Is fancying a particular sex and not a particular gender bigoted?

[ArcheryAnnie]

Changed name for obvious reasons.

Provoked by this article - which is getting a depressing amount of traction, by a blogger on twitter called stavvers: www.donotlink.com/framed?43198

Short version: if your sexual preferences are linked in any way to the shape of your potential partner's genitals, then you are a bigot. So, eg, if you are straight, you should be attracted to men who have vulvas, and if you are a lesbian, you should be attracted to women with penises. (This isn't saying "it's totes ok to fancy trans lesbians or transmen", which would be cool, it's saying "if you pay any attention to the shape of someone's genitals at all, you are a bigot".) Any way of Doing Sexuality apart from stavvers' way is creepy and weird, and also cissexist and bigoted.

Most of this was aimed at women, naturally. Men's preferences were an afterthought.

In the twitter storm that followed, stavvers and her allies spent a lot of time tee-heeing about how any woman who disagreed with her was probably crap in bed, and all these lesbians who objected it this were prudes who didn't know how to have sex, were probably just holding hands in the dark, and .....dear god it was like a timewarp into the 1950s. Lesbians who choose not to sleep with people - men or women - who have penises are prudish and frigid! How hilarious! How new!

This would all be irrelevant if stavvers was seen as what she is (one of those tedious people who thrive on being "shocking" and "edgy"), but she's got a depressing amount of support for it.

[ArcheryAnnie]

I should have also said: my loathing of this post is because it flies in the face of everything we have learned, painfully over the last few decades, about boundaries and consent for women.

If women - gay, straight, bi, whatever - don't care about the shape of their potential partner's genitals, that's totally cool.

If women - gay, straight, bi, whatever - do care about the shape of their potential partner's genitals, that should be totally cool, too.

Women should never ever ever ever be required or pressured to find anybody attractive for an reason at all, and they should not have to supply any justifications about it, either.

[MagicalHamSandwich]

Doesn't matter, even if it were bigoted:

IMHO, sex is one of the few areas in life where I fully support people choosing based upon their prejudices, regardless of whether or not these are reasonable or not; it's a question of bodily autonomy, really: any other approach risks coering people (men and women) into sex with people they do not want to be having sex with. There's a name for that and it's illegal for a reason.

Personally, I'm attracted to tall, slim, blond men (and, yes, men with penises, thankyouverymuch). It's just like that. Is that fair on dark haired, chubby short men? Not really, I suppose, I wouldn't really consider sleeping with them usually. However, arguing that I must not discriminate in accordance my personal preferences would be akin to arging that all men (or women, for that matter - why stop at sexual orientation here?) deserve an equal shot at having sex with me, and that therefore it is not me but some abstract sense of 'fairness' who should get to determine who I do and do not grant access to my body. And at this point we're moving firmly onto Elliot Rodgers territory ... don't think I need to point out why that is problematic.

[DoctorHfuhruhurr]

I can't get my head around this idea at all. Lesbians who don't fancy transwomen with penises are bigots? WTF?! Surely these transwomen with penises should be happy having sex with each other if the presence of a penis is no big deal. Oh what's that? They want a choice in who they have sex with? So does every-fucking-body else, including lesbians!

[turbonerd]

Haha, this is a wind up, right? Yes please, do dictate to me and everyone else who I should fancy and have sex with, or call me bigoted. This "Logic" is ...moronic.

[ArcheryAnnie]

Wish it was a parody post, but no. She means every bit of it.

[WhosLookingAfterCourtney]

Utter, utter bollocks. I hate that so many people go along with this in order to appear right on.

[BillnTedsMostFeministAdventure]

"Doesn't matter, even if it were bigoted"

Well, this.

I fancy Spike more than I fancy James Marsters. Does that make me bigoted against non-vampires?

And do you know who I definitely find unattractive? People who call those who don't fancy them names. Plenty of men in bars do this if you politely decline their advances. I don't fancy them because they tell me I should either.

[FloraFox]

Note in the comments she says it's okay for transwomen to not want penis because of dysphoria but when it's women, they're bigots.

It's the twisted thinking of gender ideology. So woman-hating.

[AMumInScotland]

If I happen not to fancy men with beards, am I a bigot?
If I happen not to fancy men of Chinese ethnic origin, am I a bigot?
If I happen not to fancy men who are shorter than me, am I a bigot?

No, no, and again no.

And if I happen not to fancy men who have female genitals, that doesn't make me a bigot either.

[ArcheryAnnie]

^I fancy Spike more than I fancy James Marsters.*

Do you know, BillnTed, I suspect you speak for many, many of us who watched Buffy.

/never thought of it this way before

[ArcheryAnnie]

(Some day, some day I will get the * ^ etc etc right on this site. That day is not today.)

[BillnTedsMostFeministAdventure]

I speak for the WORLD!

Well, the penis-liking world.

[AnyFucker]

Worra load of shit

[BillnTedsMostFeministAdventure]

On a more serious note, I think Stavvers is quite extreme, isn't she?

[wannaBe]

interesting one.

Recently I was on a thread where the op had found out that her partner of nine months was bisexual. Plenty of posters including me said that we would have an issue with this, not with the issue of him being bisexual but with the issue of his not having divulged this information from the outset because we wouldn't want to be in a relationship with someone who was bisexual - sexual preference being for straight men.... Plenty of people on that thread were using the words bigot and homophobe etc etc. Yet when I asked the question as to whether a woman (or man) should be accepting of a transsexual, even a post-op one, nobody responded.

In terms of a transsexual who has not had reassignment surgery, why on earth should I want to go there - I am not a lesbian. And before I am shouted down for that, while psychologically he may be a man, physically he is still a woman. It is unreasonable for anyone to expect that a perspective straight partner should just accept this.

[ArcheryAnnie]

I've come across her type before: young; middle-class and well-educated but quite sheltered; once she's discovered politics she imagines everyone else is as ignorant as she once was; thinks her experiences are the template for everyone else's. And now delights in being more-radical-than-thou, more edgy-than-thou, thinks the ability to "shock" (yawn) is an acceptable substitute for actually making an appreciable difference in the world. And she's found a little group of like-minds who she imagines are this revolutionary circle she'd been looking for, so she follows their every word slavishly as she doesn't want to be thrown out of the cool kids club.

(Yes, she's extreme. And a screaming hypocrite. And the absolute king of mimeophants.)

[FloraFox]

I think she's extreme Bill but she's had some mainstream exposure. She got herself in a knot by trying to no-platform Julie Bindel from public speaking then appearing on Radio 4 with her.

I'm all for giving people like this a broader platform so that the nonsense can be seen for what it is.

[CaptChaos]

benefit of the doubt

I kind of get where she might have been coming from. If she is talking about a group of people who hang out together, who have never seen each other naked, then yeah, it might be a bit odd to be wondering about the contents of their underwear.

removes benefit of the doubt

However, in certain circumstances the contents of a person's underwear is very important. In a rape crisis centre, in a high school's girl's locker room or boy's locker room come to that or in my bed. Telling me that I am a bigot for only wanting the genitals I was expecting or suggesting that I am unimaginative in bed if I then refuse to go any further with the surprise genitals makes a person look like a prick. And a rape apologist.

This has fuck all to do with TERF. It is about consent, and this female's desire to dick around with women's ability to feel comfortable in NOT consenting to sex with 'surprise' genitals.

[ArcheryAnnie]

Ah, FloraFox, but she was thinking of the cheque and the exposure not in the best mental health that night when she took a gig with the BBC alongside Bindel, so we have to forgive her, otherwise abelism!

Other women's mental health distress, on the other hand, are just irrelevant sadfeelz or white women's nonsense (even when they aren't white) or cishet tears (even when they aren't cishet).

[AnyFucker]

cishet ?

what fuckery is this ?

[ArcheryAnnie]

Well, indeed.

So much of this bullshit is based on a weird, topsy-turvey inconsistency. It's bigotry to assume anything about anyone else's identity in any way, shape or form, unless you want to punish women on the internet, in which case you are absolutely entitled to assume they identify as cis and as het.

It also feeds into the "we must explain ourselves and our histories at every step in order to earn the right to an opinion" trope that is prevalent now. So if you don't want to come out, even if it's risky for you - too bad.

Fuckery indeed.

[MrsCakesPremonition]

I don't have to have sex with anyone I don't want to.
I have the right to withdraw my consent to having sex at any time and for any reason. This includes the last minute discovery that someone is not emotionally, physically or mentally who I thought they were.
I shouldn't be made to feel that I should be having sex with someone out of guilt.

[DoctorTwo]

So if I don't find a certain hermaphrodite or trans woman I'm a bigot? Riiiiight.

[DoctorTwo]

The word 'attractive' is missing from that sentence.