When the push for transgender inclusion was about bathrooms, the discussion that ensued was about bathrooms, as if that was the start and end of the issue. Even then, there were other issues at play, locker rooms, showers, dorm and hotel rooms, that didn’t catch the level of interest of bathrooms. That meant people talked about stalls where people did their business, and what was the big deal, really?
The problem was never bathrooms, even if locker rooms, showers and dorms didn’t fit as nicely into the “no biggie” paradigm. Some women raised the issue of privacy, of a safe space for women, and for young girls, to clean and dress without seeing a penis, and without someone with a penis seeing them naked. The “social construct” argument was created in part to overcome the cognitive dissonance of this situation. It was a fight about nothing, about something society invented that didn’t really exist.
Their concerns were dismissed to the extent they were discussed at all. Just because some mom is a prude who feels her child deserves some female privacy is no excuse to discriminate. Their little darlin’ will get over it. A transgender person will not. Why the feelings of one trump the feelings of another was justified by marginalization. The more marginalized person’s rights beat the marginalized, but less so, person’s rights.
But once the initial shock and awe was overcome by the details of toilet stall doors and Puritan moms, the natural progression of the concept would necessarily happen, and to the outrage and horror of the trans community, the BBC said a part of it out loud, a variation on a theme predicted here.
Jennie is a lesbian woman. She says she is only sexually attracted to women who are biologically female and have vaginas. She therefore only has sex and relationships with women who are biologically female.
Jennie doesn’t think this should be controversial, but not everyone agrees. She has been described as transphobic, a genital fetishist, a pervert and a “terf” – a trans exclusionary radical feminist.
Jennie is a woman. Jennie is a lesbian woman. She is not sexually attracted to people with a penis. Is this not allowed?
“I’ve had someone saying they would rather kill me than Hitler,” says 24-year-old Jennie*.
“They said they would strangle me with a belt if they were in a room with me and Hitler. That was so bizarrely violent, just because I won’t have sex with trans women.”
What’s notable about this is that it isn’t a matter of persuasion, or even personal preference. It’s sexual demands upon threat of violence. That tolerance and empathy piece comes off a lot less sincere when accompanied by the two-prong reaction of deserve to die and worse than Hitler. Nice, right?
“There’s a common argument that they try and use that goes ‘What if you met a woman in a bar and she’s really beautiful and you got on really well and you went home and you discovered that she has a penis? Would you just not be interested?'” says Jennie, who lives in London and works in fashion.
Jennie’s answer is yes, for the obvious reason that she’s a lesbian and, as such, does not want someone to penetrate her with a penis no matter what that person was wearing before, what name she uses or what changes were made to her birth certificate or passport. It’s nothing personal, but it’s very personal.
This arises in the context of a lesbian woman pressured to accept a transgender woman as a woman for the purpose of engaging in sex. It presents the same situation that will arise when a straight man takes a beautiful woman on a date and, at the end of the evening, learns that his date has a penis. What’s it gonna be, boy?
At this stage of the progression, the attack is largely emotional pressure of the sort that many would argue constitutes rape if applied by a straight man to a straight woman.
As well as experiencing pressure to go on dates or engage in sexual activity with trans women, some of the respondents reported being successfully persuaded to do so.
“I thought I would be called a transphobe or that it would be wrong of me to turn down a trans woman who wanted to exchange nude pictures,” one wrote. “Young women feel pressured to sleep with trans women ‘to prove I am not a terf’.”
One woman reported being targeted in an online group. “I was told that homosexuality doesn’t exist and I owed it to my trans sisters to unlearn my ‘genital confusion’ so I can enjoy letting them penetrate me,” she wrote.
One might chalk up the fear of being called a “transphobe” or a “TERF” to the fact that these women were lesbians, and already inclined by their own experiences to be more sensitive to such characterizations. After all, when one relies on marginalization as an argument for asserting rights, it’s hard to deny the same to others, particularly when your initials have been mashed together for years.
But this sensitivity is also prevalent on college campuses. It’s not that every student suddenly identifies as non-binary, but many do to demonstrate their support or that they’re hip. Even students who don’t perceive themselves to be particularly progressive have a decidedly progressive perspective on issues of race and gender. This leaves many students open to sexual extortion by pressure to engage in sex not based on physical attraction, but identity politics. Nobody on campus wants to be called the university transphobe.
And when the date is over and sex is in the offing, until the moment Timmy learns that Sally has a penis, the option will be acquiesce or discriminate. For now, it’s sexual peer pressure. If that fails, there’s Title IX. It’s going to go there because it has nowhere else to go.
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