Moreover, even if being gay or trans is just the result of cultural influence doesn't mean we should respect it any less. That said, it's worth asking the question isn't it?
People had precisely this same concern about gay people over the past few decades. And the same concern about things like heavy metal music.
When your argument rhymes so well with these obviously broken prior arguments, it is worth re-evaluating.
https://medium.com/@QSE/when-you-say-i-would-never-date-a-tr...
Others would say they're not saying that, but that your preference is influenced by transphobic culture:
https://www.curvemag.com/blog/transgender/the-often-misunder...
I'm sure others would be fine with it.
On the other hand, I'd like to know what the OP, shtps, would think if they dated a transwoman without knowing she was trans and later found out about it. People have committed violent crimes because they didn't know, or at least claimed they didn't know as a defense.
So there is something there that needs clearing up. If you're attracted to someone and then later find something about them and decide you're not attracted to them after all, that's not the fault of the person you initially found atttractive. Agreed?
It's not about 'who's at fault' really. It will sooner or later come up and it is better sooner than later for both parties. If I'm dating a woman and she doesn't mention that she already has children, which is a big deal for me, then we're both just wasting our times because that's something I can't compromise on.
I don't know why this even needs to be stated, but violence is not an option in either of these cases.
It needs to be stated that violence is not an option because many times violence has been used against trans women and the defense of the perpetrator was "I didn't know she was trans".
I guess nowadays people also informally call "having casual sex" dating. I'm also not sexually attracted to trans women if that's what you're getting at. We would not even be able to have sex.
Ok, we're on the same page regarding the violence.
I guess the alternative would be that you have to be willing to have sex with everybody of your preferred sex? Are there people who actually think this?
Sure, but my preference for being solely with brunettes is not as strong as my preference for being solely with straight people, so the deception is not equal in its merited response. Perhaps this is bigoted, but I’m sincerely interested in your conviction.
Feel free to exclude based on physical criteria common in trans people, be it from masculine features, to larger frames to a set of genitals you're not attracted to, but "trans people" as category is way to broad. Because they can functionally be cis women. Unless you have a breeding fetish I guess.
Insisting on a separate category feels like people are holding on to bioessentialist feeling that trans women must be men, which would make a cis man gay. Pair that with toxic masculinity and you have one of the reasons for violence particularly against trans women.
(I have no personal stake at this, like many trans people I mostly date other trans people, less complicated and your partner has less of a hard time relating to you)
Best of luck!
It's probably still the right thing to do, purely because the trans panic defense is still a thing and it would be unsafe, but I see no moral obligation here.
However if a person driving a Ferrari wearing a 5k suit and a 50k watch asks someone on a date, that person may be under the impression that they are going on a date with a rich person and that they will not be going to McDonald's.
I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with taking your date to McDonald's. Plenty of people love McDonald's. But it is not the same thing and that date may not go well.
If you're saying it to prove a point I mean yeah people see through that
I have to keep these opinions quiet now because of the negative social backlash I’ve gotten.
I can’t believe we live in times where we have people in the lgbt community who criticize homosexual men as being “genital fetishists” for being attracted to only men of the same sex.
Now what? Are trans people not allowed to have different opinions and ideas about anything? As a gay man, would you say that all gay men see everything in the same way? For example, if I ask 100 gay men their opinion on gay marriage, will I get 100 identical answers, or...?
What I'm trying to say is, whenever someone says something stupid to you, remember that they are just one person expressing one opinion and that this opinion may well change as time goes by. Don't assume that all of society, or all of one particular segment of society, has the exact same, or even similar, view.
Also to be blunt, I doubt this "negative social backlash" you've gotten is as bad as that, or even that it's the kind of backlash you get outside of Twitter. But maybe I'm old. I transitioned in the 90's when most transwomen I knew identified as gay men. Try that one for a woke debate, some day. Anyway we didn't have Twitter back then so you wouldn't be called a "genital fetishist" to your face for not liking vag else most transwomen would have been decried as "genital fetishists". Eeew, fish and all that.
My point is I think that people will come up with all sorts of dumb ways of thinking when something becomes an "issue". We're still at the point in the curve, with trans issues, where they are "issues" whereas being gay has more or less been assimilated in mainstream culture (and that's part of why gay men are being attacked by "woke" folk). Wait it out. In a few years people will be reading all those woke tweets and blogs and tumblrs and laughing, mostly good-heartedly.
And why does there need to be a "backlash" even? Do we absolutely need to have a big old culture war everytime somebody says something stupid?
It's just a really shitty thing to do, and it's not even accurate. Attraction models do not solely work based on genitals, there's a lot of other characteristics that go into that.
But you don't know how his argument with his friends went, so it's a little arrogant to tell him "they were probably mad at you because you said X".
It is also wrong to call a lesbian transphobic because she finds testicles unattractive and vaginas attractive. She is entitled to be honest about her sexuality.
Nobody says you're not allowed to have genital preferences. Chromosome preferences (with everything else equal) however seem legitimately transphobic to me. They're more a rejection of trans people than stemming from a preference in attraction.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
It’s becoming more and more mainstream, and there’s no party to turn to in order to help halt this nonsense.
Politics is the process of distributing power, and left wing politics aims to distribute power more widely, whereas right wing politics aims to concentrate it.
I never stated that (you did). I merely pointed out the fact that humans are largely hypocrites and duplicitous by nature. ALL interactions between humans is underpinned by power.
In the past, the power grab was explicit, nowadays said power is sought after behind the veneer of "civility" and "niceness".
It is basic human nature that I'm criticising. The left are just as bad as the right - but at least, with the right - you can see them coming, because they are mostly explicit (at least relative to the left).
The left are just as power hungry as the right, but are very well versed in this "we are nice, caring people" act - this is why I (a seeker of the truth - and nothing but the truth), am enjoying their dirty inner workings coming to light.
> The left ... was never about equality and justice, it was always ... being about POWER
It feels more than a little reductive to attribute this behaviour to "the left" as a whole, when in fact it is a very small number of people. Perhaps you feel it is appropriate in your own context, but again this is a (common) presentation that purports to dismiss an entire "wing" of political thought, but actually just presents crude stereotypes.
Finally, I think the idea that the right present their attempts at power in a more naked fashion just isn't borne out by the evidence. Right wing policies are frequently presented as being dictated by either reason or common sense (often depending on the audience), and those of their opponents dismissed as unrealistic. This is the same kind of veneer you decry on the left, just a different colour - one that some find more appealing.
You're conflating two very different things here: "I would not do this", and "If someone does this they're not really gay".
It feels like a motte-and-bailey fallacy to me.
I could understand if you'd find some to most trans women not attractive, but a categorical exclusion seems transphobic to me.
There are trans women where you really can not tell, even if you're in an intimate relationship. At that point it moves from being a genuine preference to bigotry.
But I can see what you're actually asking: Is anyone going to yell at you because you're not dating them. The answer is no.
Unless you real question was not a question, but more of an implication that something that literally never happens must happen on a grand scale. Damn the woke mob forcing me to fuck trannies!
As a trans person I do not believe in a firm sex/gender distinction. The evidence clearly suggests gender identity (unlike race) has a major biological component.
Case studies like David Reimer are pretty definitive, in my opinion.
So, other, actual evidence, please? A citation in a journal would do. E.g. Yu & Yu 2017 "Gender identity has a biological component" or something of the sort. Something we can accept is "evidence" in a mainstream, standard sense, not in the sense given to "evidence" by the internet, like "I know of something that agrees with my personal beliefs so it's evidence that I'm right".
Not being attracted to this or that person is perfectly natural. Reminder: a lot of trans people "pass" perfectly.
"ostracized by the woke community" in another strawman.
Perhaps there's something else going on?
(I am sure that trans people far more often have far worse experiences still)
I've heard stories, both online and from my sisters (who live in a pretty woke neighborhood and have a pretty woke circle of friends) about kids and teens who were "criticized" for being "too gender conforming" by "concerned" parents and friends alike. And stories about teens and grownups being ostracized and called names for politely rejecting trans or same sex people flirtations[1].
While I don't think these anecdotes are outright bullying, of course, it shows a certain direction, and it shows certain parental and peer group pressures building up in certain cohorts of society. All this can cause a certain amount of trauma and confusion[0], especially in kids and teens who haven't had a chance to explore and form their personality and identity on their own to a sufficient degree yet, when e.g. you as a kid get a sense that your parents are unhappy about you or when friends and peers call or at least insinuate you are "a bit of a" transphobe or homophobe because your brain is interested in the opposite sex and opposite sex genitalia.
[0] I am NOT saying all trans people are just confused. But I do think that some kids and younger teens are in fact just confused. Well, all kids and teens are constantly confused about everything, that's part of growing up, which is to a great part trial and error and trying to make sense of things and experiences. But this kind of confusion I am talking about relates to the old stories of "My parents wanted a boy and only got me, a girl, so I tried to be as much a boy as I could growing up trying to please them", but with a new slant to it, that might possibly involve hormone therapy at worst.
[1] One more slightly related anecdote, I am directly biased here: When I was like 17 or 18 (still in school, so, long ago), I was at a party and had a guy hit on me. I am a guy myself, but straight. Fine no worries, I told him nicely I am not interested. He (admittedly quite drunk) would then follow me around for some time, trying to convince me with zingers like "only a man knows how to suck another man's cock to perfection, I can show you, follow me!". The following days people would ask me why I "hate gays". What happened after that guy struck out with me is that he went around telling people I am a "gay hater". It took quite some effort to explain myself to people that I in fact do not hate gays and am not "grossed out" by gays, etc, just do not find them to be sexually attractive partners for me personally. I am sure some of my peers still thought I am a rampant homophobe afterwards. The more you defend yourself, the more guilty you look and all that. I am convinced this affected some of my friendships negatively and certainly messed with my mind[2]. I dread to imagine what it's like growing up now in some hyper-woke community, socialized by shit storms and parents and teachers who think math is racist and it's OK to punch "nazis".
[2] One openly bisexual girl from my grade remarked to me "Now you got a glimpse at what it is like for me a lot of the time". True that, only a glimpse, but bad enough for me already.
They have lives, responsibilities and dependants. Unlike children they can’t change their identities on a whim without repercussions, or negative impacts on people they care about.
I imagine that many people would rather ignore their “true” identity, than risk losing a spouse they care about, or disrupting their children’s futures.
Who said that? It's probably becoming less of an issue, but it's definitely not disappeared.
There's also the little detail that people tend to cluster based on interests and personality traits in the first place, so I could see many ending up in the same circles even if none of them were out yet.
A lot of the things they described had a "wait that's a symptom??" reaction. I have since suggested to a couple of friends to get checked for ADHD in a similar manner if they seem like they might be struggling with it. Worst case they're now in the mental healthcare system and have access to a therapist who can figure out what they're struggling with
When you find a good place you tell your mates about it
• People with shared experiences often cluster together in friend groups. (There are autistic friend groups, yet you'd get laughed out of the village for saying “Sally caught autism off her friends”.)
• People tend to come out around people it's safe to come out around.
• Seeing your friends coming out as [whatever] might make you properly consider whether you might also like guys, or Minecraft, or not being a woman.
And they're the same effects in anyone with a socially-frowned-upon interest. Think of the tabletop-RPG-playing “nerds” of yore.