I wrote a recent post about the novel A Lady for a Duke. In case it wasn’t apparent from the hoity-toity language I used to describe the plot and such, I loved the book!

It is 400+ pages of exquisite writing, where you got the sense that every sentence was crafted with care. It is also a beautiful story, told well, and features, as its star, a remarkable trans woman and an even more remarkable relationship between her and her lifelong best friend.

I am rehashing all this because I was searching for another book to read, and I came by chance upon a Reddit discussion on that book, and several of the commenters chose to compare it to A Lady for a Duke. I was taken aback by the attitude of these commenters who would dismiss this book as unreadable or unworthy because (spoiler alert!) it contains a sex scene – or perhaps the sex scene – that is not their cup of tea.

Honestly, it’s not mine either.

I’m not sure why the author chose to do things that way – to have the trans girl as the top during sex – and I would have really loved to see something I could better relate to, and that, I imagine most trans women better relate to. (I could be wrong.) Maybe she was trying to make a point, to illustrate something less common, less understood. I don’t know. But like the Reddit gang, I would have preferred it the other way.

Still, that 1% of the book does not invalidate the other 99%, which is a gift to the trans community. To be fair, the whole 100% is a gift to us. We have so few heroines in fiction (and real life) to fantasize about or look up to or see ourselves in, and Viola is one of the best, most complex of the fictional sort.

Beyond that, shouldn’t we try to be open-minded about the sexual alternatives open to us? Or do we just want others to be open-minded about us and our choices?