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I have no problem with those that choose to experience sex with trans, all the power to them. It's not my cup of tea because I like women, real women, that sounds somehow prejudiced or old fashioned but if you believe sex is real then it actually means something. I viscerally would not want to have sex with a man, and especially a man pretending to be a woman. This is just me and is no reflection on the other person.
The harm I've tried to tell you is deceiving me with appearance. A man passing as a woman can not have babies, and is inhabiting a psychology of pretense that creates a distance that fails the test of intimacy at the first hurdle as far as I'm concerned. It's just not how I'm built I'm afraid.
Now if people disclose, that's entirely another matter. I have no problem with people in all their variety. I'd question whether the person couldn't have found another way that didn't involve medical intervention but I'd take them as they are, I wouldn't likely consider romantic involvement but Id be happy to partake in conversation if they're interesting. But the body to me is not just a sack of meat, it is the primary link to reality and a failure to accept it seems to me like a failure to truly accept oneself. That probably sounds judgemental but it's how I orient to life. Be gay, be a feminine man, be gender non-conforming but why change your body drastically with all the attendant risks, or if someone is trans why would they pretend to be something that they are not - if someone is not born a woman, how could they ever know whether they are a woman? The most one that person could know as far as I can tell is that they feel comfortable appearing as a woman. Well why would they hide that truth in the pretending to be a woman?
Sex alone doesn’t govern your attraction. You’re not attracted to ovary ducts or XX chromosomes, you’re attracted to the female phenotype. Otherwise you’d be attracted to the very good looking trans men I linked earlier.
Getting called a man, especially a “man pretending to be a woman”, is distressing for trans women. That is why many attempt to pass. It’s also a way to avoid the negative attention that being a visibly trans person can bring - many people are hostile towards trans women, but if they see you as a regular woman, you’ll be safer.
Personally, I’m hoping that one day we have the technology to have good enough sex changes that trans women are indistinguishable from cis women including in terms of reproductive capabilities. At that point, would you still say they are men pretending to be women, or would you agree that they are men who have turned into women?
Why should I accept it when I can change it? The option is literally there, it’s not perfect but it made a noticeable improvement in my life.
If anything, accepting being trans is what took the most courage. I tried to deny it for years, and tried to be something I wasn’t.
Believe me, I’ve tried everything else. I couldn’t stand my body before I transitioned, now I can finally stand to look at myself in the mirror. Life is short, and the option not to have a body I despise is literally right there. Why shouldn’t I take it? What’s the upside of being miserable?
Now, I can have real relationships, I can enjoy sex, I can be a lot more intimately fulfilled than I used to be. I’m grateful for all the physical changes I am experiencing, a marked difference from how I dreaded puberty (I may not know what it’s like to be a woman, but I certainly know what it’s like to become more of a man by going through male puberty and male aging, and that was an awful experience).
Right, he clearly isn't looking inside someone's chromosomes to tell what sex they are. I think @ShariaHeap probably thinks something like this:
He's attracted to the female phenotype, and maybe trans women can manage to fool him, by mimicking that. But there are other factors that he might want in someone attractive, like having ordinary genitalia, or maybe being able to bear children, or maybe just that he wants to be in a relationship with a woman on a level other than what's attractive, and doesn't think that passing is sufficient to count for that. (and knowledge can affect attraction, as well)
And then by passing and attempting to be in a romantic relationship with him, the hypothetical trans person would be wasting his time by holding out in front of the appearance of a relationship he wants, that in actual fact he can't have.
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I'm not discounting your experience, it sounds like it is working out for you.
I am describing my private mental experience of finding out that someone who I thought was a woman, was not. Im not at all convinced that I wouldn't suspect it in any case.
Perhaps the man 'pretending to be' is overdoing it, 'identifying as' is kinder. And I'm not necessarily talking about public life, but private spaces. I don't know why someone would hide that info and I find it condescending, or even infantilising for people to agree that trans identified are that sex, and self-denying of the person to deny their actual situation.
More broadly on the topic, i think that society should change to be more accepting generally of difference. It feels like a regression from social liberal goals to accept that hiding as a woman is the best path. We also don't know enough about the effectiveness of transition to push it as a culture. Its not ubiquitous that people experience relief, some people suffer regret, ongoing medical problems and persistent dysphoria post-transition. I'm worried about the child safe-guarding implications of pushing transition to younger ages so boys can look more girlish and pass better and I think we should run solid research that tests other approaches and gives us a more robust evidence base. We should seek to understand body-identity issues better and investigate why the rates are increasing.
None of this happens if we adopt a trans-human stance and push trans as a solution as a culture. We are not even currently measuring the desistors well.
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Yeah, it's a necessary but not sufficient condition for attraction. You can't claim it's bigotry just because it excludes you.
Aren't there a whole bunch of trans women who claim to have no dysphoria, and isn't using dysphoria for gatekeeping seen as bigoted?
For the same reason we tend to think it's better for people with other forms of body dysmorphia to accept their body rather than change it. The option for them to modify their body is also literally there, and for a person who doesn't like their leg the result of amputation is probably more perfect than a typical result of transition.
I admit I always had trouble understanding dysphoria, but I can concede there's some amount of people for who transitioning is the best option. OTOH it seems obvious that the option to accept your body the way it is, is far superior when it's available.
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