I think she means we can’t boil it down to just liking vag or peen. Which I agree with. But IME even after hormones and surgery there are usually still some signs of a person’s original sex, and these might well be enough to put off people who are a Kinsey 0 or 6, while those who are a bit more towards the middle way be fine with it.
I think we all agree on this more than it looks like. The basis of attraction is biological, and there are many factors involved, which may all have to line up for someone to be attracted.
If there really is a generational difference here between older lesbians who are more hesitant, and younger lesbians who are more open, then it’s worth investigating the underlying reasons for that difference.
My personal feeling is that there is a generational difference.
I’ve been thinking for at least a month now that this thread would be over already if you and your sister were ~30ish researchers working in a university department, rather than ~40ish+ researchers working for government agencies. My feeling is that both factors are a big deal.
Pointing at “biology”, or some other biotruths explanation, would be insufficient in the case of a noticeable generational difference in attitudes. Not wrong, but insufficient. The explanation could even be something along the lines of “Younger women in these communities are much more worried about being harassed, or even cancelled, and that fear is pushing their dating behavior into uncomfortable territories they wouldn’t ordinarily prefer”. I don’t find that plausible, I’m just pulling it out of my ass. I don’t really have any good idea.
But if there really is a generational difference, that difference requires some sort of explanation. We won’t ever necessarily figure it out what it is – reality is complicated, we understand relatively little about our society and its vagaries – but there must be something going on.
I’m glad that someone gets it. I feel like I’m in a funhouse mirror maze at this point. I’m trying to make the point that sexual attraction is more complicated than “functioning genitalia?” That may or may not be all an animal requires to mate, but I’m told that people are no different.
If lesbians are only attracted to plumbing, then women become interchangeable. I’m not saying people’s sexuality is completely divorced from biological reaction.
What if the answer lies in younger people (in general) are more experimental and open to new things and as they get older they learn what works for them and what doesn’t, thus they do not spend a lot of time trying new things because: been there, done that.
I’ve been thinking about the cultural differences that might make a cis woman leery about partnering up with a trans woman.
Again, I’m not a lesbian, but I suspect there are lesbianfolk ways analogous to blackfolk ways. Slang, humor, pop cultural references. Recently I recommended “Knives Out” to a lesbian friend of mine and I told her that Jamie Lee Curtis was in it (there’s a lot of A-list celebrities in the film, but hers was the only name that came to mind). She expressed a lot of interest in the movie–more interest than she normally does when I recommend stuff! “You do know that Jamie Lee Curtis is every lesbian’s dream, right?” she said, laughing. I had no idea, because I’m not in the culture.
Transwomen have their own subculture. When my trans coworker first came onboard, she would refer to everyone as “hun” (she has stopped doing this so much, to my relief) I’m sure there are other cultural idiosyncracies like this–things that transwomen do and say that indicates their group membership.
So I could see a cis lesbian wanting to be with someone who trades in her cultural idiosyncracies, because these things affirm her identity and her group membership.
There’s also the maturity piece that we haven’t talked about. A 30-something cis woman has lived as a woman for 30-something years. A 30-something trans woman likely only has a few years under her belt. Grown-ass women tend to seek out other grown-ass women for relationships. They don’t want to be with people who are likely still going through psychological adolescence–who are still figuring out their femininity or womanhood and identity. And they don’t necessarily want to be in the role of teacher.
I know you’re not saying that. But is it fair to say that it’s the primary one, by a significant margin, for people to whom that sort of thing matters?
Who should be doing this investigation? Male-bodied people trying to get laid? I don’t see the value of this investigation to society, and I’m not saying this to be contrarian. I honestly see no point to it. The very question is asking us to re-litigate a subject that has hurt the L community.
We already know that younger people are more experimental in general than us old broads. Recreational drug use, religion, dietary choices, political beliefs…I could keep going all day. Sexual experimentation is on the same list. Youngsters like to taste the rainbow. It is known.
Do you really think the particular flavor of feminism a woman subscribes is more relevant to whom she sleeps with more than her maturity level and how confident she is of her likes and dislikes? The men I dated in my 20’s differ from the men I dated in my 30’s. In that time span, my tastes become more refined. My politics didn’t shift that much at all, but my understanding of my requirements in relationships developed significantly.
I simply don’t understand why this even needs to be explained. Bringing feminism into this needlessly politicizes female sexuality.
No one is saying they are only attracted to genitals. We’re saying its the thing their sexual orientation is organized around. We’re also saying it’s biological.
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We discussed moving it but have decided it is overall doing find here in IMHO.
Grown folks aren’t known for being flexible. Flexibility is a young person’s game. Younger people learn foreign languages easier than older people. They are more adventurous and open to novel experiences than older people. This isn’t due to young people having different souls than old people, which we’d have to assume is going on if biology isn’t an explanation. Younger people simply have more plastic brains than older people.
Twenty years from now we might not be having this discussion at all. Twenty years from now, transwomen might be equipped with artificial vaginas that are pretty damn close to the real thing, so the old school robot cis lesbians might finally be down for the trans love. But it is also possible that twenty years from now we’ve evolved in other ways. Maybe trans rights will no longer be so focused on gender affirmation and trans folks will come to fully embrace the trans identity. Instead of seeking affirmation from cis folks, they will be fine getting it from themselves. It is also possible that the bisexual portion of the population will be so huge in the future that anyone who wants sex doesn’t have to work that hard to get it. I happen to share in the belief that most of humanity is on the bisexual spectrum. Being wired to be flexible doesn’t obligate someone to be flexible. It just enables them to be flexible when the conditions are right. Maybe in the future the conditions will be ripe for widespread bisexuality, and trans folks will always have someone to play with.
I’m not arguing that sexual behavior is hard-coded in us. There is such a thing as “software”. The fact that our software is constantly updating is not evidence that we act independent of biology.
Probably because I’ve read narratives from transwomen who obsess over how “wrong” their new vaginas look (as well as feel, internally, since they aren’t self-lubricating)
But I’m totally to the open possibility that these people suffer from body dysphoria and thus are prone to finding problems with their body parts no matter what they look like.
If my experiences with teens and twenty-somethings in the past few years is anything to go by, we definitely won’t. The gender binary as we know it is just not a thing to them. My 15-yo daughter hangs out with nb kids, I LARP with nb uni kids, I do community work with young nb social workers. And that’s not including the gay, bi, asex and trans kids in that age range I’ve encountered. Sure, there are still plenty of repressed, closeted or otherwise conservative kids that age range too, but that’s pretty much their lifestyle choice now, not an overriding societal imperative. And it seems to be the same with foreign people in that age range that I’ve interacted with. Variant sexuality is just not worth singling out for them.
I realise, based on your previous posts, that for you this raises some overblown spectre of kids turning trans just to be trendy, but that’s not what I’m seeing. It’s distinctly possible there’ll be less trans people as being nonbinary becomes way more accepted (and yay for that).
All the ones I know who’ve had bottom surgery seemed ecstatic about it.
To the point, in one case, of hosting a viewing party…
Neither are penises, so these unhappy transwomen - who seem to be your sole touchstone for what transwomen think, maybe find more positive trans people to follow, just saying - should have been used to it.