Research presented in this project examines how the social construction of sexuality affects cisgender (cis) men\u27s attraction to transgender women. While mainstream discourse roots gender normative males\u27 attraction to transgender women in heterosexuality, this project demonstrates how cis-trans pairings emerged from homosexuality in the twentieth century. This project traces the way sexologists\u27 elaboration of the differences between sex, gender, and sexuality helped to distinguish transfeminine people from trans-attracted gender normative males using Foucauldian genealogy. Further, this project examines how researchers have adapted nineteenth-century frameworks of same-sex desires as sexual fetishes to construct gender-conforming “healthy” desires aimed at transsexual women by using the elaboration of these categories in the science of transsexualism. By doing so, this project illustrates how researchers deemphasized the body of trans people and elevated their gender to ensure a white middle-class cis-normative society
