As a transgender person who spends a lot of time seeking the opinions of other trans people and activists, I think a majority of trans people, including myself, agree that nobody should ever feel pressured into dating someone, and that having a genital preference is not transphobic (“If a lesbian only desires same-sex dates that’s not bigotry, it’s her right”, Comment). However, I do think there is room for reasonable discussion when a cisgender person declares that they simply do not find any trans people attractive.
When it’s possible for trans people to be assumed cis, to insist that you don’t find trans people attractive is to imply that it’s possible to instantly tell who is trans and who isn’t, and this is consistently proved false. It suggests there is another reason behind the declaration, whether that be a perfectly valid genital preference (with the necessary assumptions about trans people’s genitals that entails), or that they believe they are “still men” or “still women”. The notion that a trans person is “still just a woman/man” is evidently not acceptance of their identity, and transphobic.
Alex Winter
Selly Oak, Birmingham
