Open this thread I got to sorting by "contraversial" Idk what I expected...

CW: transphobic violence

When people get killed for disclosing and people get killed for not disclosing what the fuck are you supposed to do, dating is hard enough as it is imagine your life is literally on the line when you hook up or start seeing someone romantically.

I remember in 2013ish tumblr culture it was like, social justice dogma that genital preferences were transphobic, without much room for nuance. And I bought into it, hard, and never had it challenged for years. Then I got into discord servers with a lot of trans people and started noticing that many trans people themselves have genital preferences. Especially common seemed to trans women who strongly preferred dicks, and further in particular transbians who were only interested in dating other trans women. I don't want to go off listing examples because there are a ton of different people with a ton of different aspects to the minutiae of their attraction, but yeah meeting trans people with genital preferences, some stricter than others, made me realize that policing genital preference isn't actually good. Actually my initial reaction when I first started meeting like, transbians who only want to date transwomen who haven't had bottom surgery was to say "isn't that bad because it reinforces the transphobic idea that there's a difference?" But after a while of discussing it and self-examining I realized how problematic that is.

Of course, "I won't date trans people" doesn't necessarily have anything to do with genital preference because trans people might have had bottom surgery. So a, say, straight man categorically dismissing trans women because they're not into dicks doesn't make sense because not all trans women have dicks.

But I kind of wonder what angle the tweet being linked here is coming at it from. Like the specifically mention the word "preference", which makes me wonder if this person is in fact drawing on 2013 tumblr social justice dogma that genital preferences are transphobic. I have no idea, and don't have the energy to read through the replies to see what in particular is going on.

Maybe it's time to realize it's bananas to try and address sexuality with any of the nuance which is its proper due among strangers via the medium of text.

I would agree a straight dude who feels the bizarre need to LOUDLY DECLARE his lack of attraction to trans women is probably just expressing transphobia.

If it just genuinely the case a straight dude has never felt attraction to a trans woman and doubts they ever would, I mean whatever you can’t control who you’re attracted to. I’d say just yah know, keep that to yourself and if a trans woman ever does express attraction to you just politely say “thanks but no thanks”.

not dating post-op trans women? sure, that's pretty shitty

but not dating pre-op/non-op trans women isn't transphobia, you can't pick your sexuality

i hate this struggle session so much

What if I'd like to have biological children of my own?