Each individual has the freedom to decide…but…
Karen L. Blair asks the age-old question, Who will date a trans person?
Karen Blair is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia; an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia; and Chair of the Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Issues (SOGII) Section of the Canadian Psychological Association.
So, not just a random activist on Twitter but an expert.
Regardless of your current relationship status, imagine for a moment that at some point in the future you were to find yourself single and looking. Under such hypothetical circumstances, which of the following people would you consider as a potential dating partner:
- a cisgender[1] woman
- a cisgender man
- a transgender woman
- a transgender man
- or a person with a non-binary gender identification?
In a recent study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 87.5% of the participants who were asked this same question only chose the cisgender options and excluded transgender and non-binary individuals from their hypothetical dating pool.
But, she goes on, romantic relationships are important and healthy, so…what about the trans people?
What then, does this mean for trans people’s overall well-being if the majority of people within society won’t even consider them as potential dating partners under hypothetical conditions?
I don’t know, but the fact that romantic relationships are important and healthy does not impose an obligation on other people to provide them to people they don’t want to have romantic relationships with. This idea is an echo of Amnesty International’s infamous claim that sex [with someone else] is a human right. People who are not trans are under no obligation to be attracted to trans people.
However, despite the fact that most participants were unwilling to consider dating a trans person, there were certain demographic characteristics that were associated with more inclusion of potential trans partners. For example, while only 3.1% of cisgender, heterosexual individuals were willing to date a trans person, 55% of individuals who identified as queer or bisexual included trans persons as potential dating partners, perhaps due to their pre-existing ability to look beyond gender when choosing a partner.
Aka their confusion of gender with sex and their overall confusion on the whole subject and their burning need to be woke about it.
While the study did not ask participants about their reasons for including or excluding trans persons, the authors speculated that exclusion was likely the result of factors ranging from explicit transprejudice, such as viewing trans persons as unfit, mentally ill, or subhuman…
“Subhman”? I call bullshit.
Ultimately, each individual has the freedom to decide whom they date or are interested in dating, and thus the article does not suggest that any single individual must include trans people within their dating pool. However, the article does suggest that examining and following the overall societal patterns of including or excluding trans people within the intimate realm of dating can be used as an indicator of overall acceptance and social inclusion of trans people. In other words, it is one thing to make space for trans people within our workplaces, schools, washrooms, and public spaces, but it is another to see them included within our families and most intimate of spaces, our romantic relationships. We won’t be able to say, as a society, that we are accepting of trans citizens until they are also included within our prospective dating pools; at the very least, on a hypothetical basis.
In other words we’re not saying you have to include trans people in your dating pools but we are saying that you have to include trans people in your dating pools. Entirely up to you of course! But you have to.
Odd that we are given percentages for ‘cis’ heterosexuals, queer, and bisexual people willing to date trans people, but nothing for trans people willing to date other trans people.
This ain’t fucking Golarion, most people ain’t bisexual…
(A land where the one and only transwoman is a “woman” due to a sex change potion, so is isn’t really trans at all)
Do bisexuals actually have a “pre-existing ability to look beyond gender when choosing a partner“? Aren’t bisexuals attracted to men-who-are-men and to women-who-are-women? I’m not sure how to express this. But it seems silly to say that bisexuals are oblivious to or uninterested in the sex/gender of their romantic partners. Possibly inane analogy: If I like both summer and winter, does that mean I am able to see beyond differences in temperature, or that those differences are unimportant?
And then there’s the excerpt you already called bullshit on. To paraphrase: We didn’t ask why non-trans people aren’t open to dating trans people, but can we all just agree it’s because they are mean and bigoted? Yes? Agreed? Good. So ordered.
You know what, I’m not really including cis-women in my dating pool, either. I don’t include Trump voters in my dating pool. I don’t include serial rapists in my dating pool. I don’t include people who kick puppies in my dating pool. I don’t include incels in my dating pool (not that they would be willing to date an overweight 58 year old with a doctorate, anyway). I don’t include people who rape and pillage the environment in my dating pool. I don’t include people who shoot big cats for the fun of it in my dating pool. I don’t include fundamentalist Christians in my dating pool. Why? Because I am not attracted to people who are in those groups.
I guess it’s lucky I’m married and not dating, because I would definitely be branded as “non-woke”.
I’d be willing to bet that that figure is the same or higher than the 87.5% figure for everyone else. It would rather spoil the argument in favour of more wokeness and inclusion if those for whom we are supposed to be woke and inclusive are as bigotted and transphobic as everyone else.
Kinda spoils the argument from wokeness if you have to actually admit that sexual attraction really is sexual attraction. Funny how gender critical types are pilloried for their concern about biological sex, which is portrayed by TRAs as a single-minded focus on genitals, when we have this paper that studiously avoids them in an instance where they are actually central to the topic at hand.
As a straight female exclusively attracted to straight males, I guess I’ve always been insufficiently appreciative of the fact that gay men and women never seemed to view that, in itself, as a form of homophobia. So a belated thanks to those whom I should thank.
From another summary of the same study (https://www.them.us/story/cis-trans-dating):
So 6.23 of the 7 people apparently. #MathIsHard
It’s kind of embarrassing if any trans people don’t want to date trans people. They so completely buy in to this theory that people can change their sex that they do it themselves, then when asked if they’d date a person like that, they say, “ick, no”?
I do believe the percentage of trans people willing to date other trans people is pretty high though. But perhaps that’s due to the only trans person I know personally, who is a transwoman who exclusively dates other transwomen. They all consider themselves lesbians. They live in a major west coast city and there seems to be a large community of people like this, since their twitter feeds are full of mentions of other “cute couple” friends that also seem to all be transwomen.
I wouldn’t, just because that person’s understanding of how the world works would be so different from my own that we wouldn’t be able to communicate meaningfully.
The wording there: “pre-existing ability to look beyond gender when choosing a partner” implies that bisexuality or heterosexuality is an “ability” that could otherwise be learned, gained or developed if one tries hard enough. We as a society FINALLY JUST arrived at the realization that conversion therapy is harmful and doesn’t work, and enacted legislation to stop the practice and bury the idea for good — and barely a moment later the kids have dug it back up and are throwing it in me and my fellow G’s and L’s faces all the fuck over again. And to my horror, it’s the FUCKING LEFT endorsing it this time.
How far are they going to take this assertion that everyone ought to be sexually attracted to people of both sexes? Are woke therapists going to start treating guilt-tripped lesbians in an effort to cure them of their inner transphobia for not wanting to be fucked by be-wigged straight males?
Oh, by all means, Professor Blair, please continue to publicize your “research.” Please get more and more attention for your views that straight men are obligated to date trans women or be branded bigots. That’s going to work out REAL well for your cause.
Repeating what ArtyMorty said, with emphasis, because it’s so right:
We as a society FINALLY JUST arrived at the realization that conversion therapy is harmful and doesn’t work, and enacted legislation to stop the practice and bury the idea for good — and barely a moment later the kids have dug it back up and are throwing it in me and my fellow G’s and L’s faces all the fuck over again. And to my horror, it’s the FUCKING LEFT endorsing it this time.
Standing ovation for Artymorty.
Shun! SHUNNNNNNNN-nuh-nuh!
And now for a moment of pedantry:
I’d be very leery of using the phrase “conversion therapy” without qualifying it “gay” or “homosexual”, because TRAs want to position any treatment for GID/GD that isn’t “affirming” as a form of conversion therapy.
Me earlier:
I stand corrected. Thanks.
It will certainly get the attention of many people (e.g. men) who have until now ignored the pressures that lesbians are under to submit to ladydique or be branded transphobes.
not Bruce, #14. Not necessarily corrected; note the qualifier – transgender or non-binary. According to Blair’s list, above, non-binary is seperate from transgender, so we still don’t know the actual figure for trans people alone.
They professed to be willing to date another trans person. But how many actually have? And out of the ones who actually have dated a trans person, how many did so out of politeness or peer pressure within contemporary “queer” culture? I know of two homosexual people who have dated opposite-sex trans people but privately confessed to me that they were not at all attracted to them and secretly found the sex very unpleasant. They probably only dated them out of a sense of obligation. They sound exactly like the countless gay men and women I know who forced themselves to have sex with opposite-sex partners before they came out of the closet to satisfy the expectations of straight culture.
And did you notice that that figure mysteriously clumps transgender and nonbinary people together? Perhaps that’s to inflate the figure: I would expect the kind of people who are inclined to declare themselves “nonbinary” are apt to also be the kind of people who would profess to be sex-blind in their sexual preferences because they think it’s virtuous and post-“binary” to say so. Quite frankly, if you took the nonbinaries out, I bet the number of trans-identifiers willing to have same-sex relationships with other trans identifiers would be lower, because study after study over decades and in different countries has shown that the majority of trans-identified people are heterosexual males.
I’m also going to point out that there are two definitions of ‘transwoman’ and ‘transman’ that could easily be getting conflated here. The older one that was exclusively for born-men who had actually ‘transitioned’–that is to say, had undergone hormone therapy, psychotherapy and finally surgical transition. Then there’s the modern ‘transgender’ usage that is tied solely to self-identification. I wonder how many of the ‘yes’ respondents were thinking in that original usage.
Because I will be honest, as a straight man, I have little trouble thinking of a post-surgical transwoman as a viable romantic partner, so long as they were otherwise compatible socially. But yes, I would say “hell, no” to a “transwoman” who still is swinging low.
From that summary of the study
I don’t understand why they find these results surprising. Straight women who are prepared to sleep with a trans person are opting for a person with a male body. They are opting for the real life sex of the person, not the professed gender identity. Similarly, gay men selecting a trans woman are actually opting to date a male body – their default preference, while straight men opting to date a trans man are opting for a female body as are lesbians opting for a trans man. Altogether completely unsurprising.
Hmmm, just reading Freemage’s comment above, I guess I’m presupposing that full or indeed any transition has not occurred and that it’s largely a matter of identity. More fine grained data required from the responders I think.
@Freemage,
That’s all well and good. And frankly yes, it’s nice to hear that you’re open-minded about such things. But I feel compelled to point out yet again: you’re really not the issue here, because the majority of trans-activists are heterosexual males (with no interest in straight males like you) and that’s why these battlegrounds are about women’s boundaries.
You typically don’t hear homosexual-male transwomen making angry demands that straight men find them attractive. The problem is heterosexual-male transwomen trying to make women — lesbians — redefine their boundaries to accommodate straight blokes with a variation of heterosexualism that to many lesbians doesn’t look or feel anything like lesbianism. Yes, there are homosexual transsexuals, too, but you exemplify exactly why that doesn’t lead to as many conflicts: you recognize in yourself that as a straight male, these people may in fact be effeminate enough that with a touch of surgery you’d be willing to accept them in your dating pool, which is what they desire, and is their primary motive for transitioning. All good, but somewhat beside the point I guess.
“While the study did not ask participants about their reasons for including or excluding trans persons, the authors speculated that exclusion was likely the result of factors ranging from explicit transprejudice…”
Why?
If there were a survey of gay men and they said they would never date a woman, should we speculate that this is because of misogyny?
@Ben McGorrigan #21
Exactly.
(1), due to being female… (2) due to same, provided she has not physically transitioned. (3) but only the female ones. Hey I wonder if there is a common – and blindingly obvious – thread here.
Talk about well-poisoning! I’m sure there are some that believe this, mostly from conservative evangelicals and such. But where is the speculation on other much more reasonable motivations? Absent, and so the reader just has that suggestion of massive bigotry floated in front of them.
I distinctly recall this coming up on pharyngula… luckily, PZ had a handy excuse: he’s married and so did not have to answer the question.
The study did not allow for trans people with a non-binary gender identification. Or maybe they did. I don’t know the “woke” terms for distinguishing NB people who’ve had or desire medical/surgical sex “reassignment”.
Artymorty, thanks for your references to studies. Clarification please:
That does seem to be the case, but certainly there are trans activists pushing binders and mastectomies and testosterone for girls. Are any significant number of these activists of them TIFs? (I couldn’t off the top of my head name one, so my guess is no.)
Similarly, a lot of recent focus has been on ROGD and social contagion, often among girls. It seems a lot of trans-identified young people are homosexual girls. Do you have any information about that?
Off-topic for this subject, but I came across this article about an all-women’s group for women struggling with alcoholism and thought some here would be interested to read about how that can be helpful for women.
https://www.minnpost.com/mental-health-addiction/2019/08/with-its-new-center-for-womens-recovery-the-retreat-addresses-the-needs-of-women-fighting-addiction/
I have had some discussions with a person close to me who believes they may be trans, and they are deep within the trans community now. I discovered that there is little acceptance of the realities. This individual believes that all the cases that are happening are surgically altered people that a lesbian has already been attracted to, and refuses sex once finding out they are trans, even though there are no male organs present. I suspect this belief is widespread among people who prefer not to look at the realities of what the TRAs are demanding. It’s their way of dealing with cognitive dissonance.
@iknklast #27:
How much do you think the TRAs’ mastery of the motte & bailey tactic plays a part in that effect? What about the problem of epistemic closure? It seems as though cognitive dissonance acts as a reason that knowledge isn’t closed under known entailment in this case. After all, it’s often publicly stated that trans is an umbrella term for, well, everything under the sun, and yet the modus ponens isn’t evaluated. So obviously it’s only post-operative transwomen who are being rejected.
We all rule out all sorts of people as potential romantic partners (or potential fuck buddies, for that matter) for all sorts of reasons. Hell, I rule out anyone who answers “Yes” the the question “Do you consider astrological sign important in a match?” on OkCupid. WE ARE ALLOWED TO HAVE OUR OWN IDIOSYNCRATIC STANDARDS FOR WHAT WE FIND ATTRACTIVE OR UNATTRACTIVE IN A POTENTIAL ROMANTIC PARTNER! There might be some standards I can imagine criticizing, such as someone who refuses to date anyone of a different ethnicity or rejects everyone of some specific ethnicity. But even then I wouldn’t be criticizing the dating preference so much as the racial bigotry which clearly underlies it. And what underlies this particular preference is not bigotry at all.
There is nothing at all idiosyncratic in me, a heterosexual male, finding people with penises completely unattractive and not even a potential option for a romantic partner. If I were, I would be bisexual or homosexual, not heterosexual. It’s called “sexual preference” rather than “gender self-identification preference” for good reason, and no amount of putative wokeness is likely to have any actual impact on anyone’s sexual preference no matter how much whining people like Blair do about it.