Why or why not?
You can find people attractive without wanting to date them.
true, it’s hard to fit all the context I wanted to add within a title …
my question is really meant to ask how people would react to learning someone they are attracted to and would otherwise date being trans
If I just asked “would you date a trans person” I would expect the reader to think of an ugly trans person because that’s the stereotype, and then the answer is usually no, but that doesn’t get at what I’m wondering about.
Go with, if you were romantically attracted to a person. That helps differentiate between lust and love.
well being attracted to someone doesn’t imply physical attraction to me - it’s a reasonable interpretation, but it can also mean romantic interest
Wasn’t the question…
And yet that is the answer I most relate with.
Yes. Because i find them attractive.
Yeah we already established in the premise I find them attractive. Of course I would.
this is the right answer, here is your prize: 🎂
There’s no “right” answer to this question.
I know, I was joking 😝
I’d be a bit of a hypocrite if I had a problem with that
ha, fair enough - though it’s precisely because I’m trans that I would be hesitant to date a trans person, but honestly it would depend on the person and where they are in transition, among other things. I guess in my mind if I loved them, that would transcend that they are trans (just like if they were in an accident and became paraplegic, my love and loyalty to my partner would mean I would still love them and stay with them even with that disability).
Fair enough. I might be a little hesitant to date someone really early in their transition, just because I would need to seriously consider whether I was able to take on the somewhat implied responsibility that comes with that to guide them through such a scary and vulnerable period.
Beyond that I’m functionally t4t, it’s just really nice to date someone who gets you, and all the baggage that entails, and with whom you already have such a strong shared connection.
Having been in this position, sure, but I’ve also had to end relationships because the person transitioned in a direction I wasn’t attracted to. Communicating honestly and openly is the key, as it is for pretty much everything about interpersonal relationships.
No, because I’m already happily married.
If I weren’t, well, the “equipment” is part of what I’m attracted to. So whether I would want to continue something long term depends on what they’re working with.
I would not. I’m all for treating people as they want to be treated, but as far as my own attraction goes, I don’t think I’d be able to completely think of them as being of the opposite sex.
this assumes you are able to tell, do you think you can always tell?
or is the point that once you know they are trans, the knowledge prevents you from seeing them as their gender?
If I couldn’t tell, and they didn’t tell me, then i guess I’d just be happy in my ignorance. I can’t say that I can always tell, because… well I wouldn’t necessarily know about the times I couldn’t tell. But yes, if I knew then it would break the attraction for me.
that makes sense!
What do you think it is about learning someone is trans that breaks the attraction for you?
Good question. I think what it comes down to is that the idea of someone being trans is just kind of foreign to me. I never met someone in person who was trans until I was close to 40, as far as I know. So for most of my life I categorized people, at least as far as attractiveness and dating goes, without distinguishing between sex at birth and gender identity.
So while I treat (or hope that I treat) trans people as appropriate for their chosen gender, it doesn’t come completely naturally to me. It’s hard for me not to think of a trans woman as “a man who wants to be treated as a woman”, even though I know that’s not what they want. And while in day to day interactions I can just ignore that difficulty and treat a trans woman as a woman, when it comes to romantic interest it is not so easily ignored.Same. Similar, anyway. I’ve only knowingly met one trans woman who completely passed, who - if they were a Cis woman - not only would I have been with, but would’ve been completely out of my league.
But knowing they were Trans… yeah, I have hangups, in the same way I’d have hangups about the idea of being intimate with another man. I’m not completely against the idea, but I’ve got ingrained social prejudices it would take a fair bit of work to overcome.
Same for me. I am all for trans rights and I would 100% support their choice, but I don’t think dating would work for me.
Yeah but I’m bi and just am into people that make me thirsty, doesn’t matter to me
Side note: The atmosphere on Lemmy is very pro-queer. Mastodon seems to be pretty queer too, but the number of users is a lot bigger, so you might see more diversity in answers. If you asked the same question on Reddit or X, you would absolutely find lots of unsavory comments.
“unsavory” lol
Yeah, that’s just a shorter way to say: “open hostility, verbal assault, hate speech, various kinds of unethical or even criminal activity, and general online nastiness”.
Which, according to Reddit would be fine. But don’t you dare say anything about grand pappy elon
I somehow added an i there and was a little too excited to comment ‘Yes, who doesn’t love trains!?!?’
I love this, lol
autism has entered the chat 🚂
No, because I’m taken but it wouldn’t change the fact that I find them attractive. I’d date someone no matter their gender or genitals though, if thats what your asking
that’s not exactly what I’m asking - but it’s informative that gentials come up (makes sense in the context of dating)
I tend to think of being trans as more than just gential situation in terms of dating - if the person is not passing for example, you might get stared at as a couple in public, the stigma that is directed at them might also impact you. Their life experiences- the harassment, the unemployment, etc. might impact you. For me, these even might be more important factors than their genitals.
(I tend to be able to see a female penis as female, it’s usually soft and flaccid, like an oversized clit - it’s not as “male” as people tend to think, which can be a disappointment for a certain subset of people who want the female penis to perform and fill the role a male penis usually does.)
Uh so if I showed you a picture of a penis you claim to be able to know if it’s owners gender? Doesn’t that kind of go against your beliefs?
But yes it’s genitals for me
No because I’m married and my wife wouldn’t like that.
More seriously, It’s not a hard no, but I lean towards probably not, it would probably depend the specifics of their identity and the state of any medical transition.
In general, I’d tend to call myself a straight cis man. If I think long and hard about it, I could make an argument that I’m perhaps something along the lines of a non-binary person with a penis, who just happens to present in a traditionally “masculine” fashion in basically every way, and who is attracted to people with vaginas who present in at least a somewhat feminine way.
That’s a fucking mouthful though, and I’m just not gonna get into the weeds about that in casual conversation.
The fact that I’m a man isn’t really something that’s particularly important to me, I just kind of think of myself as a person. If somehow someone misgendered me it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest (though it may get a chuckle because I’m a bald, hairy dude with a big busty beard and fairly deep voice, not exactly the picture of femininity)
And while I quite enjoy having a penis, I don’t feel as though I’d be particularly bothered by having a vagina instead (although you can miss me with that period nonsense, but I think most vagina-havers would agree on that point) and I’d otherwise live my life the same way.
And how “feminine” a theoretical partner would need to be actually gets a lot of leeway. I can find people pretty far into the tomboy/androgynous/butch/etc end of the spectrum attractive, maybe even preferably to the extreme “girly” end of the spectrum. There’s a line there where they’d be too “masculine” for my tastes, but it’s a fuzzy one.
And for me, a certain amount of physical attraction in a partner is important. It’s a pretty wide spectrum that I’m able to find attractive, but there are limits, and I have preferences and dislikes to varying degrees.
And one of those strongest preferences is that my partner have a vagina. I am just not attracted to people with a penis.
If we want to count it under the trans umbrella, I don’t think that me dating a non-binary person with a vagina would be out of the question.
Maybe even a FTM femboy type who hasn’t had or want bottom surgery.
MTF, which I think is more in the spirit of this question, is a bit murkier though. If they don’t intend to get bottom surgery I think that’s a pretty hard no. And even if they have or intend to I can’t say that I’ve ever seen, let alone touched, a surgically-created vagina, so I don’t know if they’d do it for me the same way as a natural one.
The best comparison I do have is that I generally consider myself to be a boob-guy, and while it’s not an outright disqualifier, fake boobs don’t usually do it for me in quite the same way as real ones, but some are better than others, and while I tend to like big boobs, I have nothing against small ones, and a mastectomy isn’t a deal-breaker for me either.
So I suspect that with bottom surgery, it’s a firm “maybe”
As for a trans partner who has not yet but intends to get that surgery, I guess it kind of depends on the timeline. I don’t really want to have sex with someone with a penis and a sexless relationship for me would have a limited lifespan.
All of that said, regardless of whether I’d date them or not doesn’t change how I’d view their identity. There’s plenty of women out there I wouldn’t date for any number of reasons, but that doesn’t mean I see them as any less of a woman.
Personally yes, absolutely. I guess benefits of being Bi/Pan?
But I can see how some wouldn’t. Preference and compatibility matters in a relationship.
People are misinterpreting what straight means in this thread. You can date a trans person and be straight. Have a genital preference is different than your sexual orientation. It’s perfectly fine if you wouldn’t date a trans person because they don’t match your genital preference, sex related things can be a deal breaker. But you’re not gay for dating a trans person of the opposite sex.
It’s perfectly fine if you wouldn’t date a trans person because they don’t match your genital preference, sex related things can be a deal breaker. But you’re not gay for dating a trans person of the opposite sex.
Ok, then the equal is true — I’m not transphobic for deciding I don’t want to date a trans person. Regardless of sexual part compatibility.
+1, dating a trans woman as a man doesn’t make you gay
tangent on attraction to trans people being gay
I understand why people get this confused though, a lot of times “trans woman” is a gloss for “man who lives socially as a woman” - the assumption people have is that trans women are “biologically male” - this is like an essential aspect of being a trans women, it’s what differentiates them from cis women: being male. And so I understand the polite response is to treat a trans woman as a woman, but when it comes to someone’s sexuality, that is likely to expose the deeper perspective that trans women are really male (and thus attraction to them is attraction to a male, and thus gay). All I can say is that trans women are women biologically, too - sex hormones like estrogen mediate a lot of the differences between male and female bodies. A trans woman on estrogen is more like a cis woman than a cis man “biologically” - the way they smell, the way they metabolize drugs, etc. And even this binary notion of sex is a bit of a lie, even cis people often have more mixed sexual traits than they realize. Anyway, this is complicated. “Straight” and “gay” might themselves not make sense in a world where we acknowledge the natural diversity in human sexual differentiation.
I think sometimes the “genital preference” has often become an acceptable form of “transphobia” (I don’t mean that word in the “I’m going to murder a trans person” kind of way, but more like a “bias and stigma against trans people” kind of way).
I think this is a fundamental confusion about female penises, tbh - the assumption is that they are much like male penises, which is a reasonable assumption given how little exposure people have to the female penis. Even in trans porn you generally see trans women’s penises being used like men’s penises - how are we supposed to show this is unrealistic and not characteristic of most trans women?
On the other hand, I do believe genital preference really should be respected regardless of whether it gets mixed up with transphobia, and someone who understands and sees a woman’s penis as a female might still prefer to have penetration with a vagina, for example. Anal sex can be involved and be painful, etc. so I completely understand if that doesn’t end up suitably replacing vaginal sex (and to be honest, I feel this way myself as a trans woman - I was deeply unsatisfied with having a female penis, and I feel if I have a right to my bottom dysphoria and sexual preferences, who am I to deny some legitimate preferences of sexual partners who also want a particular kind of penetration?)
That said, I do think often ignorance and transphobia hide behind “genital preference” and this muddies the waters. My reaction to this is a bit of indifference - I’m not interested in coercing anyone into having sex with trans people, I just want to have an opportunity to expose more people to the truth and invite people to think more deeply about their beliefs. I don’t need to change them, even, it’s just nice to have some dialogue.
As long as they have the matching equipment then I’m totally fine with it.
I’ve always wanted to try out dating an mtf girl
Sadly no. I want kids of my own someday.
As a tangent, what happened to adopting?
not interested.
What happened to you guys who down voted on OP when he or she merely said what they want and what they are interested in? Can’t you learn to respect others?
