An article published in
Psychology Today says that if you are heterosexual and cisgendered and are attracted to men who are actually men or women who are actually women, then you are dehumanizing transgenders and the non-binary. Cisgenders are people who identify with their birth sex.
Karen L. Blair and Rhea Ashley Hoskins published a study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and they argue that the refusal to date transgenders and similar attitudes exacts psychological harm to transgenders.
The authors chose 1,000 participants for their study and asked their preferred partner given the following choices:
- a cisgender woman
- a cisgender man
- a transgender woman
- a transgender man
- a person with a non-binary gender identification
Roughly 87.5% answered that the first two options were preferred, depending on their orientation. Non-binary and transgenders were at the bottom of the list and only those who identified as gay, bi-sexual, or other forms of sexuality. The authors did not like this result and believe that a change of attitude is needed.
They wrote: “If trans and non-binary people lack access to one of the most stable sources of social support, this could explain some of the existing health disparities within trans communities.point 169 | Looking more closely at the patterns of responses, it also became clear that individuals were least likely to express an interest in dating trans women, even if their sexual
psychologytoday.point 16 | com/us/basics/identity">identity
would otherwise indicate an interest in women (i.point 90 | e.point 92 | , straight men, lesbian women, or queer/bisexual individuals).point 147 | Indeed, nearly 20% fewer people indicated an interest in trans women than would have been expected based on the sexual identities of the individuals within the sample.point 288 |”point 7 | 1
A similar study by the Canadian Psychological Association produced identical results. But the authors pointed to other factors apart from nature itself: “Dehumanization/prejudice, uncertainty or lack of knowledge, and issues related to bodies and reproduction.”
The authors continued: “The most common reason for being unwilling to consider dating transgender or non-binary people was that participants felt that they lacked information and understanding of what precisely these kinds of identities mean within the context of dating.point 368 |
For example, many simply stated that they had never really considered the question before and were unsure of what it would mean to be in a relationship with a transgender or non-binary individual.point 164 | Other reasons, however, were less about lacking information, and more about a strong dislike for trans people.point 258 |
”point 7 | 1
They also chided participants for thinking that “make believe” identities characterized transgenders and for wanting to date people with whom they could have biological children and called their language “dehumanizing.”
“A minority of individuals mentioned a desire to only date people with whom they could have biologically related children, however, often these reasons were still expressed using dehumanizing language, such as saying that a trans man ‘was not a natural man’ or a ‘real man’ and that therefore it would not be possible to have children with him,” they wrote.
While they admit that they can’t dictate who people should or should not date, they insist that hetero cisgenders dating transgenders should be seen in the same light as progress in interracial dating.
“Just as sociologists have tracked acceptance of inter-racial relationships as a metric of overall societal acceptance of racial minorities, future fluctuations in the extent to which trans and non-binary individuals are included within the intimate world of dating may help to illuminate progress (or lack thereof) with respect to fully including trans and non-binary individuals within our society,” they concluded.
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