Regarding your reblog about the transphobic/reducing a person to their genitals thing, is it okay to not want to have sex with someone because of their genitals, or to not want to date someone who's trans and has genitals you do not like when you know they expect some sort of sexual component? I don't really care what's in someone's pants, but real dicks make me want to puke :/
I mean, itâs okay not to have sex for any reason, because agency is top priority. Like, a white supremacist could vow not to ever have sex with any black people, and theyâd be fine in doing so, because despite their views, itâs important that sexual agency takes top priority.
And again, Iâd stress that people need to really examine what they mean when theyâre talking about genitals, because like, trans womenâs genitals tend to be very different (regardless of surgery) than, like, cis menâs. And due to education systems tending to be deeply cissexist, that variance tends to be omitted/ignored/rejected. And as someone who wants trans people to be free of oppression one day, one of my top priorities is getting people to reassess their understandings of bodies, not limited to but including how they fit with sexuality.Â
Like, if thereâs someone with a penis who expects to penetrate with it during sex, and you donât want any part of that, and itâs a dealbreaker for you both, then thatâs basic incompatibility. Thatâs obviously not going to work out.Â
But, like, just because a person has X genitals doesnât mean theyâll be interacted with, felt, or seen in any moments of sexual intimacy. Thereâs a lot of ways for folks to experience sexual intimacy, and provide pleasure to each other, and I think that itâs good to have discussions about that and sexual boundaries instead of just writing people off from the get go based on assumptions about their body that might not hold any truth at all.
Again, unlearning cissexismâs vitally important, and thatâŚand any hypothetical trans people involved in these scenarios, need to be centered in these discussions instead of whether X person is transphobic for not wanting to date people with X genitals. Trans people are a tiny demographic, itâs rare for folks to run into enough where they would have to consider how trans folks fit into their politics of desire. Whereas trans people have to generally learn how to fit cis people into ours, and how to find the safe ones.Â
And generally, cis people are not safe for us. itâs why 52%-79% of trans people who date after starting transition have been sexually assaulted/raped by at least one romantic partner, at least once. Cis people are generally terrible at being in relationships with us, and tend to abuse us, usually due to deeply held cissexist views on our bodies, and them harboring secret transphobic stigmas against us.Â
So, like, unless youâre asking this question to better unlearn your cissexism, and/or to become a safer current/future friend or partner to trans folks in your life, youâre probably asking the question for the wrong reason.Â
Like, a lot of the time, folks ask these questions to basically pressure or guilt trip trans folks into telling them theyâre not transphobic and that itâs okay for them to not want us or even consider us, and tbh thatâs not very different than someone walking up to me and asking about my genitals. Oneâs a guilt trip, and the otherâs bluntly inappropriate, and both are essentially centering discussion around our genitals and how they might affect people other than us. And thatâs just not real polite or much of a meaningful inquiry.
 Like, would you want people to walk up to you in the middle of the street and say that they could never love or date you? Just unprovoked, people doing that all the time? It gets tiring. And it wears you down. And when trans folks already are deemed unlovable and undateable by society at large, and only fuckable in secret, it can kind of grate on you to have people wanting you to tell them itâs alright for them to feel that way when so often those feelings are just due to transphobic and cissexist socialization.