Even Adrian Harrop can see it.
I‘ve stayed out of a certain discussion today — if you know, you know. However, what I will say is that it’s so disappointing to see such disrespect & division between folks within our community. I hope that folks will, in the fullness of time, try to find some common ground.
There is always room for debate and disagreement. Everyone sees things through the prism of their own life experience, and often our individual “takes” will come into conflict with one another. But please — for want of a better expression — let’s try to keep it above the belt.
When folks make things personal, & make disparaging or disrespectful remarks about each other, it does nothing to serve the needs of the wider community. Indeed, doing so tends to feed ammunition to our shared enemies, who’ll have been gleefully observing this whole thing unfold.
Above which belt? McKinnon explains the belt:
No preferences are inherent and immutable.
Here’s the thing I think some of people’s opposition to this is about sexual orientation. I don’t think sexual orientation is inherent or immutable either.
Hear me out.
No seriously.
But it sounds like what homophobes have been saying to same-sex attracted people for decades…a small improvement on throwing them into prison, but still a long way from Not Telling Them Which Genitals To Desire.
But ok, let’s hear McKinnon out:
I think people bristle & boch at this because they think saying this means that non-heterosexual orientation arr not valid. No. That does not follow at all. That is not an implication of what I just said. It’s a mistake to think that it is.
Uncareful people I think that this is the same thing as homophobic people saying that non hetero sexual orientations are unnatural and so you should just change to being hetero. I’m not saying that at all. Kind of literally the opposite.
I actually think any sexual orientation other than pan is immoral because sexual genital preferences immoral. But that means I think hetero people are just as bad off.
In other words…everyone on the planet should get rid of genital preferences entirely, and that way trans people will no longer have such difficulty finding people willing to have sex with them. Seems fair.
“Faith Naff” replies:
I’m just thinking about all the gay people who’ve felt pressured to be attracted to their opposite gender but simply don’t, and have been bullied, ostracized, and killed for it. To then imply that their complete lack of opposite sex attraction is immoral feels like further harm.
Right? It’s fine to do that to “cis” women…but anyone else? Hey now!
That’s where Harrop comes in.
Same. I feel like I’m being labelled here — as a gay man — as being somewhat problematic or “immoral” for being exclusively attracted to other men. I feel like I deal with enough of that kind of oppressive & invalidating rhetoric already, & I feel somewhat attacked by it tbh [feeling attacked emojis not included]
McKinnon:
Do you think it’s wrong for someone, who is sexually orientated to include men, not to date a trans man because he has a vagina?
If no, then we can stop there for now. If yes, why?
Harrop:
tbh, a guy’s genitals *are* a factor in whether I find them sexually attractive or not – in the same way that many other aspects of a guy’s physicality type are. I’d theoretically be open to challenging these “preferences”, but I’m not going to pretend it wouldn’t be difficult…
… the idea that this gets me labelled as immoral or transphobic is frankly, ridiculous. And let’s face it, if you’re making someone like me feel this way & start to doubt himself, god knows how folks less familiar with this discourse would feel looking in from the outside.
Or…women? How women would feel looking in from the outside? Is that relevant at all? Or nah?
Nah, of course. There was an attempt:
So now you know how Lesbians have been feeling all along. Congratulations.
But naturally it was ignored.
