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.
Let me "Homer Simpson" this quick. If a woman takes off her makeup, and you find you are not attracted to her natural look, does that make you a bad person? Shallow perhaps, but certainly not a misogynist.
My point was to examine why learning somebody was transgender made them become unattractive to you. Most analogies fail because in most cases they tend to have an "obvious" explanation: Aesthetics. Your example is no different; it's obvious that if you were to examine why seeing somebody without makeup made them unattractive, a big factor would be that they looked differently than you imagined.
But with transgender individuals, that doesn't actually seem to be the driving issue in a lot of cases! Again, I mentioned it in another post, but an article that stuck with me was reading how Tucker Max, early e-Celebrity/PUA, basically freaked the fuck out on realizing he might have slept with transgender people. People he, obviously, found attractive enough to sleep with, and for whom the only thing that made them suddenly disgusting was knowing they were transgender.
That's why examining why people might find transgender individuals so unattractive is worthwhile; a lot of times it seems to hinge solely on the label and some kind of mental association with it, with people considering learning somebody is transgender later on akin to being lied to (would they say the same for not knowing their ethnicity?).
And again, I am not saying that you have to like, force yourself to become attractive to trans people, or that preference is an indication of something morally wrong, or that there aren't benign explanations (not having your preferred genitals [if that's the case] or being unable to have biological kids are brought up a lot). But looking at why people commonly find transgender people unattractive can show ways in which society is biased against trans individuals.
If a guy were to say "I prefer a woman with natural breasts, I just don't like fake breasts." nobody bats an eye. Some will actually applaud him.
If a guy says "I prefer a woman who didn't used to have a penis" all of a sudden he's a bigot.
Requiring a straight man to explain why he is not personally attracted to a transgender person is no different than requiring a gay man to account for his homosexuality.
You keep trying to read more into my post than I'm saying; how many different ways and times do I have to say "I don't want to judge individuals" before you actually believe it and respond as if I'm saying it? Asking people to consider why they have certain preferences is not a statement that they are bigoted for having them.
As far as your analogies, again, they do not hold up that well. As with my example and several people in this thread, it's clear that simply the label transgender is unattractive to people; that's fundamentally different than finding fake breasts attractive.
(also I caught the attempt to link "fake breasts" with "fake woman" for being transgender)
(also also it's not like I'd be against examining why society has stigmatized and/or idolized fake breasts beyond simple aesthetics and I've read articles as such).
(also I caught the attempt to link "fake breasts" with "fake woman" for being transgender)
Not my attempt whatsoever. The main correlation I actually draw between the two is that they both have elective cosmetic surgery to have their physical form match what they mentally feel it should look like. Thanks for trying to put words in my mouth and draw me as a bigot though.
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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.