This isn’t about being smug or not. Veganism is morally superior as long as you consider that animals suffer for Human Consumption, envionmental impacts of animal products far outweigh vegan alternatives, and humans can get all of their nutrition from vegan sources.
The reason humans eat meat is for pleasure and profit, neither of which can be considered “morally superior” to the benefits of Veganism.
I really hope it’s a cultural difference, but where I’m from, calling someone a ‘morally inferior feminine whiner’ “having a full on tantrum” because they said something you dislike with is frowned upon.
Flattening “I deserve to murder terrified children slaves because I’m a picky eater” to “something I dislike” is a bigger offense than your misquote.
But your description of the carnists in this thread is not inaccurate, minus the misogyny you’re illiterately trying to paint me with.
But no matter what, wherever there’s suffering; wherever there’s exploitation, there’s a .world account defending it in the most trite, superficial way possible.
Trying to get rich is the selfish version of “every man for himself”, building a more equal society is the empathetic one: in a fair society there are no threats to seek your own life.
Seems pretty easy, buy 100mil of gold bullion. It’s around 3100 lb (1400kg) and is relatively small. I think you could hit it under a bed or couch or two. Probably fit it into a couple awkward corners in your closet. Use one as a paper weight.
I like this one because, even though it’s a hypothetical, I always think these scenarios are going to involve me getting shafted somehow and it turns out they never had that billion and they just wanted you to experience having 100 mil for a short time so you know how much you lost and laugh while watching you piss it all away on things you didn’t even necessarily want.
Your way has a nice insurance policy to it if they weren’t good for the billion.
You can buy gold (and other precious metals) as exchange traded commodities, no reason to have them physically delivered to your home and risk damaging your floor.
This always makes me laugh. Somewhere after 2000 I had my gender and sexuality renamed by a really small, small part of the population. Who gets offended as hell if I say I don’t care for it. I can easily make them mad as hell just by mentioning a few thing they don’t like but can’t be argued. But somehow my dislike of their renaming me is not justified but their presumption to do so for everyone is.
You’ve rephrased, and essentially reformulated Paolo Friere’s famous and enlightening quote, “Equality feels like oppression to the oppressor.” Does having privilege make one an oppressor? In some cases, it most certainly does but I would disagree that coming from privilege makes one an oppressor: history is full of examples of people from the oppressive ruling classes risking or sacrificing everything to fight against oppression and restore equality. I am privileged but equality would not feel like oppression to me; or if it did I would have to self criticize harshly since I spend so much of my time and energy fighting against oppression and for equality. And this is what your rephrasing has done, it has eliminated the class aspect from Friere’s formulation; furthermore it isn’t connected to anything. So when you say this in isolation you create a privileged other. Friere on the other hand was fully aware of the dialectic between the oppressed and their oppressors, and scientifically worked out his thesis: through dehumanization of the oppressed, the oppressors lost their own humanity. While oppression had to be fought, first the oppressed had to restore their own humanity by restoring their own subjectivity. Once they had liberated their minds, and in fact through this process they would become organized in such a way to organize their bodies as well. This is the perceived nadir of the oppressors, the equality that feels like oppression. However, in its final stage this equality restores the humanity of the oppressor, in fact it is the ontological mission of the oppressed to restore the humanity of the oppressors. this final synthesis of the dialectic is not inevitable however, and the whole enterprise is based on education. “When education is not liberating,” he said, “it is the dream of the oppressed to become the oppressor.”
I don’t know what that deleted comment was, probably some hateful bs, but was your comment intended to educate, and set others on the path of education?
I looked it up, it appears in a lot of places though its origin is unknown. So you picked it up from somewhere. Definitely not your fault for mangling what is obviously a distorted Friere quote, though it remains mangled and now a part of public consciousness. I still have the same reservations about it and I wish you would consider reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed rather than dismiss what I’m saying and probably keep repeating this. But you’re right, it was a waste of time.
I’m cis. I’m a cis man with a exclusive sexual interest in cis women. I find the term very helpful to express very clearly who I am and what I want. I can’t imagine being so delicate as to lose my shit over being called cis.
I find the word as displeasing as some people find ‘moist’, but I’m entitled to an opinion. Am I going to wave a sign around and demonstrate over it despite thinking it was promoted for its potential to upset the victim? Of course not: it’s just a stupid name and I’ve been called far worse by better drill sergeants. There’s a lot of room in there between disliking something and “losing my shit over” it, and it will help respecting others if you understand that.
You think it’s reasonable to be offended by the words “moist” and “cis”?
People who are offended by being called “cis” are often the same people who have spent their lives labelling everyone else because of a misguided sense of superiority. Being called “cis” bursts that bubble of, “you can’t label me because I one of us, not one of them.” Those people need to get the fuck over themselves.
When someone uses the words f-ggot or d-ke or tr-nny or the words cis or breeder or the N word or bloodmouth or carnist or corpsemuncher or any one of the other words that fanatics or extremists use I know exactly what they are and I stop giving the first fuck about anything they say.
EdIT: Do you know why this comment is being downvoted? It’s because the members of the fanatical groups that I listed in my last paragraph resent being lumped in with the members of the other fanatical groups I listed. Each one of them believes that they are morally pure and supperior and that the others are not. They can’t see that they are making the exact same intellectual error in believing that they are pure and superior and that everything they say and do is justified. Anti-LBGTQ extremists and pro-LGBTQ absolutists are the same. Different beliefs and targets but the intellectual mistake that they make is exactly the same.
They didn’t even say he found it offending. Just that they found it displeasing.
They then spent the rest of the comment talking about how they keep it to themself and doesn’t attack or act otherwise negatively to people who use them. The way a healthy person handles such things.
Meanwhile you’re the one actually flying off the handle and getting offended by this. I would suggest some introspection as to why you’re so bothered by a random comment on the internet like that.
What part of, “I’m a cis man who has a preference for cis women” sounds fragile to you? I am very clearly comfortable in my own identity and very clear in what I like.
People who are offended by being called "cis" are often the same people who have spent their lives labelling everyone else because of a misguided sense of superiority.
I’m cis. I’m a cis man with a exclusive sexual interest in cis women.
Here. Unless you know for certainty that you can 100 percent correctly identify every person you meet as cis or trans, you wouldn’t have the knowledge to confidently make that statement.
I have very clearly stated that I am exclusively interested in cis women. Are you suggesting that a trans person would ignore my very clearly stated preference and lie to me in order to have sex with me?
I very clearly stated my preference. You’re trying to use pedantic arguments to invalidate my clearly stated preference. Are you suggesting that I shouldn’t be allowed to have a preference or that people who don’t like that preference or don’t think I should have that preference should be allowed to simply ignore my preference?
I think that your “preference” is based on very sloppy thinking rooted in ambient transphobia. I think you are also confusing a desire for precision of thought with being pedantic.
I think you’re trying to imply that preferences are neutral facts. I think you should consider how you’d react to someone saying “I am only attracted to white women” or “I am only attracted to 18 y/o women”. Do you think their preference is a neutral fact or an expression of something?
Oh, also, expression of “preference” is different than having a preference. Ask why you felt the need to say it in this thread.
At minimum keep it to yourself. Ask yourself what the utility of saying it is. Because what I read is “I support trans people but I still find them gross personally because if I don’t say that people will think I’m a f*g”
So you’re telling me that I should stay in the closet because you don’t like my chosen lifestyle?
Do you hear what you’re saying?
Ask yourself what the utility of saying it is.
The meme was about people who use “cis” as an insult and the people who find it insulting. My comment completely disarms the fanatics who use “cis” as a slur by embracing the word the way that it was originally intended to be used AND by using it in a way that those fanatics don’t like.
This is an utterly ridiculous straw man. Literally worthy of ridicule. These are bad arguments and you should be ashamed to have made them.
Yeah, let me just page up all the trans and feminist academics writing on stigma theory as it relates to misogyny and transmisogyny and let them know that they are wrong, that cis men are never afraid of being tainted by an association with women or queer people
Or maybe you’re just wrong and defensive, which is 1000 times worse than just being wrong and learning from being wrong, which is a normal human thing.
When your online ego isn’t on the line I’d suggest reading Sexed Up by Julie Serano.
Well read on transmisogyny? How do you want me to point out to you that you’re incorrect? Like, earnestly, what is the right way to point out to someone that they’re being bigoted when they don’t know they’re being bigoted?
I know more on this than you
on a personal level- plenty of men hit on me and then when I speak in my non-passing voice to let them know I’m a lesbian react with disgust. Men who say they’d never be attracted to a trans woman have had no problem aggressively hitting on me
On an academic level- I’ve read a lot of feminist works on misogyny, and works on how transmisogyny operates.
You haven’t done enough study on the topic to have an opinion that you should personally stand by.
Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak?
What do you mean by my preferences? I am annoyed when people spout bullshit that they don’t understand is bullshit and then get defensive when you tell them they’re wrong, stop playing the victim.
Could you possibly be any more egotistical? You are really full of yourself.
I understand completely that I am a cis man and that my sexual preference is for cis women. Why are you trying to force your beliefs down my throat? What defect of personality is it that makes you think that you should decide what I’m allowed to like?
I’m not being defensive. I don’t give the first fuck what you think I should like. I’m just trying to help you to understand how utterly toxic you are.
Yeah, I’m the egotistical one, not the cis guy trying to explain why it isn’t actually transmisogyny to a trans woman who has studied and experienced this specific form of transmisogyny.
You aren’t some static being where people attempting to change your mind about something you haven’t investigated is some violation. If that is what it feels like to you maybe you need to do some self reflection, because what I am describing to you is literally just the process of learning.
Edit: also men like you love to force your preference on me. Do you know how many times I’ve been cornered (because some men like to do that when hitting on someone) and had to be there for a man’s significant emotional event after realizing he was attracted to a trans woman? This is me being proactive so some trans woman doesn’t have to deal with your freak out if you end up hitting on a trans woman.
Are lesbians bad because they don’t want to suck cock
I know plenty of cis and trans lesbians who love to suck cock. Just not men’s cocks.
And I am equally suspicious of lesbians who are like “trans men are an exception” because they generally either treat trans men like shit or realize they’re bi but only interested in dating and fucking other queer folks.
Yes, it is you who is egotistical because you believe that you should be able to dictate to me what I should like.
Not dictating to you what you should like, pointing out that what you’re saying doesn’t actually make sense when it comes to interacting with women in real life and not just looking up porn categories.
Yeah, I’m defective for having experienced your “preferences” in other men resulting in men being really scary to me upon those men being rejected, and wanting to explain to you that men making sweeping claims about attraction to trans women can put trans women in danger when reality doesn’t match up so neatly.
Plus all the connection to stigma culture that reinforces transphobia but that is less acute.
Yeah, I’m defective for having experienced your “preferences” in other men resulting in men being really scary to me upon being rejected, and wanting to explain to you that men making sweeping claims about attraction to trans women can put trans women in danger when reality doesn’t match up so neatly.
You have never experience, “my preferences” because we have never met. You’re lumping me in with the men that you’ve had bad experiences with which is unfair. I am very much a friend to the LGBTQ+ community. I am perfectly comfortable to say, “I’m flattered but I’m not interested” and I have done so more than once. For me, that’s the end of it. No drama. Given the very diverse community I run in (I wrote in another comment that, “my wife is bisexual, my sister is bisexual, my daughter is a lesbian, my son and daughter both have non-binary and trans friends who I regularly spend time with, I have gay friends and lesbian friends, I was a member of the wedding party at a same sex wedding, I am friends with a local transmasc, and I’ve had a pair of transfem friends for more than 50 years.”) I find it very useful to be able to say, “Here is who I am and here is who I’m interested in.” The people around me seem to appreciate that rather than resent it. Why would you want to pursue someone who said that they weren’t interested in you? I don’t try to talk lesbians into be interested in me, that would be the height of arrogance on my part.
Plus all the connection to stigma culture that reinforces transphobia but that is less acute.
I am not transphobic. Labelling anyone who doesn’t agree with your world view as transphobic really devalues anything else you have to say. I like redheads. I like big butts. I like small boobs. That doesn’t mean that I’m brunettephobic or blondephobic or small bottom or big boob phobic.
I’ve seen you around before and know you’re acting in good faith, and I believe you’re an ally, or at least a potential ally, to the trans community.
I’m chiming in here because I replied to OurToothbrush earlier to give her a cis-het male ally’s perspective, and suggest that she might have more success with a less confrontational strategy.
She suggested I might have better luck explaining her objection to you, or at least that she would appreciate me trying to help you understand her point.
Both your comments are coming fast and furious so I’m trying to respond to your latest.
So here goes:
Your basic point was that you’re exclusively interested in cis-women, and that this is a preference you have, everyone is entitled to preferences so what’s the big deal. It doesn’t mean you’re not an ally.
Life is complex. Just as there’s nobody that’s purely “racially white” (race isn’t real, but that’s beside the point, or maybe it is the point…), there’s nobody that’s purely female or male. Obviously most people’s bodies develop either testicles or ovaries not both, but: there is a sizable portion of the population where it’s not so clear cut. Ultimately: Every person has mutations in their DNA that skew their body towards and away from what’s considered masculine/feminine.
While sexual orientation towards masculine/feminine people doesn’t seem to be strongly influenced by culture (ie I don’t think you can raise a kid to be gay), what a person perceives to be masculine/feminine/trans IS strongly a product of their culture and conditioning.
Viewing sexuality and gender through the framework I laid out above and considering her experiences may help you understand why OurToothbrush sees transphobia where you see sexual preference.
OurToothbrush’s experience seems to be that lots of ‘cis-het-men’ say they aren’t attracted to trans-women, but are in fact attracted to trans-women like her. When they discover that she is a trans-woman they have very negative reactions. Since the (former) suitors were attracted to her until they guessed she was assigned male at birth, but before they had learned the status of her genitalia, how can she conclude anything other than transphobia? Do you see how their reaction is basically the same as your statement?
I pointed out to her that transphobia and homophobia are beaten into men/boys and if they have a negative reaction to learning that a women that they’re attracted to was assigned male at birth, it doesn’t mean they aren’t allies, just that they haven’t unlearned that phobic conditioning. It’s a type of internalized latent transphobia that has infected me too. I don’t dwell on it because as a person in a committed monogamous relationship for over half of my life, it is unlikely to matter, and I suspect it would be a monumental undertaking to unlearn. The effort is better spent healing rifts between allies.
Can you understand why when someone says “I’m exclusively interested in cis-women” a person with OurToothbrush’s experiences might hear “trans-women are gross”.
Tldr; I think I see where you’re both coming from. We cis-het-men are notoriously fragile, especially when our allyship is questioned. I think it will be more effective for people trying to point out people’s latent transphobia to take an educational/ collaborative tone at first, and it’s something I’m going to try to do a better job of helping people understand.
Honestly, thank you two for having this spat so that I could map it out in my head better, I’m not sure I’ve done the best job typing it out though. You’re both welcome to tell me to fuck off.
Thanks for taking the time to write. I wrote in a different thread here that I do not find male bodies attractive and that I had never met a transfem whose body I found attractive. I am a big fan of a full, curvy female body. I am absolutely not interested in penises and I have no interest in masculine faces or bodies. Saying that I am exclisively interested in cis women is a good starting point. I’m not interested in the heroin chic supermodel look with no hips and chiseled faces. Scarlett Johansson and Anna Kendrick are both absolutely gorgeous. I like Scarlett Johansson’s body but I don’t like Anna Kendricks’. I find Jamie Clayton very pretty but I’m not sexually attracted to her body. I don’t hate trans women and I don’t fear trans women. My limited experience (friends with two transfems for over 50 years and one transmasc for over 10 years) and interactions with several trans coworkers and adjacent people has reinforced that I have no sexual attraction to any of the trans women I have encountered. I wouldn’t react violently to a proposition from a trans woman any more than I would from a gay man. I would, and have several times said, “I’m flattered but I’m not interested.” then I go on as though nothing had happened. I don’t discount the idea that a trans woman with a feminine face, a curvy feminine body with wide hips, natural breasts, good mental health, and a great personality could catch my eye and end up in a relationship but I have never seen that combination in a transfem.
Labelling someone who is so obviously an ally a transphobe does not help the cause of understanding.
Yes saying that you’re exclusively attracted to cis women is an easy short hand.
I think OurToothbrush is frustrated with the erasure of transwomen that you fail to identify as trans.
I think when you said:
I had never met a transfem whose body I found attractive.
You don’t actually know if you’ve ever found a trans-woman attractive because you don’t know the birth details of every women you’ve ever found attractive. Some of them could be trans.
It’s not something I was particularly cognizant of either before seeing OurToothbrush’s reaction.
I think I would have trouble getting it up for a blow job from a smoking hot women after I learned she had a penis. I’m willing to concede that that is technically transphobic. I don’t think it changes the fact that I am an ally of the trans rights movement.
Just say you’re a cis-het male ally and I think everyone will know what you mean. It’s too bad this has been sick an ugly experience, it’s still a hell of a lot easier than gender dysphoria.
Sorry for butting in, and I fully understand if I’m completely out of line here, but can you expand on this statement?
I think I would have trouble getting it up for a blow job from a smoking hot women after I learned she had a penis. I’m willing to concede that that is technically transphobic.
Is it phobic to not be attracted to every aspect of a person? Is it racists if fiery red hair is a turn off? Is it hateful to dislike piercings? Is it so bad to not be down bad for blue eyes?
I can see how less obvious trait could lead to a frustrating situation and an appartent change in opinion, like being turned off by a dorky laugh, or a tattoo, or violent behaviour, but is it somehow hateful to not be attracted to everything about someone?
I feel like telling people that something about themselves is inherently bad isn’t any better. Maybe someone doesn’t like the colour red because they just really hate Canadians, and perhaps they would be fine with red otherwise, but are they being hateful by buying a blue blanket? What about people who just like blue? It would be great if no one hated a colour because they hate the people represeted by a flag, but forcing everybody to buy red blankets doesn’t help anything, you know?
I think the idea I’m circling here is that attractions aren’t fair, and trying to make them fair is worse. Conflating that with transphobia seems ironic. Does that make sense?
Sorry that it has taken me a long time to respond, I’ve been at the cabin, away from my phone.
Yeah the problem is that because of the history of discrimination we don’t have words for relatively harmless discriminatory tendencies. So if I were to say
I have racist tendencies
it sounds like I’m admitting to being a “capital R” racist, when what I mean is,
I was taught incorrect stereotypes by media as a child, and sometimes despite my best efforts to be egalitarian, these biases cause me to make bad judgements. I try to notice when this happens, to make sure I treat people fairly.
Yeah I’m not saying anyone is a jerk for having sexual interest only with feminine people with vaginas and boobs, I’m just saying that it’s kinda trans-erasure (and therefore technically transphobic) to say
I’m exclusively attracted to cis-women
Because a person doesn’t know the assigned birth sex of every woman they’ve ever been attracted to.
Ah, so then you’re using transphobic to mean any discrimination against a trans person, no matter how reasonable? Fair enough. I had taken it to mean discrimination primarily on the basis of being trans, rather than a basis of incompatability or circumstance despite intent; but even if the intent is good, if it causes harm it should be called out eh?
Also, good point about being attracted to some traits of a person instead of the whole. It would be very tiring and extremely odd to never be attracted to anyone unless you knew very intimate details of their life.
I think we need another word. Transphobic suggests fear or hate. I neither fear not rate trans people as I’ve made clear multiple times. If I’m not interested in having sex with men am I androphobic? I’m just not interested in trans people sexually. I’m transdisinterested, not transphobic.
I’ve been chewing on this. I have a question. It’s a bit of a thought experiment.
If you’re a man (biological male) and I’m not at all interested in having sex with you and you decide to transition to a woman at what point along that transition am I a transphobe if I still don’t want to have sex with you?
On the continuum from a raging, murderous transphobe to the perfect ally where is the point where you can label someone a transphobe?
I’ve already told you that I have had a pair of transfem friends for 50 years, a transmasc friend for 10 years, my kids have non-binary and trans friends who I treat with the same dignity and respect that I treat everyone else in my life is the simple fact that I’m interested in cis women enough to get me labelled a transphobe? What if I’m that raging, murderous transphobe but I have sex with trans women? Is being a transphobe like a scorecard, you can have a perfect score but a single wrong answer and you’re a transphobe?
I’m not being an ass or trolling. I genuinely want to understand your perspective on these questions to inform further discussion.
I asked a longtime lesbian friend whose partner is a retired human rights lawyer who specialized in LGBTQ+ rights law about this conversation and the partner mentioned absolutism (which I mentioned in another part of this discussion.) I just wonder if that’s what’s going on here.
I’m off to a maker fair with my family today so I probably won’t get back to this until late this evening. I hope you have a good day.
Sorry that it has taken me a long time to respond, I’ve been at the cabin, away from my phone.
Yeah the problem is that because of the history of discrimination we don’t have words for relatively harmless discriminatory tendencies. So if I were to say
I have racist tendencies
it sounds like I’m admitting to being a “capital R” racist, when what I mean is,
I was taught incorrect stereotypes by media as a child, and sometimes despite my best efforts to be egalitarian, these biases cause me to make bad judgements. I try to notice when this happens, to make sure I treat people fairly.
Yeah I’m not saying anyone is a jerk for having sexual interest only with feminine people with vaginas and boobs, I’m just saying that it’s kinda trans-erasure (and therefore technically transphobic) to say
I’m exclusively attracted to cis-women
Because a person doesn’t know the assigned birth sex of every woman they’ve ever been attracted to.
OurToothbrush was offended because she is a transwoman and attracts men that think they’re exclusively attracted to cis-women. She’s on the front line of transphobia, and searching for a partner puts her at a too real risk of being murdered by a transphobe.
Yeah it sounds like absolution is a relevant term. People like to think that there are only biological males and biological females and that’s that. It’s not that simple. People like to think that there are racists and non-racists and that’s that. It’s not that simple. People like to think that there are transphobes and non-transphobes and that’s that. It’s not that simple. To me, being an ally is is about supporting a community to defeat unfair discrimination. Imo supporting individuals with friendship isn’t exactly the same but it’s better than nothing.
We all have lives. I sometimes remember that I was discussing something with someone weeks later.
In the end my trans friends, LGBTQ friends, my lesbian daughter, and my son and daughter’s LGBTQ, non-binary, and trans friends and everyone who knows me knows that I’m not a transphobe. They know that I’m an ally. They know that they can count on me for support and that I will actively protect them.
Being labelled a transphobe by someone who doesn’t know me and obviously has rather extreme views is less than meaningless to me. I engaged in the coversation to try to help her to understand my position and that labelling anyone who wasn’t interested in having sex with her, no matter how much of an ally they really were, was counterproductive. I did my best. I’m going to keep doing my best to be an ally no matter how much people who demand thought perfection label me. That’s just who I am.
It’s also important to remember that “perfect” is the enemy of “good”. There will never be a perfect ally, because allies don’t have the same lived experience. But (I think) that allyship is still a good thing.
Are you nitpicking an ally for using “exclusive” instead of “principal”?
MapleEngineer doesn’t actually know for sure that he has never been attracted to a trans woman. So it’s important to correct him when he says he has an exclusive sexual interest in cis-women.
Is that your point? That failing to acknowledge the nuance that sexuality exists on a spectrum must be addressed confrontationally because it’s erasure?
Transphobia and homophobia are too often literally (yes, I mean literally) beaten into men. We have to work to unlearn it. If an ally says he wouldn’t be able to keep it up if he learned the woman he was courting was assigned male at birth, believe him, but don’t discount him as an ally. Imo your efforts are better spent combating active transphobia than policing your allies. If their terminology hurts you, suggest better ways to articulate their points but do it collaboratively instead of confrontationally.
Having read about your experiences (elsewhere in the thread, you hadn’t posted them when I started my prior comment) I understand your reaction better.
If someone says they’re not interested in dating Republicans, it doesn’t mean they are any better than the average person at picking one out from a crowd.
Attraction can change as you learn more about a person. There’s plenty of people on tinder who looked hot in their pictures but their bio then went on to turn me off.
I don’t see such a statement in this comment chain. Closest thing is “exclusive sexual interest”, which isn’t as broad as “experiencing attraction” and also doesn’t imply a magical way of filtering out anyone he believes is in that group but isn’t.
So in this metaphor trans people are AI, cartoons, and wax figures, and cis people are human?
Or, on a less confrontational tact, do you only experience attraction once you’ve confirmed that the person is cis? How does that work, do you ask for medical records before having an initial impression of people?
It kinda feels like people who don’t believe trans women and cis women are interchangeable should be the ones pushing the word, those who say ‘trans women are women’ surely don’t want the slogan to be made meaningless by having cis women as the established term.
Hi! I know this might just be the wrong context at this point as you are already getting flak, but I was curious and wanted to ask why you have exclusive sexual interest in cis women?
For example I would imagine some heterosexual cis men would have a hard time dating a trans woman who haven’t had bottom surgery or who are early in their transition (in which case sometimes the sexual preference is phrased as a genital preference rather than about exclusively dating cis people).
Some women who for various reasons pass well as cis are not distinguishable from cis women, and in that case I assume based on your statement you still would have a hard time dating that person if you found out they were trans.
For example, based on your statement I assume you wouldn’t date or be attracted to Nava Mau.
I understand if you don’t want to answer, it’s not like this is the best context and it is a vulnerable topic - just wanted to extend an olive branch in case you wanted to talk and think about it with less judgement.
Hi. I’m happy to talk to someone who wants to have a reasonable conversation.
Just some context. My wife is bisexual, my sister is bisexual, my daughter is a lesbian, my son and daughter both have non-binary and trans friends who I regularly spend time with, I have gay friends and lesbian friends, I was a member of the wedding party at a same sex wedding, I am friends with a local transmasc, and I’ve had a pair of transfem friends for more than 50 years. I am very much an ally to the LGBTQ+ community.
I have always been straight and have always been interested in women. My experience with my two long time transfem friends colors my preference. Both have very serious mental health issues. One is post-surgical, the other will never be able to get surgery. I do not find Nava Manu attractive but that is strictly a funcion of what I see as vary sharp facial features. She reminds me of Theodora Elphaba. Jaime Clayton, on the other hand, I find very attractive. I’m not completely closed to the idea of a relationship with a trans woman but in my fairly broad experience with trans women I have never encountered anyone who I would be at all interested in having a relationship with. Thus, my preference is for cis women.
Interesting. Well, first - thanks for being an ally!!
It does seem like trans folks have a pretty rough road in most societies, and predictably that leads to poor mental health outcomes. The statistics about how well a trans person does post-transition has a lot to do with whether they are accepted by their family and friends. (Mental health issues are also common before transition while closeted, or not-yet aware of being trans, which might have biological as well as social / psychological reasons behind it.)
It also makes sense you might not personally know trans women you are attracted to as there are far fewer trans folks compared to cis folks; though, it sounds like you were even able to list a trans woman you do find attractive.
Digging into that more, if there were someone who had the right personality and looked like Jaime Clayton, would being trans be a deal-breaker for pursuing a relationship with that person? I guess I wonder if it’s really being trans that is the problem for you, or if this is just a short-hand for a bunch of other traits that in practice just make you less likely to be attracted.
I ask because at this point it sounds like you would be pretty open to dating trans women who you find attractive (personality and looks wise), but that it is more practical reality that you just aren’t attracted to most trans women (probably for a variety of reasons).
The question for me has always been, are my friends mentally ill because of how they were treated as a result of being trans or is being trans a manifestation of their mental illness.
The friend I am closest to grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family and she was horribly sexually abused as a child. I wonder if she didn’t reject her maleness as a result of that sexual abuse.
For me, personality is far more important than looks. I have often been attracted to women who were not classically attractive.
I can imagine myself being attracted to a trans woman with the right combaintion of looks, mental health, and personality. I haven’t encountered anyone who fit the bill but it might happen. Another issue is that I don’t like plastic at all. Fake boobs, cosmetic surgery, lip injectoions and fillers turn me off. I find Janie Clayton very pretty but I’m not keen on her body. I don’t find narrow hips attractive and her boobs just aren’t for me. The same is true for cis women. I don’t find narrow hips or fake boobs attrative on a cis woman.
There has been plenty of research into the etiology of gender dysphoria, but the current science considers gender identity as fixed and biological, which makes sense of why conversion therapies have been so unsuccessful (otherwise the conservative medical establishment would be more likely to recommend conversion therapy to solve the “problem” of trans people, as talk therapy is much less intervention, much cheaper, and much more socially acceptable than medical transition).
It’s behind a paywall, but that can be circumvented if you know how.
More interesting than whether mental illness is more common in trans people because of how they are treated by society (which seems almost obvious, though worth confirming empirically) is whether mental illness might be more common for trans people because of the biology, such as from having the “wrong” sex hormones in their body.
Gay men who were forced to take estrogen in the UK experienced symptoms like depression and suicidal ideation, and lots of the same things trans people report (there is speculation whether Alan Turing being forced to take estrogen may have contributed to his suicide).
There is also the famous case of David Reimer whose penis was accidentally amputated during circumcision as a baby. Under the direction of the psychologist John Money, who believed gender was entirely determined by environment / social programming, was raised as a girl. Reimer consistently struggled being raised as a girl, eventually decided he was a man, and struggled immensely with mental health struggles before his suicide.
Suicide seems to be a common thread among those suffering from gender dysphoria, with over 40% of trans people reporting having previously attempted suicide and over 80% having considered attempting suicide (source), and it’s not surprising cis people when forced to take cross-sex hormones also seem more likely to commit suicide (though we don’t have as much evidence about this in particular, so take that as speculation on my part).
All this to say, religious trauma and sexual abuse certainly can and do complicate someone trying to figure out whether they are suffering symptoms of gender dysphoria or not, but the current evidence points to gender dysphoria not being caused by environmental factors (like sexual abuse) and likewise not being reversible with any kind of known treatment other than transitioning.
Furthermore, there have been autopsies of trans and cis brains that have found parts of the hypothalamus in trans women match cis women’s, even if not taking hormones. Here is a relatively accessible overview by neuro-endocrinologist Robert Sapolsky about those autopsy studies which were high quality and confirmed with follow up studies several times: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QScpDGqwsQ
Being trans cannot be adequately theorized in merely biological terms, so please don’t mistake me for implying there are no social aspects to being trans, but I do think there is sufficient evidence that gender identity and dysphoria have biological components that aren’t influenced by environment.
Regarding trans women and plastic surgery: many trans women transition before puberty and thus look and sound pretty much like cis women, i.e. they develop as cis women would. Obviously even in those cases some trans women opt for surgeries, and while neo-vaginas have some differences, they are more like natal vaginas than most people realize (both in look and function).
In that sense, it doesn’t sound like being trans is what you don’t like in a woman, but rather certain body features that might be more common in trans women who have transitioned as adults (breast augmentation, facial feminization surgeries, narrow hips, etc. are more common in trans women who went through male puberty). But there is a huge variety of trans women, even those who transition as adults don’t necessarily get breast augmentation or facial feminization surgery, though narrow hips are obviously more common still.
Perhaps this seems like nitpicking or like I am making an irrelevant or theoretical distinction, after all if most trans women you know look a certain way, is it that wrong to generalize this way. The problems of stereotyping aside, part of the problem is that trans people in general are under a lot of pressure to conform to cis-sexual norms, and those who can go “stealth” typically do. That means, a bit like sexual minorities, it can be an invisible identity, but where a subset of adult trans folks especially early transition are more likely to stand out as trans. What we think of as a paradigmatic “trans woman” is someone who doesn’t conform that much to our cis-normative notions of a “woman”, and that is because of that unintentional sampling bias.
I acknowledge this is a lot, so let me stop here and see what you think so far.
This is very interesting. I don’t doubt that gender identity is biological. I agree with the current thinking that gender dysphoria is not mental illness. It is just apparent to me in my very small sample size of three (two transfem for more than 50 years and one transmasc for 10 years) that mental illness and gender dysphoria are, at least in my sample, adjacent to each other in 100% of trans people I know. I am also of the mind that mental illness is a biological issue so having biological gender dysphoria and biological mental illness adjacent to each other raises questions.
I have been thinking as I’ve been puttering around this evening and you just hit the nail on the head. It is the secondary sexual characteristics of cis women that I find attractive. I like a feminine face, natural breasts, and wide hips. I have a copy of The Big Butt Book 3D that a friend gave me in my nightstand. I don’t find men’s bodies attractive. When I look at a fit man I think, that’s a great body but I don’t feel any attration to him. I just appreciate that it is a good body. I have never encountered a transfem whose body I found attractive. In all cases I found their faces and bodies masculine which I don’t find attractive. To be honest, I don’t find supermodels attractive, either. They’re too skinny, with no behinds and often very chiseled, masculine faces. I think Scarlett Johansson is gorgeous and I find her body very attractive. I think Anna Kendrick if stunning but I don’t find her body attractive. She’s too light in the pants for my tastes. I don’t find most social media personalities at all attractive because I don’t like heavy makeup and fakeness. I like no makeup, hair pulled up into a ponytail, and … I dunno, plain?
Saying that I have an exclusive sexual preference for cis women is a very good starting point. I’m not interested in penises at all and every single person that I’ve ever been attracted to sexually has been a cis woman with the secondary sexual characterists of a cis woman. I don’t hate or fear trans women, I’m just never been attracted to any that I’ve met.
Are we sure kool-aid isn’t the evil one? I’m sure he’s killed or gravely injured a few children busting through those walls. Think he’s footing repair bills for that damage? I’m guessing not.
I just don’t understand it. I once watched a video of his out of curiosity, as he had the largest YouTube channel, and I just don’t get it. Our country’s TV channel for children is more interesting.
That’s because he aims at a very specific hyper engaged demographic. The pre-pubescent teenager. Then they keep watching either out of habit or emotional stunting. They might not be a very sofisticated audience, but they are very dedicated. It might be all they watch, they construct their identity around the content they watch and demand parents to spend money on the products pushed to them by their favorite influencers.
This is not unusual, all generations have done it and diverse agents have capitalized from it. From boy bands, to star wars, Disney kids/adults… They are the unicorn audience in marketing, if you can get your claws on a person during that development stage, you got yourself a consumer of your brand for life.
I actually respect vegans that are vegan to prevent the suffering of animals.
I get it. Grew up farming. Chicken houses are an industrial horror machine.
We’ve recently bought a play farm and hope to raise or hunt all our meat. Only the slaughter and butchering of steers will be outsourced. Takes some serious equipment to handle an animal that large.
I’m an omnivore by evolution and enjoy meat and hunting. I’m always a little sad when I kill something, however. I figure that sadness means I’m human and is a good thing. When I eat meat from something I killed, it means more. There is a lot of respect involved in it as well something like religion.
If more people had to kill their meat, we would probably live in a very different world and there would be a lot more vegans.
The entire dairy and meat industry is based on the rape and slaughter of animals. Mistreament of animals within the industry is arguably tantamount to torture and would be considered as such where it applied to humans.
and getting a giant steel horn implanted in your forehead would be a cosmetic procedure, but i guess you’d be pretty upset if someone did it to you without asking?
artificial insemination would fit the legal definition of rape in several jurisdictions in the world if you did it to a human.
so you think all humans have rights to do any kinds of violent, invasive acts to any animal, as long as they call it a “veterinary procedure”? is there anything a human could do to an animal which you would classify as “rape”?
I can confidently say that I have never raped an animal.
My housecat engages in a lot of torture, but she’s a damned good mouser. I put a stop to the torture when I catch it. I don’t allow my cats outside because they’re so bad on native wildlife, especially ground nesting birds. Cats are obligate predators. I kill cats if I find them in the woods as they are now varmints.
I’m an omnivore, and am at peace with that. I strive to kill in a manner that I find ethical. I kill critters to eat them, varmints to restore balance. I’ll eat the varmints if I can.
Getting roaches, which invade your space, don’t contribute positively to it and, in fact, can cause disease is quite different from voluntarily raising chickens for slaughter.
Really, all you need is a small tractor to lift the steer after you’ve skinned it and to drop the gut. Skin the animal on the ground and roll it from side to side to get it all off, split the chest and cut out the anus, start lifting at the rear legs with chains through the achilles tendon, and pull the anus through, then as you lift more you can free the gut from the backbone and gravity will pull the gut down as you get higher.
Let it all fall on the skin, pull out the bits of organs you want or can feed the dog, and you have the carcass hanging now. Split with a sawsall and a long demolition blade. Make yourself a handhold between the fifth and sixth rib, then cut through the spine and breastbone above the 6th rib.
Leave as much fat on the inside of the cavity as possible so the tenderloin and brisket don’t dry out when hanging. Try to hang it at 2-4C for a couple weeks.
This sounds like excellent advice. I don’t even have a small tractor yet. Before steers, I’m going to have to string new fence. Next spring, if I’m lucky and have worked real hard, I’ll be getting a bottle calve or two.
Did find a cinder block shed with a good roof that wasn’t even listed. Has a loading ramp for a pickup. I’m real tempted to just outsource it.
Have a hernia and don’t know if I can do it.
Do have a root cellar that will be perfect for hanging.
I heartily agree. I’m also an omnivore, raised on a farm. The best meat is the meat you raised or hunted yourself, both ethically and taste wise.
The respect I have for the animal I personally kill for sustenance is the closest an atheist like myself will ever get to religion. I respect the lives of animals to sustain mine as a human, and I know if I raised it or hunted it, it had a much better life and will taste better than any meat you’ll see at a Wallmart.
Damn skippy. I’ve learned I’m an atheist with a pagan heart.
I’ve found that I must be hunting something when I go in the woods or on the water. Animal, vegetable, or something else. Don’t care if I actually kill, catch, or find; there just has to be a goal. I love taking other people and helping them get in tune with the world.
This makes me angry. You murder a creature for your pleasure. You do it against her will. If she could talk she’d beg you for her life, if she could fight back she would. Talking about respect in this violent relationship is self-righteous, cynical and speciesist bullshit. Like talking about respect after raping a child. The best pussy is the one you hunted yourself, right?
Why crazy? It is a very accurate comparison:
Having sex and eating food is a core pleasure baked deep into our brains. We can decide what to eat and who to have sex with and we can use force to get what we want. It’s a taboo to rape and a taboo to kill. Animals can’t fight back like adult humans because they are innocent and often don’t understand the situation they are in, just like children.
Not seeing the similarities is because specisism and carnism are normalised to us in every aspect of our lifes since we’re born. Watch the videos, I’m not fighting you. If you want to minimize the suffering of animals, leave them alone! It took me quite some time to figure this out as well.
I’m currently working outside my old home, preparing it for sell. Taking a break right now.
A little old lady just stopped to grab things I’m sitting by the road for picking. She has a daughter and grandkids that are running from abuse. They’ll be getting a bunk bed and dressers from us. She likes pigs, we have pet pigs. I’m sitting aside some pig figurines that my girl left behind. One is a birdhouse that is full of piss ants, an invasive species. I poisned the fuck out them because they need to die. They’re varmints.
I have a rat problem I’m dealing with due to the cat moving and a bag of feed being left behind. I’m using poison, traps, and a gun to kill the varmints.
I’m not going to take the time to watch whatever videos you’re suggesting. Eating meat isn’t rape. That is a stupid argument you shouldn’t use. It is killing. I’m comfortable with killing.
I’m likely way more in tune with nature, animals, and trying to minimize my impact on the earth than you ever will be. Some of your ideology is poisonous and you are sick from it.
Humans have canines and binocular vision because we are omnivores. Meat and killing can be ethical, it’s just difficult.
You’re comfortable with killing because you’re not the one whos throat is being slit.
I would argue that your idiology is way more poisonous and harmful than mine. If you don’t want to watch anything, you can read the transscript here.
Who’s got the most impressive canines? You know what they eat?
The woman in that picture has some very minor canines.
The cat has some big ones.
Walking out of a unsuccessful deer hunt, I had an encounter with a mountain lion. Hissed and growled it away. Like totally a peak life experience. It was thinking about eating me and I convinced it otherwise. Did pull my pocket gun in fear.
For hunting, would you prefer the animal overpopulation starve, get torn apart over hours by predators, or get hit by a car, killing people? A hunters bullet is one of the fastest deaths a wild animal will get.
If plants you kill to eat, the trees that became your furniture and home could talk, they’d beg too. So would the termites, bedbugs and lice, viruses and flesh eating bacteria.
Lastly are you nuts?? Eating a steak isn’t child rape, that’s insanity lmfao
Haha, no, I don’t fuck pumpkin, do you even get what I’m trying to say?
Did you look at the Bullshit Bingo? It addresses everything you said, because you’re not the first one to come up with it. It’s a collection of a hand full of replies I hear all the time. I answer them all the time. I even looked up the # so you don’t have to go through the rest of the bullshit.
If more people had to kill their meat, we would probably live in a very different world and there would be a lot more vegans.
I agree with your overall post, but you have the conclusion backwards.
The closer you are to hunting or slaughtering the more it’s just a normal part of life. I’ve never met a vegan when I grew up in a rural area around farms, only after I moved to the city and it’s almost exclusivly people that grew up in the city.
Well, I wouldn’t say vegans are common anywhere (where I’ve lived). It’s like 1-2% of the population.
And while my point indeed was totally anecdotal, it goes beyond just knowing people. There are other hints. I still often visit family in my childhood home area and even today you can notice a different in marketing. Restaurants there often don’t even mark meals as vegan on the menu, while restaurants in big cities often have an entire section for vegan meals.
Also supermarkets specialising on bio food and such (our equivilant of like wholefoods) aren’t present at all. You’d have to drive like 30km to get to one. Also in regular supermarkets meat replacement options are either not availible or poorly stocked.
So I’m not sure if it’s a result or a cause, but I’d say it’s much harder to be vegan in a rural area, just from a logistical standpoint. And you get a lot more local farmers markets, so you also have access to fresh and relativly cheap meat.
I’ve tried to search for some statistics about the distribution of vegans in urban and rural areas, but didn’t find anything useful. I did find some quora and reddit threads with quite a few replies of people that have similar expirences to mine.
Yeah, you’re right it’s a different thing to doing it in cities, cooking is important. In my experience, I have lots of vegan rural friends however that’s due to my social circle and isn’t representive. In the uk apparently we are on 4.7% vegan now (1567% increase in 10 years) its become noticeably more over the last few years but probably not to the same level as cities.
If people had to kill their own meat, not only would there be more vegans, but people who did eat meat would probably eat a lot less on average than the average person today does. It would probably make a lot of people healthier too.
people would probably eat less meat sure just because of the logistics of it, but did u forget that history is a thing? 150 odd years ago most people regularly slaughtered their own animals a few hundred years further back and basically everyone did, and at the same time almost everyone with very very few exceptions ate meat.
Of course they did, they also had drastically less options than they do today. It’s no coincidence that veganism is a fairly new concept, it’s only fairly recently that it’s become feasible.
My point is that slaughtering ur own animals is in no way a deterrent for eating meat at least no more that any other prep for any food is. Also Pescetarianism was available as a life style and very few people chose it despite not having to slaughter anything smart, and despite fish being very easy to kill and butcher from a literal and moral perspective.
Well I agree with you that I don’t think it was much of a deterrent, because that was the reality of how people were raised. But I think these days many people have never killed the animals they eat, and they were also not raised in the same conditions, so I suspect that forcing people to kill their own animals today would indeed be somewhat of a deterrent, at least to certain groups of people. But this is of course all just my opinion and speculation.
Healthier is debatable. Meat is, relatively speaking, pretty good from a health perspective.
Most of what we eat that’s “bad for us” is refined carbohydrates. Sugar, fried starches, breads, that kinda shit. The burger patty is far from the worst offender on the plate.
If suddenly everyone is slaughtering their own animals, the foods they turn to to replace this calories aren’t going to be leafy greens, they’re going to be shitty carbs. Shitty carbs are already most of people’s diets.
That’s a fair point, I was mostly thinking that many people consume far too much meat, and that reducing it would be healthy, but if it’s only being replaced with trash then it wouldn’t be any better
If we’re talking about processed meat, that’s probably true. Even a small amount is probably too much.* If we’re talking about like, grilled whole cuts? Which admittedly probably isn’t typical in most diets, hard to get too much of that. And would be much more common if we were butchering our own meat. But so too would probably be sausage and cured meat so, now I’m not so sure things would change that much.
we used to live in a world were almost every slaughtered their own animals to eat and withing a rounding error everyone ate meat. its only icky to us today BECAUSE we dont interact with it.
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