Sissy porn at Princeton University

(by Genevieve Gluck. Warning NSFW)

This article is a shorter version of Genevieve’s original piece, which you should read in full if you have the stomach for it. It is NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

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In April 2020, a trans-identified male named Río Sofia gave a presentation for Princeton University titled Forced Womanhood!, after his exhibition in 2017 at Cooper Union College, wherein Sofia displayed photographs and video of himself in scenes modeled on sissification pornography. In sissification, or sissy pornography, sometimes also called “forced femme”, men are ostensibly ‘forced’ into traditional feminine sex roles, including being made to wear makeup, pink frilly dresses, and lingerie, as well as to perform acts of sexual submission. The genre emerged from BDSM practices of dominance, submission, and sadomasochism, and the male participant, as well as viewers, are encouraged to experience sexual arousal through the humiliation of being degraded as though they were women.

The sexualized fantasy is contingent on men being dehumanized through femininity. This explicitly demonstrates that femininity — as in, the socially constructed sex stereotypes imposed on women by force, by men — are designed to dehumanize women and girls. This is worth bearing in mind in any discussion of gender identity ideology. Harmful beauty products, purchased in the form of plastic surgery, breast implants, high heels, and excessive makeup are frequently purported to be expressions of selfhood.

Río Sofia begins his presentation by saying, “Bear with me as we expand into the constellation of ideas around forced feminization, forced womanhood, feminism, and porn!” He then begins to discuss forced feminization pornography magazines and points out that there are often advertisements for black market ‘feminizing’ hormones located in the back pages of these pornography publications.

Sofia also mentions the humiliation of discussing the relative size of a man’s genitalia. This is a recurring theme in forced feminization pornography, wherein statements are made in favor of ‘forcibly’ transitioning a man into a ‘woman’ due to the assumed inadequacy of his manhood. In a similar vein, gender identity ideology promotes the view that women can be defined as castrated or emasculated men.

Men devise the projected notions of femininity, impose them upon women by coercion, sometimes by force, then assert that women are inherently male projections. This consequently streamlines the male appropriation of the female: by first reducing her to a set of ideas, then claiming that the reduction of women is the truest definition of women, men can lay claim to every aspect of the female and purport to possess her entirely, both physically and metaphysically.

Sofia created a series of videos along with the photographs for the Forced Womanhood! exhibition. One video highlights the eroticized threat of castration, a trope in sissification pornography, and features himself in a chair with sawed-off legs and his genitalia bound by rope. In another video, he points out that he has borrowed the stereotypical pink ‘sissy’ dress from his friend Torrey Peters and recommends a novella written by Peters called The Masker, which follows participants in a masking convention. ‘Maskers’ refers to men who don silicone body suits and face masks in order to resemble women and subsequently engage in sexual activity with each other. It’s worth mentioning that Peters was nominated for the UK Women’s Prize in Fiction earlier this year for his book, Detransition, Baby, which also references the forced feminization fetish. An open letter created by Wild Women Writing Club condemned the decision and called the book “an extended male sexual fantasy in which women, and babies, are reduced to one-dimensional props.” Peters, who was long-listed, was not selected for the subsequent short-listing, but nevertheless took an honor which ought to have been reserved for a female author. The Women’s Prize for Fiction responded to the open letter with a strongly-worded statement condemning all who opposed their decision.

Towards the end of his 90-minute presentation, Sofia describes his disappointment over having his pornographic exhibition not only praised, but shown to parents of prospective students. Not receiving the backlash he had hoped for, he then stripped down naked and exposed himself to the president of Cooper Union College. At the time of this exhibition, the president of Cooper Union College was a woman, and presumably he is referring to Laura Sparks. What Sofia is describing is a criminal sexual act: he deliberately exposed himself to a woman, with the explicit intention of upsetting her.

Río Sofia: “When I showed this work, I was preparing for quite a bit of backlash. Right around the corner [from the exhibition] is the [university] president’s office. All day, people are moving in and out of this exhibition space [including] administrators and board members.

There was this one time that the admissions staff had come in with a group of parents of prospective students [at Cooper Union]. They came in to show the work, and the president of the school told [students] that they had to come in and see this show.

That really pissed me off! I was like, damn, did they just turn this into an empowerment narrative? I got really upset and I was like, how far can I push this? The last day of the exhibition, I got fully naked, and was just in those lucite-looking heels, completely naked in those heels, and I stood in the doorway of the president’s office.

I wanted to see the pushback, because what it was doing was really destabilizing my senses. If I don’t have the pushback, what am I making? So much of my argument around trying to fight back against the empowerment narrative, I needed that thing to use as a foil to push back against.

So I’m standing in the doorway, I’m naked, feeling very obstinate and waiting for someone to try me. Then this administrator comes out, and she looks at me, and [says], ‘Can I take a picture with you?’”

This example illustrates how men who promote gender identity ideology are intentionally violating women’s boundaries in a blatant power play aimed at using women’s expressions of self-defense as evidence that they are more oppressed than the women they appropriate. It neatly summarizes the tactics of the transgender movement as a whole: aggrandizing by means of antagonizing. It also suggests that the public is being forced to participate in a BDSM fetish which ceases to be thrilling when it does not cause distress, especially to women. Therefore, gender ideology can be understood as encouraging the mental (and often physical and sexual) abuse of women on a massive scale. It depends on the suffering of women for its existence: in theory, in practice, and in its activism.