I’m 26, straight, and male. I consider myself a socially progressive person, have been a vocal supporter of LGBT issues since high school, and was president of my college Gay-Straight Alliance. Here’s my issue: I fully support the trans community. I have numerous friends in varying states of transition and I’m 100 percent behind them. But in my own dating life, I wouldn’t feel comfortable dating/having sex with a woman who had at one point in her life been a man. I realize I wouldn’t be fucking a dude, but it’s a mental hurdle I can’t clear. All my LGBTQA friends—be they trans, gay, bi—call me a transphobe, because if I were truly on their side, if I truly “understood,” then sex with a MTF straight woman would be no different than sex with a cisgender straight woman. Do I have the right to not feel comfortable with the idea (or reality) of having sex with these women and still consider myself a supporter of the trans community? Are my friends being unreasonable? Or am I a hypocrite?
Fears Real Activism
Undermined [by] Dick
“He’s not transphobic—not in my book,” says Kate Bornstein, author, performer, “advocate for teens, freaks, and other outlaws,” and herself a trans woman. “One more thing he’s not is straight. Sex-positive, supportive of trans folk, and heterosexual? Cool! He’s a queer heterosexual—and some of my best friends are queer heterosexuals.”
As for your specific issue—you’re not attracted to trans women—Bornstein says that by itself isn’t evidence of transphobia.
“A queer heterosexual is just as entitled to the fulfillment of their sex and gender desires as anyone else,” says Bornstein. “Sometimes those desires depend on the nature of their lover’s body. Well, trans people have bodies that are different than cis people’s bodies. We’re two (or more) mints in one—a physical blend that attracts a lot of people. FRAUD just doesn’t happen to be one of them. The fact that he’s sensitive to that blending of genders in our bodies does not make him transphobic.”
What can you do about it?
“Go have good sex with cis women,” says Bornstein. (Don’t know what “cis” means in this context? See: tinyurl.com/cisdefine.)
Whatever else you do, FRAUD, Bornstein wants you to stop identifying as straight.
“He’s part of our queer tribe,” she says. “And who knows? One day, he might meet the right trans person.”
And who knows? One day, your cranky LGBTQA friends might accept who you are just as you’ve accepted them. Make an effort to use “attracted to cis women” in place of “wouldn’t feel comfortable dating” trans women, and you’ll hasten that day’s arrival.
Kate Bornstein’s new memoir, A Queer and Pleasant Danger (Beacon Press), will be published in the spring. Follow her on Twitter @katebornstein. (Follow me @fakedansavage.)
I’m a 26-year-old guy in a polyamorous relationship. As this is my first kick at the poly can, I wasn’t dying to tell my family, “Hey, I’m dating a married woman!” However, through the magic of Facebook, my brother found out that the girl I’m seeing has a husband. Once I was “busted,” I discussed the situation with my sister-in-law. The issue is that my GF and her husband have a 10-year-old son. My brother has compared the poly community to drug addicts and stated that CPS should remove my girlfriend’s child from her home, etc. My brother and his wife are now threatening to cut me out of their lives—as well as their children’s lives, whom I care for a great deal—if I don’t dump the girlfriend. Thoughts?
Forced To Pick
Right off the top of my head: Your brother is a shit-smeared asshole, your sister-in-law is an ass-smeared shithole, and they’d be doing you a huge favor if they cut you out of their lives.
Pick the GF, FTP. That might mean you won’t see your nieces/nephews for a while, which would be sad for you and bad for those kids (children with crazy, controlling parents need to spend quality time with saner family members). But if you dump your girlfriend at their insistence—if you fail to stand up to them—you will have established a dangerous precedent: Your love life isn’t yours to manage, it’s theirs, and all your future partners will be subject to their batshittery/scrutiny and, if they disapprove of any future girlfriends (concurrent or subsequent), they will attempt to exercise the veto power you ceded to them during this conflict.
Your brother and sister-in-law are bullies, FTP, and you’ve got to defend yourself. So long as your GF and her husband aren’t doing anything inappropriate in front of their son and they’re not placing unfair burdens on their son (they don’t expect him to keep secrets, if they’re not out about being poly; they don’t expect him to be out about his parents being poly, if they are out and he’s not comfortable sharing that info with his friends), you need to come to their defense, too. And you might want to consult a lawyer now, just in case your brother and sister-in-law call CPS.
I am a 29-year-old male with a fetish for snapping pictures of women’s legs and feet in nylons. I look for women online who will allow me to pay them to take these pictures. I recently posted an ad and received a reply from a coworker. I find her very attractive and would like to photograph her legs and feet. How should I handle this?
Sent From My Mobile Device
Here’s a relevant story from the files: Vanilla Gay pays a social call on Kinky Gay. KG informs VG that there’s a Hot Dude tied up in his playroom. KG invites VG to view HD. KG is right: HD is hot. HD is also, as it turns out, one of VG’s coworkers—one of VG’s straight coworkers.
It was an unexpected twist of fate—HD didn’t know that VG and KG were friends—that resulted in VG discovering something about HD that HD didn’t choose to reveal to VG. (A twist of fate and the rules HD agreed to when he played with KG: HD had consented to KG showing him off.) While it’s possible that HD wouldn’t have cared that VG knew his secret, it was likelier that HD, if he knew VG knew his bi-for-bondage secret, would’ve felt embarrassed around his coworker—not to mention compromised during any routine workplace conflicts with VG.
I urged VG to keep his mouth shut.
In your case, SFMMD, while it’s possible that your coworker doesn’t care who knows that she does fetish modeling on the side for extra money and/or thrills, it’s likelier that she would be embarrassed to learn that someone she knows professionally discovered what she’s doing. There are plenty of other women out there, and plenty of other legs and feet to photograph. Keep your mouth shut.
I was reading a letter in your archives from a woman who didn’t have much libido. I was disappointed that you didn’t mention that decreased libido is a common side effect of almost every form of hormonal birth control. The first thing a woman with low libido should do, if she’s been on the same pill for years, is to switch methods. I would love it if you’d mention this in your column.
Spread The Word
Done and done.
@134 (mr Ven), what do you mean by “unusually superio(u)r of me”? I’m not sure I understand. :-|…
@intermittentcat, who wrote:
Not entirely, intermittentcat — because we are allowed preferences, in sex or othewise, because of things that we think or conceptualize in a certain way, regardless of the underlying reality. It’s simply up to me to decide what it is that I like to eat, drink, see or listen to in my spare time… and have sex with, on the basis of any reason whatsoever, since what is at stake here is the pleasure I get from it.
I have the right to like classical music and dislike rock music, or the other way round; I have the right to think I’ll enjoy people who like my favorite kind of music more than people who don’t; people who share my tastes in foreign language, sexual orientation, bodily shape and form, than those who don’t.
Of course you could counter that whatever kind of music I don’t like is also internally complex and just as full of emotional associations and interpretations — ultimately, just as aesthetically legitimate — as the kind of music I like.
And you’re right. It is.
And I’m also right — because I don’t like it, and I’m entitled to that.
So: someone who doesn’t want to fuck a transgendered person is not transphobic, s/he is simply not attracted to transgendered people. Your claim is that this person is not attracted to the idea of what transgendered people are; but since the point here is this person’s pleasure (sexual and otherwise), then the fact s/he is not attracted to an idea rather than to a reality is not really relevant.
I personally would advise this person to try to enter into contact with real transgendered people to see if s/he couldn’t find one s/he would actually be attracted to; and if s/he did and was reciprocated, to go ahead and have sex — it might be a liberating experience to see that one can go beyond what one thought were one’s limits.
But then again, this person might say “no thanks” and stick to his/her current sexual preferences for cisgendered people only. And that is also fine, because this person is entitled to pursue his/her personal (including sexual) happiness with whatever limitations s/he wants to have — even if I myself wouldn’t likewise limit my own pool of available partners.
In short: people have the right to decide who they want to have as friends, lovers, etc. on whatever criteria they think are going to bring them closer to happiness — even if I think these criteria are wrong or wouldn’t work for me, it’s not my life, it’s not my happiness, so it’s not my call.
As for whether or not it’s prejudice… let me ask you the question: what’s the difference between preference and prejudice? Can you have a preference for a certain kind of people without this being prejudice? According to what criteria, and under which circumstances, would you be able to tell the difference? (I have my own answers to these questions, but I’m curious about yours.)
@138 (psst), I, for one, would call the African Americans bigoted who wouldn’t accept your right to identify as African American and alter your body to fit theirs. You are indeed entitled to do with your body what you want; and if someone believes that ‘Blackness’ is so deeply in the blood that coming to it later in life and without the necessary genes is ‘just wrong’, well then I beg to differ.
Which is what you would yourself do, isn’t it?
You see, here’s what is wrong when you say that people are never born in the ‘wrong body’: you aren’t really looking around yourself. People are born in the ‘wrong body’ all the time — judging at least by how much they hate the body they’re born with. I’ll bet more than half of the people in the world would change their bodies for a new one without any hesitation if it were as easy as downloading your consciousness into them (as in some SF movies).
Besides, there are lots of bodies that are objectively bad: bodies with genetic diseases, for instance. You’re not going to tell people born with genetic defects and who want to change that with therapy that they aren’t entitled to it because ‘they have to accept the bodies they were born with’ now would you?
I think you’re offended because you think someone is trying to claim that you don’t have the right to be happy as a cisgendered woman. This often happens in activism: fighting against bigotry often becomes (or is perceived) as fighting against the group of people among which most bigots are to be found. This creates a kind of reverse bigotry that, though smaller in terms of actual number of bigots, is still as bad as the original one in terms of how it misrepresents the other group.
So you probably feel trans people are ‘forcing’ a cisgendered identity onto you because they don’t want you to be happy simply as ‘a woman’. Indeed I’ll bet there are some who are trying to do that. (Dan’s glitterbombers are probably among those.)
But not all. Not every person who talks about ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ is trying to deny that you’re a woman, and that you can be happy with whatever level you apply to yourself. No, pssst — many people are simply using a useful word to talk about a certain group of people for whom there was as of yet no positive descriptor (only negative ones like “not transgender”), and only in the contexts in which this is necessary: for most intents and purposes “woman” works fine.
@138 (psst), I, for one, would call the African Americans bigoted who wouldn’t accept your right to identify as African American and alter your body to fit theirs. You are indeed entitled to do with your body what you want; and if someone believes that ‘Blackness’ is so deeply in the blood that coming to it later in life and without the necessary genes is ‘just wrong’, well then I beg to differ.
Which is what you would yourself do, isn’t it?
You see, here’s what is wrong when you say that people are never born in the ‘wrong body’: you aren’t really looking around yourself. People are born in the ‘wrong body’ all the time — judging at least by how much they hate the body they’re born with. I’ll bet more than half of the people in the world would change their bodies for a new one without any hesitation if it were as easy as downloading your consciousness into them (as in some SF movies).
Besides, there are lots of bodies that are objectively bad: bodies with genetic diseases, for instance. You’re not going to tell people born with genetic defects and who want to change that with therapy that they aren’t entitled to it because ‘they have to accept the bodies they were born with’ now would you?
I think you’re offended because you think someone is trying to claim that you don’t have the right to be happy as a cisgendered woman. This often happens in activism: fighting against bigotry often becomes (or is perceived) as fighting against the group of people among which most bigots are to be found. This creates a kind of reverse bigotry that, though smaller in terms of actual number of bigots, is still as bad as the original one in terms of how it misrepresents the other group.
So you probably feel trans people are ‘forcing’ a cisgendered identity onto you because they don’t want you to be happy simply as ‘a woman’. Indeed I’ll bet there are some who are trying to do that. (Dan’s glitterbombers are probably among those.)
But not all. Not every person who talks about ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ is trying to deny that you’re a woman, and that you can be happy with whatever level you apply to yourself. No, pssst — many people are simply using a useful word to talk about a certain group of people for whom there was no positive descriptor yet (only negative ones like “not transgender”), and only in the contexts in which this is necessary: for most intents and purposes “woman” works fine.
@152 How do you know the husband doesn’t know and approve of the wife dating another person? Polyamorous relationship usually means that all people involved are fully aware and approving.
The brother and his wife are the problem in the case mentioned because they, just like you, believe that “living our lives well” means your way is the only way and everyone else has to follow. As they say in my religious community: “live and let live”.
@Alea, who wrote:
See, here’s what I don’t like with this kind of definition for transphobic: it’s basically regulating my right to define my happiness in the terms I like.
It’s as if you were saying that, if I like classical music but not rock music, then I am “rockaphobic”. Or if I like vanilla ice-cream but not chocolate ice-cream, then I am “chocophobic”.
In some sense this is ‘true’ (if ‘phobic’ is taken to mean ‘doesn’t like’, which I guess it sometimes does in colloquial usage), but this trivializes the problem: since we all like certain things and certain people, but not others, we’re now all “something-o-phobic”. Liberals are “Republicanophobic”. Atheists are “religiophobic”. Gays are “straightophobic”. And on it goes.
The bottom line for me is: prejudice has to affect others to be a problem. If I don’t like to sleep with a certain group of people — to the extent that I would change my mind about sleeping with someone if I suddenly found out that s/he belonged to this group — but treat them otherwise as normal people, I’m not being prejudiced against them. I simply know what works and doesn’t work for me sexually (as I know also in the area of food, music, movies, hobbies, or work, etc.), and I’m entitled to that.
In order for my lack of interest to sleep with a certain group to be seen as prejudiced, it would have to imply some wrong, some harm — and I frankly am not so arrogant as to think that not being able to sleep with me is going to be harmful to some group of people in such a way that I would be morally wrong in denying them access to my body. 🙂
Sexual preference is not prejudice. Sexual preference is simply what does or doesn’t make you happy sexually.
@159, you may be able to fool yourself into thinking that a disordered relationship like his is healthy, but I’m not fooled. There’s a son in the equation, and Forced To Pick, as far as we know, hasn’t done anything to raise him, look after him, or pay for his well-being. He seems, from his letter, to be getting pussy without any of the side-effects or responsibilities of getting pussy. I don’t see any sign in FTP’s letter that the husband knows about him, which led me to think he’s sneaking around. I still think that this is what he’s doing.
@21: I have a copper IUD. About 3-4 months after getting it (and getting off hormones) my sex drive about doubled. If you have been off hormones for a sufficiently long time (say, 6-12 months, though it varies) and haven’t seen an improvement, or if your sex drive has noticeably declined since getting off hormones, then there is either something else going on medically (thyroid and depression spring to mind though there are many possibilities) or the hormones were actually boosting your sex drive (entirely conceivable if things can go in the other direction). Find a sex positive doctor– http://www.plannedparenthood.org/ is a good place to start — where you can discuss the issue. It took me four years to find a method that didn’t suppress my sex drive, so keep trying!! It is *well* worth it. I wish this was an issue more often discussed… way to go Dan!
“If he is attracted to someone, and would normally love to sleep with them, but then finds out they are trans and changes his mind, EVEN THOUGH THAT CHANGES LITERALLY NOTHING, yeah, you’re transphobic.”
I believe this is a true statement. There is no reason for anyone to rule out possibilities for dating any one just because they happen to be trans, black , white or asian.
There is no way anyone can “tell” by bone structure that somoeone is transsexual, you can guess right, but you cant guess right every single time.
I dont think someone who is not turned on by a certain race is a bigot per say, nor do i think someone who is not turned on by someone who happens to be transgender is a bigot, but you have to have a little bias in order to rule out a whole group of people based on one trait.
By the way, I also think anyone who rules out any possibilities to fall in love with someone because they happen to be overweight,asian black at least on a subconscious level.
I am not saying we cant have our own perference, but there is no justification to rule out the possibility of falling in love with every transgender woman on earth, as i am sure there are transgender women completely live and look like a woman in every possible way.
The only thing that stop a heterosexual man from falling in love with such women is an internal bias against people who are transgender.
To not be attracted to any given trans women, or even to generally find you don’t fancy trans women, and note this, is fine, of course. It might even be that the nature of surgically constructed vaginas turns out, should you get that far, to be such th…at that you actually aren’t in to getting it on with any trans woman at all, no matter how much you might like her otherwise. But to be freaked out, not by the reality of the woman in front of you, but by your concept of the kind of thing you think she is, is almost a textbook definition of prejudice.”
This statement is absolutely bang on. Imagine if you fell in love with a woman (love at first sight) and than you found out about her past, about her DNA, and you suddenly stop loving that person or feeling attraction, than YOU ARE prejudiced against transgender people on an subconscious level at least.
It would be wise to at least admit and explore why you feel this way by digging deep inside your mind and soul, instead of saying you are completely accepting.
“Even though that changes literally nothing.”
It sounds great, but examine the premise. How could finding out something as monumental as a sex change operation change nothing? How could a person’s past with different genitals (and the expectations and treatment that goes with those genitals) be inconsequential? We forget all sorts of things, but that?
I’m trying to think of any other major component in a person’s life that it would be easy to ignore, or even something that would change literally nothing, and I can’t think of anything.
If FRAUD reads all of the comments, I hope he makes it down this far.
Based on the letter you wrote here, you seem to be an awesome person. You’re fully aware of who you are and you’re supportive of those who are fully aware of themselves as well. That is the best thing that ANYONE can be.
I have hetero friends who have my back 100%. They got issues with certain gay things, but if they approach me with it, I discuss it respectfully, present my points and hold my ground. They may not like it, but they respect it.
Don’t let all this activism bullshit make you feel like you don’t have a right to your personal preferences. A real friend lets you be you and accepts you for who you are – and JUST because someone is LGBT does NOT mean they aren’t a selfish asshole.
Ms There – That’s a bit flawed. Even if we leave out the question of odds (that FRAUD is capable of love at first sight or on ridiculously slight acquaintance, that a straight person who has known far more trans people than most and some of them probably quite well would come across one he wouldn’t guess might be, and that there would be sufficient mutual attraction to allow the relationship to get to such a point), in your scenario the woman involved has permitted him to fall in love with her before making the revelation. Insufficient openness about a plausible dealbreaker has killed many attractions even when the dealbreaker wasn’t a dealbreaker.
Vennominon, are you saying as a trans woman, I have the power to control when and how someone fall in love with me before I disclose my past history? I am not God and I dont have wear a label on my forehead about what DNA I have. People can fall in love on second or third dates and not have the opportunity to talk about or know the most intimiate details or even personal details about someone, and that doesnt mean that person is lying or witholding information on purpose.
You have the right to not like rap, or enjoy looking at art instead of playing foot ball, but just being against the idea that you can never be with someone because they are not born with the DNA you perferred, thats bias based on gender identity, thats a prejudice , even if you dont admit it , even if you are considered to be an accepting person by almost everyone including trans people.
Crinoline,
It’s perfectly fine if someone choose to not be with anyone who ever had life changing surgery or anyone with a really impressive or intense battles with self actualization, but dont tell me thats just a personal perference, not a bias or prejudice..if you love a person, you love them based on who they are and trans women come in all size and shapes, pre op and post op, race and color, backgrounds of all types..
The only reason someone choose to say no to being in an intimiate relation with all transsexuals before ever even meeting them is based on a prejudice. sorry.
Mr Ank – Framing a choice of moderates choosing a political side as succumbing to temptation is practically calling it a moral fault to take a side. Calling that more superiour of you than usual was my own attempt at matching your own spotless moderation in all things in a tolerably humourous manner.
By the way, what’s so beatified about being a moderate? Haven’t we seen quite a few examples of outrageous things lately because somebody wanted to “present both sides fairly”? (I am reminded of Mr Mantegna’s short-lived and perhaps rather insufferable television series in which he portrayed the most perfectly impartial Supreme Court Justice who ever existed and week after week was always the swing vote in a 5-4 decision. Superhuman impartiality may be a desirable quality in a Supreme, but do we really want to generalize it to the point of considering it a fault to have a strong and partisan opinion regardless of the issue?)
I could say more, but it’s way too late. Sorry if this was incoherent.
Ms There – SOME people can fall in love on second or third dates, though we might debate on how shallow or deep such love might be. But it is not the sort of thing that happens to everyone all the time. In FRAUD’s case, too, one might think that he’d probably even be much more likely to know (or guess) a trans woman’s status before a possible first date than most straight men. He’s also much more likely to discuss trans issues with women he dates just as part of his own history, which would seem to make it more likely that the matter would be revealed as a dealbreaker before he’d fallen.
I said “insufficient openness” rather than “concealment”, consciously trying not to frame it as a matter of deliberate intent. There can be some things one finds out about someone too late, regardless of the reason. Some cases might or might not involve more fault than others, but that’s a question of degree.
Again, it’s very late here and I’m sure I’m incoherent. I just meant to say that I’ve known people with dealbreakers who surprised themselves by overcoming them, and people who couldn’t handle the timing of when something came out even though the something itself wasn’t the problem. That struck me as a flaw in your example; I was not saying that the example was wrong.
“The only reason someone choose to say no to being in an intimiate relation with all transsexuals before ever even meeting them is based on a prejudice.”
Only if heterosexuality and homosexuality are also prejudices. Should we tell soi-disant lesbians that they’re bigots by refusing to consider having intimate relationships with men? What about men who pose as lesbians online? Or men who convincingly crossdress?
MTF transsexuals want to be treated just like women (I reject the term “cis-women”). That can happen in the social sphere, maybe even should happen, but in the romantic sphere, forget it. You’re NOT just like women: your bodies are an amalgam of male and female qualities, in varying proportions. It may be that in some situations the male qualities are well-hidden, but they’re still there, and complete openness will generally reveal them, except maybe in cases where the two parties are of different races (non-Asian men have a hard time spotting Asian ladyboys because most races are bad at differentiating members of other races to begin with).
There are men out there who will be attracted to those male qualities, so why do you insist on railing against those who aren’t? We have the right NOT to want to have sex with you, NOT to want to love you, NOT to want to “give you a chance”. That doesn’t make us bigots; it makes us people who realize that we’ll never want the real you. And that makes you angry, just as every rejected lover gets angry — but you no more have the right to cry bigotry than a man does if a lesbian doesn’t want him because he’s a man.
@93 clashfan: I’m glad you liked it!
I’m still puzzled about all this redefining new sex terminology.
Does this make me a cis-ter?
FRAUD’s friends are being silly. If ‘supports the rights of’ has to equal ‘sexually attracted to’, then every queer-basher with girl-on-girl action on his hard drive is a LGBT ally and every woman-raper is a feminist.
@Doot (22) who said “man-made pussy looks like a blown-out truck tire that’s driven through the mud,”
That may be the case for some people, but it’s hardly universal. My girlfriend’s cunt is gorgeous. Possibly her surgeon was better at his job than the surgeons who worked on the person/people you know? But no, a constructed cunt is not automatically less attractive than a home-grown one, and it’s ridiculous to say that it is.
arewethereyet-170– Fine. I accept that my preference for the cisgendered is a prejudice, but in doing so, I reject any negative connotations normally associated with prejudice and bigotry. I now pronounce them good things and hope everyone engages them happily and proudly.
I’m not attracted to men with short hair, that does not make me menwithshorthair-phobic.
@179
It’s like saying that women are more “obsessed” about getting breast cancer than men. Or more “obsessed” about being raped than men.
How’d you end up so fucking obtuse?
Anecdotally, I know many women who have experienced low libido while on hormonal birth control. Myself I lost 10 years of good sex before putting 2 and 2 together. Mostly because pharmaceutical companies and the medical community either downplay or outright conceal these side effects. Mirena IUD hormones not systemic? I would love to believe it. After being screwed by pharma for a decade, I won’t believe anything they claim ever again.
It seems to me that there’s two distinct issues here.
One is something I’ll call the straight male teen’s trans nightmare: “Imagine that you were dating this really cool girl. It’s the third date, and you’re in loooooove with her, and you’re just about to hit a home run, when you find out she’s a trannie!!!1! What do you do!?!? [in a hushed subtone] and does this mean you’re … GAY?!?!” Personally, I think I’d handle it much like I’d handle a revelation that the woman I was with had had her tubes tied. At certain periods of my life, that would have been a deal-breaker, even if she was “perfect” otherwise, and it would have been much less unpleasant for everyone if she’d told me that on the first date rather than waiting until everyone was heavily emotionally invested. At other periods of my life, it wouldn’t have been a major issue.
But that’s not what FRAUD is talking about. He’s saying he’s met a lot of MtF trans people, and he’s never met one who turns him on. His political activism tells him he should be turned on by at least some of them, but his hormones refuse to cooperate. I think that’s a comment on the limits of current male-to-female surgical techniques, not prejudice.
@Mydriasis: I think he’s trolling.
BTW, Mydriasis, you don’t understand phylogeny. Phylogeny compares populations that don’t interbreed. So you can compare (for example) lions and tigers and bears with it. Phylogenetic techniques are inapplicable to male humans and female humans, or US whites and US blacks, because those groups do interbreed.
@161
I’ll try once more…
What may work for others may not work for you and vice versa. No need to label it as a “disordered relationship”.
And maybe he is involved with raising the child to some degree or another? After all, the brother and his wife threatened to contact CPS. They never threatened to tell the husband, and probably because he is fully aware and approve of what’s going on.
Just live your life happily and let other live theirs. Thanks
@179 Hunter: Did you not have a nice Thanksgiving?
I still don’t understand your issue and your beef. I’m not obsessed with my libido, only observant. Are you mad because you’re currently not getting any, and that you secretly wish more women DID obsess about their sex drives? Are you harboring a disquieting thought that if you didn’t get some ass soon (Oh, the horrors!!), you might become a dateless troll? Or how well hung you think you are, DAMN IT! Why can’t they SEE it??? Or whether or not I prefer hamburgers to hot dogs or chocolate to caramel? It sounds more like you’ve become a bit oddly “ob-sexed”. For someone whose vague opinion that women’s perceived obsessions are so obvious [they] “aren’t worth saying”, you seem hell bent on screaming volumes.
@181 mydriasis: Maybe it’s because he’s too obsessed with his libido?
@141 – “You mention “trappings”, and I ask: why can’t people like/engage in the ‘trappings’ of the other gender without deducing that this makes them a member of that category? E.g., if I like to skateboard, climbs trees, fix cars, watch sports, wear trousers rather than skirts, etc (all “stereotypical” male things), does that make me a boy/man? Why can’t I just be a girl/woman who likes that sh*t? “
This is where I always get lost in discussions about gender. I was born with a standard female body and was treated in the normal way for my body. But I have zero mothering instinct, I like video games and rough sports, and rarely wear a dress. I don’t feel like a man, I’m not sure I really feel like a woman. I like what I like. I don’t understand how people cross that line from “I like the things normally associated with the opposite gender” to “I am supposed to be the opposite gender”. I’m not questioning anyone’s right to feel that way or to act on those feelings, just saying that I really don’t get it. Just because society tells me my interests are masculine doesn’t mean I need to change my body to be male to fit with my interests. Maybe I’m missing something. Can anyone recommend some reading that might explain it to me?
I wish we could/would take the BT out LGBT. Totally differnent issues and totally different life challenges. I know it’s not progressively queer of me and unPC but there you have it. Hate away……
I agree with @90. Even though I’m in a long poly realtionship.
Read the question again:
“Do I have the right to not feel comfortable with the idea (or reality) of having sex with these women and still consider myself a supporter of the trans community”
Nowhere here does it say love, hes purely asking about sex. There is no way in hell he can know for sure every woman he comes across is or is not born with an XX OR XY DNA, this is his issue with being uncomfortable with an idea in his head about what trans women are like.
It is possible for FRAUD to get off on having sex with a woman, and than days later, he found out shes actually trans, it didnt matter how “uncomfortable” he is now, but the fact was, he did have no problem getting his rock off on a transsexual woman as long as he didnt know in his mind.
He has the right to be turned off at the idea of being a transsexual, he can still support transsexual people but dont tell me he doesnt have a personal bias if the only thing that is stopping him from admitting he is attracted to a woman is if he found out the DNA of the woman in question.
And there are also many people who dont have sex until they get married, you can fall in love with someone and never had sex with them. So the more important question I have is can FRAUD fall in love with a trans woman or a woman who happens to be trans?
I couldnt care less if some men dont want to have sex with transsexuals, in my experience, the problem with transsexuals finding a mate is not due to a lack of sexual partner, but a life partner who is brave enough to confront his desire and stand up proudly for the woman he is in love with.
With all the women I have slept with in my life, it would not surprise me to find out 1-2 were transwomen. What the hell, never really had and bad pussy. Some too loose, some too tight but it all was pretty good in my memory of how things were. Does that make me a, “queer hetrosexual”, lol?
Identities are useful. I identify as gay so everyone knows I find men sexually and romantically attractive. Technically, I’m bisexual as I do find the very occasional woman attractive and I quite like vagina. Though, honestly it’s unlikely I’d ever end up going there and I definitely couldn’t fall in love with a woman. So I think identifying as bi would just be confusing for people and ultimately counterproductive.
Likewise, for me personally, queer is a redundant identity. Everyone knows what I mean when I say I’m gay; queer would just make it confusing. It’s, for me, unnecessary.
I kinda thought queer stood for genderqueer anyway. And, whilst I’m not your stereotypical blokey bloke; I’ve got stereotypically masculine and feminine personality traits: I’ve always felt comfortable with male pronouns and uncomfortable with female ones. I’m definitely male.
queer heterosexual is the most ridiculous term i’ve heard of so far, and i love kate bornstein!
@187 Hunt: Ha-ha—You wish! It sounds more like you’re a little cis-boom-sexed about mine, though.
All kidding aside, I’m pretty sure I’m older than you are.
@64 Please forgive me for a second — I’m a bit of a nerd. I’m not arguing with you on the merits of your position. I just can’t resist looking at numbers, statistics, stuff like that. So, have pity and don’t get mad at me.
If GSA’s are working the way they should, attracting a cross-section of the whole population, gay and straight, then the membership of a GSA should have approximately the same proportion of gay and straight people as the population does. Which is what… 90% straight? In such an organization, given perfectly unbiased processes, you’d likely have the majority reflected in the leadership, what, about 90% of the time? Anyway, just saying, something to consider when looking at the numbers. It might not harbinger the end of the world.
@112: All words are neologisms that took hold.
I was a little put off by Kate Bornstein’s words – I’m supportive of equality, but I’m straight. Then I took a look at her IGBP video, and a couple more things she’s got online. And, seeing how she presents herself, I’m a little easier about it. It’s the kind of thing that comes off a lot more offensive printed on a page than coming from the mouth of a person.
@183
I understand how it works, I was just taking liberties for the purpose of illustration. If I wanted to be more accurate you could take the tree, point to the end of it, after people split off and say ‘look, somewhere in here we developed somewhat isolated human populations’. And then trace your finger way way back to whererever sexual reproduction emerges and say “look, this is where ‘men’ and ‘women’ become seperate”. I had to read a paper on it but I completely forgot who invented sexual reproduction.
I kind of meant it as an analogy, not a faithful description of genetics. My point was that the biological difference between a man and a woman is much greater than the biological difference between races. So equating race with gender is silly.
183-199- Besides, lions and tigers can interbreed. (But that’s entirely beside the point.)
I’m a transgender woman, and I just wanted to say that Kate Bornstein does not represent me.
Ms Brooklyn – How’s the tree growing?
Actually, I quite appreciate your viewpoint, and to some extent I approached FRAUD’s possible dating future with a similar mind set.
Your approach seems better suited to a different type of alliance than one with such a built-in privilege and power imbalance. The closest type that springs to mind is a hypothetical Catholic-Protestant Alliance. That might fit your analysis much better, and I’m sure there are better examples just waiting to be recognized.
Granted, GSAs draw from a cross-section of the population, but you can hardly expect direct proportionality in membership. It’s a bit difficult to deconstruct, because of questions of identification, but, with far more to be gained at stake for the G side than the S side, it seems safe to say that a considerably smaller proportion of the S side is open to alliance in the first place.
A few leadership considerations:
* Identity makes this murky, as presumably not all the straight-identified GSA presidents will still be straight-identified ten years later, but there may in many individual GSAs be no pool of available open non-straights. It reminds me of how Billie Jean King founded a women’s sports magazine and had to hire a male editor because there were no qualified women available.
* An organization formed to address imbalance and promote amity between different groups is likely to reflect its mission in its leadership. If the idea of privilege is well addressed, then much of the straight membership might be more willing to take a back seat and listen instead of to push to the fore and White Knight.
* A sad counter-argument is that it seems highly likely that many non-straights will want a straight president thinking that it will be good for the GSA image or make it apparent that it isn’t just a Gay Club.
* One concern I’ve been developing seeing such a lenghty run of openly straight GSA presidents goes a way beyond the appearance of prerogative to the extent that GSA presidency may come to be a sort of philosophical fashion accessory acquired by Type A young straights to establish liberal credentials. It reminds me a little of all those college-bound girls one hears about who would look at someone with a schedule of five hours a week of volunteering and call her a slacker. I don’t want the position to become just another piece in the Competitive Charity game.
@200: Lions, tigers, and Hunter, oh, my!
ankylosaur @156 “what’s the difference between preference and prejudice?”
It’s a matter of certainty. If you say, “I have always liked red licorice, and never liked the black kind,” that’s your preference. If you say – “I don’t eat black licorice because I know that I will never like it,” that’s a prejudice. I’ve lived long enough to find myself occasionally finding a pleasant version of something I thought I couldn’t stand. You point out that it’s not a problem as long as it doesn’t affect anyone. And that’s true for preferences/prejudices about licorice.
But it’s one thing to say: “I’ve never had a black friend, and I don’t expect to ever be friends with someone black. We’re just too different.” It’s entirely different to say: “I could never be friends with someone black.”
I’m glad to live in a culture where people understand that saying such things does affect other people’s real lives.
Same with the transgendered. I see a difference between saying that you’re not attracted to the transgendered, and saying that you could never be attracted to anyone transgendered.
The latter is closed-minded. Prejudiced. Not open to new experiences.
Crinoline @178 “I accept that my preference for the cisgendered is a prejudice, but in doing so, I reject any negative connotations normally associated with prejudice and bigotry”
Reject away, Crinoline. But I judge people closed-minded for not tasting the really spectacular octopus stew at this one restaurant (“I could never like octopus”). And similarly, to me there’s a negative connotation when someone says “I could never enjoy any kind of sex with someone transgendered.” You just don’t know. Imagine being blindfolded while someone with amazing talents fisted you until you came multiple times. You can’t imagine that there exists a transman who could give you pleasure that way? It’s just a fist. What do the childhood experiences of the person with the fist matter, when it comes to a fun sexual moment?
“Sex-positive, supportive of trans folk, and heterosexual” doth amount to “queer heterosexual”.
… Which the base vulgar do call straight.
EricaP (@204):
I understand the distinction you draw between preference and prejudice, but I find it hard to judge people as harshly, if their prejudice only manifests itself in closing off a possible positive experience for themselves.
If we’re getting hyper-interpretive here, I would argue that many prejudices take more the form of “I can’t bring myself to try octopus, because the thought of it makes me too squeamish,” than “I could never like octopus.”
And the same goes for statements of narrow sexual limits or preferences. If you recall, the lw’s original question wasn’t so much about whether his preference for sexual attraction being limited to women who were born female made him prejudiced (by your definition, I suppose it does), but whether his lack of desire to have sex with a trans woman made him transphobic.
I don’t think the lw’s statement of preference should be the basis for leveling a fairly harsh judgment about his being close-minded and prejudiced.
Prejudice means to pre-judge, to assume something about a specific individual, thing, or experience without experiencing it directly. But as long as one doesn’t go around saying hateful things or behaving negatively about someone, s/he has the right to a preference without being called, essentially a close-minded bigot.
I’m a straight woman who isn’t in the slightest sexually attracted to women (yes, some of my best friends, etc.). I didn’t have to give the experience a try to know how not-attracted I am (though I have and I was: unattracted, unaroused, and unable to enjoy myself). But I knew how uninterested I was in women sexually long before I confirmed that gut reaction, which, btw, I did not to try and be open-minded, but because it was important to the man I was dating.
If I said, “I could never like having sex with a woman,” but supported gay rights, and had many lesbian friends, would you call me prejudiced or homophobic? I hope not.
“Sex-positive, supportive of trans folk, and heterosexual” doth amount to “queer heterosexual”.
… Which the base vulgar do call straight.