No, Having Genital Preferences for Dating Doesn’t Mean You’re Anti-Trans

One of my biggest issues with transgender activism is the way activists attempt to control other people’s sexual preferences. There is a obvious problem that will occur for most transpeople when it comes to sexual relationships. To put it bluntly, they likely will not have the sex organs their potential partners find arousing. Some transpeople take offense to this rejection, arguing that some women have penises and some men have vaginas.

This is biologically inaccurate. The scientific method we use to determine sex is based on our chromosome patterns and how humans as a species reproduce. Our genitals are what indicate externally that we are a dimorphic, i.e. two-sex, species. Males, precluding some genetic abnormality, have testes and penises. Females have ovaries, uteruses, and vaginas. This may not fit with the political arguments made by the transcommunity, however, it is biologically accurate.

As a result of this biology, most people will prefer one of the sexes and expect that sex to possess the corresponding sex organs. It is not biased to assume this anymore than it is biased to assume humans would prefer another human as a sexual partner.

Yet Riley Dennis argues that a person wanting a woman with a vagina is “anti-trans”. Dennis created a video, however, below is a transcript. Dennis starts by playing word games:

Feminist explains why it’s “okay” to objectify men

Who does not love a good double standard?

One would think that movement supposedly built around respecting people’s agency and humanity would avoid anything that would make it appear they do not follow their own standards. For example, if a movement argued that it was wrong to sexually objectify one sex because reducing a person to an object is inhumane, one would expect this to apply to the other sex as well.

Yet one would be wrong. Sabrina Maddeaux argued in a National Post article that it is perfectly fine to sexually objectify men because it is “different”. As she explained:

Male objectification isn’t threatening because men don’t suffer from a severe power imbalance that puts them at risk economically, socially and physically.

A two minute Google search proves this wrong. People judge whether to hire, date, or befriend men based on the men’s appearance. The notion that unattractive men have it easy or that men’s appearances have little impact on how people treat them is nonsense. The evidence suggests that unattractive men do face severe power imbalances due to their looks.

We do not even need to look at studies to demonstrate this. We can follow Maddeaux’s model and use movie stars. Actors like Paul Giamatti and Steve Buscemi do not headline most films. They are fantastic actors, yet they are rarely given the leading man role.

Let us use another example: Aaron Paul.

Lauren Southern: Dude Look Like a Lady

I do enjoy when someone turns another person’s logic against them. Lauren Southern had an exchange with a protester recently after the Deploraball. The protester’s point was that the event was sexist, and after making several arguments and getting shut down by Southern, she turned to claiming that the event only featured one woman. She figured this was a winning argument. She was wrong:

A Difficult Marriage

I came across an article written by a woman raised by lesbian mothers. Heather Barwick argued in her piece that while she supports the gay community, she no longer supports gay marriage. She stated:

Growing up, and even into my 20s, I supported and advocated for gay marriage. It’s only with some time and distance from my childhood that I’m able to reflect on my experiences and recognize the long-term consequences that same-sex parenting had on me. And it’s only now, as I watch my children loving and being loved by their father each day, that I can see the beauty and wisdom in traditional marriage and parenting.Same-sex marriage and parenting withholds either a mother or father from a child while telling him or her that it doesn’t matter. That it’s all the same. But it’s not. A lot of us, a lot of your kids, are hurting. My father’s absence created a huge hole in me, and I ached every day for a dad. I loved my mom’s partner, but another mom could never have replaced the father I lost.

According to Barwick, her mother married her father essentially to fit in. However, Barwick’s mother eventually came out, divorced her father, and found a woman to share her life with. Barwick’s father “wasn’t a great guy” and after her mother “left him he didn’t bother coming around anymore.”

That is a poor reason for failing to support gay marriage.

“Creep” shaming

There is a rule most boys learn by the time they reach high school: Be handsome. Be attractive. Don’t be unattractive.

When it comes to attracting the opposite sex, that rule is absolute. No matter how nice, how polite, or how respectful a man or boy behaves, his level of attraction plays the biggest role in whether the woman or girl will consider him likeable or creepy.

That reality poses a problem for feminists like Hugo Schwyzer. As he explains in a recent article:

What SNL played for laughs, many men (and some women) took – and still take – seriously: Some men can’t win with women, these people believe, no matter what they do or say. This attitude is best observed in the recent backlash against calling men “creepy.” […] Others argue that “creepiness” connotes something specific: male homeliness. […] I often hear something similar in my gender studies classes. […] Whenever the subject of sexual harassment or “creep-shaming” comes up in class, someone–almost always a man–makes the case that SNL was right: the only way for straight men to safely express sexual interest in women is to do so while following the skit’s three rules. With almost invariable bitterness, these young men complain that unless a guy has won striking good looks in the genetic lottery, he’s doomed to be rejected and seen as overstepping his boundaries, no matter what he does.

This eye-rolling response is nothing new for Schwyzer. He has previously expressed a disregard for men’s dating plights and condoned unfair suspicions about men by women. Schwyzer does not see this is a legitimate issue of unfairness on women’s part. Rather, he sees the “backlash” from men against being called creepy as “an unwillingness to accept [a woman’s right to decide whose attention she wants that has] given women unprecedented power to say ‘no’ to the lecherous and the predatory.”

Yet he provides no examples of anyone arguing anything remotely close to that straw man.

Pegging: The Answer to Misogyny?

Oh Hugo, Hugo, Hugo. Where do we begin? Let us start here:

Want to make straight men better in bed — and better feminist allies? The path may be simple: fuck them up the ass. According to one brand new book, the path to making men more compassionate, appreciative and playful may be straight through their butts.

Speaking as someone who had a feminist “fuck him up the ass” for quite some time when I was younger, I can assure people that it did not make me a “better feminist ally”, although it did prepare me for the kind of moronic logic Schwyzer uses in his article on Jezebel.

Schwyzer argues, using The Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure: Erotic Exploration for Men and Their Partners written by Charlie Glickman and Aislinn Emirzian, that “pegging”, the act of a woman using a strap-on dildo to anally penetrate a man, is “liberation from the masculine straitjacket, with happy consequences that extend well outside the bedroom.” As Schwyzer explains: