Gender transition can leave transgender people in a bit of a bind about their sexual desirability. While a transgender female may look, act, and feel masculine and exhibit male tendencies, she is just as female as any other female. If she is interested in either gay men or straight women, she could find herself perpetually attracted to individuals who are not going to be interested in her simply because of her vagina.

The same holds true for transgender men who have retained their penises. If they are into lesbian women or straight men, those two demographics will most likely be turned off by their body parts. This has got to be a painful, difficult, and kind of tragic place to be. The solution? Blame transphobia.

A young trans woman took to the internet recently to bemoan her fate at not being able to get gay guys attracted to her, despite her male appearance. The response was pretty well aghast that a woman who has transitioned to male yet retained her vagina could shame men for liking men and not liking her.

The question is: is it transphobic for a gay man to not want intimacy with a female-bodied transgender person, or is it homophobic for a female-bodied transgender person to think a gay man should want to be intimate with her?

Women expressing rage and disgust over gay men not being into vaginas. This is just homophobia. Call yourself a man, then shame gay men for liking dick. Describe their sexuality is crude, filthy terms. How are these people any different from anti-gay conservatives? pic.twitter.com/tKktpd6cjw — Lara Adams-Miller (@LaraAdamsMille1) November 16, 2019

To answer the question, we have first to assess language. How did we get here? The only way it could be possible to think that gay men are transphobic for not wanting to be romantically involved with people who have female reproductive organs is if homosexuality means same gender-attracted and not same-sex attracted. It would also have to have been finally determined that gender and sex are separate entities.

Homosexuality has long meant a sexual orientation wherein a person is attracted to others of his own sex. Yet because leftist theorists have split biological sex and gender, there’s this idea in transgender ideology that homosexuality should mean “attracted to people of your own gender.” To them, gender means the sex a person wants to imitate, rather than that person’s immutable biological reality. While biological sex-attracted homosexual men would be attracted to other men, the new idea is that they should be attracted also to trans women, who supposedly have the gender male, but the sex female.

It’s hard to imagine that the LGBT movement should adopt a position wherein it is acceptable to judge others on account of their sexual preferences. In this case, homosexual men are being shamed for their sexual preference, because they are told that their preferences are not inclusive, and that this lack of inclusivity represents a bias, a prejudice, that needs to be overcome.

But the very basis of the gay rights movement was that sexual preference is a personal matter that it not beholden to anyone else’s wishes or expectations. The idea was that we’re all beautiful just the way we are, that we don’t have to change ourselves to suit others, or behave a specific way just to fit in with society.

Telling gay men and lesbian women that their sexual preferences, which were so hard-won in the realm of social acceptability, are transphobic because they don’t include all sexes is a bastardization of the original movement. How have we marched for gay rights and legalized gay marriage only to get to the point where some affiliated with the gay rights movement believe that men who are strictly into other men are homophobic for not liking women? It seems a terribly sad situation for the young trans woman who feels she is a gay man despite not being male, but there are limitations in life, and when we make choices, those come with consequences.

It is really too bad that the object of this person’s desire will never desire her back, not because of anything she can change, but precisely due to those things that he and she cannot. Accepting when a person isn’t into you is not an easy thing to do. It must be doubly harder when you feel you meet all the criteria, but find that you fall short somehow, in ways that you can’t do anything about.

Trans women are not the first ones to make the claim that homosexuality among non-trans people is transphobic. Some high-profile trans women claim to be lesbians and shame and demean lesbians for not wanting to be with male-bodied persons. Trans cycling champion Rachel McKinnon, who has called female competitors “losers,” claims that “genital preferences” are “transphobic.”

You: "I like dick" Girl with dick says 'Hey, wanna date?'

"Oh…no…I only like dick on guys" Guy responds to date ad: 'Sup girl'

…guy has a vagina

"Oh, sorry, I only like guys with dicks" Both cases trans people are left in the cold. 'Genital preferences' are transphobic. — Dr. Veronica McKinnon (@rachelvmckinnon) September 30, 2019

If we accept that gender and sex are diametrically opposed concepts, it may become possible to imagine that homosexuality should mean same-gender-attracted instead of same-sex-attracted. But this relativist view allows sexuality to be an external characteristic, and not one that is inherent within an individual.

Additionally, it is part of a movement to divide us from the reality of our bodies. If, as McKinnon posits, the only morally acceptable sexual orientation is pan—as in, could (and indeed must) find anyone sexually attractive—then an individual is deprived of his or her sexual determination. Is that really the kind of culture we want to live in?

If we spin that concept out to its logical conclusion, then people would suddenly be in a position of being forced to declare attraction to those they are told to be attracted to, as opposed to those they actually are attracted to. Besides genitals, what other characteristics would not be up for debate? And in a time when fetishes and kinks are making their debut as socially acceptable, would those people who are only into certain kinks and the like also be shamed for not accepting others?

We have gotten to a point where sexual liberation itself has become an authoritarian box. It’s no longer acceptable to liberate ourselves from society’s expectations, we must now liberate ourselves from our own desires.

For much of our lives, we have been taught to believe that sexuality is a huge part of what defines us, and that we should not be ashamed of our preferences. But if trans ideology wins the day, people will be made to feel shame anew for those preferences, and everyone’s sexuality will be questioned for so-called inclusivity, as opposed to being something that is up to individuals.

If sexual liberation movement continues to embrace gender identity as an essential component of that liberation, they will find that what they are being asked to give up far outweighs the gains.