Desired in Private. Erased in Public.
Trans people are the most searched and the most legislated against. That is not a coincidence. (Shutterstock Creative/MAYA LAB)
They will stream us, search us, and fantasize about us in private, only to demonize and legislate our right to exist in public. Scroll through any streaming platform, any adult content site, and we are there.
As someone who immerses herself in social media, it can be liberating. What better way to express oneself than to show out and show skin online? (Tastefully, of course.) Trans bodies are everywhere the gaze lands, even when some ardently oppose. And yet, in the same cultural moment, this is among the most transphobic times we live in. Whether it’s legislative acts that rescind our identification papers and erase our authentic selves, or restrict access to restrooms and, increasingly, healthcare, the legislation designed to erase us from public life has never been more aggressive or coordinated.
A recent Playboy article reinforced what many of us already knew. Trans content ranked second in Pornhub’s 2025 Year in Review. Second. While local, state, and federal governments stripped gender-affirming care from trans youth, adults, and redefined sex in federal documents, the country was also—quietly and hungrily—watching us.
It is not irony; it is architecture.
The fetishization and the legislation come from the same source: a culture that wants access to trans bodies without extending dignity to trans people. One happens in a private tab in a private browser. Another, perhaps, in a Senator’s hotel room. But both seek control. Who gets to consume us, and who makes those terms.
Most especially, whether we get any say in the matter.
“Nothing the political climate is or does will affect that people that people will find me attractive,” said trans creator, Bloody, in the Playboy article. There is something bold and clarifying about that statement. She isn’t performing resilience; rather, she’s stating a fact. Desire doesn’t wait for political permission. And for trans people who have built their labor, livelihood, and visibility on their terms, that fact serves as power and protection. The state can rewrite and legislate definitions all it wants to. It cannot rewrite what moves them.
But we should be careful not to let that truth serve as a salve. The fact that trans creators, actors, personalities, educators, writers (hello?!), and others continue to build audience, income, and presence in the middle of an erasure campaign is a testament to survival. But survival is not the same as safety. Neither is visibility the same as rights. And a culture that consumes trans bodies while simultaneously working to legislate us out of existence is not a culture that has reconciled anything.
Beyoncé told no lies when she said, “ They hate me because they want me.” The ache of that line isn’t just pop wisdom. The 2022 album, Renaissance, was rooted in the cultural impact & legacy of ballroom culture, where Black and Brown queer bodies found safety and trans bodies found space. That line is a precise diagnosis of how anti-Blackness, transmisogyny, and desire have always operated together.
To be a trans woman in this particular cultural moment is to be the target of hate and the object of fantasy. To be consumed and controlled in the same breath. That contradiction is not new. Black trans women have always known, always navigated in climates like this. What is new is the scale, industrial appetite, and brazenness of the erasure happening in plain sight.
We need more than desire. We deserve the architectural fullness of life: healthcare, safety, legal recognition, and the right to exist beyond the edges of someone else’s screen. Until that is true, the numbers on Pornhub’s Year in Review are not a sign of progress. They are a mirror held up to a culture that wants everything from us and is still deciding whether we deserve anything back.
