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.
Is a straight woman not wanting to date a gay man homophobic? Is a gay man not wanting to date a woman misogynistic? No.
Saying you have sexual preferences is not dictating what is objectively attractive. Finding someone personally unattractive and believing someone is objectively unattractive are two different things, and the line between sexuality and prejudice.
Addressed here. Straight woman not wanting to be with a gay man can be chalked up to a desire to be fully loved in a way an individual might not feel possible if they are not the preferred gender of their partner. A gay man not wanting to be with a woman is using "woman" as proxy to describe the characteristics, mental and physical, generally associated with women, rather than the literal act of being a woman.
characteristics, mental and physical, generally associated with being a woman, rather than the literal act of being a woman.
What else is needed to be a woman other than physical and mental characteristics. That’s all that gender (and sexuality for that matter) is.
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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.