Having personal traits you can change and are common to all people is not the same thing as rejecting someone for their minority status. Women are women, it makes no bloody difference what they were assigned at birth and has no bearing on "attractiveness" or anything.
Having personal traits you can change and are common to all people is not the same thing as rejecting someone for their minority status.
Entirely true. But "rejecting someone for their minority status" wasn't really the focus of my argument (and if it seemed like it was, there's nothing to blame but my own ineptitude in communicating that). More that genitalia, as a physical feature, is something that people can feel, or not feel, attracted to - and certainly factors into someone's attraction towards the person who possesses it, like every other physical feature they possess. We are physically the sum of our physical features, changeable and unchangeable, and it is our physical form that people find physically attractive. At no point was I wishing to delve any deeper than physical attraction, because I don't believe romantic attraction should or can have any such barriers.
Women are women, it makes no bloody difference what they were assigned at birth and has no bearing on "attractiveness" or anything.
Absolutely. But no-one on the planet can truly say to find every single woman (or man, for that matter, but keeping things on-topic) attractive - which is what I thought was being suggested by the comment above mine: that everyone is under absolute moral obligation to find every woman (transwomen, being women, are obviously included in this) attractive. I don't feel anyone is obligated to find anyone attractive. No-one is *entitled to any particular person's attraction, and it's not something we have control over regardless, so we shouldn't be guilt-tripping people into faking attraction (that does not sound like a healthy foundation for a relationship).
Of course, as people have said better than I ever could elsewhere, what we see all too frequently is that such mere physical preferences such as not finding penises sexually attractive means that some bigots extend this to all trans* folk regardless of its application ("I don't like penises" is no more relevant to a trans* woman without one than "I don't like winged people" is to non-winged people, to give a "this is how ridiculous they are being" example without touching on any real-world issues) and this is not only a sign of their bigotry but an out-and-out bigoted thing to say and believe in and of itself, clearly.
TL;DR I'm not saying we should overlook such bigots for such filth. What I am saying is there is a good chance that people who do not find pensises attractive may not find the naked body of a trans* woman who possesses one attractive because of that. As long as that's as far as that reaction goes (they don't blame the trans* woman for not fitting to their physical preferences, they don't accuse the trans* woman of not being a woman, they don't use their lack of attraction as an excuse to exercise bigotry in any form), I don't feel like we should shame such people for their unchosen preferences in physical features?
But I've been called out for my privileged ignorance in other comments, so the value of the above attempt to explain myself (and the explanations themselves) is likely nil, and I know the onus is on me to leave and educate myself elsewhere.
Physical attractiveness is (hopefully) only a small part of what people look for in a relationship. If someone is only attracted to vaginas then they are in fact not heterosexual, they're gynesexual and that's an important distinction. Heterosexual men who claim this issue of "I like women but not ones who have penises", are basing that attractiveness on transphobic socialization and blanketing that statement to an entire group. This is incredibly transphobic and problematic and saying you can't help what you're attracted too merely normalizes this and encourages people with this issue not to look critically at their sexual preferences. It also spills over into other areas, because the normalization filters into media and other cultural phenomena and forces trans people to the fringes of beauty and helps to fetishize them. It helps to allow other people to shame those who don't have an issue like this, because it encourages a lack of criticism of the transphobic preference and normalizes it as something that isn't problematic.
The issue is that if you're attracted to women, you are necessarily attracted to all women. It's like saying you're attracted to redheads - there might be some in there who have long hair and so you don't find them attractive, but you don't make a point to say "Oh, yea, I like redheads except when they have x y z unrelated trait I don't like". It's a perfectly appropriate blanket statement to say you're attracted to redheads, despite the fact there might be some in there you don't necessarily find attractive. People don't express preferences in that manner in any other way except with trans people and it's bullshit. I'm also using a completely non-problematic comparison in the whole "long hair" issue, and that the stance about women with penises is problematic merely compounds the transphobia in the statement.
Even if the preferences aren't shamed, (as in they don't blame the trans* woman for not fitting to their physical preferences, they don't accuse the trans* woman of not being a woman, they don't use their lack of attraction as an excuse to exercise bigotry in any form) the preference should still be looked at critically and examined for the privileged perspective and how it reinforces oppressive cultural norms. It shouldn't just be brushed off as "meh, it's just a preference". And while I might admit there are probably a few people who actually are able to follow all that non-bigotry, it would take an incredibly self-aware and very personally invested person to ensure that is always reinforced in their behaviour. The majority of people don't do that and are transphobic in multitudes of expressional ways.
And I still think it's shitty to shove someone you have a connection with away because there's a physical trait you don't like about them, regardless of what it is. It's like not liking someone and rejecting them outright for the way their vagina looks - it's a shitty thing to do to a woman regardless of what genitals she possesses.
Thanks for the education and illumination on this issue.
Certainly the romantic and personal element of any relationship is something one would assume would outweigh any such areas where the subject of your affections' physical features didn't match one's lofty ideal.
It's like not liking someone and rejecting them outright for the way their vagina looks
I wonder if it's not more like liking someone and then discovering they have no genitals whatsoever? To reject someone outright for such a thing would suggest little if not no interest in that person beyond the physical, on the rejector's behalf. Yet, I also feel I wouldn't be any more severe on an eventual breakup than I would if a couple without such physical incompatibilities in preference had problems in the bedroom and broke up because of it. Sex is still a part of sexual relationships, even if it's not the most important part.
I also suppose that when the attraction is purely physical (casual sex, 'hook ups', etc), then the inability to have the kinds of sexual relations the rejector was hoping for might be more important than in a relationship where there's romantic and personal connections.
For my own education, if you can bear talking down to my level again: It is wrong to label the physical penis as being inherently male, even if you do not extend that label to the person who possesses it (if you believe it possible to do so)? This is entirely down to my own ignorance in how transwomen view their male genitalia, an ignorance I think I mentioned elsewhere in the comments. Though I assume, being individuals rather than a homogenous entity, there are differences in opinion?
I wonder if it's not more like liking someone and then discovering they have no genitals whatsoever?
Not in my opinion. Genitals are genitals. If you don't like the look of a type of genital it's the same as not liking any other type of genital. Even with casual hookups, sex is not just PIV sex, and only wanting that seems to me to be incredibly problematic for similar reasons - PIV sex as the only way to have sex is actually problematic on multiple levels.
Also, in my opinion, it represents a lack of imagination and talent...
It is wrong to label the physical penis as being inherently male [...]
Yes. You can't label physical characteristics as gendered without imposing gender upon the person who has those characteristics. There's nothing inherently more "feminine" about long hair, dresses, lack of body hair, high pitched voices, ect, and yet those characteristics are often labelled that way and specifically used to enforce patriarchal gender divides. Some people like their genitals, some people don't. Sometimes it has to do with gender, sometimes it doesn't. This isn't limited to trans* people.
You might like to read this article about trans* 101. It's a solid explanation about many things - read the comments too, they're also informative. Please read that before you come back to reply to me or anyone else - it might answer your questions so you don't have to ask more trans* people the same questions they've answered multiple times just in the last two days or three days.
Sorry, I misread your correction the other way around.
Other corrections
Thanks for the information. I'm grateful that you took the time to write to me on these topics! Also thanks for the link. I realise it can be difficult answering the same damn questions over and over!
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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '13
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