Ask Lemmy

Thanks for this post and the comments!

There are several valuable new aspects and perspectives to be found, at least for me.

It's perfectly valid to have preferences on both presented gender and genitalia. Some people only prefer masculine or feminine presentation but are good with whatever hardware; others care less about presentation but have strong preferences on what a partner is packing. Others care about both, others are good with whatever.

Where someone might need to be tactful is if they prefer someone whose genetalia is opposite of that typically possessed by that gender. There's nothing inherently wrong with that preference, but trans folks have been fetishized and objectivized in the past, and anyone with those preferences would need to be particularly sensitive to that.

Consider this; if a guy says he's straight, that means he's into women, right?

Which means he's attracted to every single woman who has ever existed, regardless of appearance, body type, hair, age, skin colour, weight....

Obviously not. That would be insane. So these categories aren't absolute or all encompassing.

What about a guy who says he likes blondes. Does that mean he's never allowed to be attracted to a redhead? If his blonde girlfriend dyes her hair, does she suddenly become absolutely repulsive? If a girl he otherwise has no attraction dyes her hair blonde is he automatically going to find her sexy as hell?

So if someone says they're straight, that's really about as meaningful as saying you like blondes. It, broadly, expresses a preference. Nothing more.

The only difference is that societally, we're taught to treat one of these things as absolutely fundamental to our identity and the other as largely inconsequential. But in truth they both carry about as much weight.

The reality is, you're attracted to who you're attracted to. That's all there is to it. The idea of trying to define your sexuality, in any absolute way, is completely pointless. You are you. There has never been anyone else exactly like you in the history of the universe and there will never be anyone exactly like you ever again. Your preferences are as unique as you are. So whether you prefer the term gay, straight, bi, pan, queer or anything else just doesn't matter. It's only a way of communicating a general concept, nothing more.

Now, I want to be absolutely clear about something here; I am not suggesting that these words are not important. They are, because the ideas that they communicate can change someone's life. But they're only important as a tool for communication; they don't define, and they should never constrain.

So if you think of yourself as straight and then one day you meet a pre-op trans woman and think she's the hottest person you've ever met in your life, it's up to you to define for yourself what that means. It's absolutely no one else's business.

People who are attracted to trans people are far more likely to only be attracted to our hormonal sex than to only be attracted to our assigned sex at birth.

In general in queer spaces it's understood that sexual orientation respects gender identity, for example I like both cis and trans women, but have no desire for anyone with a testosterone dominant body, and I identify as a lesbian.

Some people aren't into trans people of their preferred gender, just like some people aren't into fat people of their preferred gender. In general the rules of politeness that one would follow for the latter should go for the former.

Honestly? To a certain extent it makes gendered words fairly useless as broadly descriptive words. Instead it lands on the level of names. The meaning remaining is a word someone chose for themselves. This, in turn, also makes the gender-based words for sexuality broadly useless.

Looking at myself for instance - I could quite possibly be sexually attracted to someone who had fully female sexual characteristics while identifying as a man, whilst I've never found myself attracted to a person with fully male or even someone with a rather small subset of visible male sexual characteristics identifying as a woman.

What does that mean for my sexual orientation? I don't know. I usually describe it as hetero/straight, simply because that is what most often fits and I have more important problems to think about, so good enough.

You love who you love. You have sex with whomever you have sex with. You remain human in any case. What value comes from trying to define a 'straight perspective'?

I would see this as the term straight and gay not being a complete description of one's sexuality and leaving some ambiguities. If you're a man and you say you're straight then it's clear you like cis women. Doesn't mean that you necessarily like trans women. At the same time if you are straight and like trans women you are no less straight. If youre straight and like trans women and you want that fact to be explicitly clear you have to add something to the single word description straight. Same would apply to the word gay or lesbian.

I think this is asking for clear categorization of what sends clearly to be a spectrum of humanity. I'm married. I won't fuck anyone else. So from your point of view am I gay or straight? Ace? How my spouse identifies is none of your business. What they have in their pants only I and Schrödinger know. Whether we even fuck at all is unknowable to you. Does that make a difference to you?

Suddenly you can't define me without knowing things about other people. So is your definition about me or them? Like, to what end are you trying to put folks in boxes?

I kinda get it. When I was younger these sorts of questions fascinated me as well. But I'm older now and I've been friends with straight folks and gay and trans, watched an old friend transition. I don't care any more. They are doing the thing that makes them happy. I don't need to understand it. I don't even really need to know what it is.

Sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation are all distinct.

it’s like, all arbitrary, dude

Tautological definitions clarify nothing.

What matters is what someone means with a word. If someone says they're straight, what do they mean?

Yes, I think part of the idea is that causation between sexuality and gender expression is an outdated notion. As in, we know for a fact that sexuality is more complicated than "Has male parts -> has male expression/preferences" and "has female parts -> has female expression/preferences", because intersex people exist. We know the biological mechanisms responsible for this kind of decision making are more complicated than we understand. I don't think that's saying cishet people don't exist (I'm one), it's just saying that not being cishet is also a normal and acceptable form for humans.

If you want a real mind bender consider intersex people. They are also a minority, smaller than trans as a group, but also have a lot of discrimination and ambiguity from the binary view of sex and gender. Some intersex people have indeterminate genitals, others have mixed features, and some rare few have something close to both sets of organs. They may have a gender which aligns with one or the other general gender presentations, they also may not. It is really a full range of possible outcomes.

They also have some major historical, and current, bigotry around how they are seen and interacted with. Many people with indeterminate genitals are operated on by surgeons based in the surgeons best guess for the sex of the child, not based even on genetic details like karyotype, XX or XY. Sometimes the parents are told that their child had a small abnormality and it needed medical correction, but this is just to make the child fit typical sex norms, not for medical necessity. The surgeries can be very harmful to the child and may lead to difficulties later in life, especially around puberty, where they end up having been "corrected" to a sex which does not align with their gender identity.

Past all the horror, what is the sexual preference of someone who dates an intersex person? This is where externally applied and rigid categories fail. If a cis man is interested in an intersex person who has male genitalia but presents and identifies as female is this straight attraction? The woman here is clearly a woman in all ways bar genitals, so a casual or even in depth check without going under clothes will not identify any difference from female. The woman identifies as a woman, the man sees her as a woman, and she behaves as a woman in all ways bar sex and toileting. Straight doesn't really have to exclude this relationship, but also it may be a bad rigid category, it may be better to say the man is on the straight end and likes fem people. It also may be best to not look for a single word or term and just describe things, saying this guy likes fem people but isn't repulsed by typically male genitals.

I think the language here is hard because we are trying to fit messy reality into boxes. Fascism relies on this simple categorisation of people to form boxes for control and regulation of people. We don't actually have to do this. We can just describe the world we find and use labels loosely to act as a shorthand, not a prescription. Someone could be described based on their behaviours but not have that result in a demand for consistency. As you say, no need to yuck someone else's yum, but I think also no need to define their yum into a tiny box because it is convenient, let them yum without labels and allow yourself the same.

a person who says “I crave girl dick” is
bisexual

Something else that I think is an important part of this discussion, especially in regard to family members, is long-term medical issues.

There are a lot of medical conditions that are gender-specific, especially with aging. For one example, an FTM transitioned individual will likely still experience menopause. That is the actual menopause condition, not just similar symptoms. An MTF individual may experience menopause-like symptoms due to complications with estrogen therapy. Evidence also suggests that transgender women have the same risk of cardiovascular issues as the general male population:

Evidence from several studies suggests that cardiovascular risk is unchanged among transgender men using testosterone compared with non-transgender women. Evidence in transgender women is less clear. Some studies have found increased morbidity and mortality from myocardial infarction and stroke compared with non-transgender men, however these studies did not adjust for a number of risk factors including tobacco use, obesity, and diabetes.

https://transcare.ucsf.edu/guidelines/cardiovascular

Functionally, if you were born male then your cardiovascular system is still the same. However, as noted in this study there is not a large body of research on this specific subject and there are many complicating factors, so the above conclusion is tentative. Hopefully we will get more research and better statistics, but long-term studies are slow.

Unfortunately these issues don't go away just because you look and feel different now - we just don't have the technology to make real changes to your genetics, not yet anyway.

If you are transitioning, obviously you're having a lot of conversations with your medical team about all of this. I would encourage you to please also discuss it with your family. They won't have all the specifics that you do about the side effects unless you talk to them about it.

If your family is disassociating with you because of your transition - first of all I am very, very sorry and I hope you either have or find some new family. Please please make an effort to have a person in your life (other than a medical professional) who you can trust enough to discuss your medical situation with. I know it's very personal, but like... everybody needs care and support, and to get that you need other people with patience and understanding, and to have understanding you need communication. Talk to people who care about you, and give them at least some of the specifics. And really... you need that care and support from someone directly involved in your personal life, not just the trans community on the internet. You need someone who can look at you and see that you are struggling.

Sexual orientation is also a self-identity. I don't think it's necessary to specifically address to a child all the possible varieties. Just "respect people no matter what label they go by".

Next, have fun learning that sexual behavior is different than sexual orientation, and sexual attraction is different than romantic attraction. Too many possible combinations and interpretations, just go with what people label themselves as.

I don't understand your question. Let's stay away from gender identity - are you suggesting that a lesbian somehow isn't a woman because womanhood is for some reason tied to finding men sexually attractive?

And if not - isn't it obvious how gender identity and sexuality are two separate things?

People identify as they identify: People will believe whatever they want, about themselves and the world, yes.

A woman is what she tells you she is: Huh? Am I a good husband if I beat my wife if I tell you I am? An honest man if I lie about it? How does that even work? Reality and speech can go hand in hand, but they definitely don't have to! And if you're saying "a woman is a person who tells you she is a woman", then no, again, if being the female or male part of the human species means anything to anyone, the same way that being the female cannabis plant or male dog mean things to people, then, once more: reality CAN go hand in hand with speech but it doesn't have to, specially so if these labels don't mean anything concrete to me because it's in my emotional interest for them not to.

I didn't understand much of the question but I just needed to clarify that. At the end of the day, whatever you like, if you're not coercing or manipulating anyone and you care for the person beyond the pleasure their genitals give you, what can I or anyone truly criticise you for? Even if I don't understand, I cannot hate you for it in earnest, you aren't hurting anyone, and I cannot even care that much about it. Regardless of how the West feels about sex and lust, people are waaaaaaay more than just that (or at least they should be, what vacuous lives would they have otherwise...). 🤷‍♂️