I would hope this wouldn’t be in question by anyone?
It doesn’t matter if whether it’s bigotry or not. Everyone is entitled to choose who they do and do not date, or enter into a relationship with.
If you only want to do people of a specific sex, or race, or religion, or hair colour, or zodiac sign or whatever: that is entirely your right to do so.
And if you feel discriminated against because someone won’t date you for being the wrong sex/race/hair colour/etc then tough shit. You don’t get to choose who other people are attracted to, or who other people want to date.
I stopped reading at “biologically male”. Uff.
This is commenting on Allison Bailey’s employment tribunal, where in this past week,
>a QC on the Bar Council’s ethics committee defended the concept of overcoming the “cotton ceiling” – the offensive idea that a lesbian’s lack of desire for trans women is rooted in bigotry rather than their same-sex attraction – and compared it to initiatives to promote racial integration in post-apartheid South Africa.
>It was Cathryn McGahey QC, a witness for Garden Court, who drew the analogy between this workshop (“Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling” run in Canada in 2012) exploring how “ideologies of transphobia and transmisogyny impact sexual desire” and South African racial integration and who implied it was possible in a non-coercive way to persuade a same-sex attracted lesbian she might want to have sex with a trans woman.
Ok ? Isn’t that obvious.
If I don’t want to date someone with ginger hair for example it’s not bigotry it’s my right to chose that doesn’t mean I am bigoted towards people with ginger hair.
The vast majority of trans women don’t want to force anyone to date them. No one in the wider trans community actully thinks that if you don’t want to sleep with them that’s discrimination. Genital preference is a thing and everyone knows that.
The backwards opionions of very few trans people, and the lies and overexaggerations spread by TERFs shoudnt be attributed to the wider community.
You can be as picky as you want when dating, and if you don’t want to be with a trans person for any reason at all then that’s fine. Just don’t be an asshole about it and nobody with a brain will call you a bigot.
Edit because this is annoying now.
Sexual orientation isnt a choice.
Gential preference is a term that has been used more recently to describe the potential issues that come up from a persons sex and gender/ gender presentation not being the same. I’m not saying you can pick what you like, that is just the term that is used.
If you don’t think trans women are women or that trans men are men for whatever reason, you don’t have to date them. That is the whole point of my comment.
You have the right to refuse to date anyone you want for any reason at all. If it comes from a place of transphobia, misunderstanding or not seeing the person as the gender they identify with, it doesn’t matter, you still are under no pressure to date them.
I’m literally telling you to do what you want lol.
If you dont want to date a person of a different race, thats up to you. But if you feel the need to go round telling people you don’t want to date a person of a different race, you’re gunna look racist.
all too often there is a (sometimes willful) failure to understand/accept the difference between *sex* and *gender-identity*
we don’t control what we’re attracted to; if a lesbians attraction is based on sex and not gender identity, that doesn’t mean she’s a bigot, surely
tired: quietly dating whoever you want, as is your right
wired: writing a five-page article in the observer about how your dating preferences are NORMAL, ACTUALLY and the WOKE MOB is OPPRESSING YOU and that GENDER IDEOLOGY is actually EVIL and that GENDER DYSPHORIA is MADE UP by the POWERFUL TRANS LOBBY so that they can use it as a stick to BEAT LESBIANS
You don’t need to open your eyes very far to see that:
Any person thinking it is ok to have an unwilling partner is off their head, and this cuts right across the board effecting everyone.
It ain’t in anyway trans specific.
Minorities are ruling us? Again? Omg where are going? Nonsense
[deleted]
Wouldn’t it depend on what your objection is, as to how seriously people take it? If you don’t like penises then you don’t have to date anyone with a penis. But if you are a lesbian faced with a transwoman who looks like Emily Blunt, who’s had surgery to build a vagina, at that point what are you objecting to? Feels like you are just not attracted to them on principal.
Like you are welcome to not be attracted to people with dark skin, but if you meet someone who bleached their skin are you going to turn them down because they used to have dark skin or because their natural skin tone is dark?
I don’t want to pressure anyone and I want to respect their personal choices. I just don’t get why you would turn people down over their chromosomes or body parts they used to have.
>This is not a fringe belief: the chief executive of LGBT charity Stonewall recently said in relation to a BBC story about lesbians feeling pressured into dropping their boundaries: “Sexuality is personal… but if, when dating, you are writing off entire groups like people of colour or trans people, it’s worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attraction.”
Wow this is an awful take. If you don’t want to date a transperson it’s because you haven’t spent enough time rethinking your opinion.
That’s a disgusting, infantising statement to make.
The next step is if you ever reject someone of x identity youre now a bigot and guilty of discrimination.
And if a lesbian desires a relationship with a trans women that is her right too, and if a trans woman goes out with either another trans woman or a cis woman that is a lesbian relationship.
Cis women with trans women as partners are frequently called “handmaidens” and “dick panderers” or denied their lesbian identity or said to be in a straight relationship, yet this misogynistic abuse is never drawn attention because abuse of trans people’s partners is considered as acceptable as abuse of trans people by our press.
Why is it *only* lesbians (bio women) being attacked??? You *never* hear this crap said to gay biological men – but nor should you!!
This trans movement stuff seems increasingly harmful to biological women in general whereas, yet again, biological men seem to get a pass. It’s tiring to hear.
I just don’t get why this is worth having a newspaper column about? It’s an argument which effects two small groups of the population, and I genuinely doubt we’re talking about more than a tiny minority of each group who have strong opinions on this. It’s like listening to your next door neighbours have a fight and then reading 2000 articles over the next year about why one of them is a danger to society. It’s crazy.
This is just another attempt to make trans people a bogeyman, trying and make people afraid of an incredibly marginalised group as a distraction to how fucked our planet is, give people a reason to vote against their economic interests about some nonsense culture war issue, and keep a tiny group of people who own so much of the worlds wealth in the luxury they’ve become accustomed too.
Very pro trans rights, am pansexual because that used to be a better term for people who were open to all genders before more recently where it has been changed that bisexual also covered trans. I’m also very pro egalitarianism, man woman or anything not within those limits should be equal. No race should be treated special.
But we cannot choose what we’re attracted to. It isn’t racist to not be turned on by say an Asian person and it isn’t racist to be more turned on by Asian people. If you’re only attracted to men you don’t suddenly hate women. If you have genital preferences then you don’t just choose it even if it is simply a preference for loose vaginas or small penises but if it is a genital type then you really cannot help it.
I believe people can discover new preferences and indeed discover changes in their preferences both as they get older and as they’re exposed to more experiences but that’s more learning something they didn’t already know about themselves than just outright changing. They’re under no obligation to even try and see if they enjoy it until they find themselves curious. Many who firmly choose their sexuality as an early teen grow older and realise it is something slightly different, some people realise they’re bi not gay and some realise they’re bi not straight but sometimes even people realise they’re gay not straight or straight not gay and it is some weird self imposed expectations that tilted their understanding and they don’t realise they’re going through the motions to feel one way.
And I’ll say as a disabled person that I also will not judge someone for not wanting to date a disabled person. I wish I wasn’t disabled so I sure as hell won’t be mad someone doesn’t feel they can dedicate their life to coping with my situation.
That said, if you’re a lesbian and you say you aren’t attracted to trans people while saying they’re not a form of women and not lesbians that is where you start crossing the line from preferences and into anti trans rhetoric and it becomes harder to defend.
The one thing that really puzzled me about this article.
Why would anyone attend that ‘cotton ceiling’ lecture where the idea is to ‘help’ cisgender lesbian women become more attracted to trans women.
Like, if you’re not attracted to that group of people, what motivation do you have to convert yourself to being attracted to them? What’s the point?
Are lesbians being harassed about their sexual preferences, is this an actual problem.
> the cotton ceiling – and the right of a lesbian to call it out as a coercive device to shame same-sex attracted women into compromising their boundaries
The original workshop that people are still banging on about was comprised of a whopping seven people mostly talking about body image, and nothing to do with shaming or coercing anyone. It’s just been blown out of all proportion.
Articles like this and the talk of *coercion* seem to have one purpose, to cast trans women as a bunch of abusive men trying to invade women’s spaces and assault them, pure insinuation.
I’m sorry but at this point if there are genuine conflicts between the rights of cis women and trans women we need to see evidence now, enough of these vague existential fears.
And who is actually arguing against that? Sleep with whatever person consents. Nobody is taking that away from you in the slightest. Nobody can stop you from only having same-sex relationships. Literally nobody.
This writer is either stupid or malicious.
The scary transes aren’t coming for your rights. They’re not here to make you sleep with them. They’re just trying to live their lives, and all they ever get is constant bullshit articles like this pile of wank making them out to be this massive oppressive force, this spooky boogeyman trying to attack women. It’s not true. It’s never been true. You are inventing a moral panic, and siding with conservative groups who ARE trying to strip the rights of women to do it. Trans people are not your enemy. Ironically, it’s trans people that are overwhelmingly and consistently FOR women’s rights and bodily autonomy. You’re not protecting women, you’re shitting on trans people. You’re not saving women’s rights, you’re shitting on trans people. You’re not being forced into relationships you don’t want, you’re just shitting on trans people. You can still sleep with who you like. If you don’t want to sleep with trans people, JUST DON’T FUCKING SLEEP WITH THEM.
At least I can take solace in the fact that this post got downvoted into obscurity where this lunacy fucking belongs.
23 comments
I would hope this wouldn’t be in question by anyone?
It doesn’t matter if whether it’s bigotry or not. Everyone is entitled to choose who they do and do not date, or enter into a relationship with.
If you only want to do people of a specific sex, or race, or religion, or hair colour, or zodiac sign or whatever: that is entirely your right to do so.
And if you feel discriminated against because someone won’t date you for being the wrong sex/race/hair colour/etc then tough shit. You don’t get to choose who other people are attracted to, or who other people want to date.
I stopped reading at “biologically male”. Uff.
This is commenting on Allison Bailey’s employment tribunal, where in this past week,
>a QC on the Bar Council’s ethics committee defended the concept of overcoming the “cotton ceiling” – the offensive idea that a lesbian’s lack of desire for trans women is rooted in bigotry rather than their same-sex attraction – and compared it to initiatives to promote racial integration in post-apartheid South Africa.
>It was Cathryn McGahey QC, a witness for Garden Court, who drew the analogy between this workshop (“Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling” run in Canada in 2012) exploring how “ideologies of transphobia and transmisogyny impact sexual desire” and South African racial integration and who implied it was possible in a non-coercive way to persuade a same-sex attracted lesbian she might want to have sex with a trans woman.
Ok ? Isn’t that obvious.
If I don’t want to date someone with ginger hair for example it’s not bigotry it’s my right to chose that doesn’t mean I am bigoted towards people with ginger hair.
The vast majority of trans women don’t want to force anyone to date them. No one in the wider trans community actully thinks that if you don’t want to sleep with them that’s discrimination. Genital preference is a thing and everyone knows that.
The backwards opionions of very few trans people, and the lies and overexaggerations spread by TERFs shoudnt be attributed to the wider community.
You can be as picky as you want when dating, and if you don’t want to be with a trans person for any reason at all then that’s fine. Just don’t be an asshole about it and nobody with a brain will call you a bigot.
Edit because this is annoying now.
Sexual orientation isnt a choice.
Gential preference is a term that has been used more recently to describe the potential issues that come up from a persons sex and gender/ gender presentation not being the same. I’m not saying you can pick what you like, that is just the term that is used.
If you don’t think trans women are women or that trans men are men for whatever reason, you don’t have to date them. That is the whole point of my comment.
You have the right to refuse to date anyone you want for any reason at all. If it comes from a place of transphobia, misunderstanding or not seeing the person as the gender they identify with, it doesn’t matter, you still are under no pressure to date them.
I’m literally telling you to do what you want lol.
If you dont want to date a person of a different race, thats up to you. But if you feel the need to go round telling people you don’t want to date a person of a different race, you’re gunna look racist.
all too often there is a (sometimes willful) failure to understand/accept the difference between *sex* and *gender-identity*
we don’t control what we’re attracted to; if a lesbians attraction is based on sex and not gender identity, that doesn’t mean she’s a bigot, surely
tired: quietly dating whoever you want, as is your right
wired: writing a five-page article in the observer about how your dating preferences are NORMAL, ACTUALLY and the WOKE MOB is OPPRESSING YOU and that GENDER IDEOLOGY is actually EVIL and that GENDER DYSPHORIA is MADE UP by the POWERFUL TRANS LOBBY so that they can use it as a stick to BEAT LESBIANS
You don’t need to open your eyes very far to see that:
Any person thinking it is ok to have an unwilling partner is off their head, and this cuts right across the board effecting everyone.
It ain’t in anyway trans specific.
Minorities are ruling us? Again? Omg where are going? Nonsense
[deleted]
Wouldn’t it depend on what your objection is, as to how seriously people take it? If you don’t like penises then you don’t have to date anyone with a penis. But if you are a lesbian faced with a transwoman who looks like Emily Blunt, who’s had surgery to build a vagina, at that point what are you objecting to? Feels like you are just not attracted to them on principal.
Like you are welcome to not be attracted to people with dark skin, but if you meet someone who bleached their skin are you going to turn them down because they used to have dark skin or because their natural skin tone is dark?
I don’t want to pressure anyone and I want to respect their personal choices. I just don’t get why you would turn people down over their chromosomes or body parts they used to have.
>This is not a fringe belief: the chief executive of LGBT charity Stonewall recently said in relation to a BBC story about lesbians feeling pressured into dropping their boundaries: “Sexuality is personal… but if, when dating, you are writing off entire groups like people of colour or trans people, it’s worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attraction.”
Wow this is an awful take. If you don’t want to date a transperson it’s because you haven’t spent enough time rethinking your opinion.
That’s a disgusting, infantising statement to make.
The next step is if you ever reject someone of x identity youre now a bigot and guilty of discrimination.
And if a lesbian desires a relationship with a trans women that is her right too, and if a trans woman goes out with either another trans woman or a cis woman that is a lesbian relationship.
Cis women with trans women as partners are frequently called “handmaidens” and “dick panderers” or denied their lesbian identity or said to be in a straight relationship, yet this misogynistic abuse is never drawn attention because abuse of trans people’s partners is considered as acceptable as abuse of trans people by our press.
Why is it *only* lesbians (bio women) being attacked??? You *never* hear this crap said to gay biological men – but nor should you!!
This trans movement stuff seems increasingly harmful to biological women in general whereas, yet again, biological men seem to get a pass. It’s tiring to hear.
I just don’t get why this is worth having a newspaper column about? It’s an argument which effects two small groups of the population, and I genuinely doubt we’re talking about more than a tiny minority of each group who have strong opinions on this. It’s like listening to your next door neighbours have a fight and then reading 2000 articles over the next year about why one of them is a danger to society. It’s crazy.
This is just another attempt to make trans people a bogeyman, trying and make people afraid of an incredibly marginalised group as a distraction to how fucked our planet is, give people a reason to vote against their economic interests about some nonsense culture war issue, and keep a tiny group of people who own so much of the worlds wealth in the luxury they’ve become accustomed too.
Very pro trans rights, am pansexual because that used to be a better term for people who were open to all genders before more recently where it has been changed that bisexual also covered trans. I’m also very pro egalitarianism, man woman or anything not within those limits should be equal. No race should be treated special.
But we cannot choose what we’re attracted to. It isn’t racist to not be turned on by say an Asian person and it isn’t racist to be more turned on by Asian people. If you’re only attracted to men you don’t suddenly hate women. If you have genital preferences then you don’t just choose it even if it is simply a preference for loose vaginas or small penises but if it is a genital type then you really cannot help it.
I believe people can discover new preferences and indeed discover changes in their preferences both as they get older and as they’re exposed to more experiences but that’s more learning something they didn’t already know about themselves than just outright changing. They’re under no obligation to even try and see if they enjoy it until they find themselves curious. Many who firmly choose their sexuality as an early teen grow older and realise it is something slightly different, some people realise they’re bi not gay and some realise they’re bi not straight but sometimes even people realise they’re gay not straight or straight not gay and it is some weird self imposed expectations that tilted their understanding and they don’t realise they’re going through the motions to feel one way.
And I’ll say as a disabled person that I also will not judge someone for not wanting to date a disabled person. I wish I wasn’t disabled so I sure as hell won’t be mad someone doesn’t feel they can dedicate their life to coping with my situation.
That said, if you’re a lesbian and you say you aren’t attracted to trans people while saying they’re not a form of women and not lesbians that is where you start crossing the line from preferences and into anti trans rhetoric and it becomes harder to defend.
The one thing that really puzzled me about this article.
Why would anyone attend that ‘cotton ceiling’ lecture where the idea is to ‘help’ cisgender lesbian women become more attracted to trans women.
Like, if you’re not attracted to that group of people, what motivation do you have to convert yourself to being attracted to them? What’s the point?
Are lesbians being harassed about their sexual preferences, is this an actual problem.
> the cotton ceiling – and the right of a lesbian to call it out as a coercive device to shame same-sex attracted women into compromising their boundaries
The original workshop that people are still banging on about was comprised of a whopping seven people mostly talking about body image, and nothing to do with shaming or coercing anyone. It’s just been blown out of all proportion.
> https://www.transadvocate.com/cotton-ceiling-uncovering-the-trans-conspiracy-to-rape-lesbians_n_10251.htm
Articles like this and the talk of *coercion* seem to have one purpose, to cast trans women as a bunch of abusive men trying to invade women’s spaces and assault them, pure insinuation.
I’m sorry but at this point if there are genuine conflicts between the rights of cis women and trans women we need to see evidence now, enough of these vague existential fears.
And who is actually arguing against that? Sleep with whatever person consents. Nobody is taking that away from you in the slightest. Nobody can stop you from only having same-sex relationships. Literally nobody.
This writer is either stupid or malicious.
The scary transes aren’t coming for your rights. They’re not here to make you sleep with them. They’re just trying to live their lives, and all they ever get is constant bullshit articles like this pile of wank making them out to be this massive oppressive force, this spooky boogeyman trying to attack women. It’s not true. It’s never been true. You are inventing a moral panic, and siding with conservative groups who ARE trying to strip the rights of women to do it. Trans people are not your enemy. Ironically, it’s trans people that are overwhelmingly and consistently FOR women’s rights and bodily autonomy. You’re not protecting women, you’re shitting on trans people. You’re not saving women’s rights, you’re shitting on trans people. You’re not being forced into relationships you don’t want, you’re just shitting on trans people. You can still sleep with who you like. If you don’t want to sleep with trans people, JUST DON’T FUCKING SLEEP WITH THEM.
At least I can take solace in the fact that this post got downvoted into obscurity where this lunacy fucking belongs.
That’s absolutely right