Does anyone else hate being told this?

Hey, you're a sweetie! (*hug*)

I definitely understand why it's irritating. First, people are invalidating trans people by claiming they are some other gender. Second, they are invalidating your sexuality by saying your openness to dating trans women makes you into men. (Trans women are women, as you know.)

 

I definitely understand why this would irritate you. People shouldn't judge others' perceptions of their sexuality.

 

Maybe we should have a whole different sexual identification for people who would date a trans person of the gender-identity they are attracted to.

Trans-friendly lesbian. Trans-friendly straight. Trans-friendly gay. What's a good, short term that would fit this?

But really, I know some straight guys who really love crossdressing men. They are very straight, but there are hordes of married heterosexual men who see all these underappreciated crossdressing men out there. They look, and they are like, "Uh...wife on the rag, relationship on the skids...storm...port." They would, however, NEVER date a masculine-looking cis-guy.

I agree, and I submit that a possible solution would be to add, to our already cluttered vocabulary, a term that really distinguishes you from a bisexual person or a pansexual person, while also distinguishing you from lesbians who would not be comfortable with a pre-op trans-woman. There are many trans-lesbians out there, and it would help them to know that they have options.

 

Yeah, the fact that you would date transgender women with or without surgery does not make you any less of a lesbian. Transgender women are women, but there are some that do not see them that way. That being said though, dating transgender people is a preference that people have, and it can easily be communicated by saying if you would date transgender people. I don't really think that there needs to be a new term invented for that.

 

Cognitive bias, basically. And it says more about them than it does about you. These people are inadvertently projecting their own perceptions of transgender individuals onto you and therefor your orientation. It might not necessarily be that they feel hostility, but they may just have that little niggling thing remaining in their minds that they just can't bring themselves to disassociate the identity of a person from their birth sex. When you say: "date a transgender girl" they are visualising someone who is, at least to some degree, a male, because they have failed to process that not everybody else would see the same. A lot of people have this difficulty given how ingrained the standard concepts of sex and gender are throughout life, but that doesn't excuse them trying to dictate to you your own sexuality just to suit their perspective.

You can try to explain to them: "No. Because she IS a woman and that's how I'd accept her. And if you cannot, that's nothing to do with me." but expect to come up against some stubborn attitudes on this, I've encountered people who will swear blind that a person is their genitals and refuse to even contemplate any different. Try not to focus too much on it because it's not worth it to waste the energy on anyone who wouldn't respect your sexuality. It's your life, no one else should affect how you live it.

 

Like Brad said, I don't think there needs to be a term... actually I would find that very degrading...

No hard feelings though, just... just no please


Good initiative on the thread, OP! It's nice to hear things like that every once in a while! (*hug*)