I think the problem is that while cis lesbians understand that straight women like men and lesbians are not men, trans women know that lesbians like *women* and because many trans women define “women” as “people who internally, innately understand themselves to be women, regardless of birth assignment or genital shape” and many cis people define “women” as “people who were born with vaginas and designated female as birth by doctors,” there’s a disconnect. Many trans people feel that they *are* their genders, innately, regardless of whether or not they’ve been on HRT or had GRS or can “pass” as their genders. They know that other people perceiving them as their birth-assigned gender and asserting biology as destiny (ie: “you were born with a penis, so that means there’s something masculine about you”) contributes to overwhelming feelings of dysphoria, depression, self-hatred, and suicidal ideation in some trans people. Given that, they often feel that asserting a baby with a penis is a “male” baby and is a “boy” and that a baby with a vagina is a “female” baby and is a “girl” can set potential trans children up for all that dysphoria and pain later on. Because of this, some wish to remove the genital criteria from “maleness” and “femaleness” and either have come up with non-gendered, medical words for “person who reproduces with penis” and “people who reproduces with a vagina” and “person who cannot reproduce” and then let individuals determine their own genders OR completely drop the idea of gender altogether and let people be who they are.
This discourse is relatively new, and people are pushing for “love the person, not the genitals.” Some people in the trans community believe that attraction is based on innate, self-understood gender and not based on genitals or any other sex characteristics. Since they believe that a trans woman is completely, 100% female and they believe that deciding someone is male simply because of their penis erases trans identities and harms trans youth, they often believe that it is that innate womanhood that lesbians want and that lesbians who reject trans women are rejecting them based on a flawed belief that penises are “male.” They suspect that if lesbians understood that penises were not “male” (in the sense that they don’t make someone “a boy” or “a man”), then lesbians *would* be okay with penises. This attitude gets reinforced when many lesbians say stuff like “no, I’m not going to be with a trans woman because I like women, not men” or “you’re not a real woman, so no.”
The fact that “no” is in both these sentences should end the discussion completely, and it’s horrible if it doesn’t. However, if you felt like someone was rejecting you because they thought something was true about you that wasn’t (like that you were a member of a political party you always vote against, for example), you might want to be like “hey wait a second, that’s wrong.” The problem is that while most of them are saying “I want a woman,” what they mean is “I want someone with conventional XX biology or something close to it (since some intersex people are assigned female at birth and grow up essentially indistinguishable from XX women except for things like lack of periods or what-have-you).”
I have to wonder if the language could be rephrased to say “I like this *kind* of woman better” rather than “I like women and you’re not a woman,” maybe dysphoria would be less triggered by this kind of rejection. Maybe not. I don’t know. The fact is that trans women are a marginalized group, and so there’s this hair-thin line between “I am not comfortable with the kind of body you have/I am not attracted to the kind of body you have” and “I think being trans is bad/dirty/wrong/invalid/etc.” Regardless of which category you’re in, no one should pressure you into sex.
I personally think that people who experience gender and attraction as something innate are just as valid as people who experience gender and attraction as something biological. I think we need language to support both groups of people without anyone getting labeled a “bigot” for having their own needs and preferences. That said, I also recognize that there’s a problem of too few people wanting to be with trans people. I think that problem should be addressed more globally by spreading understanding so that people who are on the fence can make informed decisions like “oh, I thought negative things based on porn stereotypes, but now I realize this is actually okay” or “I hadn’t considered that a trans person could be attractive, but now I’m thinking differently” and people who have “no penises” or “no vaginas” as hard-limits won’t be harassed for feeling that way anymore.
In short, there is a difference between a lesbian being angry that a straight woman who likes men doesn’t like women and a trans woman being upset that a lesbian who likes women doesn’t like the kind of woman they are or acknowledge that the kind of woman they are is a woman at all. They’re different issues, but they’re similar in that no one should pressure anyone else into sex or create ultimatums surrounding attraction.
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