I think it’s important that folks recognize that this discussion about sexuality is a lot more nuanced than it’s often made out to be. This is likely going to be very long, because it’s really not a question with a simple answer.
Like, as a disclaimer (and it’s odd that I often have to do this), no one is telling anyone that they have to have sex with certain bodies or they’re transphobic, or terrible. In the same vein, being penis repulsed does not = being transphobic.
Back to the point, you say that you’d have no trouble being with a trans woman, but sex is something you feel you wouldn’t be able to handle if that woman had a penis, due to your repulsion.
I think that’s a fair enough question, and it’s really evidence on how certain narratives and assumptions are so often made in regards to sex and sexuality in a cisnormative society.
People grow up being told that certain bodies are male, certain bodies are female, and they often find out that both types of officially sanctioned bodies being attracted to each other is heterosexual/straight, and folks who are attracted to their own type are gay. Simple, straight forward, easy to navigate through logically, and to build expectations around.
Combine that with how media (and sometimes education) teach us about sex in ways that don’t or rarely discuss physical boundaries, and that helps build certain assumptions of entitlement, access, and expectations of how we will experience our partners’ bodies, and how they will experience ours.
Trans folks (and intersex folks certainly have this potential as well) tend to throw a wrench into a lot of those assumptions, because suddenly, there’s no dichotomy of bodies. There’s no easy sorting, there’s parts that…all our lives…we’ve understood to be coded as one group’s parts showing up on another’s. and as much as it’s easy to say on the surface “Okay…so penises aren’t just things men have”, it can be difficult to really root out the impact such coding has had on our beliefs, thoughts, gut feelings and instincts. Kind of like how when i was a teen, I’d claim I wasn’t the least bit racist, and later realized that I was absolutely harboring racist sentiments in some of my reactions, instinctual thoughts, in beliefs on cultures, etc.
So it’s important to really ask folks to think about their take on how cissexism and cisnormativity might have shaped views on sexuality, and personal politics of desire, in the same way that racial preferences have been interrogated, and whatnot.
Because there absolutely are assumptions made about trans women, particularly trans women with penises, and how we have sex.
Now, I’ll say that if a person’s attraction (not just sexual, the whole range) to a trans women dies an immediate death upon learning she has a penis, that’s transphobia, because attraction doesn’t vanish like that unless there’s major disgust involved.
Like, beyond the universally messed up assumption that we’re fully entitled to the bodies of our partners (which crops up when folks assume what would/must happen during sex across any context, whether it’s a cis dude assuming he’d have to give oral to a cis woman, or a cis guy assuming his cis dude partner would stick a dick in his ass, or a cis woman assuming a trans man would need to be penetrated, assumptions about access are a brazen display of entitlement), there’s a lot of discussion about trans women’s penises.
I’ll say right now that I’m not penis repulsed, but I know that penis repulsion manifests in plenty of different ways, to different degrees, and I wouldn’t want anyone to engage sexually in a way that would harm them. That’s very important.
But that said, there’s been a lot of assumptions made by folks who are penis repulsed who assume that trans women with penises would penetrate them with it, who assume that they would have to touch a penis, that the penis would get erect, that the penis could ejaculate, that it’d share the same texture/smell (which, tbh, is something I don’t get, since I’m pretty sure that veries for everyone, but anyways) as a cis man’s, or that they would have to see a penis at all. And the way a lot of these assumptions are made tends to frame the hypothetical trans woman as an aggressor, which I can understand a penis-repulsed person doing (because they don’t want to interact with one, such framing makes sense as a reaction), but that’s still tied to the widely held social view of trans women as sexual predators. So while such responses and use of language are still valid and understandable, it’s important that folks recognize that trans women aren’t sexual predators, that they’re at an incredibly low risk of actually being sexually predatory compared to other demographics. A response that groups trans women with cis men in a cisnormative society is expected, but it’s still a cissexist response that needs to be recognized as such (unless, in the extremely rare case, a person has been assaulted by a trans women with a penis, in which case there’s some merit, but such cases, by nature, would be immensely rare in comparison to those whose repulsion is drawn from cis men’s actions).
And honestly, those assumptions are pretty baseless. A huge amount of trans women with penises do not want their partners to interact with it at all. Paired with that is an enormous amount of trans people, particularly trans women, have experienced sexual assault or rape by intimate partners since transitioning, so even those who could entertain using their penis in some way during sex will likely be vigilant on discussing boundaries and potentially avoiding anything that could have lingering trauma bubbling up, for either partner. I know I wouldn’t want to have dysphoria flare up while I’m trying to be intimate with a partner, or have a trauma-related response, and equally as much I wouldn’t want my partner to have any trauma-related responses, or to be made uncomfortable or hurt by my actions.
I know plenty of trans women who are (or were) sexually active while pre/non-op and whose partners never saw or engaged with their penis during sex. I have a friend who has been with her boyfriend for over 3 years and I’m pretty sure he’s actually never seen her penis. Maybe on accident, but she keeps hers lucked away like fort knox, has major bottom dysphoria, and she manages to have sex regularly. She and hey boyfriend don’t shower together, and they don’t sleep in the nude together, but there’s honestly not much else she couldn’t do with her boyfriend that other hetero couples do.
So I guess what I’m trying to get at is that there’s a lot of assumptions being made about what being involved with a penis-bearing trans woman would be like, and a whole lot of them are wrong and fueled by transmisogyny.
And there’s a lot of things people aren’t thinking deeply enough about their sexuality. And that, in a cissexist society, likely means there’s some transmisogyny rooting around in some gut reactions, notions of attractiveness, etc.
So are you transphobic because of your sexuality or what you’re able to involve yourself with? I’m not sure that answer is more important than getting people to interrogate themselves on this sort of stuff. There are people who want to have sex with trans women who have penises, and there are people who claim it’s a dealbreaker. I don’t want either group to get sexually involved with trans women until they’ve thought long and hard about this stuff, because those who haven’t are far more likely to wield transmisogyny against us when they’re with us in whatever way.
But if I had to answer in a simple, generalized way:
-A person should never experience a total loss of attraction to another person after learning their genital status. That’s a clear, and inarguable sign of transphobia at play. Simply knowing a person’s genital status is no excuse for such a monumental loss of attraction to a person.
-Being solely attracted to genitals is transphobic. Requiring engagement with specific kinds of genitals is fetishistic.
-Assuming the sexual form, function, and needs of a trans woman with a penis is transmisogyny, and (even if just passively) assuming full entitlement of a partner’s body on a sexual level is also problematic as hell.
Do any of the above three fit you? if so, you’re probably dealing with transmisogyny/transphobia. Is it a massive deal that will have transfolk foaming at the mouth? Nope. In a world where even those who love and support us the most do or think transphobic and cissexist things, this is just one more rock added to the pile.
Which is why the important thing is getting people thinking, not whether or not they’re transphobic. Everyone’s transphobic, so it’s far more important to take a potential issue and investigate it until you’ve got some answers. To let things stew for a while and really contemplate how cissexism and transphobia might have helped influence/frame thoughts on the matter.
Because no matter what, folks are going to walk away and do their thing, even if they DO realize they’re transphobic in some way from their behaviour/thoughts. Some won’t care, and will be dismissive, for whatever reason. Some will find themselves upset by their biases, but won’t be able to feel attracted to such trans women…and that doesn’t make a person morally inferior or bad, just means they’ve been deeply impacted and it’s not the right time, if that time comes at all. There are plenty of ways folks can come away from self-investigation, and cis people checking the “will fuck a penis owning trans woman” box isn’t a real high priority. What matters is that people have a better grasp on this, so that maybe one day, they’ll understand transphobia better and will be more active in combating it, in whichever way they manage. Maybe that means having healthy, valuable relationships with us. Maybe it won’t.
This isn’t about policing sexuality (not that you said it is, though it’s often an accusation I hear), it’s about getting people to think from an angle that they’ve been explicitly taught doesn’t exist, or isn’t worth considering. Folks do that, and come away with a better understanding of how transphobia affects their life? That’s great! That’s what we want! We don’t want people saying sexuality is excused from critical thought, like many do try to push, which is why so many trans folk harp on about this, and why it’s so important to get people realizing that nothing is unaffected by transphobia. Everything can and should be interrogated for it. Everything.
So yeah, I’ve gone on long enough. Basically, you think hard on this, you let some of these thoughts stew, maybe come back to them here or there going forward, then that’s great. In the meantime, you do you. Learn more about transphobia, listen to trans voices. That’s much, much more important than whether you can have sex with us. Our abusers love to have sex with us, it’s not really anything special, or that’s terribly concerning to the community. The important thing is HOW people understand us, and our bodies, within the sphere of sexuality and desire, and how transphobia, cissexism, etc. shape those understandings.
