Thread by @po8crg

There is a bunch of nonsense being said in reply to @OwenJones84 and @AyoCaesar about "same-sex attraction".

Obviously, if you translate "homosexual attraction" literally, it means "same-sex attraction", but the word dates back to 1869, before sex and gender were distinguished.

There are lots of cases where we say "sex" when we mean what we now call "gender" and some the other way around. That's just how human language works. You can dislike that, but there isn't much you can do about it.

On top of that, there are a whole bunch of different things encompassed by "sex" and "gender" - identity, expression, phenotype, genotype, endocrinology, anatomy.

So, when we say that someone is "homosexual", what do we mean? Do we mean they are exclusively attracted to other people who were assigned the same gender at birth (ie, what transphobes mean when they say "sex")?

Well, no. There are lots of people who call themselves homosexual who define their own attraction in other ways. Plenty of cis gay men fancy trans men. Plenty of cis lesbians fancy trans women.

... and they don't fancy cis people of the other sex, so it's not as though they are bisexual.

Now, the accusation that is made is that pro-trans people want to make those gay/lesbian people who are "same-sex attracted" redefine themselves as "same-gender attracted". As far as I can tell, no-one has ever tried anything more than persuasion, which isn't "make" in my book.

The main demand seems to be "stop telling lesbians who are attracted to trans women that they aren't lesbians". Is it possible that our historic category of "lesbian" encompasses two sorts of people, one who is attracted to trans women and one who isn't?

Maybe so. But that doesn't make one of them "real lesbians" and the other not. Not does it let either of them define the others out of their lesbianism.

And we can say the same about gay men, though transphobes tend to talk less about them.

I don't especially want to get into the "cotton ceiling" controversy, other than to say that people are entitled to be sexually attracted to whoever they like, but they are not entitled to insult people because they aren't sexually attracted to them.

And "Have you considered whether you're not attracted to this person as a result of society's bigotry against them?" is a fair question, and you should think about that. You can legitimately answer "Yes, but it's too late to change." as well as "No".

It's not "redefining homosexuality" to say that it can include being attracted to people of the same gender as oneself. Any term that includes more than one person has to deal with the fact that different people are different.

Different gay people are different. That means that their gaynesses are different. Gay people are not all gay in the same way. It's not a redefinition to say that people who are exclusively or primarily attracted to people of the same gender are gay.

The word was never that clearly or sharply defined in the first place. "If you have ever experienced any positive sexual feeling about someone of another sex than your own than you're not homosexual" is not how language or humans or sexuality works.

The aspect of gender/sex that different people respond to is different. So people who have some male and some female characteristics will be classified as "male" by some monosexuals and as "female" by others.

Humans are varied!

Finally, though perhaps more importantly than some of the other things: if you find a trans person attractive when you don't know they are trans, it is not a "trick". It's not rape if you then have sex without knowing.

And the "trans panic defence" when people get violent to trans people they are attracted to when they discover they are trans? That should not be a defence, and implying that being a trans person that is attractive is a violation plays into that attitude.

Saying that trans people are coercing you into changing your sexuality or some such validates exactly the sort of violence that is committed under the trans panic defence. Don't do that, it's transphobic.