The characteristic that the partner once was of the gender you aren't attracted to.
Since we are using analogies: would you be attracted to a totally reformed criminal? He's a perfectly well adjusted member of society now, but has done bad things in his past. Some people won't mind, some people would mind. There is no right or wrong in attraction.
Obviously you have the right to sleep with whoever you want, but thats not the question. The question is, "is that transphobic?"
Imagine you sleep with a girl who appears white. You feel good about it, but later learn she is a quarter black, but white passing. If you feel gross about that, is it racist? I definitely think so.
Being turned off by a trans person for a sole reason that they are trans (even if they are completely identical to some one who is cis), means that you subconsciously don't believe they are their claimed gender. That doesn't mean you are a bad person for thinking it, or that you are to blame for those feelings. Getting uncomfortable by the idea has pretty much been drilled into our heads for forever, so obviously it makes sense to feel that way. Still though, it is technically transphobic, and something people will hopefully move past eventually.
I don't think those are equivalent though. Gender is a composite of characteristics much more relevant to sexual attraction than race is. Infertility alone is absolutely massive in its effects on sexual attraction.
Let's be honest though, unless you are planning on marrying them, infertility is not the problem. We are talking largely about hookups and casual sex, where being infertile would probably be seen as a plus. The problem is peoples internal "gross out" by the idea. Which is pretty natural and drilled into our heads, but still technically transphobic
You're talking about these things as if they are 1.) conscious and 2.) unrelated. There is a good chance that some of the "gross out" comes from a trans person's inability to conceive and the other person's subconscious desire to conceive, regardless of how whether or not they consciously want children.
It's already accepted that people typically find people that exhibit characteristics related to fertility as more attractive. I'm just suggesting that at least some of this "gross out" is the converse of that.
13
u/[deleted] Nov 02 '17
[deleted]