First emerging from Craigslist personals in the early aughts, ‘T4T has transcended hookup culture to describe intra-communal solidarity and support.

WORDS BY QUINN RHODES

“t4t is a promise. You just promise to love trans girls above all else. […] We aim high, trying to love each other and then we take what we can get. We settle for looking out for each other.” 

– Torrey Peters, Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones

You might have seen the phrase ‘T4T’ in trans people’s dating apps bios, or perhaps you’ve come across it in the tags of an Instagram post, a TikTok video, or even fan fiction on Archive Of Our Own.

T4T stands for “trans-for-trans” and usually refers to romantic and/or sexual relationships between trans people – though, like lots of the language trans people use, it’s an expansive term rather than having a strict definition.

If you’ve ever wanted to understand more about T4T relationships, or wondered why some trans people are explicit about not dating cis people, please read on.

Origins of T4T

Before T4T was popularised on dating apps and social media, it was used by trans folks searching for intimacy during the dawn of the digital age. As explained in ‘The t4t issue’ of Transgender Studies Quarterly, the term arose in the context of early 2000s Craigslist personals — with the “t” (rather than “m” for “man” or “w” for “woman”) allowing for trans and non-binary people to describe genders and sexes that cannot be neatly summed up within the gender binary.

But just as the term has outlived Craigslist personals, the idea of trans people being drawn into relationships with other trans people long precedes it. 

Dr Liz Powell, a licensed psychologist who specialises in non-traditional relationships (and who is genderqueer themself) says that trans people get each other, see each other. We already have a shared set of language, experiences, and frameworks for talking about sex and our bodies.

Powell adds there is “this kind of shared experience, this shared bond from having been part of this [marginalised] group that is unique to a T4T relationship.”

M, a 41-year-old, non-binary trans guy agrees. His current relationship, which is T4T, makes him feel “very seen and understood”.

There’s also a gender-affirming aspect to the dynamic. “I’m not worrying that I’m being put in a particular role in my relationship due to my gender,” M explains. “I don’t worry that any part of my anatomy will make my partner think of me as ‘really’ some other gender than what I am.”

Safety and space for self-discovery 

For many trans people, T4T relationships provide a space where they don’t have to play the role of educator – which can be exhausting, especially in the context of a romantic and/or sexual relationship.

“I trust trans people around the messiness of my gender way more than I trust any cis person,” Powell says.

They have more space and freedom to explore and be playful with their gender with other trans people, because they know “they are handling it with a care and a gentleness and an awareness that a lot of cis folks just don’t have.”

That care and awareness is invaluable for being able to figure out that you are trans. Jason, who is 43 and describes themselves as genderqueer and non-binary, explains that being with a trans person was invaluable for exploring their own gender. “I’m not sure I would have ever given myself space to be queer if I didn’t have this relationship to help me through self-doubt,” they say. 

“I can handle some degree of embarrassment or awkwardness as part of the learning process with cis people, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt”

Fi, who is 40 and a femme-of-centre, non-binary trans woman, values the common context between trans people. “[Cis people might not have] the immediate, visceral understanding about why I wouldn’t want to risk going into a specific restroom and would want to find another one, for example, or why I might be crabby or grumpy the day before my HRT shot,” Fi explains.

Safety plays a huge role in trans people choosing to date and have sex with each other. Dating another trans person means you know they’ve already dealt with – or are at least aware of – the safety issues trans people have to constantly consider. But it’s also about being able to show up as your truest self. As Powell explains, it is less likely that trans or non-binary people will “round down” your gender to make themselves more comfortable, for example, or hide your transness from people in their life.

Brielle Bright, a 37-year-old woman, explains, navigating relationships with cis people can lead to invalidating scenarios. “I can handle some degree of embarrassment or awkwardness as part of the learning process with cis people, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, even when it’s well meaning.” And, as she points out, it’s not always well meaning, which “immediately puts us in danger of abuse or assault.” 

That shared context and understanding is so important. Although they’re polyamorous, Fi doesn’t seek out cis people to date. “The amount of education and explanations I think would be needed takes all the joy out of it for me.” 

Joy in T4T relationships 

Trans people can find unparalleled joy and intimacy in T4T relationships.

“In relationships with trans people, I often feel like I’m healing and being healed. I need and am needed. I’ve never experienced closeness like that outside of T4T relationships,” Brielle explains.

There is also beauty in trans people choosing to build relationships (and gendered roles within those relationships) that work for them – rather than conforming to the cis-heteropatriarchal scripts of what these ‘should’ look like.

“I value a partner who has taken some of the cultural assumptions about sex and gender and identity and broken them down in order to rebuild them,” Jason says. “[This is] inescapable as a trans person; taking the stories you were given about gender and figuring out what to do with them is something we’re all forced to do.”

“Seeing how hot other trans people are can be one layer of validation”

And then there’s the undisputed fact that trans people are hot. Siobhan McManus, a 41-year-old trans woman, notes that intimacy with her trans partner allows them to celebrate their bodies. “We understand each other in the challenges we face, the eroticism we share, because in my encounter with her body I don’t feel bad about mine – quite the contrary.” 

Powell says that many trans people have encountered the false narrative that if you transition, no one will want to have sex with you – while in their experience, the reality is that many trans people actually end up having more sex after coming out.

“A lot of us have a fear of being undesirable, unwantable or unlovable if we ‘become’ trans, because [transness is seen as] bad and gross and icky and terrible,” they say. “That’s just not true. Seeing how hot other trans people are can be one layer of validation, and seeing a hot person think that you’re hot can be another layer of validation.”

Siobhan adds that she and her partner also find joy in being able to escape “the cis-sexist surveillance” of their bodies and from a society that judges people for not being ‘sufficiently’ a man or a woman. “I think that’s what draws us to each other. We’re a refuge for each other in a particularly hard moment in trans history.”

T4T beyond sex and dating

Amid ongoing legislative attacks on trans rights and heightened transphobia in the media, the term ‘T4T’ has taken on new, broader definitions as trans and non-binary folks strike up networks of care, support and friendship between one another. 

Trans people showing up for each other is far from new, but intentional community has never been more important. “In this boom in transphobia, I believe these connections of friendship and care between many trans people have become much more important,” says Siobhan.

Fi has seen this solidarity in action when it comes to helping other trans people find work. “We tend to experience a higher than equitable rate of unemployment and general fuckery around being fired unjustly, so taking a proactive stance to help each other find employment when we need it has been invaluable to most of my friends.” 

“Loving another trans person gives you strength”

With the proliferation of anti-trans legislation across the USA, and the continual disintegration of trans healthcare in the UK, trans people are increasingly relying on community care. M has helped people find where to get cheap needles, and Brielle has helped (and in turn been helped by) others to find DIY hormones and medications when local access to care doesn’t exist.

Mutual aid and community care is a powerful tool of resistance – and it’s one that can be incredibly rewarding. Last year, M flew from San Francisco to New York to support a friend who was having top surgery and didn’t have anyone local who could stay with him. “I went to the hospital with him, made food, helped him shower,” M recalls. “I was really happy that I could do that for him.”

T4T relationships and solidarity can pushes back against the idea that trans people are unlovable or that they are alone in the face of anti-trans violence. Whether it’s for sex or mutual aid, trans people connecting with each other is both joyful and powerful.

As Siobhan puts it: “Loving another trans person gives you strength.”

The post ‘T4T’ isn’t just about dating, it’s about community care appeared first on GAY TIMES.

From negotiating terms to navigating sexual health, here’s your expert-led guide to opening up

WORDS BY QUINN RHODES
HEADER BY YOSEF PHELAN

More people than ever are experimenting with non-monogamy and seeing if it works for them, yet practical advice about how to open up your relationship – and how to proceed once you’ve done it – can be hard to find.

While the immediate instinct following your newfound sexual freedom might be to find the best dating app for non-monogamous folks and get swiping, there’s actually a lot more to figure out. Luckily, we’ve called in the experts.

What is an open relationship?

An open relationship can refer to a number of relationship styles, wherein people are free to date, have sex, and/or form romantic relationships with multiple people. Open relationships fall under the umbrella of non-monogamy, though don’t necessarily all look the same.

Dr Liz Powell, a licensed psychologist specialising in non-traditional relationships and author of Building Open Relationships, explains that the majority of us approach dating with a relationship style “based in ownership and control and entitlement and assumptions.” Open relationships challenge these ideas, encouraging us to build relationships based on “clear communication and empowerment and autonomy and agency.”

There are lots of terms you might come across in the process of opening up your relationship. Here are a few key ones to get you started:

• Monogamy: having a romantic and/or sexual relationship with just one person at any time.
• Non-monogamy (also known as ‘ethical non-monogamy’ or ENM, or ‘consensual non-monogamy’ or CNM): having the potential to date or have romantic and/or sexual relationships with more than one person at any time, with the knowledge of everyone involved.
• Polyamory: a form of non-monogamy with emphasis on having the freedom to form intimate connections with multiple partners.
• Hierarchical polyamory: a form of polyamory where the couple are considered the ‘primary relationship’ and additional romantic and/or sexual relationships they form are ‘secondary’.
• Open relationship: a form of non-monogamous relationship where you and your partner or partners are free to date or form romantic and/or sexual connections with new people.
• Metamour: a partner of one of your partners.
• Compersion: the joy you can feel for your partner’s happiness with or excitement about another partner or relationship.

With many of these terms, exact definitions differ so it’s important to understand that fluidity is part of the equation. For example, there is no precise moment where an open relationship becomes a polyamorous one – feelings, and situations, can change and commitments can escalate.

Expectations also vary from person to person: two individuals doing non-monogamy might have relationships and boundaries within those relationships that look completely different. Unlike in the monogamous world, where there is more of a consensus around certain milestones or models of behaviour, there is no “right” way to open up your relationship.

That said, communication and clearly stating what you want and being as transparent as possible – even when it’s scary, and even when you feel like you’re stating the obvious – are key whenever it comes to non-monogamy.

Myths about open relationships

While there is an increased awareness of non-monogamy, mainstream media depictions of open relationships rarely reflect the reality of what those relationships can look like. As Dr Powell points out, it’s not all sex parties and orgies – the reality is that non-monogamous folks are “spending a lot of time on Google Calendar and a lot of time processing.”

Open relations involve a lot less threesomes than you might imagine and a lot more scheduling. In fact, Keely, who is 27 and non-monogamous, says that it’s a lot more boring than people make it out to be – but in a good way! Dr Powell explains that if you don’t want to talk about your feelings a lot, you might not be suited to an open relationship. “Non-monogamy is just a ton of talking about your feelings. You will talk about your feelings endlessly, because you’re going to have so many people with whom you’ll need to talk about your feelings.”

Talking of feelings, there is also a misconception that people who do non-monogamy don’t experience jealousy. Sarah (who is 34 and polyamorous) says that unpicking the ways we have been socialised to think about love, sex and relationships doesn’t “magically make every anxious or jealous feeling disappear, but it will give you tools to deal with them.” Indeed, experiencing those emotions does not mean you are ‘failing’ at an open relationship – Sarah says that hard feelings are “normal and valid.”

Opening your relationship may bring connections you are not expecting. Jo, who is 44 and describes her relationship style as slightly hierarchical, has found her community through polyamory. Not only that, but your relationships do not have to be equal, or treated equally – just fairly. As Jo discovered: “Each of my partners brings something very different to my life, and my role in each of their lives is unique.”

“Non-monogamy isn’t a plaster you can stick over issues in your relationship, it’s an entirely new relationship that requires work and care”

Negotiating an open relationship

While talking to your partner is essential for both monogamous and open relationships, ‘communicate!’ is advice that is easy to give and much harder to actually do. Where do you even start with negotiating an open relationship? Often, the process of deciding to be non-monogamous with a partner isn’t the most difficult bit – it’s defining what your new relationship will look like and ensuring that all parties have a common understanding of the types of assurances and freedoms they will need in order to make it worthwhile.

An exercise Dr Powell recommends to couples who want to open their relationship is to “take everything about your relationship, lay it out and decide what you actually want.” This can be a process of writing down – on paper or on your Notes app – the practices, standards and fun couple activities that will ensure you will feel safe to explore. Powell advises couples to do this separately, so people don’t just make choices based on what they think their partner wants. In an exercise like this, it’s important to check in with yourself and be honest about what you want.

For Sarah and her nesting partner, their first step was to discuss what they needed, wanted, and didn’t want. “We discussed safer sex practices, scheduling of dates versus time for us as a couple, what we thought we would want to hear or not hear about the other’s relationships.”

It’s important to schedule in solo time as well, rather than keeping your schedule jam-packed with time with a partner or out dating. Powell says that due to how pervasive mononormativity (the presumed social default of monogamy) is, couples often have an assumption that “any time that their partner does not have other plans is automatically time that they are entitled to or that their partner will want to spend with them.”

Powell advises couples to plan for what they will do if their partner has a date and they don’t have plans. “There’s this tendency to try to have something fun scheduled whenever your partner has a date, but if one person’s thing falls through, the other person still has to figure out how to deal with it.”

Breaking up to build new relationships

When opening up your relationship, Powell says it can be helpful to think of it “as though your previous relationship is ending, you’re breaking up, and you are starting an entirely new relationship with non-monogamy at its core.” This allows you to start from scratch, and decide what you want your relationship to look like, rather than what the traditional relationship escalator says it “should” look like.

One of the biggest mistakes couples can make when opening their relationship is simply not unpacking mononormativity. Jo thinks it is important not to get “bogged down in the minutia of ‘rules’, but make sure you understand what ‘opening up’ looks like to each of you.”

Keely and their partner initially drew up rules that they would both to follow if either of them saw another person, but they found that “the first few times my partner saw new people, we found that the initial rules we’d outlined for interactions were not realistic, and we had to reassess how to make the arrangements feel okay to everyone.”

And while the idea of your partner developing feelings for someone else is also scary, Powell thinks that making rules about having sex but not being allowed to have feelings rarely works in reality. “As humans don’t tend to be particularly great at being able to not develop feelings for someone with whom we have a close connection.”

https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/culture/homoflexible-feeld-dating-app/

Emotional risks and vulnerability

Increased risk of STI transmission often comes up when discussing the challenges of non-monogamy. However, research in 2015 found that while having an increased number of sexual partners increases the potential for STI transmission, people engaged in non-monogamy were more likely to use condoms during sex and more likely to get tested for STIs regularly, so the risk level wasn’t found to be greater.

Additionally, Powell believes that anxiety about STI risk is often misplaced. “The majority of the time when people say that what they’re upset about is STI risk, what they’re actually upset about is emotional risk.” They believe that people tend to move towards not using barriers with partners because we care about them, not because they have great safer sex practices. It’s important to own our fears related to intimacy and emotional connection.

For Cay and her partner, their biggest challenge was needing to accept that while they care deeply about each other, they each had needs that were not being met and could not be met by the other. “It’s incredibly difficult to accept one’s own shortcomings, but it is instrumental in understanding any form of non-monogamy.”

You shouldn’t let the potential challenges of non-monogamy put you off opening up your relationships. In fact, Powell believes that focussing on your fears when negotiating the boundaries of your new relationship can “drive you to make a lot of decisions and agree to a lot of things that you then are not going to feel good about.”

And that is the aim: to build a relationship you feel good about. Non-monogamy isn’t a plaster you can stick over issues in your relationship, it’s an entirely new relationship that requires work and care. It might not be easy, but it can be incredibly rewarding to create a relationship that works for you and your partner – or indeed your partners.

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