J K Rowling and the trans furore

In My Humble Opinion
4687

I get that people don’t like the article I posted.

I’d like folks to consider this one, though:

I recently spoke to a lesbian friend who is active in the Labour party who said that she routinely comes under social, and sometimes quite explicit, pressure from ‘progressive’ friends to sleep with transwomen. ‘I’m sick of being told I should like penis. I don’t like penis. That’s why I’m a lesbian. That’s the whole point,’ she said.

Since I started writing about sex and gender last year, I’ve had a lot of conversations with women – and a few men – who say they worry that some of the people promoting transgenderism are advocates of ‘queer theory’, and are engaged in a quite deliberate attempt to break down societal norms and barriers in order to make it a lot easier for people with penises to put those penises into a much greater range of people than is currently permitted.

I generally view that worry with a fair bit of scepticism; it all sounds a bit far-fetched and even conspiratorial. But then I read things like Karen Blair’s blog, and I wonder.

The writer is referencing a blog he excerpts in the article that contains a line: We won’t be able to say, as a society, that we are accepting of trans citizens until they are also included within our prospective dating pools.

How do folks in this thread feel about this idea? From where I sit, it is just a couple of steps away from accusing someone of transphobia for having a specific sexual preference. It fuels the sense of entitlement that young lesbians have encountered from some transwomen. Seems to me it’s a problematic yet predictable outcome of making gender affirmation the ultimate end goal of trans rights.

4688

I wonder if most transwomen espousing this view are hypocritical, in that they don’t have the same attraction for transwomen as they do for ciswomen. Would a lesbian transwoman see no difference between a transwoman and a ciswoman in terms of having a relationship? Or would the transwoman prefer ciswomen to transwomen?

4689

Try that one.

4690

From what I’ve observed lurking on trans boards, a lot of trans people don’t want relationships with other trans folks. Being accepted by a cis partner is the ultimate goal, because that would affirm their gender identity to the maximal degree.

But on social media, you’re generally hearing from young voices. Young people are prone to dating hypocrisy. Like the fat girls that only want beefcakes or the dark-skinned guys who won’t look in the direction of dark-skinned girls. Young folks have an idealized relationship in their head. They eventually learn that it’s just a dream and recalibrate.

Some of the apparent hypocrisy has some logic to it, though. Like, I have heard mentally ill people say they don’t want to be with other mentally ill people, because their lives are already too complicated as it is. I totally get that. I don’t think I’d want to be the weak, pathetic, dependent one in the relationship, but if I suffer from regularly occurring issues, I want to be able to experience those issues and deal with them without worrying about my partner’s suffering at the same time. So I could see someone experiencing the struggle of transitioning not wanting to be in a relationship with someone going through the same thing.

4691

Do you think that there could be something like societal or institutional transphobia, like there is with racism? That someone who is not personally hateful to trans people might still be acting or speaking in ways that are damaging to trans people because of unexamined ideas and attitudes about trans people they have absorbed from the society around them? If these societal biases exist, and can be reduced, does it seem likely to you that the number of people open to the concept of dating a transwoman might increase? Do you think it would be acceptable to work towards that outcome - without, of course, specfically attacking or denigrating any single individual who rejects a specific romantic or sexual overture?

4692

Yeah, hey, why don’t you go find another innocuous dating guide explicitly authored for cis lesbians who are interested in dating trans women, and compare it to corrective rape? That’s the sort of solidly rational argumentation your side could really use more of.

4693

But that is false. The alteration to the term “marriage” was not in any way a complete redefinition. It was, at the very most, a slight expansion of the legal term of art.

The plan with this movement - one that at least one person in this thread have just straight up said is A-OK with them - is to say the word “woman” doesn’t mean anything at all.

4694

Can you address this in the link you provided:

I am also embarrassed as a queer for the fact that so many straight cis men have worked through, or are beginning to work through, their own issues regarding trans women, whereas most cis queer women refuse to even consider the possibility that they even have an issue.

Do you think, or perhaps even in your experience, that straight(ish) cis men that are allegedly working through their issues regarding trans women are actually working through their own issues as bi-curious men and the facade of a trans woman make that curiosity less threatening? While the women this author is trying to date are well past that level of confusion about their own sexuality and have decided that they are cis lesbians who are exclusively attracted to other cis lesbians.

4695

So is it transphobic to not want to date people of a sex you aren’t attracted to or isn’t it?

I provided links to examples of people actually saying it’s transphobic. monstro tried to provide examples too, and for some reason the post was moderated away. Don’t pretend this stuff isn’t out there; it is, and it’s misogynist rape culture.

4696

From the article @Miller linked to:

Therefore, the inescapable conclusion is that while trans people and cis bisexual women are often open to dating trans women, the overwhelming majority of cis dykes are not.

It doesn’t make sense to me that Serrano had to put in months and months of investigatory work to realize being biologically female is a necessary condition for basically all lesbians in the dating scene. This is why we call them lesbians rather than bi or straight.

For all the assurances that “sex is real” is a straw man, it certainly seems like many in the trans community don’t understand what biological sex or sex sex are. Genitals aren’t just a side dish; they are the main entree for most everybody. Expecting a lesbian to date a male is like expecting them to settle for a meal without their preferred entree. Please help us understand why Serrano seems so surprised lesbians aren’t trying to settle like this?

@Miller asked me earlier to explain why I thought the Allure article I cited earlier didn’t read to me like something a women would write. Well, this article gives off the same “a male wrote this” vibe. I mean, what is up with the “cis dykes” shit? Just call them women or lesbians and give the “cis” thing a rest. Again, not shocking that a transwomen who talks like this would struggle with dating. How many lesbians are lining up to be called a cis dyke over morning cups of coffee?

4697

I really do appreciate the greater context, and I do agree with you that the context makes what she said not sound as awful.

But I do disagree with her when she writes this:

And when the overwhelming majority of cis dykes date and fuck cis women, but are not open to, or are even turned off by, the idea of dating or fucking trans women, how is that not transphobic? And to those cis women who claim a dyke identity, yet consider trans men, but not trans women, to be a part of your dating pool, let me ask you this: How are you not a hypocrite?

I’m not a lesbian. But I am a woman, and I do know that women are not like men sexually. To put it as crudely I can, a wet hole of any type is sufficient for most men. Women tend to be a little more particular.

But there is also a less biological-based reason why cis lesbians are not jumping on transwomen en mass. Their identity is wrapped up in not liking d. If you’ve spent years telling everyone you know and love that your love for pussy is an immutable part of you, then you probably aren’t going to embrace dick, even if it’s attached to a pretty face. Cuz you’ve already told yourself that dick is repulsive. To use an apt metaphor, it’s like those annoying people who say they hate sushi without having tried it because they can’t imagine raw fish being delicious and ew gross.

Is this unenlightened, maybe a little juvenile? Of course. But isn’t transphobic, not unless we’re equating people with genitalia now.

There’s another explanation besides (or in addition to) transphobia that could be explaining the pattern. I suspect San Fran transwomen are enormously diverse–much more so than the average cis lesbian. If you see an ad that advertises “transwoman” and you live in a place where transwomen run the full gamet of humanity (from the female-passing, HRT-receiving SRS-having person to the butch queen penis-haver with the five o’clock shadow), maybe you are OK with taking a chance…if you are just looking for a fun time. But if you are looking for a serious relationship, you’ll likely go with the gender that is a known commodity. At a bare minimum, a cis woman knows that another cis woman has what she is looking for in terms of body parts. She knows they will have some things in common and knows she won’t have to worry about navigating a world (on multiple levels) she’s not familiar with.

I’m guessing quite a few folks your friend has encountered are indeed transphobic (and I appreciate her admitting that she has held transphobic beliefs herself). But I don’t think transphobia is the only explanation. One thing is rarely the only explanation. I think it harmful for transphobia to be the go-to explanation for trans discrimination in the dating realm. Discrimination is what the dating realm is all about, and a lot of that is going to be discrimination centered on biological criteria. I think pansexuality can be promoted without shaming or guilting people for liking what they like.

That’s what it sounds like your friend did in that piece, and cringingly, she did it by appealing to the ways of menfolk. That rubs me the wrong way. Women ain’t men. We don’t need to be like men. We don’t want to be like men. So we shouldn’t be compared to them.

Thanks for providing the link, @Miller.

4698

@Miller just characterized as “innocuous” the Allure article I cited earlier. This is an article that implies lesbians that reject transwomen need to “unlearn“ their “nasty transphobia” “.

So when these lesbians don shirts with “transphobe”, you’d think he’d understand the position they are finding themselves in. But nope.

4699

Seems I’m not the only one to have found the posted article by Julia Serano either hopelessly naive at best, or having an understandable self serving agenda at worst.

4700

Do you think that there could be something like societal or institutional transphobia, like there is with racism? That someone who is not personally hateful to trans people might still be acting or speaking in ways that are damaging to trans people because of unexamined ideas and attitudes about trans people they have absorbed from the society around them?

It’s an interesting question. It’s a complicated one to answer because of the strong nexus between race and culture. Is a black person who doesn’t want to date a white person a racist? Or are they someone who doesn’t want an especially complicated life–a life where they have to deal with the awkwardness of a culture that’s unfamiliar to them, where they may have to deal with hostile in-laws and their own disappointed family members, where they might have kids who deal with issues they have never experienced?

I see the big uptick in interracial relationships over the past couple of decades as a sign that society really and truly is becoming less racist. But interracial sex has existed since the beginning of time. Race has never stopped people from bumping uglies. In contrast, trans-cis relationships are a newfangled thing, along with gender identity. We haven’t run the experiment for very long to be able to make any good predictions.

Since gender = sex to most people, it shouldn’t be surprising why jiggering with one’s gender expression without jiggering with their sex organs doesn’t result in instant romantic pairings. Gender expression is merely a clever way of signaling what parts you have. I think it is very possible that pansexuals will swell in number as gender minorities swell in number. But I don’t think it is realistic to expect trans citizens to be included in everyone’s prospective dating pools. So I think it is harmful to make this a performance metric of trans acceptance. A person who doesn’t want to date someone who has genitalia they dislike but they will select them for jobs, rent apartments to them, sell homes to them, befriend them, and vote for politicians who care about them is just a person with a preference for certain genitals. Let’s save “transphobe” for people who don’t want to do any of these things.

4701

This part is also a hot mess.

My purpose in writing this piece is to highlight how cis dykes’ unwillingness to consider trans women as legitimate partners translates directly into a lack of community for queer-identified trans women.

This doesn’t make sense. Since when did forming a community necessitate being in bed with one another? Don’t lesbians and gay men share a community together? Yes. The way this reads you’d think “cis dykes” as having orgies with one another indiscriminately, and this orgy is what unites them.

After all, queer women’s communities serve several purposes. They are places where we can build alliances to fight for our rights. They are places where we can find friendship and chosen family. But one of the most critical functions that queer women’s communities serve is in providing a safe space outside of the heterocentric mainstream where women can express interest, attraction, and affection toward other women.

Yes, and for many lesbians, they don’t have the ideological view that males can actually be women. So just because a male has a different self-concept doesn’t mean they share it.

What happens to their “safe space“ when lesbians are no longer able to define what it means to be lesbian simply because an outsider wants into that space? It doesn’t seem very safe anymore. It would be nice to see Serrano show some self-awareness by probing this question a bit.

In other words, queer women’s spaces fulfill our need for sexual validation. Unless, of course, you are a trans woman. And personally, with each passing year, it becomes harder and harder for me to continue to take part in a community in which I am not seen as a legitimate object of desire.

What does Serrano think lesbians who are past their prime and become sexually undesirable do? Not every lesbian is rolling in lovers; like any community, there are biases that keep people from scoring whom they want. It’s life; get over it!

I get the sense Serrano thinks pouting about this is supposed to make lesbians come rushing over with apologies and love offerings, but that’s not how this works. Lesbians fed up with this bullshit are likely to be only happy to have Serrano leave the community if this means the guilt-tripping articles will stop.

4702

I’m going to assume it is more naive than malicious, since @Miller has vouched for her decency. “Why can’t these girls be more like the boys!” is hilariously tone-deaf, but it probably makes perfect sense from someone coming from the “sex isn’t real” school of thought. Apparently not everyone knows that women aren’t simply men in skirts. As a group, women experience sex differently than men do. Of course your rando horny guy isn’t going to kick out a pretty girl out of his bed just because she has a dick. She’s got two warm, wet holes that can make him cum. It’s not hard to make the average rando horny guy cum.

But a woman who wants to eat some pussy is not going to be happy if there’s nothing but dick on the menu. Hence, why it should surprise absolutely no one that cis lesbians have no problem hanging with transmen. They’ve got the thing they are looking for. Pussy. If they were transphobic, seems like they would be repulsed by transmen instead of attracted to them. Sounds like they just like what they like and it doesn’t matter to them how it’s presented. That actually sounds more egalitarian to me than a sexual orientation defined around the professed gender identity of the two people involved.

4703

No, it doesn’t. Here’s the passage she’s referring to, with a bit more surrounding context, emphasis mine:

Note the highlighted phrases:

“If you’re reading this article, you’re already entertaining the idea of hanging with one of us (or already have!)”

“Unlearn society’s nasty transphobia” - not your nasty transphobia, but the transphobia every one picks up in the course of growing up in a transphobic society, including trans people themselves - you have no idea how many trans people I know who attempted suicide before transitioning, because they couldn’t imagine living a happy life as a “freak.” And the sentence ends with a promise that you will have fun with the trans women “in your love life,” implying that those women are already there.

The rest of the article (I admit I started skimming after a bit) is almost entirely practical advice about communicating with your trans partner and what sort of things to expect (both physically and emotionally) once the clothes come off.

It’s got absolutely nothing to do with lesbians who refuse to date trans women.

4704

I’m not entirely sure how to respond to the continued insistence that “trans woman” = “has a dick.”

4705

Um, probably because we are talking about a piece where the writer says this:

While I recognize this is a privilege, as it makes my life significantly easier in many ways, it also means that any flirting, making out, or heavy petting I engage in will eventually lead to a coming-out-as-trans moment, which often leaves me with an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach.

If she’s not talking about her dick being discovered, what the hell is she talking about?

Do most trans women have penises? I’m guessing they do. If true, it is reasonable to assume that the person identified as a transwoman in a personal ad likely has one, even if she doesn’t say she does. A bisexual cis woman might not care. A pansexual cis woman might not care. A romantic asexual cis woman probably won’t care. But I would expect a lesbian cis women to care a whole lot and decide it’s not worth the gamble. Not because she has anything against transwomen. But because she really wants to eat some pussy. Does this strike you as unreasonable?

4706

Yeah, it’s usually not that rosy. These relationships are often toxic, if not outright abusive, because the cis woman in the relationship insists on treating the trans man as another lesbian. I knew one couple where the woman in the relationship would only use her partner’s preferred name and pronouns when they were fighting, and deadnamed her and misgendered her the rest of the time.

It’s also worth noting that, “I like eating pussy, so I should date a trans man,” is the sort of preconception about dating trans people that necessitates articles like the one YWTF was just shitting on. Generally speaking, trans guys are not really cool with people playing with their pussy. It’s not universal, and some guys are okay with it to different degrees, but a lot of trans guys have an absolute “hands off” policy about people touching their junk. A lot of these relationships break up because the cis woman in the relationship won’t accept these sorts of boundaries.