Those fruitists are dangerous.
This isn’t a new topic. In quite a few opinion pieces folks make the argument that preferences based on race are racist. I don’t see why that logic can’t be extended to any biological characteristic be it intellect, height, weight, odor, gender, whatever the case may be and used to attack any preference in dating or mate selection. But it feels so absurd that folks can’t choose to associate romantically or sexually as they wish that many just want to redefine the term in order to save the term to use as weapon. But if we are being logically consistent then we have to accept that those who argue that it is a form of a racism or more generalized bigotry have a point.
The only people that are in my dating pool are people that are attracted to me. If someone is not attracted to me but decided to date me anyway, they are doing both themselves and me a disservice, because I only want to be with someone that also wants to be with me. I am a heterosexual cis male attracted (almost) exclusively to cis females. If, in the interest of equality, I decided to date outside of that demographic, I am not increasing the dateable pool, I am lying to myself and to the person I date that I am not attracted to. That relationship is built on a lie, and is unlikely to end positively for anyone. This is extremely different than a cake. A cake is an inanimate object. I do not care about the banker’s intentions or feelings. I just need a cake. It is not a back and forth relationship that needs to be built on mutual caring and honesty.
The whole issue is a classic illustration of the difference between systemic bigotry, which operates at the societal level, and conscious bigotry, which is a matter of individual viewpoint.
For instance, there’s a strong systemic bias in society towards heterosexual couples consisting of a taller man and a shorter woman. Doubtless not coincidentally, many individual women don’t want to date a shorter man and many individual men don’t want to date a taller woman. It’s not that they believe that short men or tall women are in any way intrinsically inferior: they just don’t happen to be attracted to them and wouldn’t feel right being with them.
Does that make them bigots? Certainly not on the level of conscious individual bigotry. They don’t choose to fail to be attracted to the shorter men and taller women, they just don’t happen to be attracted to them.
But are their responses entirely unaffected by the systemic social bias that says people shouldn’t date shorter men or taller women, that almost invariably depicts “ideal” couples conforming to the taller-man-shorter-woman norm? Probably not.
So that’s an example of the way, as Delayed_Reflex said, (generic) you can have personal romantic preferences that don’t make you a bigot, personally, but that nonetheless are part of pervasive systemic bigotry in the dating world.
This is of course true. Just look back at nearly any media from the 70s or earlier. Watching even clips from The Tonight Show from that era is often cringe inducing due to what we would now consider to be just casual racism and sexism. There is little doubt later generations will feel the same about the present.
I don’t understand this. These TRAs that you mention, they think lesbians should choose who they date based on gender and not biological sex and anatomy?
Yes. A minority, like I said. Just a very loud one - and sometimes from people who aren’t otherwise unreasonable.
Ok thanks! I didn’t know gender was that important in dating.
It can be, though that’s not entirely what I was talking about, so I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.
no point, just didn’t know that some people would have people date based on gender instead of physical characteristics. It’s interesting to learn that.
I want a pony.
Yes, there are quite a few people of whatever sexual orientation who do choose a partner based on gender rather than on anatomical birth sex.
For example, a cisgender gay man:
I assume you accept that, if someone doesn’t want to have sex with someone who has the genitalia of the sex they’re not attracted to, that’s OK?
I think by “quite a few” you mean “there are some that a journalist was able to hunt around and locate”.
Great! Good luck in getting that pony!
Thanks. Pony doesn’t want me. Sad face. I demand pony want me.
What do you mean by “OK”?
Is it their right to have that preference for a specific anatomical sex, and can they hold that preference without deserving to be considered personally a bigot, or culpable for it in any way? Yes, absolutely.
Is it nonetheless possible that their preference is to some extent influenced by systemic and very entrenched societal bigotry against transgender people, and that if their lives had been lived in a society that wasn’t bigoted in that way, their preference might be different to some extent? Yes, I think that’s plausible.
In other words, when it comes to something as intimate and personal as your romantic and sexual relationships, your choices might be somewhat influenced by, and somewhat helping to perpetuate, systemic societal bigotry. But you nonetheless still have the right to make those choices without being personally criticized or condemned for bigotry as an individual.
And the same applies IMHO to romantic/sexual preferences involving overtly racial/ethnic/class/etc. categories. Yeah, maybe on some level you’re a little brainwashed by systemic racism or classism or whatever, as are we all. But in your dating life (as opposed to, say, workplace interactions with coworkers) nobody has the right to try to get you to be more “broad-minded” about any of your reactions, or to condemn you for bigotry because of what appeals to you and what doesn’t.
Wellll now, 12% of a study sample of 958 people, as per my last link, is about 115 people. If the sample is at all representative of the population (which from the description of the study in the article sounds like a reasonable inference), then there are at least a few cisgender people in every hundred who are open to dating a transgender person. I think it’s fair to call that “quite a few people” in absolute terms, even if as a percentage it’s quite small.
This seems interesting. Do you think people’s attraction to physical anatomy is somewhat influenced by systemic societal bigotry?
For at least some people, to at least some extent, yes, that seems very likely. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that some people’s ignorance of their capacity for attraction to a different kind of physical anatomy than what they’re used to finding attractive is somewhat influenced by systemic societal bigotry.
I’m not saying that if we lived in a perfectly transphobia-free world then everybody would automatically like all the different bits equally. Any more than if we lived in a perfectly homophobia-free world everybody would automatically be completely bisexual. Neither of those scenarios seems plausible.
But judging from the number of cisgender people recounting that they never expected or wanted to get with a transgender person until one day they happened to meet The One and that turned out to be more important than genitalia… Yeah, I would be very surprised if systemic societal bigotry turned out to have absolutely zero role in absolutely everybody’s responses to genitalia.