An R&B singer refused to kiss a man who thinks he’s a woman, and now the singer is being labeled transphobic, a growing trend as the transgender community demands not only tolerance, but also affirmation, approval, and dating rights.
Ginuwine, a contestant on “Celebrity Big Brother UK,” found himself on the receiving end of what could be classified as sexual harassment when housemate and transgender woman India Willoughby tried to kiss him after he said he wouldn’t date a trans person. When the 47-year-old singer rejected the unwanted kiss, Willoughby stormed off, inciting a Twitter rampage against Ginuwine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fu3j8SAL3g
Find out why some are calling Ginuwine transphobic for refusing to kiss his ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ co-star and leave it to #BlackTwitter (including D. L. Hughley) to shut that notion all the way down! Weigh in below. https://t.co/Xq6zDlP5JL
— TV One (@tvonetv) January 10, 2018
Just to be clear: it's ok to say "I don't want to kiss you." It's not ok to say "I don't want to kiss you because you're trans"
— Alyssa Katze (@AlleeCatBlues) January 9, 2018
— Willy Dee Billiams (@SoufWeSt_) January 10, 2018
https://twitter.com/TonyTheNarwhal/status/949844486712016896
https://twitter.com/Katie97531200/status/950147235014168576
The criticism runs counter to everything we’ve been hearing from the #MeToo movement. If a man were talking to a woman, and she said she wasn’t interested in dating him, but he tried to kiss her, some would be claiming “sexual harassment!”
Instead, some think the straight man is at fault for not complying with the other’s advances in this situation simply because the aggressor is a transgender person. This attack on straight men for their noncompliance was recently expressed in a video produced by Mic.
Cis men are insecure about their attraction to trans women — and now they're spilling the T about dating while trans.#DatingWhileTrans #WalkingWhile Trans pic.twitter.com/AefL42oH2z
— Mic (@mic) January 4, 2018
“If the idea is that a guy dating a trans woman makes him gay, then what you’re basically saying is that a trans woman is not a woman, she’s like a boy playing dress up,” one trans woman says in the Mic video. “I mean, like, I haven’t put in all the work and the money and the time and the resources into my transition for people to say I’m playing dress up. I’m not playing dress up; this is who I am 24/7.”
“Certain cis men who I find are trans-attracted, their approach to trans women, specifically, is a very dismissive approach,” another trans woman says. “I think that their view on us is that of a weak boy. They don’t really see us as women.”
The difficulty in finding straight men who will date transgender women has driven some to advocate not telling a date they’re transgender. They get onto online dating sites and classify themselves as women, go out on a date, and don’t tell the man their true sex. Then they wonder why or complain when the man is angry after he discovers the truth.
“These interactions (usually beginning online) can quickly lead to defensiveness as they backpedal to explain how they aren’t gay, usually including insults and slurs that dehumanize me for even daring to list myself as a woman,” a transgender person named Sara writes on Medium. “These men are interested in my femininity, even though they may be worried about being seen as gay just for hitting on a woman with a penis, or having sex with a girl who used to have one.”
Transgender people identifying as women say they are often afraid to tell straight men that they were “assigned as male at birth” because they can become violent, Sara adds. “Transphobia can sometimes slide all the way down to justifying the murder of trans women with comments like the ones made by comedian Lil Duval recently on New York’s Power 105.1 FM radio show The Breakfast Club, in response to what he’d do if he found out a woman he’s been sleeping with was assigned male at birth.”
“It’s pretty terrifying to navigate a dating pool where you’re both disqualified from people’s dating preferences when you disclose your trans status up front, but then also threatened with violence when you choose not to share the details of your genitals before the other person can ‘accidentally’ fall in love with you,” Sara continues. “In this context it makes sense for trans women to wait when you know you’ll be excluded up front, but if you don’t disclose your trans identity instead, you are punished for not telling, possibly by death. Huh … It’s almost as if trans people lose either way.”
A reason they call straight men who don’t want to date them “transphobic” is that men may be attracted to them until they know the truth. Straight men, they say, claim they’re not attracted to transgender women, which is why they should know the truth before dating. The problem is, another trans woman writes, “these people view transness as a mere physical quality that they just aren’t attracted to.”
The issue with this logic is that the person in question is obviously attracted to trans people, or else they wouldn’t be worried about accidentally going out with one. So these people aren’t attracted to trans people because of some physical quality, they aren’t attracted to trans people because they are disgusted by the very idea of transness.
No, straight men are not disgusted by the concept. They are turned off by the physical reality that transgender women are actually men, no matter how many surgeries or alterations they’ve undergone to make themselves look like women. Of course, a man can be attracted to the feminine appearance, but looking like a woman in dress, make-up, or even plastic surgery doesn’t make trans women actual women.
Is it bigoted when a straight man says he doesn’t want to date a gay man? Does this mean he is disgusted by homosexuality? Does this make him a homophobe? No. When a man is interested in a woman, he wants a relationship with an actual woman, not with a man who fantasizes about being a woman. He wants a relationship built on an objective reality — that the person he is with is truly, objectively, a woman.
Transgenderism is based on self-referential concepts, not on objective truth about one’s body. When we deny that there is such a thing as objective truth regarding our sexuality, everything becomes subjective and then we are forcing people to accept our own self-perceptions as truth. As human beings we simply don’t have that right.
For society to function and for relationships to flourish, we need to share objective realities — truths that are not defined and determined by individuals, but by our Creator and natural laws. If we don’t agree on certain objective truths, like the fact that there are only two sexes and you are either a man or a woman, then we will inevitably demand that others comply with our own vision of reality. We will attempt to violate their free will and their freedom of thought to conform to our fantasies.
This is what is happening with the transgender phenomenon. We are being forced to accept something as real and true that isn’t. Straight men should not be intimidated or forced into dating men who imagine themselves as women. This doesn’t mean transgender people should be treated with disrespect or harmed in any way, but that is more likely to happen if they deceive the men they’re with until their true sexuality is revealed.
Violent responses should never be tolerated, but a man who thinks he’s with a woman and then discovers he’s been kissing a man is likely to have an intensely emotional response. This isn’t shame; it’s anger at deception. It’s not transphobic; it’s an expectation of truth.
