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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15615 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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I don't think the position is right -- a lot of people care about fertility enough to torpedo in cis-cis relationships, a lot of people make romantic decisions on statistic matters as much as empirical reality, and there are 'non-physical' concerns that matter -- but :

The main objection here is that there are in fact zero transwomen who are indistinguishable from women with a womb.

I don't think this is right, either, or at least not arguing the same thing from their perspective as from yours.

Now, admittedly, I'm a bi furry, so my scales are probably not anywhere near the typical. And there's some blurry lines between "can easily be detected" and "indistinguishable". And the links from the actuallesbians post you're quoting is more highlighting trans woman the poster thought hot, more than thought especially undetectably trans. But I think there's a couple meaningful underlying threads that aren't in the obvious read:

  • The exact definition of 'indistinguishable' is not a bright line. There's probably some activist who'd make arguments about a XX transwoman, but even if such a person actually identified as trans rather than intersexed or something anyway, the more meaningful bit is that most people don't do random karotype checks of potential dating partners to avoid the one-in-fifty-thousand complete androgen insensitivity case.

  • There's a tendency to compare the most visible trans women to a platonic ideal of feminine beauty (and, to a lesser extent, trans men to masculine stereotypes). Even outside of the direct problem where out people are out by definition, and that a lot of the most visible trans women are not exactly central examples for a variety of reasons, a lot of actual women are pretty butch! This doesn't even have to be a Weird Gender Thing; 'she's just tall' or 'she's just butch' predates a lot of modern trans discourse. But there's a perception of all trans woman as 6-ft tall Adam's Apple-and-five-o'clock-shadowed pink dress wearers that's not really a good model.

  • The actual sex stuff isn't great, but it's also come a long way, in ways that aren't well-understood from outside. That's even truer in the lesbian field, where some of the limitations (not getting as wet, needing a lot of exercise to take a moderate-sized dick) are likely to be important. Even for trans guys, there's still a long way to go, but something like reelmagik (cw: if you google this, you will get pages of silicone dicks) aren't going to get the full feel of heat or the splatter, for obvious reasons, but they've got options that either wouldn't stand out or would only stand out in good ways in a crowded locker room.

  • (And, conversely, a lot of people who object to relationships with trans folk won't be pacified were we talking something like magical cloned replacement organs; cfe the discussion in the rest of this thread.)

I don't think I'm sanewashing the position. From original context:

It's valid to be not into penii. this is, possibly, the only context in which anyone is allowed to care about a trans woman's genitalia.

So there's at least some recognition that there's going to be practical differences.

That's not to condone the model, or to say that it's complete, but more that a lot of the disagreement is over definitions rather than point deer make horse problems.

It's valid to be not into penii. this is, possibly, the only context in which anyone is allowed to care about a trans woman's genitalia.

Is it also valid to not be into what I believe is called a neo-vagina (i.e. the result of bottom surgery)?

I'm off the market so it's not really a concern for me, but I do have a preference for some vagina shapes over others, and some I find unappealing. From the (probably biased) selection of pictures of the results of bottom surgery I have seen, neo-vaginas very much fall into the latter category, especially when we also take some of the medical complications into account that come with them - those of the olfactory kind, for example.

I can't speak for other people, but the linked thread starts with a pretty general :

Not being interested in, or not dating, a specific woman who does not currently have the genitalia you prefer.

And there are specific trans women in that thread who share your specific opinion ("intricacies like shape, smell, taste, mechanics") and didn't get a ban-hammer over it.

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