Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer who writes on international politics, religion, culture, and humanism.
2020 UnHerd article
Using a question India Willoughby posed on Big Brother about dating transgender people, Leonard wrote for anti-transgender publication UnHerd about the so-called “cotton ceiling” debate about cisgender women who won’t date trans women.
Unfortunately, two years on, the ethics of refusing transsexual people as dating partners remains a fraught subject: questions such as âIs it transphobic for lesbians not to date trans women?â are being discussed online. Again, they tend to arouse strong reactions. Some lesbians, for instance, have expressed concerns that raising the question of whether they âshouldâ be attracted to trans women is a surreptitious attempt to pressure, manipulate and guilt trip them into shifting their sexual boundaries into unwanted sex in the name of being more âopenâ.
Of course, there are lesbians who are reluctant to date trans women because they believe they are not actually women (or at least not women in the same way biologically born women are)â. But itâs worth remembering that lesbians have endured a long history of attempts to control their sexuality, whether through hideous practices such as religious indoctrination, conversion therapy or âcorrectiveâ rape to âmake them straightâ. And why focus the attack on lesbians, when many straight men would also reject trans women as a potential mate?
This obviously provokes a wider question: when does a preference become a convenient cover for bigotry and prejudice? On some level, as this tweet declares, âdating is discriminationâ. But the question provoked by that Big Brother episode was: when is discrimination acceptable, and when is it unacceptable?
References
Leonard, Ralph (October 7, 2020). Is dating discrimination? UnHerd https://unherd.com/2020/10/the-dangerous-politics-of-desire/
Resources
Twitter (twitter.com)
Medium (medium.com)
Muck Rack (muckrack.com)