Actual men would not take this bargain.
If you think you're a man and would take this bargain, you should discuss this with your therapist and start thinking deeply about your gender identity, because there might be some stuff about yourself you haven't realized before lol.
Please don't belittle struggles of people you don't know and question their identities, even as a joke.
Chances to hurt someone AND yourself are equal, just trust me I know what I'm speaking.
I don't think that it's reasonable to interpret the comment you've quoted the way you have. I don't think it's belittling. The thing to keep in mind is that there is actually a pretty large niche industry for writing transgender transformation stories like these. The vast, vast majority of the audience for these (or at least the only people I've ever seen open about engaging with that sort of content) are closeted and early or pre-transition trans people. That is, works like that were something they came upon earlier in their lives and it sparked a major realization leading to their interest in transition, though they may not read as much of it later on (some still do).
I've not engaged much with them personally because the majority of them seemed to have coercive components to the story that I found hard to enjoy. But I think for a lot of closeted people that's part of the appeal, in much the same way that a lot of cis women reading het romance stories find coersion part of the charm, as it gives them a way out of taking full responsibility for their horniness; just swap out a set of internalized misoogyny those cis women are working through while reading those books with internalized transphobia for the tg-tf audience.
But, at least for the purposes of this discussion, I'm a cis dude, so those stories never had much fulfillment for me in the first place. They're just kinda there, and leave a bit of an unpleasant aftertaste because of the way the fantasized coercion component play out. Not my bag.
The point is not that if you're finding the story compelling, you're obviously trans and should seek transition. It's that if the story speaks to you in certain ways it's worth figuring out what those reasons are, and working with people to help you on any journeys of discovery that might come along with it. The goal is not transition but a deeper understanding of what your own self-conception actually is, and that can't be done without exploring some ideas that might otherwise remain covered up in a bigoted society.
That said, it may not surprise you to hear that I'm in this one for other reasons. I find the narrative compelling because I think the idea of a romance where the leads have chemistry and one person is risking a lot, potentially making large sacrifices for the person he cares about, is interesting. What if he falls out of love -- how would his life change in regard to these sacrifices? What if that happens and he finds that the sacrifices aren't sacrifices at all, and for that matter isn't a "he" either? Will he only pursue the romance if there's a way to end the curse?
Like one potential reading of this story so far is that it's taking the sort of jokes made against those dumb chauvinist types -- the guys inspiring the rejoinders like "fellas, is it gay to have empathy toward and be romantically involved with a woman" on social media -- and taking it seriously, asking what love might be like if that's actually how it worked.
As the saying goes, to be loved is to be changed
.jpg?1700886898)