As a transman, I have some reservations about the time and energy that we, as a queer community are putting into the current marriage debate.
My primary reservation is that there are so many much more pressing law reform issues that affect the LGBTIQ community that are not being dealt with at all because priority has been given to the marriage issue. From a human rights perspective, I would argue that the top three most urgent issues facing the LGBTIQ community are the legislative requirement for sterilisation of trans people as a condition for gender recognition, the refusal of governments to adequately deal with issues of intersex surgery on infants and children, and the incredibly high rates of discrimination and victimisation of sex and gender diverse people in our community.
My secondary reservation stems from the fact that trans and intersex people are constantly called upon to actively support essentially gay and lesbian causes, while the gay and lesbian community has an awfully long history of refusing to acknowledge or supporting trans and intersex issues. It is this blindness to trans and intersex issues that I particularly want to address  – because as I see it, this blindness is not only intensely frustrating for trans and intersex people – it is also potentially damaging for the marriage campaign itself.
To get right back to basics, what is at the heart of the marriage issue is that the commonwealth marriage act defines marriage as being between a “man” and a “woman”.
The entire marriage debate has, to date, been waged on the basis of who should and who should not have access to marriage. And when I say “the entire debate” I mean that both we, and those who oppose us, are engaged in dialogue ONLY about whether people in same sex relationships should be able to access marriage in the same way as people in heterosexual relationships.
In other words, we have ALL engaged with this debate on the basis that it is a debate that is ACTUALLY ABOUT sexuality.
Although I agree that there are very sound human rights based arguments about why same-sex relationships should be recognised by the state in exactly the same way as heterosexual relationships, I do not agree that this is the only, nor even the most powerful, debate to be engaged in.
When we frame the debate only in terms of sexuality, we don’t question whether its true that marriage currently only occurs between men and women. Nor do we question whether the definition of marriage or of men or of women is problematic. By not raising these issues, the ONLY sphere we allow our own debate to occur is in the context of us having to justify why a change should be made. We set the argument up so that those who oppose us don’t actually have to argue for anything – except the continuation of the status quo.
But if we frame the debate in terms of gender then there are legitimate and destabilising questions that we could be asking – questions that those who oppose us would actually need to respond to and questions that I think, they would find very difficult to answer.
My experience of marriage right now, in this country is that IT IS NOT something that only happens between a man and a woman – There are many trans women who remain legally married to their wives. And there are transmen who can legally marry other men. And there are many people who are unable to marry either a man or a woman because for a whole range of reasons it is unclear whether they themselves are men or women.
It is very clear to me that the marriage debate is one where it makes much more sense to engage with the debate on the basis on GENDER and NOT on the basis of sexuality.
What the marriage Act doesn’t define – and nor does any other legislative instrument in this country at a Commonwealth, State or Territory level – is what a man or a woman actually is.
And the reason that these terms are not defined in legislation is that there is so much variation in the natural biology and social context of the human experience that it is completely impossible to define categorically what a man or a woman actually is.
The biggest issue facing trans and intersex people in Australia at the moment is about identity recognition – the fact that there is NO CONSISTENCY in the way that governments recognise a persons sex – that the same person will be legally recognised as male by some government agencies while being legally recognised as female by other government agencies.
So I think the biggest question about marriage is quite simple: “How can a government on one hand maintain that marriage can only be between a man and a woman if that same government is unable to consistently articulate what a man or a woman even is?”
In the ACT there is also second important question: “How can the ACT Government maintain that it is serious about the importance of legal recognition – when although they seem desperate to legally recognise my relationships, they refuse to legally recognise the very essence of my individual identity as a man?”
So as activists, let’s start to scratch just a little below the surface. Let’s start to demand a little bit more of those people who claim to be our allies.  Let’s REFUSE TO just accept THE MYTH that marriage is, or ever can be effectively restricted to unions between “a man and a woman”.
Let’s start shifting the discussion to HOW we want the legal definition of marriage to be changed, rather than WHETHER it should be changed at all. And let’s remember that all we need to do to achieve this shift is to engage with the marriage debate on the basis of gender rather than sexuality.
To do these things is to shift the marriage debate to an arena where we CAN win – because we shift the debate to an arena where our argument is evidenced not by us arguing on moral concepts like human rights and social justice and equity but where our argument is evidenced by the natural and undeniable diversity of sex and gender that always has and always will exist in our society.

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I’ve dated (proportionally) a lot of guys who were closeted homos. Now, when someone is closeted, sometimes one’s identity is really tied up in the notion of the embattled homo, who can’t have what one wants. For example, my identity was really tied up in the notion that I like girls better than boys, but I just couldn’t have them. I identified as a (closeted) lesbian instead of as a bisexual for that reason.

Now, some of these guys made it perfectly clear that they loved me in spite of my female body, not because of it. It was never verbal, it was always those little actions that tell you that someone finds part of your body too horrible to contemplate. Now, obviously having a partner who can barely have sex with me at all, and definitely can’t have sex unless I’ve put my finger up his butt, who refuses to touch my breasts, who thinks my vagina is ‘gross’, only reinforced my own body dysphoria, and my own desperate longing to have a body that my partner could desire. (For the record, I actually quite like putting my fingers up people’s butts. Its just tedious if it’s every single time, and you know your partner has to lie back and think of Tom of Finland to get it up.)

It’s a fucking horrible way to be. Being straight, or being gay is no excuse not to revere your partner’s body and the pleasure you can have together. Even if your partner is not the gender you usually desire, even if your partner is transgendered or intersex. If you can’t handle the reality of their body, you should be polite enough not to take them to bed. Express your love for them in other ways. This notion that I’ve seen in transfeminist circles, that if someone likes your body because it’s trans, rather than in spite of its transness, they must be a tranny chaser, strikes me as being full of self-loathing. I don’t want yet another gay boy to hate my body, while loving me. Or ignoring my body, while loving me. I’m a person in a body, and I want to be touched, and touched with conviction!

So anyway, imagine for a moment some heterosexual cis folk dating. They get into bed for the first time, and start to get undressed. The dude is all like “Your boobies are hot cos they are girl boobies” in his head, and he gets aroused. He doesn’t think that way about the boobies of the other footy players in the change room, even though they might be just as big and round as this girl he’s bedding (though if they are footy players, probably not as soft). She is probably enjoying the feeling of his boner pressed up against her. The knowledge that it’s a responsive, flesh and blood organ, rather than a silicone penis probably adds to that arousal. Their attraction to each others’ bodies is intrinsically linked to their understanding of the other person’s gender identity.

Now, I’m not saying that heterosexual cis women could never be attracted to a trans man, or heterosexual cis men can’t be attracted to trans women. The way we construct a lover’s body in our mind, and under our hands, is linked to how we understand their gender. So when a lover doesn’t have the strength to see a trans person naked, without starting to screw up on pronouns, or can’t touch certain body parts for fear of challenging their notion of their lovers gender, there’s a problem.

Notice that I am not saying that people should ignore trans folks’ requests not to touch certain body parts!!!

I am saying that don’t assume that just because someone’s body is trans, you aren’t allowed to touch. NEGOTIATE. For example, my breasts are fairly sensationless. I very rarely get any feeling out of them, though I do sometimes if my mind is in the right place, which tells me that there is probably no nerve damage to them, just psychological blocks. However, I am never going to get past my psychological block to enjoying my breasts if I’m the only person that ever touches them. Even when I tell partners that it’s ok to touch them, and I want them to touch them, they often don’t, because they say, when they are sleeping with a man, breast play isn’t something they usually do.

Some trans folk want to be treated exactly like a cis person of the same gender. Again, you should respect their wishes. However you can’t assume what that looks like in that trans person’s mind, and you should communicate about it and make sure everyone is on the same page. Also, for the record, don’t assume that someone’s biggest hang up in bed is their gender, just cos that’s your biggest hang up about being in bed with them.

My point is: I want a partner to love my body for what it is RIGHT NOW, not what it might be, what it could become after surgery / more hormones / more surgery. Likewise, I want to be able to appreciate a trans partner’s body for what it is right now, and enjoy my partner for being gender fucked, not for their body’s similarities to a cis body, not for my ability to block out the ‘conflicting information’, but for all of the beautiful, sexy, pleasurable body they have right now.