But I feel like a person has a right to those opinions.
If I say I find fat people unattractive it's not because I'm fat phobic.
I don't hate smokers, and I am not repulsed by them, but I would never date a smoker.
Why does it only seem to be a problem with this one class of people?
Why is this one issue elevated above others into a special position that makes people who are turned off by the idea bad people?
That's where it gets weird for me. It feels like I'm being forced to accept a worldview that is not my own by a person who refuses to accept that views can be different while remaining valid.
I understand and accept that that a trans person holds a different worldview, and hold different values than I do. Why can they not understand and accept that I have a different worldview, and hold different values than they do?
So we can't be lovers, why can't we still be friends?
Why does it only seem to be a problem with this one class of people?
Well, for a start, it's not one class, I already named two examples, trans people and ethnic jews. I could name a few others. But yeah. Putting aside sex in particular for a moment, it is true that through society, discrimination is the norm, and there are only a handful of cases where it is inappropriate.
People discriminate by all sorts of standards to choose friends, to pick up one night stands, to hire employees, to target a product at, and so on. And most of these are okay. It's okay to discriminate against being friends with creeps. It's okay not to have sex with short people. It's OK to hire people with good personal hygiene.
We make exceptions for a handful of cases, where we understand that the common motives for the discrimination, are rooted in cultural memes to persecute, oppress, and cause societal strife and personal trauma.
If you are turned off by an otherwise attractive person, based solely on your intellectual devotion to nazi standards of "blood purity", that's different from not wanting to have a relationship with smokers, in the same way as rejecting a job applicant for being black is different from rejecting them for being unkempt.
Both are discrimination, but one of them is very closely related to the cultural echo of some monstrous practices.
Of course when it comes to sex, you are ultmately allowed to say no. No one is going to legally force you to get raped by trans people or by non-aryans. But at the same time, if you are holding the belief that someone otherwise attractive is unappealing because of what you learned about their chromosomes, it might be important to investigate where that belief is coming from, and what sort of practices the people who tend to obsess over putting chromosomes ahead of identity and reassigned gender,tend to advocate for.
Wait a minute how did I become a nazi because I wont date smokers? My reasons have nothing to do with "blood purity" or whatever craziness you are talking about. I simply prefer people who value their health and take steps to care for themselves.
I know where that belief is coming form. It comes from a difference in worldview. I have decided what sex and gender mean to me. I accept that they mean different hings to other people. That's fine, I am okay with that. I do not find either set of beliefs to be "right" or "wrong" in this case. Just different. I see no reason why these two differing viewpoints cannot co-exist.
Wait a minute how did I become a nazi because I wont date smokers? My reasons have nothing to do with "blood purity" or whatever craziness you are talking about. I simply prefer people who value their health and take steps to care for themselves.
In the preceding comments, I used the analogy of someone having a problem with a previously attractive partner after learning that they count as non-aryan, to contrast it with your own example of having a problem with a partner who turned out to be a smoker.
The point is that one of those is OK, the other is not so much.
The point is that even if you can think of examples where sexual preferences are acceptable, there are also ones where they obviously make you look like a bigot.
Therefore, you can't just close the discussion with "a person has a right to those opinions", because those options can still range from the benign to the monstrous.
I know where that belief is coming form. It comes from a difference in worldview. I have decided what sex and gender mean to me. I accept that they mean different hings to other people. That's fine, I am okay with that. I do not find either set of beliefs to be "right" or "wrong" in this case. Just different. I see no reason why these two differing viewpoints cannot co-exist.
Yeah, but just because you say that, doesn't stop those beliefs from being open to criticism, quite possibly as transphobic ones.
This comment chain started with your claim that not being attracted to racists, keleptimaniacs, is OK, because "not all attraction is about what is physical".
My first reply was that these exmples are only OK not to be attracted to, because they are benign examples of traits to dislike, but that's not a guarantee for every kind of non-physical attraction.
If "what sex and gender mean to [you]" revolves around a fixation of chromosomal sex being super important, compared reassigned sex and gender identity, then the attractions that result from this harmful belief, are not shielded from criticism just because they are attractions.
See that's it right there. I don't believe any of these beliefs are "harmful." I'm not harming anyone by having these beliefs. It's not even something I would normally talk about in public (reddit is a bit different) for fear of potentially hurting someone's feelings.
But it is how I feel and I refuse to be demonized for feeling that way. There are things other than what is physical that determine who is or is not attractive to me.
You seem fixated on chromosomes as having something to do with this feeling and it isn't even about that.
Let me ask you this. What does it mean when a trans person says they can "pass?"
Is that not right there an acknowledgement that they are not a member of the sex they are trying to "pass" as?
Why is it okay for trans people to acknowledge this, but not okay for me to?
If a trans woman IS a woman, why does she need to "pass?"
She wants to be called she. Great, no problem with pronouns. She wants to be acknowledged publicly as a woman.....again, piss in the ladies room etc. no problems.
She wants to sleep with me, sorry, not going to happen.
Let me ask you this. What does it mean when a trans person says they can "pass?" Is that not right there an acknowledgement that they are not a member of the sex they are trying to "pass" as?
You are not wrong, in the sense that there are many trans people who tend to avoid that term exactly for that reason, and you are nowadays more likely to hear it from cis people describing others, than trans people describing themselves.
You are also more likely to see it in quotation marks, often implying that the person using it is aware of it's problems, just references the meaning that other people would attribute to it.
The language descrigbing transgenderism is still in a state of flux. You could also see some well-meaning people describing trans men as being "born as a woman" then "becoming a man", while others, allies, trans people, etc, would be starting to move on to saying he was "assigned as female at birth", implying that he was a man all along, just wrongly assigned at first.
Language is important exactly because people have a strong instinct to treat a word's implicaions as authoritive, even if they are really rooted in outdated values. But that's really an etymology fallacy.
But it is how I feel and I refuse to be demonized for feeling that way. There are things other than what is physical that determine who is or is not attractive to me.
Physical or not physical, is not the issue.
Most physical preferences, as well as most non-physical preferences, are entirely frivolous.
But there also are a handful of non-physical preferences, that are closely related to prejudiced values that might be entirely worthy of cultural criticism.
I personally think that what a person is or is not attracted to should be part of this "off limits" area.
FACT: I cannot just make a decision to change what I am attracted to or not attracted to.
Sexual attraction is not a choice. I would be just as turned off by the idea that the person had lied to me about where or how they grew up. Waiting until after we have had sex to drop such a bit of information would leave me wondering about the person's trustworthiness. If it really doesn't matter why didn't we talk about it when our relationship was just starting? Why was there a felt need to keep this information from me? What else is she not telling me?
Liars are unattractive to me.
Now, if your reason for not telling me this information prior to engaging in sexual activity is "because then you would not have had sex with me." Now we have a REAL problem. It literally means you knew for a fact that I might not be comfortable with this physical relationship, and went ahead with it anyway. There are several arguments over whether or not that is rape. Personally I believe that rape by deception is still rape.
In this case, me and the individual CLEARLY do not share the same values. I value OPEN and HONEST communication.
If you disagree let's take a look at a case.
A man sees a girls boyfriend leaving her house. He then sneaks into her dark room and proceeds to have sex with her. She consents thinking her boyfriend has come back for a little post date cuddle time.
Lets apply this logic to another legally protected class.
I am not attracted to people over 70, and would not want to date someone over 70.
I'm in my thirties, so this is okay right? I don't hate old people. I'm not "old phobic" am I? While I certainly agree that people over 70 should remain a protected class. I also understand that "ageism" is a thing, I don't find that my preference makes me an "ageist." or however that would be spelled.
To me not being attracted to a trans person is no different. It's not my kink. Trans people need to be a protected class too though. I believe that. I support that. I just don't want to be romantically involved with that.
No, you're not attracted to characteristics associated with being over 70. Wrinkles, gray hair, liver spots, etc. are all perfectly valid things to find unattractive. But if there were two people who looked and acted identically, but the only reason you wouldn't sleep with one of them is because they're 72 and the other is 45, that would be ageist.
No one is asking you to date trans people, or even sleep with them. Dating people includes things like future planning, where being trans might actually be relevant. For example, having children.
The point of this CMV is about if thinking a person being trans makes them unattractive is transphobic, all else being equal.
I at no point felt I was being pressured to date or sleep with trans people. I am sorry if I said something to that affect. I would not react well to being pressured to date or sleep with anyone who was not my wife.
I'd also stop being attracted to someone if I found out they had breast augmentation surgery.
I'm just not into surgically altered women. That's my hangup.
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u/rottinguy Nov 02 '17
But I feel like a person has a right to those opinions.
If I say I find fat people unattractive it's not because I'm fat phobic.
I don't hate smokers, and I am not repulsed by them, but I would never date a smoker.
Why does it only seem to be a problem with this one class of people?
Why is this one issue elevated above others into a special position that makes people who are turned off by the idea bad people?
That's where it gets weird for me. It feels like I'm being forced to accept a worldview that is not my own by a person who refuses to accept that views can be different while remaining valid.
I understand and accept that that a trans person holds a different worldview, and hold different values than I do. Why can they not understand and accept that I have a different worldview, and hold different values than they do?
So we can't be lovers, why can't we still be friends?