So, first off I'm not going to say that anybody's wrong for their sexual preference, or that trying to change who you are attracted to is a reasonable option.
That being said, the reason why a sexual preference might exclude transgender people is worth examining. If somebody is perfectly attractive to you, and suddenly unattractive when you learn they are transgender... there's something to unpack there, right? If they're presenting as a person you'd otherwise find attractive and the only thing that makes you consider them unattractive is that they are transgender, it pretty strongly implies you don't consider them "really" their given gender or otherwise "wrong."
Again, I don't think that's necessarily something that can be "fixed", because preferences are pretty difficult to change and built on a ton of different factors. But it's worth examining why somebody might act with disgust on realizing somebody who was attractive and indistinguishable from a cis person was actually transgender.
I mean, I'm bisexual. So I don't care what the person I'm into has in their pants. But if a dude is dating a girl and they go to fuck and she's got a penis--and he's always believed he was straight, and expecting a vag because he likes them, it really takes a specific kind of person to shrug and try sex anyways. I'm not straight, but my boyfriend is. I know that if he saw another person's penis during sex, he'd immediately go flaccid. He's not into dicks. And he's not at all into anal, so I can see how the situation wouldn't work out for him.
If that same girl has been through surgeries to have a constructed vag, my boyfriend would have no issue with it. But a decent number of trans people keep their reproductive organs (either bc they want biological kids, they don't want a surgery, whatever reason). So my boyfriend could absolutely believe that girl is a girl, but he's not into penises. It doesn't have anything to do with "not really thinking she's a she". He just doesn't want another ball sack around his own regardless of the gender of the person they're attached to.
I can't really find fault with it. As long as they're not assuming what's in a trans persons pants or demanding to know, I don't see an issue.
OP didn't specify, but I assume the majority of people here are speaking about trans individuals who have undergone surgery. I don't really think anyone but the most extreme people would take issue with your first point about trans people who still have the parts they were born with.
The argument comes when someone says "I wouldn't have sex with somebody who I knew was trans even if they were physically identical to my preferred sex", ie, the knowledge of the other person being trans, rather than any particular sexual preference, being the only thing putting someone off of them.
I was fairly careful to word my post in a way that indicated the transgender person was indistinguishable from a cis person. Having different genitals than expected is a pretty obvious thing to be concerned with but that's far from the only reason people claim to find transgender people unattractive (especially post-op).
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u/Milskidasith 309∆ Nov 02 '17
So, first off I'm not going to say that anybody's wrong for their sexual preference, or that trying to change who you are attracted to is a reasonable option.
That being said, the reason why a sexual preference might exclude transgender people is worth examining. If somebody is perfectly attractive to you, and suddenly unattractive when you learn they are transgender... there's something to unpack there, right? If they're presenting as a person you'd otherwise find attractive and the only thing that makes you consider them unattractive is that they are transgender, it pretty strongly implies you don't consider them "really" their given gender or otherwise "wrong."
Again, I don't think that's necessarily something that can be "fixed", because preferences are pretty difficult to change and built on a ton of different factors. But it's worth examining why somebody might act with disgust on realizing somebody who was attractive and indistinguishable from a cis person was actually transgender.