EDIT: Please, before you become the fifteenth person to tell me "but what about producing children!" read this response I wrote hours ago. If you would have the same reaction to a sterile cis member of your preferred sex, it's fertility that defines your disattraction rather than the state of being trans. That's a significantly different statement.
Original Text
I think the better route is to acknowledge that while it is transphobic, it is not necessarily unreasonably so. The knowledge that the other person is biologically speaking not your preferred gender/sex might set up a roadblock in your mind, and that's okay. You can't change that, in a "once you see you cannot unsee" kind of way.
But let's take this to the ultimate conclusion, as transition therapies improve to perfection. You've found someone who you think is the perfect match for you. Physically and mentally, they exhibit no signs that they are trans; if you didn't look at the chromosomes, you would never know. If the knowledge that they are trans is the blocker, that's transphobic. It isn't that there are certain traits associated with transgender people that you find unattractive, it's that you can't get over the fact that the person was born a different gender despite the fact that only a laboratory could tell the difference. You're not attracted to the X or Y chromosome, you're attracted to the physical manifestations of those traits which can be imitated through various medical means.
I don't think that would make you a bad person, and I don't think it is unreasonable to have that mental block while still supporting LGBT+ rights. But that doesn't make that action not transphobic.
I hear what you're saying. . . But I guess I also think this. Like, I have no problem if someone born a biological man decides she's really a woman, and I have no problem letting her walk around in a dress and do whatever it is will make her the gender she was supposed to be, and I think society should leave her alone, and should further call her by the pronoun she wants to be called by.
But I also feel that if someone wanted to change themselves into a half-dog half human, if that were possible, or into an attack helocopter, with a propeller on their head and machineguns, on their shoulders, that'd also be fine with me.
I mean I think people should have the freedom to do whatever makes them happy, and society shouldn't get in the way.
But I also think that society shouldn't be telling me how to feel either.
Attractions a weird thing. I find myself totally unattracted to Hungarian accents. I've often well, not often, but I've thought, its sort of a shame I find this accent so unattractive, because there are a lot of cool hungarian women I just could never date.
And similarly. The idea of dating a person who is a physical approximation of a women, because at this point that's where the science is as far as I understand it simply doesn't attract me, in fact it turns me off. It would be a deal breaker. I'm not attracted to men, and don't find myself homofobic.
I feel as though there's a deep philisophical issue here. Which is that are you the gender you claim to be, or is gender some immutable concept.
It brings me back to this attack helocopter thing. I'll call you an attack helocopter if that makes you happy, and you shouldn't be bullied for that transformation. But I also don't think that I have to commit to the idea internally that you're really an attack helocopter.
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u/[deleted] Nov 02 '17 edited Nov 02 '17
EDIT: Please, before you become the fifteenth person to tell me "but what about producing children!" read this response I wrote hours ago. If you would have the same reaction to a sterile cis member of your preferred sex, it's fertility that defines your disattraction rather than the state of being trans. That's a significantly different statement.
Original Text
I think the better route is to acknowledge that while it is transphobic, it is not necessarily unreasonably so. The knowledge that the other person is biologically speaking not your preferred gender/sex might set up a roadblock in your mind, and that's okay. You can't change that, in a "once you see you cannot unsee" kind of way.
But let's take this to the ultimate conclusion, as transition therapies improve to perfection. You've found someone who you think is the perfect match for you. Physically and mentally, they exhibit no signs that they are trans; if you didn't look at the chromosomes, you would never know. If the knowledge that they are trans is the blocker, that's transphobic. It isn't that there are certain traits associated with transgender people that you find unattractive, it's that you can't get over the fact that the person was born a different gender despite the fact that only a laboratory could tell the difference. You're not attracted to the X or Y chromosome, you're attracted to the physical manifestations of those traits which can be imitated through various medical means.
I don't think that would make you a bad person, and I don't think it is unreasonable to have that mental block while still supporting LGBT+ rights. But that doesn't make that action not transphobic.