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.

If they had had surgery - but you still knew they were trans, would that affect how you felt?

Interesting question.

For me it would be more about the 'surprise' genitals aspect. So, if I knew that a trans person who I fancied had had surgery, then it wouldn't stop me fancying them, but if they sprung it on me in the middle of proceedings in a sort of, 'yes! Yes! By the way, did you know that I'm post operative trans?' style of things, it would definitely put a dampener on things. For me, it would feel like a lie.

I don't know, Kim, as it hasn't yet happened to me. I do retain the absolute right, though, with anyone I am planning to go to bed with, to stop and walk away at any point, for any reason. And that includes discovering that the physical configuration of the person I am attracted to is not the physical configuration i was expecting.

I might be fine with it, who knows. But I might not be fine with it, and that should be OK, too.

This is just ridiculous

it is simply only one step further from this to say I am discriminating against Halitosis Harold in Accounts for not responding to his inept sexual overtures.

My choice who I have sex with, how to, and in what physical and emotional form that person identifies themselves as

the rest is simply punishing women for their agency

"If they had had surgery - but you still knew they were trans, would that affect how you felt?" yes.

What do you think of stavvers post, Kim?

"And of course - should post - op trans people disclose they are post - op?" of course they should. and tbh it would be impossible not to, how else would they explain e.g. performance issues etc... after all a post op trans man cannot perform in the same way as a typical man, for instance. As sex is important it's not something you can withhold really is it? And that's before you get to the issue of things like children and whether you as a couple might want any in the future and so on.

How important is sex and genitalia in a relationship?

Depends on the people involved and depends on the relationship! For some it won't be important, and for some it will be. And both of those circs should be fine.

stavvers eternal problem is narcissism: she applies her thinking and her reactions as a one-size-fits-all that everyone should follow.

Of course it is quite possible to be a bigot and still sexually desire that which you hate and that isn't very healthy for either partner.

I hope you find someone Kim, but you've already agreed that not wanting to have sex with someone doesn't make you a bigot, so you clearly don't agree with the blogger.

Putting the onus on other people to find you attractive is exactly the sense of entitlement that the Isla Vista guy had.

If I met a man and was attracted to him (and single and interested), I would assume he had a functioning penis without giving it much thought.

If it turns out this is a transman, whether there had been surgery or not wouldn't affect how I would feel. I wouldn't date a transman (being a straight woman) just as I wouldn't date a homophobe or an MRA, even if I was attracted to them physically and the "penis" was fully-functioning (unlikely). Their world view would be too different from mine.

There are plenty of guys who are physically attractive but I would not date them, for many different reasons. Transmen don't get a special pass. This discussion about dating trans people seems to assume women are jumping into bed with every man or woman they find attractive and therefore it's unfair for trans people that they don't get their fair share. Although, to be fair to transmen, I've never seen them do this.

It's such a male-entitled attitude that if women are having sex with some people, they should be having sex with me . Like Elliot Rodger, PUAs and loads of men looking for pity shags that women get used to dealing with.

It is an interesting question Kim, in a relationship yes most definitely, it has clearly been a massive part of that persons life and I would feel betrayed and lied to.

One night stand however, it is more sticky, as hook ups are taken on face value. The case of the young transman who was prosecuted I believe hinged on him not having had genital surgery, so penetrated the girls with something that they had not given permission for hence it being a crime. But why should a transwomen be required to say more about herself than anyone else? When you randomly hook up they could be anyone. People can say that would want to know but do they have the right to?

What would most concern me in a random hook up with the man not knowing the woman was trans is if he guessed things were not as they seemed. She would be in a very vulnerable position and could subjected to violence or even murdered.

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.

Are you saying you agree with stavvers, ezinma?

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.

In the (related) #NoUnexpectedPenises" twitterstorm which predated this stavvers piece, and I think was part of it, I saw people seriously say, again and again, on reading Giagia's tweets about all the times she was sexually assaulted by men using their penises "but she's married to a man with a penis!". Because once you have said yes, once, to one penis, you have to say yes to them all. And to have a problem with that is to be unreasonable and hysterical and paranoid.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

ezinma, FloraFox, I think I'd be more impressed with stavvers good intentions if she had started this re-education project with men.

But I can't see anything about her post that would educate or illuminate anyone at all, tbh. She doesn't seem to be in the least interested in changing anyone's mind, just demonstrating her own pansexual, poly superiority.

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.