big questions for the transgender community, big -honest- questions, no bullcrap i really wanna be educated here... do the likes of Riley J Dennis speak for you as a whole? am i really 'cissexist' for not wanting to date a transgender person? am i transphobic because i fear arrest for an honest pronoun mistake covered by bill/law C16 in canada? am i to be -forced- to use your preferred pronoun or else? why does it seem you hate cis ppl just for being cis?

@Mephitidae ok, so my answers would be:

– you don't have to date any specific person. but if you say that you don't want to date a trans person, no matter your intentions, that is most likely because you have learned of cissexist standards of who is desirable. that doesn't mean that you should force yourself to date a trans person, because that wouldn't be fun for either of you. just acknowledge that personal taste can be shaped by social shit.

@maunzikation how is it cissexist if i dont like dick... cos that would be the reason... Riley here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5GYlZKfBmI seems to think not liking dick is wrong....

@Mephitidae I don't really want to watch a video now, so I can't talk about that directly.

[long answer, sorry! but this is not a simple topic.]

As for liking dick or not liking dick in general: I think it depends a lot on the context in which one talks about this preference, and the way one presents it.

@Mephitidae There's a level of knowledge about trans people to it: not all trans people or even all trans women have dicks, so trans == dick is a wrong assumption. Additionally, simplified assumptions about the way trans people have sex could be involved. See https://www.autostraddle.com/mira-bellwether-author-and-illustrator-of-fucking-trans-women-zine-the-autostraddle-interview/if interested in that.

@Mephitidae It follows a cissexist simplification to assume that one knows everything about trans people and the way their bodies look and the way they have sex. There is always more to learn.

But more knowledge doesn't have to change one's preference. There are many reasons not to be into somebody or not to want to date somebody. Some of them are pretty harmless,

@Mephitidae like "my living situation doesn't have enough privacy for sex, so sex is only going to happen if you have your own flat". Some however, like not wanting to date fat people or not wanting to date trans women or not wanting to date black people, follow along the lines of general oppression, and are very likely to be shaped by that. So… you might not be into one single person, and that's okay. You don't have to be into any specific person.

@Mephitidae But how are you communicating this? If you are stating it as a "no x no y" thing on your dating profile, that's obviously not cool in these cases.

Additionally, in the case of not wanting to date trans women, there is the whole "trans panic defense" thing. It refers to cases where (afaik so far only) men murdered or severely injured a woman they were going to have sex with when they found out that she was trans,

@Mephitidae and used this as a legal defense, that, in some cases, was accepted as a justification for this kind of violence.

So, in a situation in which you fall in love with a girl and find out that she does not have your preferred intimate figuration, there are very very bad real world examples of how you could react. You obviously don't do that, but the context is there.

@Mephitidae There is no guide to telling someone that you're not into them because of their genitals. It is almost always going to hurt (like all rejections, but even more because of all the stuff around it), and it is always going to be linked to in this cissexist idea of what women should look like and who is desirable. Even if your personal reasons are totally different!

@Mephitidae It's just a super delicate situation that goes beyond a simple "I don't like dick".

So… saying "I shouldn't have to date someone who's intimates I don't like" is in a way true, but at the same time, it really doesn't do these topics justice. This is about pretty personal stuff, for you, and even more for the other person. And yes, a lot about the way of dealing with it can be cissexist.