Symmetry
I hunted down the column in which Dan Savage gave the advice that Jocelyn MacDonald quoted, to see if it’s really as one-sided as she said. It is.
It’s from May 2015.
I’m a lesbian who has been pretty successful at online dating. Lately, however, I’ve had a few women contact me who turn out not to be cisgender. I’ve tried to remain open, but I have never been attracted to a trans woman. I don’t rule out the possibility that it could happen. But one great thing about online dating is that you can express preferences before going on a date, and I’d rather not unknowingly walk into these potentially awkward and painful situations. Is there something I could put on my profile expressing my preference for cisgender women that is not offensive to trans people? It’s important to me that I remain an ally.
Can I Say?
You can put “not into trans women” in your online dating profile, CIS, but you’ll have to hand in your Trans Ally card. Gay men are likewise free to put “no fats, no femmes” or “white guys only—just expressing my preference” on their profiles, and too many do (and not all of them are white guys), but gay men who do that have to hand in their Not an Asshole cards. Occasionally having coffee with someone you’re not into—and having to tiptoe through the awkwardness—isn’t something you can avoid in online dating. You would have to do that even if only cis lesbians responded to your ads, as you’re presumably not attracted to all cis lesbians. Having a coffee now and then with a trans woman you most likely won’t find attractive—but you never know—is a small price to pay to make the online dating world a less shitty place for trans people. It’s what an ally would do.
See? It’s weird. Instead of saying “Gay men are likewise free to put ‘no trans men’ on their profiles, and too many do” he says “no fats, no femmes” and “white guys only.”
Ally to whom, exactly?
That’s morally outrageous. Dan Savage goes all the way when he’s misguided. No half-measures.
It’s possible, I think, that he was just doing a writerly variation thing – comparing to something different as opposed to the identical thing. But if so, he should have caught it and realized it was wholly inappropriate in that particular reply.
Plus it’s possible but I don’t think it’s very likely.
So, to extend that to its logical conclusion, if I were to go onto a dating site I should just open myself up to all comers rather than express any preferences? That seems… unproductive?
It may also be that gay men encounter FTM more rarely than lesbians encounter MTF on dating sites. So Savage was going with what he knew. Statistics are hard to come by with how many MTF vs FTM transgendered persons there are. Anecdotes are notoriously unreliable, but in my anecdotal experience I’ve encountered more out MTF than FTM, by a margin of about 8-1, in my rough estimate. The problem is that FTM transgendered people could be harder to spot in public. Women have been wearing traditional men’s clothing (trousers) for a few decades now. Men, not so much with traditional women’s clothing. One might mistake a FTM person as a butch lesbian or as a woman who wears trousers, not dresses.
I’m always stunned by this idea that one’s sexual preferences should somehow conform to ideological soundness. Our sexual schema are set very early in life and while humans are very adaptable in many ways most people don’t vary that much in the types of body they find attractive.
I’m a fat woman – I’ve been at least chunky all my life. Many people, male and female, do not find fat attractive. Interestingly, I don’t either. My partner does. I’ve met many other people who do. And yes, there have been many people I have found attractive who enjoyed my company but to my regret will never find my body a turn on. Oddly enough, I never thought of them as being an asshole for not wanting to sleep with me.
Who we date/sleep with is such a personal issue that suggesting you can’t be a good ally or are an asshole for indicating what you aren’t sexually interested in on a dating site is just ludicrous. Just as ludicrous as the claims I’ve heard that a lesbian rejecting a trans woman because of her penis is somehow reducing sex to just genitals and sex should be more than that! Well, yes, but it damned well starts with genitals!
It’s the point where ideology and biology clash and not surprisingly ideology comes off worse.
What date did Dan Savage publish that letter? If it was a year or two ago, I wonder if he would sing a different tune now.
Oh duh. . .May 2015. Someone, not me, should ask him what he thinks now. Would it be different?
This isn’t the first time I have seen that idea, i.e. that people ought to be physically attracted to trans men / women despite only being attracted to female / male bodies. Incredibly, I saw a straight guy berate himself for not being attracted to visibly male bodied trans women, calling it internalised bigotry that he needed to ‘work on’ to rid himself of.
The conservatives were right – sexuality is a choice after all!
By that reasoning, all gay or straight people are now bigots, leaving
bisexualspansexuals as the only sufficiently woke people on the planet.Claire, if anything, I think it’s the other way around. Dan Savage (who’s probably done more for LGBTQ causes than 95% of self-proclaimed activists) used to be regularly denounced as transphobic and bi-phobic. I forget what got him the transphobic label; I believe he was called biphobic (and “glitter-bombed” by LGBTQ activists) for the crime of suggesting that sometimes — just sometimes — young people who announce themselves as bi are just using it as a halfway house to admitting that they are actually homosexual.
For all I know, they’re still denouncing him. I seem to recall any mention of his name provoking angry comments at FtB. But my point is that he may have been “re-educated” on the dangers of not conforming to the orthodox positions.