A giant in the field

Comments

13 responses to “A giant in the field”

1. 

   Omar

   Mar 10, 2026 7:15 AM

   The lunatics appear tohave taken control of the asylum. (Sorry, lunatics, for that insult.)
2. 

   Your Name’s not Bruce?

   Mar 10, 2026 7:43 AM

   The book, published Feb. 24 by the University of California Press, draws on hundreds of Reddit conversations about transgender women and their sexuality and dating experiences, as well as from 48 qualitative interviews conducted over Zoom with trans women and trans femmes — trans people who identify with a feminine gender expression.

   Interesting. For something that aspires to “liberate” humans from the tyrrany of sexual identity, this seems so to be strangely blinkered and unidirectional. Why aren’t trans-identified women ‘s “sexuality and dating experiences” being similarly polled? It’s not like any book like this is going to make people suddenly abandon the idea of sexual orientation, and indiscriminately start fucking anyone and everyone. The only point I see in this little exercize is to provide an intellectual underpinning to demands and pressure by trans identified males to be included in the dating pools of lesbians. This looks like it’s just a book-length rationale and justification for corrective rape.
3. 

   iknklast

   Mar 10, 2026 8:42 AM

   the fact that we keep creating new identities — such as gynosexual, finsexual, sapiosexual, asexual, or pansexual — shows how these categories fail to capture the full complexities of gender, sexuality, and desire

   the fact that we keep creating new identities — such as gynosexual, finsexual, sapiosexual, asexual, or pansexual — shows how desperate we are to be noticed and affirmed as special.
4. 

   What a Maroon

   Mar 10, 2026 9:42 AM

   Finsexual? Does that mean someone who is sexually attracted to fish?
5. 

   Ophelia Benson

   Mar 10, 2026 9:54 AM

   Or is it someone who likes to do sex fish-style?

   Or people who like to combine sex with a fish dinner?
6. 

   guest

   Mar 10, 2026 10:14 AM

   @4 I’m sorry to report that our local Green party, and other organisations that follow along, now use the acronym FINT (female, intersex, nonbinary and trans) as a catchall for anyone who isn’t, I guess, a self-identified male person. So we no longer have exhibitions, anthologies, shortlists, spaces, etc. for women, but rather for FINT (i.e. we have ‘male’ and ‘other’).
7. 

   Wes

   Mar 10, 2026 10:20 AM

   Ophelia i was just about to send this you.

   1. My framing would be: First they come for ‘’women’’ now coming for ‘’gay” and “lesbian”: i.e. first queer or destroy or dismantle the sex category/class of “women” and now do so for “gay” and “lesbians”

   The key message, see links below, is

   “University of California, Riverside associate professor Brandon Robinson argued that a sexual identity label like “gay” or “lesbian” “harms trans people” and called for abolishing sexual identities altogether….“If being ‘gay’ means being a man attracted to men, it assumes ‘man’ is a stable, inherent category, when history shows the definition of manhood is constantly changing,” Robinson said. “Gender essentialism also harms trans people, who often complicate those binary boundaries.” Robinson included traditional labels like “gay” or “lesbian” as ones to abolish, wanting readers to question “why we privilege gender and genitals above all other attributes” in our desires.

   2. And the professor’s response to the damage to the political communities is basically who cares, what trans people demand comes first , regardless of collateral or intended damage to gay and lesbians and their political communities:

   From the interview:

   But if you get rid of these labels [“gay” “lesbian”] , don’t you risk dismantling the communities that have formed under their rubrics and, by extension, the political protections that marginalized people have fought for decades to gain?

   Robinson: I think the risk is worth it. [!?!??!?!?!?] While those communities are important, moving beyond those labels allows us to see people more accurately. It leads to a more complex — and more biologically [!?!?!?!?] accurate — understanding of ourselves as human beings. It allows us to explore our desires beyond labels that often confine and constrain us. And it allows us to explore our desires beyond shame that often comes with many labels as well.

   3. Some links:

   the link that you started with which is the interview: https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2026/03/06/scholar-makes-case-moving-beyond-sexual-labels

   some news coverage:

   https://www.wfmd.com/2026/03/09/california-professor-calls-to-abolish-identities-like-gay-and-lesbian-since-they-harm-trans-people/

   California professor calls to abolish identities like ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ since they ‘harm trans people’

   https://thefightmag.com/2026/03/the-end-of-labels-brandon-andrew-robinson-argues-sexual-identity-is-a-prison-for-desire/

   this is the brand new book https://www.amazon.com/Trans-Pleasure-Gender-Liberation-Freedom-ebook/dp/B0G4VHPDV6/ref=sr_1_1?

   professor’s background and research:

   https://profiles.ucr.edu/app/home/profile/brandonr
8. 

   iknklast

   Mar 10, 2026 11:13 AM

   wanting readers to question “why we privilege gender and genitals above all other attributes” in our desires

   Because evolution. Because sexual reproduction. Because…lots of reasons, but those are the real dynamics that underlies things we don’t know we are doing. Because we are a sexually reproducing species, it requires that two individuals who mate have opposite reproductive structures if they wish to ever have children. Evolution fits us to have children, and that remains true even though some of us can’t.

   Also, I would argue that sexual pleasure is strongly tied to genitals. If someone has genitals that do not bring you pleasure, why should you not ignore those genitals and find someone who can bring you pleasure?

   The church became large and powerful by controlling people’s biological urges: food and sex. If you can get people to deny those, they are likely yours. Now trans wants to do the same thing, though they only care about sex.
9. 

   Artymorty

   Mar 10, 2026 11:22 AM

   . Why get rid of labels like gay or lesbian when many people have found them useful for understanding themselves and finding a sense of belonging?

   Robinson: It’s a several-fold argument. First, I want people to question why we privilege gender and genitals above all other attributes — like height or race — when we conceptualize our sexual identity.

   Why do we privilege sex and genitals in our sexual activity? Because that’s the fucking point of sexual activity. Sex is about sex. Sex matters when it comes to sex. Imagine that. Notice he (if he’s even a he) won’t even use the word sex. What a nutjob.

   Secondly, these categories often rely on gender essentialism. If being “gay” means being a man attracted to men, it assumes “man” is a stable, inherent category, when history shows the definition of manhood is constantly changing.

   Sex is a stable category, and it’s not the same thing as gender. There. That was easy. Book refuted in one tidy sentence.

   Gender essentialism also harms trans people, who often complicate those binary boundaries.

   Trans people are complicating it all by themselves. The concept of “trans” is the wrench in the works. It’s the bogus invention that doesn’t fit into the rest of the world, not the other way around. Stop trying to dismantle the entire world to make your pseudoscience construct of “transness” fit into it.

   What’s worse is that trans people are living proof that sex matters to everyone. If sex didn’t matter, trans people wouldn’t obsess over their pronouns all fucking day long. It’s just that they’ve concocted folk tales to try and make sense of sex, because they can’t face the reality of it.

   There are two harsh realities that trans believers can’t face. The first is that in our species, the human sex drive, hard-wired as it is, is also prone to glitches: same-sex attraction and self-sexual-attraction. Some humans are born with a hard-wired attraction to members of the same sex; some humans are born with a hard-wired attraction to their own bodies. Some of these sexual outliers cling to the trans folk tale in order to make sense and meaning of their predicament, when what they should do instead is come to grips with reality and then get on with life.

   The second harsh reality is that there’s broad overlap and deviation in male and female behaviours, but that doesn’t make the sexes indistinguishable. We can tell masculine women apart from men, and we can tell feminine men apart from women. And our sex drives are biologically wired to go for the sex of the body, not the “gender” of the personality or the clothes.

   This causes a huge problem for the self-sexual-attracted men, who are wired up for a deep sexual desire that they can never ever ever have: they desperately want to be female, but their sex drives can tell that they aren’t, because no matter how much they “gender” themselves up in women’s clothing and appearance, the deep-down sex drive can still see that they’re male and it’s refusing to release the sexual reward they want so badly. Because the sex drive works on sex, not gender, you see. So these men try and “trick” their own brains into believing that gender overrides sex, and they think if they can get the whole world to undo the concept of sex and replace it with gender, their sex drives will finally unlock that great orgasm they’re chasing.

   Entire university departments and HR departments and activist organizations are now run by men with glitchy sex drives, tearing the entire world to pieces in an effort to maximize their orgasms.

   It sounds utterly insane. And it’s completely true.

   What a fucking world!
10. 

    What a Maroon

    Mar 10, 2026 1:29 PM

    Or is it someone who likes to do sex fish-style?

    Isn’t that Onanism?

    @guest,

    So basically women weren’t sufficiently marginalized? Ugh.
11. 

    What a Maroon

    Mar 10, 2026 1:52 PM

    …it assumes “man” is a stable, inherent category, when history shows the definition of manhood is constantly changing.

    (Emphasis added.) Well, yes. “Man” and “manhood” are not the same thing. That’s why that “-hood” is there–to change the meaning. That’s the whole point of derivative affixes–they change the meaning of the word. In the case of “-hood”, it takes a relatively concrete noun and makes it more abstract. “Man” (in the sense of “vir”) is a stable, inherent category–it refers to an adult, human male. “Manhood” is something more abstract–it refers to all the sociocultural norms that attach to men, and yes, that changes over time and place. Henry VIII was considered an exemplar of European manliness in his time, but there aren’t many men running around these days who look like this (though sadly there are still many who act a lot like him).
12. 

    Omar

    Mar 10, 2026 4:27 PM

    And the fact that we keep creating new identities — such as gynosexual, finsexual, sapiosexual, asexual, or pansexual — shows how these categories fail to capture the full complexities of gender, sexuality, and desire.

    I take it that ‘pansexual’ sex is the hottest sex of all: as in a fryimg pan. But the said pan would have to be the size of a double bed. Might take a bit of shopping around to find one.
13. 

    Sastra

    Mar 11, 2026 9:21 AM

    “The fact that we keep creating new identities” shows that we ought to stop creating new identities.

    It used to be that there were a few insufferable people who claimed to be above noticing the categories humans fall into. “All I see are people” the holistic adepts would say, “I’ve gone beyond labels and divisions.” Benign smile.

    Back then they were narcissist who kept it to themselves and knew their place: it was above the rest of humanity. They weren’t trying to change the world. It was up to the world to marvel and appreciate THEM.

    Social justice ruined it.