I’m comfortable being a woman with my lady parts. I also like to pretend. I told people I was male (transmasc, specifically) so that I could freely experience attraction to just men without having the “straight” label.
Whatever I was, I did NOT want to be straight, so presenting as a trans guy helped me feel better about myself. I could be a gay man. Then, I was a non-binary demiboy (either gay or bi but would only date men).
I felt like a girl in real life. I still do. I didn’t feel dysphoria nor a desire to transition in any way, neither socially nor physically nor anything. It just felt relieving to be a gay trans guy, but that still made me trans even though I didn’t identify as male nor did I ever see myself as male, right?
(I see myself as a woman and always have, I don’t have dysphoria. I identify as a woman who wants a penis. I think I’m moreso attracted to the idea of having male parts than actually seeing myself as a guy, but like I said, it relieved me to be gay and not straight.)
long story short, I’m a woman slightly attracted to the idea of herself being a trans guy or having a penis.
Hopefully you agree, but I just want to suggest we should keep an open gate, so to speak. One doesn’t have to suffer or struggle to be gay/bi or trans - that’s just not how that works. OP might still be some kind of trans (or not), that’s not really the issue here.
OP happens to have another post talking about how they identify as bi even though they are hardly attracted to women, so your comments about faux-bi women might come across differently to her, FYI.
In the end, the community respects self-identification - and this is just how that works. It’s not really appropriate to gatekeep identity on a basis like questioning how sincere someone’s capacity for same-sex romance is. There are some biromantic-heterosexual women for example who might find it possible to have a romantic relationship with a woman, but generally wouldn’t want to have sex with a woman. This is part of why it’s pragmatic to respect self-identity, because it’s complicated and we don’t want a gatekeeping culture that victimizes people with less understandable sexualities or identities.
However, that’s not really what’s going on in this post - she said she likes to pretend to be a gay trans man to explore non-straight attraction to men, in this case she isn’t actually identifying as a trans man and she is admitting to pretending. That’s what makes it dishonest and thus problematic.
I understand that the climate today is vastly different than what it was when I was growing up. These days being gay or lesbian doesn’t necessitate a struggle and that’s fine. I am coming to terms with the fact that it’s more important to be okay for people to self-identify these days, despite what I or others may think, since being queer is simply far more widely accepted (in the US). This is true for being the LGB portion of being LGBT to a large degree, but we haven’t gotten there for the trans portion.
I’m just explaining the perspective people who have issues with OP might have and thus why they might have a problem which is what they asked about. Especially as someone who grew up in some of the hard days (i.e. being disowned for being gay, having to fight for my rights to marry my husband, etc.). And also experiencing people in my own journey that claimed they could speak on my behalf or for LGBTQ people as a whole despite having almost no understanding of the struggles we had to go through in the past. The struggles the gay community has faced in the past are being experienced right now though by trans folk perhaps even to a larger degree. Which is why it is more likely to be found problematic to pretend to be trans when you are not.
No worries, I understand you are just trying to help OP understand why they might get some hate for pretending to be trans, and I think you have a good point - it’s more sensitive to pretend to be an oppressed minority than for example to misrepresent yourself as a dominant group, e.g. straight (lots of people are closeted and we don’t think it’s appalling to pretend to be straight, it’s just pragmatic / survival for a lot of people - there is immense pressure to be straight and cis).
I didn’t mean so much to disagree with what you were saying as much as address what you anticipated as getting you hate - I just wanted to show how we might approach a situation like this without gatekeeping, but while being clear-headed about the wrongs here.
We don’t have to gatekeep OP’s identity to acknowledge that OP pretending to be trans is wrong and upsetting.