Being Trans Isn't an Excuse to Guilt People into Sex

 CW: rape, genitalia, discussions of predatory behavior, sexual coercion, manipulative behavior, disrespect for sexual boundaries

The topic of genital preferences is something that has been ongoing in the trans community for a long time, and for some reason it has entered the cesspool that is TikTok discourse. Now, I would post this on my actual channel, but I have a lot to say. I also have a slight speech impediment, and between those two things I feel like this would turn into like a fifteen-video series where wokesters harass me in the comment sections of my videos, call me a transphobe, and worse. And I like having a platform here where I am not censored and can bluntly discuss things like sex and genitalia.

So all of that said, what I've seen people saying is that having a genital preference is transphobic. My stance is that it's not, and that I will view anyone who says it is as a potential rapist. Now that might seem extreme but I want to discuss why I feel that way.

First, not all trans women have penises and not all trans men have vaginas. Bottom surgery is a thing! So having a genital preference is really not excluding someone for being trans, it's excluding someone for having a body type that you're not attracted to. Which is totally fine and not transphobic - and yes, I do also think this about fat people. I really don't care if you would fuck someone or not, I care if you treat them with respect and dignity regardless of whether you find them attractive.

Second, breaking down people's genital preferences is not an issue of human rights for the trans community. Housing, healthcare, religious, and employment discrimination, physical safety, freedom from abuse, and bodily agency are. Immigrant rights, criminal justice reforms, decriminalization of sex work, and drug decriminalization are. 

Trans kids being able to go to school and play on the sports team of their gender, and be called by their correct name and pronouns, without being bullied by classmates or teachers or outed is. Access to public bathrooms and changing rooms is. Keeping trans women out of men's prisons is. Competent and safe healthcare is. 

Those are all matters of treating people with dignity and respect, and they're integral to our rights and safety. But someone having sex with you? That's not something we need to be safe. That's not a human right. You're not owed sex. No one is. I really don't care if anyone wants sex with me, I care that I'm protected from discrimination and able to live authentically and with dignity.

Third, and related to the first point, someone having respect for you is not the same thing as them consenting to sex. You can respect all trans women, including ones with penises, as fellow women and not necessarily want to have sex with them. Same for trans men. You can respect the sexuality of lesbians and straight men who have sex with women with penises, and gay men and straight women who have sex with men with vaginas, without wanting to have sex with someone who has a penis or a vagina yourself. You can also welcome all trans women into women's spaces and communities and all trans men into men's spaces and communities, and defend them as valid men and women, without ever having sex with them.

Fourth, I'm not sure exactly where this came from, but there's this quote that says something like "all women are forced to live under an arbitrary and unfair system that divides us into two categories: fuckable and worthless. The solution to this is not to expand the definition of fuckable."

I agree, and I think that applies to most marginalized groups. We shouldn't be focused on whether cis people want to date or fuck us, but on whether we are being treated with respect and equity.

Fifth, if you equate someone not wanting to have sex with you to not having respect for you, that's literally attempting to guilt people into sex. That's toying with people's emotions and manipulating them until they have sex with you. That's using emotional coercion and manipulation and breaking down someone's barriers to make them feel like they don't have a right to say no.

It's rape. It's rape in the same way it's rape when a Nice Guy whines about how haaaard his life is at every woman who listens for half a second because no one will fuck him because he's not a Chad, and then he proceeds to beg and cry for sex twenty times until she gives in to shut him up. 

No means no, and if someone says no they meant it the first time. Stop chasing people who have expressed clearly that  your body just isn't their type! Stop pressuring sexual assault survivors who associate their trauma with a certain type of genitalia into retraumatizing themselves because you want to fuck them! Stop acting like a fucking predator and making the rest of us look bad!

People are allowed to have preferences about what kind of body they're attracted to - just like someone might prefer muscular people or short people or people with facial hair, they can also prefer penis or vaginas. Just like someone who prefers, say, a short muscular man with a beard isn't obligated to overcome that preference to date a tall skinny man who are clean-shaven just because those men might be hurt by being excluded, someone who prefers women with vaginas isn't obligated to date a woman with a penis.

It's not transphobic of them to reject this hypothetical woman based on her penis. There are trans women with vaginas, and the only inherent difference between a trans and cis woman is assigned sex at birth. So, again, the trans woman isn't being rejected based on her being trans, she's being rejected because of her penis. And that's not an excuse for anyone to be violent toward her, but it's also not transphobic. She just has a body that some people aren't into and that's FINE. They don't have to be!

Is it definitely a matter of class privilege if she can even afford a bottom surgery in the first place? Yes. Is the prevalence of genital preferences affected by cis-centric beauty standards, and is being seen as widely desirable by cis people frequently a form of privilege associated with proximity to cisness? Yes and yes. But you know what else is a matter of privilege and also something that often defines attraction and boundaries around relationships?

• Fitness. It's absolutely an indicator of class privilege and abled privilege if you have a home with a fully functional kitchen where you can store and cook fresh healthy foods, if you don't live in a food desert, if you can afford a gym membership, if you have the extra time to exercise and cook vegetables and go to the store, if you grew up with access to information about nutrition, if you can pay someone to watch your kids while you take time for yourself, if you can afford exercise equipment, if you have space at home to exercise, if you don't work a physically exhausting job that leaves you too tired to exercise and with arthritis that makes it almost impossible for you to run (which is what happened to me), if you're mentally healthy enough to consistently take care of yourself with no issues, if you're not physically disabled in a way that prevents you from exercising, if you have the food security necessary to pick and choose what you eat, if you have access to a well-maintained pool year-round, if you don't have a substance use disorder.

Also, white people are often more likely to attain a certain standard of physical fitness because on average, we have more generational wealth and access to resources than some other racial groups such as black and indigenous people, so physical fitness is also related to white privilege. And the body type most commonly considered fit in America, lean and muscular, is more commonly associated with white people and is based on Eurocentric standards of health and beauty. Like, a lot of Pacific Islanders have a stocky build, and black and Latina women are really commonly stereotyped as being curvy. In Fiji, big women were considered the most beautiful for centuries until the island was exposed to western television and, therefore, western fatphobia.

• Body weight. If you're thin or midsize, which a lot of people are when they can prioritize physical fitness (so this is also  related to class, race, and disability status, not only thin privilege), you experience less discrimination and less judgment for what you eat and how you dress. I've been all over the body-type spectrum and people have been way less judgmental to me for eating junk or wearing lazy, comfy clothes when I was thin. When I was at my skinniest a few years ago (140 lbs and 5'5", but I used to be a dancer so good posture was drilled into me at a young age and I pretty much always look thinner than I actually am), I would always get comments on how healthy I must be even when I was just eating cup noodles and chocolate. People listened to me and respected me so much more. When I was fat, I had to struggle just to get treated like a human by most people, let alone an equal. I still have emotional trauma from living as a fat girl for so long at such an impressionable time in my life. But the thing is, I never particularly cared that people weren't attracted to me because I was fat. I just wanted to be treated as their equal.

• Religion. Remember that I'm speaking as a white cultural Christian in America, but I've met a lot of Christians who excluded all non-Christians from their dating pool. I even used to be among that number. And when I became cognizant of Christian hegemony in the western world, this is something that bothered me a lot. But I've thought about it more and, while I would be fine in an interfaith relationship, I can understand why not everyone would be. Holidays, weddings, worship services, raising kids...those are all things that are influenced by religion. If you have a partner of a different religion than you, this can cause conflict around major life milestones and not everyone is okay with that. So I don't think it's a big deal if someone only wants to date people of the same religious belief as them, as long as they respect people regardless of religion.

• Gainful employment and financial stability. Not to be that person who's always talking about their ex, and definitely not trying to be the kind of person who would badmouth her, but this was also an issue for us. Because of the severity of her disabilities, she can't work. I, however, technically can - but managing being the sole breadwinner in the house on top of also contributing to domestic labor and managing to keep our relationship alive and take care of us both medically was a lot of pressure and way more strain than I could handle. So, I wouldn't date someone who's incapable of working. They don't have to be rich but they do need to be able to support themselves independently, contribute proportionately to household expenses, and have stable employment.

I've heard a lot of straight women say that they don't do 50/50 and that they expect a man who takes care of them by financially providing, by buying them a nice house, taking them shopping, paying for their beauty appointments, flying them all around the world, while they just relax, and I 100% get it, especially in the dynamic they often have with men. The truth is that women, statistically speaking, would be expected to do the bulk of thankless, exhausting labor every single day whether they were with a rich man or a poor one. They could get hurt or abused with a rich man or a poor one. That's the reasoning I've heard from most of them, and I don't fully agree with it because the thing is that while they could be abused either way, rich people, men, and especially rich men get away with a lot of horrifying shit toward vulnerable people. Harvey Weinstein, anyone? Epstein's island? Donald Trump? Elon Musk and his usage of slave labor?

However, what I do get is the desire to not have to worry about money, have high standards (God knows I would if I were straight), and to live in luxury. So, I would never ever advise anyone to rely financially 100% on their partner. Always have a backup way to make money, a second bank account that they can't touch, savings and assets that are in your name only - because all that shit is security if things go south for you. But I do also think that if you want a certain life for yourself, it makes sense to find someone who matches that - even if most low-income people aren't going to check the boxes for what you want in a partner.

• Diet. A lot of vegans and vegetarians don't want to date someone who eats meat and I completely get why. I generally say vegetarian because people are more likely to understand that, but I really identify more as plant-based and I try to be mostly vegan. I also grow some of my own vegetables and herbs. But my last girlfriend was very much a store-bought, meat and potatoes person. She had a lot of medical issues and disabilities that restricted her diet, and being vegetarian would have been a terrible idea for her. I don't resent her for it in the slightest, but the fact that our diets were so opposite was really hard for me. I found myself eating a lot more chicken and dairy than I was comfortable with. I also tend to use a lot of spice, and I absolutely love Indian food. My staple meals when I cook for myself are all things she physically can't eat because of her sensory issues and her gastroparesis.

This was something that would have continued probably forever if we had gotten married, because I would have been the primary breadwinner. I was going into social work and while you can absolutely live comfortably on a social worker's salary, you're pretty much always going to be stressed about money if you support yourself AND a spouse - especially since we're both disabled and therefore have more health expenses - AND travel (something I'd always wanted to do) when you're paying for two separate, polar opposite diets. Also, I would have been doing a lot of the cooking, and I never really learned to cook meat properly because I wasn't eating it and just didn't see the point.

I still love her so much as a friend, but I'm glad we broke up (we had a lot of reasons, it wasn't just diet) because that situation would have made both of us miserable. And what I learned from that experience is that, while I respect the choice to eat meat and understand my way of eating is not accessible to everyone because of factors like disability and food security, I wouldn't date someone whose diet is so incompatible with my own again.

Health and fitness is an issue for me as well, because at one point I briefly dated someone who completely neglected those things and was really toxic about it and I always felt like I was being dragged down with him, especially because we both have depression but I cared a lot more about my recovery and building a healthy and stable life than he did. Part of how I work on building that life is by being active. So in the six hours I had between classes at the time I would go to my college's free fitness center to swim, work out, and take dance classes (I had more mobility back then than I do now; I still exercise but wouldn't be able to take a strenuous dance class). I always asked if he wanted to come but he told me he didn't know how to work out or swim, so I offered to teach him but he didn't want to do that either. Or I would ask if he wanted to go with me or bring up the possibility of going hiking together on the trail near campus when the weather warmed up, and he would just roll his eyes and sigh like I couldn't possibly understand what he was going through. I would try to bring him healthy snacks because I'd noticed he only ate junk and he'd talked about having high blood pressure at his last doctor's appointment, or I'd surprise him by cleaning something in his dorm so it would be nice when he came back, but he'd just get annoyed at those too. He kept pushing me to buy him alcohol and bring it to his sober dorm just because I was older, even though I rarely drink and he had no intention of paying me back for that or anything else (and never took me out either). He got upset with me for not wanting to smoke weed with him, something he did constantly, even though I explained that weed is a depressant and that two of my cousins were addicted to drugs so I was just really not comfortable with that (and yes, you can get addicted to weed), and at one point he got on top of me and breathed the smoke directly into my face without my consent to try and get me high. He would skip class and neglect his homework, and get annoyed with me if I didn't text back within like five minutes because I was working on an assignment or actually going to sleep at a reasonable hour for once. He was also just really dismissive of my experiences as another mentally ill person and acted like I couldn't possibly understand him just because I choose to work on myself.

I'm not trying to badmouth anyone or act like people who aren't interested in health for whatever reason are bad people, but I need to illustrate how incompatible I was with this person specifically because of his lack of interest in his health. Things like exercise, healthy eating, and avoiding substance use have all been really important to my recovery and I can't backtrack on that or avoid setting boundaries on what I will and won't tolerate in a relationship. I felt like I was an exhausted single mom managing a sullen rebellious twelve-year-old boy going through an edgy phase, not a boyfriend with an equal adult partner who put just as much into our relationship as I did and was working just as hard on himself as I was. And I refuse to be put in that position again. You don't have to be a total health nut or anything but I expect some evidence that my partner cares about being healthy.

We can acknowledge that certain boundaries around sex and relationships can be related to privilege. And we should. But like, for me? Acknowledging that doesn't change the fact that I personally would not date someone who didn't make their health and fitness a priority and that I would much rather date someone else plant-based. I shouldn't have to change those standards just to seem more progressive. It doesn't mean I would disrespect someone based on the fact that they aren't into healthy plant-based eating and don't exercise. It just means that I have certain boundaries around who I allow access to my romantic interest and my body. 

And while I understand there are barriers to attaining a physically fit and healthy body, being financially stable and gainfully employed, and avoiding meat, that it's not achievable for everyone, and that some people just aren't interested, I also understand that I am not obligated to have anything to do with these people and we can go our separate ways. I will still advocate for them to be treated with respect and dignity, of course. But that's not the same thing as consenting to sex.

I view bottom surgery the same way. Yes, there are barriers to receiving bottom surgery and it's not achievable for everyone. No, not everyone is interested. Yes, it's a matter of privilege and social justice. But people don't have to change their sexual standards and boundaries for you just to seem more woke! And if you voluntarily don't want bottom surgery, that's fine but it also means that fewer people will be attracted to you. It is not their fault or their problem if you are not okay with that.

I don't really have anything else to say but I do want to end with something. People have the right to say no to sex at any time for any reason. Will we always agree with their reasoning? No. But they should still have the right to do it, because that's what consent is.