Sweetness and Salinity

A Meditation on the Beauty of Trans/T4T Sex

July 1, 2026 

Let’s start off by saying that this isn’t going to sound like other pieces. We said in the Appendix to Mental that at some point the human being must shine through the sludge of theory. I suppose that this “love letter” of sorts is a part of keeping my word on that topic. In full honesty, “love letter” feels like the best description. Not simply in the sense that we are principally concerned with celebrating and expressing our love for the titular act, but that T4T sex— whether it be casual, intimate, or something in between— is an act of love between bodies that have been taught that they are unlovable. So, for a moment, let us leave the footnotes, Juche-Marxist framing, and political-polemical rhetoric aside, and write about the revolutionary and transformative act of trans intimacy. 

There is a specific texture, a specific smell, and overall, a specific sensory experience of T4T intimacy. There is a geometry to feeling a body that built itself through its own labor and creativity rather than one that simply “arrived.” Let’s first address the transfeminine. Our bodies are so often either pathologized or— more commonly in this domain— fetishized into the “best of both worlds” from the perspective of repressed cissexual “chasers.” And while fetishization can certainly occur in relations between trans people, there is a different type of feeling that is far more common. 

Let’s return to that sensory experience. The transfeminine body has a certain softness, a certain strength, a certain sweetness, a certain salinity, that seems almost as if it were hand-crafted, which in a sense it was. There something enticing and wildly desirous about the feeling of two bodies, both in the midst of their own transformation, pressed against each other and becoming a single flowing being of raw creativity and independence. Intimacy— taken in this context— is more than a simple “mingling” of disparate parts. That would be the metaphysical view that we have argued against at length. The more accurate view would be to proclaim that as the softnesses, the strengths, the sweetnesses, and the salinities blend together in the heat of passion, a higher order being emerges. 

For those moments, whether they be minutes or hours, the individuals melt away and what remains is the material expression of transsexual joy itself. That joy that mostly exists as electro-chemical interactions in the brain of each individual in solitude, has attained a higher level of material expression. The joy can be held; it can be viewed; it can be experienced in the feeling of one body pressing into another, and it shines with the power of Sirius’ starlight. 

Let us now shift to the transmasculine— particularly the transmasculine and the transfeminine taken together. Certain discourse may have one believe that there is a brewing contradiction between these two. After all, transmasculinity and transfemininity could theoretically be defined in terms of each other and appear— from the bourgeois and cis-supremacist worldview— to be opposed. The transmasculine is transforming himself into what the transfeminine transforms away from. I would argue that this is an erroneous view. Transmasculinity and transfemininity are definable in terms of each other because they are each core components of the same creative process of transsexuality itself. I suppose that we are quickly entering the domain of theory, so let us again return to a sensory experience.

The transmasculine body has a certain sensory character as well. It has a salinity— a salinity that on the surface seems dominant over the sweetness. In reality, however, the salinity blends with the sweetness to produce a new flavor that is neither sweet nor salty. It has a strength, a strength that commands attention, power, respect— a strength that could strike like Mjolnir if it so chose. But this strength is not an aggressive or senseless strength. It is the strength that a fireman uses to shake a kitten from a tree. It is the strength of the revolutionary’s rifle. It is a strength that commands not from its threat but from its commitment, care, and softness. It is the sweetness that swells from the salinity.

 When the transmasculine and the transfeminine come together in this way there is a struggle in a certain sense— a struggle in the sense that struggle ought be flanked by unity. It may be a struggle for dominance or a struggle for understanding, but more than those it is a struggle in the sense that a partnered dance is a struggle. The struggle is the beauty. I suppose that in beginning with the struggle we are telling a story in medias res. 

The unity prior to this struggle is less interesting than the struggle itself or the concluding unity in my view. The first unity is the act of coming together itself. It is the first understanding of two bodies that are laboring with themselves and choosing to engage the body that represents both the position from whence they came and— to a degree— where they are headed. 

The concluding unity is more interesting, because it exists contemporaneously with the struggle. The struggle is the physical act; the second unity is the higher order being that is formed. The second unity is the taijitu— the diagram of the supreme ultimate— that can only be seen while the struggle is being performed. The second unity is the songs sung from a voice deepening from testosterone and a voice raising its register. It is the sweet salinity of the transfeminine and the salty sweetness of the transmasculine encircling each other in dance before unifying in equilibrium. 

There is something to be said— that perhaps we have already touched on— about the crucial feeling of mutual recognition present in the dance between trans bodies. Without even saying a word, there is a shared knowledge— knowledge of the first and second order— that both bodies are processes of transformation. When they press against each other, each person is fully cognizant of the fact that what they are feeling is in transition and moving constantly toward self-actualization. There is a certain beauty to that. The flowing, moving, and quasi-contradictory nature of each body is recognizing the same in its partner. 

There is a dominant idea of trans bodies as static structures. Once one is “fully” transitioned, they are simply a new thing— a new thing that is oft described in its relation to or negation of cissexuality. This can be seen in the fetishistic tendency of some cissexuals to view trans bodies as a sort of “plaything” that can serve their sexual curiosity. The tendency divorces our bodies from “typical” humanity and as such we become toys. We are not a new, higher order thing; we are simply “women with penises” or “men with vulvas.” However, in the intimacy of trans bodies, this view seems to melt away into the aether. We are bodies under constant transformation. For those moments, we are our partners, and they are us. 

We would be remiss if we were to neglect the influence on the trauma of transsexuality on trans intimacy. The labor of transness, the contradiction between oneself and one’s dominant bourgeois-cis-supremacist environment, and dysphoria all on its own, are traumatic experiences. And trauma, like any other process, is a material one. Trauma is stored in the body, in man’s own character as a social being. This is incontestable, and it is certainly retained in the temporary higher order being forged from trans intimacy. It is, however, creatively transformed. The intimate act gives its participants— and the new thing they form— to forge their own destiny rather than it being forged by the horrors inflicted upon them. The intimate act is— at its core— a declaration and manifestation of chajusong, of independence. 

As bodies dance together and become one, they are able to independently and creatively reconstruct themselves on their own terms. The mutual recognition ensures that what once happened will not be carried forward in its original form. The power that trauma and trauma-inflictors once carried is dissolved into the dance. 

Let us return again to the salinity and the sweetness— to the bodies pressed against each other in the act of transformation not just from one form into another but into a new thing. Let us return to the scents of the room. Let us to return to the songs sung. Let us return to the night itself. Traumas melt away, and mutual recognition binding two into one. At this moment, the political melts away— dissolving itself into the personal. 

We have spent over one thousand words justifying and explaining trans intimacy, but ultimately it is not entirely necessary. We have explained the beauty in intricate detail, but the beauty— when experienced— is incontestable. So, what we will return to is the dance itself. The laboring bodies exposed and pressing into each other. The taijitu swirling and lightening the world with the power of Sirius’ starlight and the guide of Polaris. Return to the weirdness, the humor, the casualness, and the intimacy. Return to the pleasure and— occasionally— the pain. Return to the warm air and the breaths of the new being. That is the beauty. Now exhale.