” comment, if reiterated too often and/or in the wrong context, can be upsetting because then I feel there’s some kind of expectation attached to it: if I’m “hot” or “sexy”, or if I’m a “hot guy”, am I expected to behave or act or feel in certain ways? I feel objectified and also burdened with something that I don’t understand and don’t know how to handle.
If instead, someone says “I’m attracted to you”, then it’s about them, not about me. They are free to feel attracted to me and to feel attracted in whichever ways is congenial to them, even if it’s sexual. At that level, I feel we’re both subjects, there’s no objectification (at least I don’t feel it), and I don’t feel like I’m expected to do something that might not be natural to me.
The aesthetic comments, though, are the easiest for me to handle. Precisely because they’re aesthetic and thus I can relate to them. I can look at someone and think, or say, “they resemble that painting or remind me of that sculpture”. That’s how I feel about most “attractive” people: I find them aesthetically attractive, there’s no sex involved. And it also feels more objective to me: it feels like there’s no judgement (positive or negative), it’s just the statement of a fact, the similarity between two things; if I wanted to, I could even pull up a photo of me and compare it to a Grecian coin or to a painting by Tiziano or to a classical sculpture, and maybe agree or disagree. But I don’t have to act or behave or feel in any way that might not be natural to me, I don’t feel like it’s required of me to act or behave or feel in any particular way. I can just be. And maybe be myself.
The Little Prince and the Fox 