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

Discrimination can end up going all the way to removing a person's choice from them.

Excellent response to the ghastly Stavvers line of thought here, which articulates how male supremacist conceptions of women's sexuality have morphed into new and hideous forms under the guise of 'sex positivity':

rootveg.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/whose-weapon-is-it-anyway/

Stavvers is one of those people trying so hard to be open-minded she has not noticed her brains have fallen clean out.

I am a lesbian, I don't want a partner with a penis. Lesbians have been told for decades that they are bigoted/mentally ill/man hating to reject penises. This is simply a variation on that old trope.

I dated a post-op transwoman for a bit. We broke up because of personality clashes, not sex. The sex was fine.

But I don't do penises. I don't enjoy penetration full stop and I'm definitely not up for blow jobs. It's not prejudice, it's knowing what I enjoy. If I fell in love with someone who had a penis, genital sex would have to be off the menu.

I notice it's only lesbians who are supposed to love penises on trans women, straight men seem to be exempt from that ridiculous expectation. It is a very male entitlement that demands women love their cock and provide them with the sex they want whether they like it or not, those born female don't have that entitlement regardless of how they identify.

Yes, this is what I notice about the whole debate. It's just one more dimension to the oppression of women's sexual choices - "women - you can't be choosy about who you have sex with." Which is the whole fucking problem, isn't it? Men don't like women to be able to choose who they have sex with. (NB. Not All Men!! )

Anyway, I say all people are allowed to say who they are sexually attracted to, at any point of a relationship, without being called a bigot. I am attracted to hetero males. If I met an apparently het male, and it turned out he had a vulva, not a penis, then I retain the right to no longer be sexually attracted to them. That is my right as an autonomous sexual human being. That is everyone's right.

If that's makes me a bigot, then - I don't know what. But I will not have anyone tell me who I should be sexually attracted to, or not.

I have never heard of this person

I feel slightly ashamed of trotting this ole cliche out...but she really does give Feminism a bad rap

Not in my name, thank you. And fuck off.

Does that blogger identify as a feminist? If so, I wonder what she thinks it means.
I thought we shouldn't shame women for their sexual choices. Shaming women for saying no to sex is as anti-feminist as it gets imo.

I adore bill's example. But this is really sad, especially the blog comment you mention, flora.

I think it is absurd.

If you look at the last comment under the blog, a rape survivor says that since reading the piece she's decided she should stop having sex with anyone until she can get over her fear of penis to avoid excluding or oppressing anyone. For fucks' sake!! This calls itself feminism?

I just cannot believe this person actually calls herself a feminist.

Her post simply reeks of plain, outright misogyny.

She really is part of that wing of misogyny which absolutely accepts that women are not the best people to choose what to do with their bodies and who to have sexual intercourse with.

She is disgusting.

But I'm glad she's getting quite a bit of exposure because as someone else said, the more people know about these lunatics, the better. I really wasn't aware that these trans-bigots were such a thing - I knew they were out there, but I thought they were marginal nutters who nobody took any notice of. Stavvers is quite well known though, I had no idea she was such a flake.

I notice it's only lesbians who are supposed to love penises on trans women, straight men seem to be exempt from that ridiculous expectation. It is a very male entitlement that demands women love their cock and provide them with the sex they want whether they like it or not, those born female don't have that entitlement regardless of how they identify.

We're all entitled to discriminate against potential sexual partners, whether that's based on ethical, religious or political beliefs, race, nationality, hair colour, height, weight, health status, income, accent, sex, genitalia, charm, humour, intelligence.... We are all entitled to choose people we are attracted to and share common goals with. Nobody has the right to demand sex or a relationship from anybody.

It's disturbing how many boys are raised to believe that females merely exist to satisfy their sexual urges and deserve to be bullied into providing them. Obviously having a sex change doesn't change that sick, dangerous and abusive mentality. Those attitudes need to be challenged in everybody who expresses them, trans or not.

Having read through the whole thing now, stavvers last post makes absolutely no sense when placed next to her, 'everyone who doesn't like penises is a bigot' stance.

She seems confused.

Generally agree with others that the idea of berating women for exercising choice over who they have sex with is horrendous.

Her responses to the comments were pitifully weak also.

I await her article telling straight men that they must have sex with people with penises, with baited breath. Oh wait, that won't happen, it's just the sexuality of what she would call ciswomen that she wants to control. Transwomen and transmen are also allowed to sleep with whoever they like.

What an arse.

Surely it's worth challenging those expectations or, at least, reminding us that they exist and are, to some extent, socially conditioned.

No I don't think that is helpful. I can see the appeal in a very gender-neutral theoretical sense. However women are constantly subject to demands on their time and bodies from men. They are asked to justify why they don't want to sleep with X, Y or Z man and are often afraid of the reaction from turning down a man (for good reason). Maybe when women are not subject to those demands nor fear the reaction to rejection, I would agree that is worth challenging. In the meantime, I will put women first and say that it's tough luck for anyone who feels they are not getting enough sex, socially conditioned or not. It's monumentally more important to me to put an end to rape culture and this type of attitude fuels it.

"agree with almondcakes that centring her argument on the preferences of lesbians (and women more generally) is unhelpful. "

It's unhelpful but it also seems to be her raison d'être. If her argument was simply "people should be more aware that their sexual preferences are socially conditioned", then I don't think she'd be using "bigot" so freely.

there's no point in denying that people have certain expectations when it comes to their sexual partners

Surely it's worth challenging those expectations or, at least, reminding us that they exist and are, to some extent, socially conditioned.

Annie, I don't believe in the ultra-fluidity of sexual attraction that Stavri seems to be encouraging, but I don't consider it to be immutable either. I agree with almondcakes that centring her argument on the preferences of lesbians (and women more generally) is unhelpful. The taboos against disabled and scarred bodies, and the phobia of a woman whipping out a penis, are mostly maintained by cis men.

ezinma there's no fairness in sexual attraction. I can't imagine a woman disclosing a mastectomy during sex. Whether it's a hook up or not, there's no point in denying that people have certain expectations when it comes to their sexual partners and the presence of absence of penis is pretty high up on the list of those things. Men would expect a woman's breasts to be present if she was wearing prosthetic breasts. Even certain other aspects e.g. false teeth or a wig, if this would be discovered during sex, why would you put yourself in the position of seeing the person's face when you revealed how you really look? That seems like a very entitled view of sex.

Flora, I don't think it is as much that if you are sexually active you should be prepared to have sex with anyone. I read more now that women are selfish and make the wrong choices so have sex with the wrong people. Because of this, someone more capable should decide who a woman has sex with her. This kind of stuff comes out of the manosphere a lot, and is being said about the women who turned down Elliot Rodger. They have created an unjust and dangerous social situation because they want to sleep with the wrong people. So rather than Elliot Rodger making people concerned about the Manosphere, it has given them a platform to say, see! we were right! Women not sleeping with 'beta males' is making men go crazy and destroy society!

The Stavvers thing is like that. The message is that women are making the wrong choices about who they sleep with, because they are too mentally incapable to make the right choice, so someone else must tell them what to do, or there will be massive social injustice and unrest because people don't have equal opportunities to get the prize of sex with a woman. Because it is women she means.

There is a related issue for people who have body scars which are 'hidden' by everyday clothing. Something stops many men from fancying a woman when they discover she's had a mastectomy. Is it bigotry? I think it's certainly unfair. So of course women hesitate before disclosing, which leads to allegations of 'deceit' as mentioned upthread.

A great deal of cultural conditioning goes into who we fancy — which naturally means racism, ableism, and transphobia. I don't see the issue with drawing attention to that.