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Trans attraction to women

I read on Twitter recently a question about whether recognising that your feelings towards a woman are as much about envy and a desire to be her as they are about fancying her affects how you feel about crushes and attraction after that. 

My off the cuff reaction was that I have both body envy and attraction at the same time. I assume that if I transition that I will continue to like girls and be a lesbian so I feel both at the same time. 

Having reflected on this for a while I wonder if it is that simple. 

I have written before about my early memories of first attraction. On a family holiday when I was eleven a girl wearing a green crop top over a black swimsuit. I thought I fancied her but my abiding memory is of fantasising about wearing her swimsuit. At school in the drama studio wondering what it felt like to wear a leotard and leggings set.  Seeing the outline of a bra through a girl’s blouse and wanting to feel like her and wear a bra myself. Tights, skirts, leggings always wondering how it felt to wear them more than seeing the girl herself. Breasts were fascinating to me but I needed to know how it feels to have them, not to just enjoy looking at them. The first time I touched a girl’s chest, I went home and put on one of my mum’s bras so I could touch myself through it and feel what the girl might feel. 

Which starts to beg the question: have I ever truly fancied a girl at all or has it always been more about wanting to be her? 

I have read that it is common for closeted trans women to date women as a means to be close to a female and learn from her and feel vicarious femininity by being close to her. 

I can certainly relate to that. And choosing female friends and feeling good about being accepted as one of the girls and especially if they confide in me about girl things like periods or sex. 

I have attraction to women and have done normal male / female sex so it is not as though I always only think about being them, sometimes I do just like someone for herself not to be her. 

At the very least though, there is a conflict between body envy and attraction. A friend that I accidentally came out to whilst drunk put it well: she said that she could tell that I wanted to undress her, but that I wouldn’t be able to decide between her and putting on her dress for myself. And she was dead right. It’s really confusing. 

I

I do fantasise about actual women, and being with them, not just wanting to be them. But the thing is, if I do try to imagine sex with a woman, I realise that it is always her point of view that my fantasy is focussed on, how it feels to her if we do this or that. Even in my imagination I am not me. So I come back to the question, am I feeling both body envy and attraction or just one or the other? Have all my relationships really been about wanting to be close to a female to share her experience? And, I wonder, would I feel differently if I transition so that the bodt envy and wish to be a woman goes away and I only have attraction?
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