Why or why not?
Can we just not do threads like this? It literally just a thread for cis people to confidently declare how much they find trans people yucky and how they are completely justified in finding us repulsive. Nothing good comes from these discussions.
People say they have a genital preference, yet trans people have a range of different genitalia, pre-op, intersex, or post operative. People say they want kids, yet some trans people can still have kids pregnancy, banked eggs or sperm, adoption, surrogacy, etc.
For every “requirement” cis people have for trans people there is a trans person that exists that meets those requirements and then cis people move the goalposts to justify their bigotry.
Cis people don’t respond.
yep you are exactly right, though I don’t know how you expect cis people to know this without interacting with trans people who are able to complicate their view …
it sounds like you justified the thread for me - the good that comes from a thread like this is the possibility of cis people learning more about the diversity of human biology. I don’t expect anyone to change their views overnight, but refusing to talk to cis people about their views just because they are problematic doesn’t seem right to me 🤔
still, you’re not entirely wrong that the discussions can just become a way for transphobia to be aired publicly, so I understand why other trans folks might not want to be exposed to this
Nah fuck that, cis people don’t get debated in this way publicly at all. Cis people can go learn elsewhere in a more moderated setting, meanwhile this thread is full of bigotry that the rest of us are subjected to.
Yes and why not?
People are misinterpreting what straight means in this thread. You can date a trans person and be straight. Have a genital preference is different than your sexual orientation. It’s perfectly fine if you wouldn’t date a trans person because they don’t match your genital preference, sex related things can be a deal breaker. But you’re not gay for dating a trans person of the opposite sex.
It’s perfectly fine if you wouldn’t date a trans person because they don’t match your genital preference, sex related things can be a deal breaker. But you’re not gay for dating a trans person of the opposite sex.
Ok, then the equal is true — I’m not transphobic for deciding I don’t want to date a trans person. Regardless of sexual part compatibility.
+1, dating a trans woman as a man doesn’t make you gay
tangent on attraction to trans people being gay
I understand why people get this confused though, a lot of times “trans woman” is a gloss for “man who lives socially as a woman” - the assumption people have is that trans women are “biologically male” - this is like an essential aspect of being a trans women, it’s what differentiates them from cis women: being male. And so I understand the polite response is to treat a trans woman as a woman, but when it comes to someone’s sexuality, that is likely to expose the deeper perspective that trans women are really male (and thus attraction to them is attraction to a male, and thus gay). All I can say is that trans women are women biologically, too - sex hormones like estrogen mediate a lot of the differences between male and female bodies. A trans woman on estrogen is more like a cis woman than a cis man “biologically” - the way they smell, the way they metabolize drugs, etc. And even this binary notion of sex is a bit of a lie, even cis people often have more mixed sexual traits than they realize. Anyway, this is complicated. “Straight” and “gay” might themselves not make sense in a world where we acknowledge the natural diversity in human sexual differentiation.
I think sometimes the “genital preference” has often become an acceptable form of “transphobia” (I don’t mean that word in the “I’m going to murder a trans person” kind of way, but more like a “bias and stigma against trans people” kind of way).
I think this is a fundamental confusion about female penises, tbh - the assumption is that they are much like male penises, which is a reasonable assumption given how little exposure people have to the female penis. Even in trans porn you generally see trans women’s penises being used like men’s penises - how are we supposed to show this is unrealistic and not characteristic of most trans women?
On the other hand, I do believe genital preference really should be respected regardless of whether it gets mixed up with transphobia, and someone who understands and sees a woman’s penis as a female might still prefer to have penetration with a vagina, for example. Anal sex can be involved and be painful, etc. so I completely understand if that doesn’t end up suitably replacing vaginal sex (and to be honest, I feel this way myself as a trans woman - I was deeply unsatisfied with having a female penis, and I feel if I have a right to my bottom dysphoria and sexual preferences, who am I to deny some legitimate preferences of sexual partners who also want a particular kind of penetration?)
That said, I do think often ignorance and transphobia hide behind “genital preference” and this muddies the waters. My reaction to this is a bit of indifference - I’m not interested in coercing anyone into having sex with trans people, I just want to have an opportunity to expose more people to the truth and invite people to think more deeply about their beliefs. I don’t need to change them, even, it’s just nice to have some dialogue.
Probably not, because ultimately, I want to play with genitals that are different from mine.
I don’t expect everyone to agree, and it’s perfectly okay for someone to have an alternative preference, and they are welcome to indulge it, but that’s just mine.
Why are you assuming their genitals would be the same as yours?
probably because only a minority are post-op
fuzzy unreliable memory of potentially unreliable numbers, but I had read over half of trans women want a vagina, but only around 12% actually have one - those numbers are probably wrong, but the overall point stands that by the numbers most trans women are likely to have a female penis.
The assumption that having a penis is essential to being a trans woman is clearly wrong, though. Most of us want a vagina, and it would be nice if access to healthcare was a priority
currently the goal seems to be to make it as hard as possible for trans people to live as their gender, which is weirdly anti-assimilationist, you would think giving a trans woman a vagina would be entirely compatible with the conservative anxieties about trans people - the better access and care we receive, the fewer visibly trans people exist … it is by denying us the means of assimilation to cis norms that we become social “problems”, which benefits no one.
I said Probably. If we can interlock, I’m good to go!
Well, I guess anal penetration is an option with pre-op women, assuming she is comfortable and knows how to facilitate that without pain or injury (I never fully figured it out myself, part of why having a vagina was important to me).
The only issue I might have is that some of the bigotry might start coming after me for associating. I’d like to think I’m the sort of person that would stand strong against that shit but I recognize that’s easier said than done from a position as relatively comfortable as the one I’m in.
Who am I kidding, though? I’d never think through the question as long as I did being asked it as a hypothetical. I’d date her and then maybe regret it later for the tangential reason.
you are the first person to mention this! I’m shocked all the focus is on gentials when I would think the stigma and being a political scapegoat would be bigger concerns!
Follow-up question: what if she were cis passing and you didn’t experience stigma being in public together?
I would say I am hetero.
If they reflect the sex they are claiming to be? Sure. I am not planning on making kids. So no way of getting pregnant either.
Rather would adopt anyway.Edit: This assumes I like their personality in the first place.
And it would maybe only in tge first couple weeks be novel and unusual/weird to me. Then it’s just business as usual.This makes sense - by “reflect the sex they are claiming to be” do you just mean they are suitably feminine and appear to be a woman?
This is a fairly reasonable take, or at least I completely understand why someone who is a straight man would not want to date someone who appears male, for example.
I guess one question I have is whether a female penis would be a problem for you as a straight man? Separately is having a vagina an important requirement for you to date a trans woman (you might be happy with a female penis, but still want penetration with a vagina, which is why I see these as two separate questions).
That depends - am I only physically attracted to them? The answer is no, whether or not they’re trans. Am I also attracted to their personality? Then yes, whether or not they’re trans.
It helps that I’m bi.
Let’s say the attraction is whatever that means for you - I usually have emotional and romantic interest in someone as the main driver of pursuing a relationship, and physical attraction is an important but secondary aspect - so when I say attracted I do mean that openly in whatever way you would normally feel attracted to someone.
Is your distinction relevant because you are asexual (or demisexual) but allo- or pan- romantic?
Being bisexual does help - I am bi as well, so it can be hard sometimes to imagine being straight - but I do think I understand the phenomenology of straightness well enough (it’s not hard for me to connect with what it’s like to not be attracted to something, and with changes in hormones I even experienced dramatic shifts in my attraction based on gendered traits).
No, because I’m (a) in a relationship and (b) not into trans people.
I mean, a lot of trans people are not that different than cis people - in the scenario I’ve imagined, this is a person you are attracted to already, and maybe finding out they are trans would be a surprise then?
What if it were someone who was post-op, had transitioned as a child, and for them being trans is a medical fact from their distant past? They live fully as a cis person, you and most people wouldn’t know they were trans unless they told you. Would you not date them if you found out?
If I were single and they* were secure, then sure. I really feel for a lot of trans people because I know the transition can cause a lot of insecurity. And that’s absolutely valid and I don’t want to be unfeeling about it, but at the same time I know myself and I don’t want a partner who is insecure and potentially overly emotionally needy, because I’m not good at providing that kind of support. So I’d be fine dating a trans person who is confident and secure, no matter where in the transition the person is.
* I say ‘they’ because I’m fine dating either men or women, not because I want to invalidate anyone’s gender :)
Me finding them attractive is already a good indication they’re trans, so…
haha, there is a solid number of Lemmy users here that are like this 😄
what do you think you find attractive about trans people - and do you think cis-passing trans people are less attractive to you?
Trans women are women, and women are gorgeous. So heck yes for transfemmes.
Cute enbies are cute enbies, you can bet I’m down <3
If a person I was dating transitioned to being a man, I would probably have to end it unless they were a femboy? (Currently seeing a transmasc femboy - he’s cute as hell <3)
Reason? I’m not attracted to a person’s genitals or the gender they were assigned at birth, I’m attracted to the person! If they have a penis/neopenis or vagina/neovagina or both or neither - who gives a damn. If a doctor declared they were “male” 20 years ago who gives the slightest fuck.
If I wasn’t already in a committed relationship, yes. I’m pan.
I you have like gender blindness like people have bird blindness?
No? I recognize gender, I’m just attracted to em all.
how do you define pan?
Generally I’m attracted to all gender expressions and sexual characteristics, just to varying degrees. Whether or not someone is trans makes no difference to me if I’m attracted to them.
oh interesting - I stopped using “pan” as an identity label when it started to be used to mean equal attraction to genders and words like polysexual and omnisexual came out. (Polysexual: attraction to 2 or more genders, but not necessarily attracted to all genders; omnisexual: attracted to all genders, but to varying degrees.)
To be honest I got tired of labels that had such different meanings among different groups, and I didn’t like the idea of ceding “bisexual” to the transphobes, so I just identify as “bi” now because most people understand roughly what I mean by it. Realistically I’m probably polysexual, but I don’t like using a label nobody is aware of, and it’s not important to me to make these kinds of distinctions.
I do think being trans could influence my attraction to someone, ironically in either direction. Being trans myself, I don’t like being around other trans people because of the “second hand dysphoria” I can feel. On the other hand, the right kind of trans body can be very attractive to me - so I guess it’s not straightforwardly about being trans, but generally I am less attracted to trans people because generally they remind me of how ugly and “gender fucked” I am. 😅 That’s a me problem, I get it.
Yep, gender is a fuck! It’s messy and complicated. I have individual preferences, but no hard lines, and I don’t intend on letting that define me. I even started adding “they/them” pronouns to my acceptable pronoun list even though I consider myself cis just because pronouns aren’t gender, and many people don’t approve of they/them pronouns. Gender is messy, and so is attraction. It’s also something that changes for many people, and that’s okay too!
No because I’m married and my wife wouldn’t like that.
More seriously, It’s not a hard no, but I lean towards probably not, it would probably depend the specifics of their identity and the state of any medical transition.
In general, I’d tend to call myself a straight cis man. If I think long and hard about it, I could make an argument that I’m perhaps something along the lines of a non-binary person with a penis, who just happens to present in a traditionally “masculine” fashion in basically every way, and who is attracted to people with vaginas who present in at least a somewhat feminine way.
That’s a fucking mouthful though, and I’m just not gonna get into the weeds about that in casual conversation.
The fact that I’m a man isn’t really something that’s particularly important to me, I just kind of think of myself as a person. If somehow someone misgendered me it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest (though it may get a chuckle because I’m a bald, hairy dude with a big busty beard and fairly deep voice, not exactly the picture of femininity)
And while I quite enjoy having a penis, I don’t feel as though I’d be particularly bothered by having a vagina instead (although you can miss me with that period nonsense, but I think most vagina-havers would agree on that point) and I’d otherwise live my life the same way.
And how “feminine” a theoretical partner would need to be actually gets a lot of leeway. I can find people pretty far into the tomboy/androgynous/butch/etc end of the spectrum attractive, maybe even preferably to the extreme “girly” end of the spectrum. There’s a line there where they’d be too “masculine” for my tastes, but it’s a fuzzy one.
And for me, a certain amount of physical attraction in a partner is important. It’s a pretty wide spectrum that I’m able to find attractive, but there are limits, and I have preferences and dislikes to varying degrees.
And one of those strongest preferences is that my partner have a vagina. I am just not attracted to people with a penis.
If we want to count it under the trans umbrella, I don’t think that me dating a non-binary person with a vagina would be out of the question.
Maybe even a FTM femboy type who hasn’t had or want bottom surgery.
MTF, which I think is more in the spirit of this question, is a bit murkier though. If they don’t intend to get bottom surgery I think that’s a pretty hard no. And even if they have or intend to I can’t say that I’ve ever seen, let alone touched, a surgically-created vagina, so I don’t know if they’d do it for me the same way as a natural one.
The best comparison I do have is that I generally consider myself to be a boob-guy, and while it’s not an outright disqualifier, fake boobs don’t usually do it for me in quite the same way as real ones, but some are better than others, and while I tend to like big boobs, I have nothing against small ones, and a mastectomy isn’t a deal-breaker for me either.
So I suspect that with bottom surgery, it’s a firm “maybe”
As for a trans partner who has not yet but intends to get that surgery, I guess it kind of depends on the timeline. I don’t really want to have sex with someone with a penis and a sexless relationship for me would have a limited lifespan.
All of that said, regardless of whether I’d date them or not doesn’t change how I’d view their identity. There’s plenty of women out there I wouldn’t date for any number of reasons, but that doesn’t mean I see them as any less of a woman.
Yeah I feel this. Not in any of the specifics, pretty much all of those I’m completely opposite to you in, but just in the overall sense of "yeah this shit’s complicated, I mostly like having sex with (in my case penises).
No, I wouldn’t date a trans person because I’m straight
hm? Can you help me out here - I assume you’re a straight man? Would you date a trans woman who is indistinguishable from a cis woman?
It’s the inate disgust. Even if she had xx chrome I’d still be grossed out at the thought of fucking a man.
No i wouldnt
if you feel comfortable, I would love to hear more - what about being trans is problematic?
It’s my personal choice. I’m not against trans people at all, but I just don’t see myself dating a trans person, I hope that is understandable!
sure, I am not meaning to challenge your personal choice, but I guess without explanation it’s hard for me to know why you feel that way, that’s all I’m curious about - just wanting to understand.
You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to, though- I’m just interested in more details if you have any.
edit: particularly if a woman was post-op, had transitioned as a child, and being trans was an irrelevant fact from their distant past, I have a harder time knowing what the remaining problem is, or why you wouldn’t date them. They are for all intents and purposes a woman, as much as any cis woman.
Ignorant asshole
I think you are being ignorant. Don’t forget my life and my decisions, dumbass
Sadly no. I want kids of my own someday.
that is a struggle, and with a trans woman it is possible they have frozen sperm and fertility treatments are possible, but having both your sperm and your wife’s sperm gets problematic, I don’t know if they have a method of accomplishing this.
And you would still need someone to have the baby for you. It’s tragic, tbh - I would love to see a succcessful uterus transplant in my lifetime 😭
As a tangent, what happened to adopting?
not interested.
What happened to you guys who down voted on OP when he or she merely said what they want and what they are interested in? Can’t you learn to respect others?
ah the peace that comes from being on an instance with upvotes only ☺️
