yeah so tumblr’s shitty app crashed and i lost the post i was GONNA put this as a reblog to and i can’t find it again so here it is as a stand-alone, but.
I’m gonna open with a summary of the original post this was going to be a response to, since this still reads like a response: the post claimed that it is transphobic for a bisexual person to say that they’re attracted to one binary gender as well as nonbinary people, because all sexualities can include nonbinary people. It said a bunch of other stuff in it too, not all of which was that awful, but that particular stupid claim is what this post is responding to.
although it is true that all sexualities can include nonbinary people, they can’t all include EVERY nonbinary person because some of us consider it misgendering if someone is openly attracted to us while also having an orientation that usually implies, in colloquial usage, attraction to one specific binary gender and not the other (i.e. straight, gay, or lesbian). Furthermore, some nonbinary people might be comfortable with attraction from some of these orientations but not others, i.e. being comfortable with attraction from people attracted to women but not from people attracted to men or vice versa, or not wanting to date straight people but being ok with anyone else.
obviously, people can’t control their attraction, but the easy solution is that if you’re attracted to someone who’s uncomfortable with it and you don’t want to change your label, you can Just Shut Up About Being Attracted To That Specific Person And Not Pursue Them Further, and go look for either a binary person or a nonbinary person who’s comfortable with attraction from monosexuals. just like you would if they were simply not interested in you! however, if you really want to continue openly being attracted to them or even date them, you should probably reconsider your labels, so that you’re not misgendering them.
the idea that it’s necessarily transphobic for someone to say they’re bisexual and attracted to one binary gender + nonbinary people, as claimed in the post i was going to put this as a reblog to, is absolutely ludicrous, because depending on the person involved, chances are they’re identifying that way specifically as a show of respect for the nonbinary people they’re attracted to. for example, i have a friend irl who identified as lesbian before starting to date a nonbinary person who didn’t want to be associated with womanhood in any way because it made them dysphoric- in order to not cause dysphoria to her partner, and in order to avoid them getting misgendered every single time she told people she was a lesbian and this was her partner, which invariably led to people assuming they were a woman, she started identifying as bisexual even though she is still not attracted to men. this was generally considered by everyone else in the friend group to be considerate and the only reasonable way of moving forward aside from them just not dating each other.
i fortunately do not usually have to deal with this since i don’t date, but if i was going to date someone, i would be extremely uncomfortable with dating anybody who IDed as anything other than either m-spec (be that bi, pan, or something else) and/or aroace but ok with dating. it still makes me very uncomfortable if monosexual people are openly attracted to me, but fortunately since i don’t ever want a relationship i can personally deal with that by just telling them to stop talking to me, just like i do when anyone else says they’re attracted to me. if someone says they’re monosexual but also attracted to me, that feels to me like they’re saying at best “i’m attracted to you because you’re close enough to the binary gender i’m mostly attracted to, although you are not exactly that gender,” and at worst “well, you’re basically a woman/man, so i’m attracted to you,” and neither of those is a sentiment i am anywhere in the neighborhood of OK with.
If someone says they’re bisexual and attracted to one binary gender + nonbinary people, that also does not necessarily imply, as claimed with no basis in the post I was going to put this as a reblog to, that they’re basing their attraction in assigned gender. At least going by the bisexual people I’ve met who identify this way, it’s usually got way more to do with presentation, and less often is related to discomfort with the binary gender not included in the attraction (i.e. someone who will not date any men, either cis or trans, due to having had a bad experience with one, but will date anybody else regardless of assigned gender). Believe it or not, just like other orientations, bisexuality doesn’t have to be based on assigned gender and can instead be based on, you know, people’s actual genders! Because nonbinary people are real people with real genders, that includes ours! If it WAS about assigned gender, though? I’d much rather them acknowledge that not everyone of one assigned gender is the same actual gender than go around claiming to be attracted to just one gender! How the hell is acknowledging that not everyone is cis by IDing as bisexual more transphobic than claiming to be monosexual because they’re just into one AGAB? It’s still bad if someone bases their attraction in assigned gender, but the problem isn’t the label they use, it’s that they are doing that at all and it would be just as bad if not worse if they IDed as monosexual.
Nonbinary people are not basically men or basically women, nor are we a wild card gender that can count as either. Some nonbinary people are fine with being included in monosexual attraction, which is why all orientations include nonbinary people- but not all of us are, and discussions of the topic also need to acknowledge that some of us aren’t included in all orientations. The idea that acknowledging this is somehow transphobic is patently ridiculous. Thanks, OP of that stupid post, for the hot take that acknowledging and respecting nonbinary people’s genders is transphobic somehow.