A study recently found that most people are not interested in dating transgender people. But why would this be a problem?

A recent Journal of Social and Personal Relationships study found that nearly 90 percent of survey respondents are not interested in dating transgender people. In a Psychology Today article on the study, coauthor Karen Blair implies these findings demonstrate significant discrimination—or at least an unwillingness to be inclusive—in dating.

However, instead of pointing out the obvious truth that biological cues are foundational for sexual and romantic attraction, the author goes to great lengths to convey sympathy for the exclusion of transgenders in the dating field as if it’s merely a social justice issue. This is yet another avenue progressives are using to encourage others to deny biological reality and normalize abnormal behaviors.

Blair explains that she and a colleague asked 1,000 survey participants, “Would you consider as a potential dating partner (check all that apply):

The results showed “87.5% of the participants who were asked this very question only checked off the cisgender options and excluded transgender and non-binary individuals from their hypothetical dating pool.”

Blair explains how important finding love is to happiness. Hardly anyone would disagree with her there. Then she goes on to say, “If very few people are willing to date trans people, what does this mean for their health and well-being? 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.”

Instead of analyzing why this might be the case, or what it might say about the transgender movement, Blair immediately assumes trans people are being actively excluded, even discriminated against. Obviously, her logic goes, nearly 900 people are wrong.

Blair also found that “only a very small minority of cisgender, heterosexual individuals (3.1%) were willing to date a trans person, a much greater percentage of individuals who identified as bisexual or queer provided inclusive responses (55%).” However, Blair still seems puzzled at the responses that indicated “individuals were least likely to express an interest in dating trans women, even if their sexual identity would otherwise indicate an interest in women (i.e., straight men, lesbian women, or queer/bisexual individuals).”

Blair didn’t ask why respondents felt disinclined to date transgenders, Perhaps it was never her intention to extrapolate on the data, but I think it’s important to attempt to do so. This data on dating could hold many clues for why so many people struggle with defending the transgender movement.

Duh: Attraction Is About Sex

Blair goes to great pains to skip over why she found the results she did and instead presumes transgender people are the subjects of sheer prejudice. This is a partisan reading of these results, so much so that her conclusions nearly abandon science altogether. Jesse Singal, who wrote a fascinating article in The Atlantic last fall about transgender children (and received significant heat for it), tweeted this observation of the article:

Interesting example of what happens when, for ideological reasons, you decide to pretend that biological sex isn't a thing that exists and is pretty deeply baked into who we are. Just all the pretzeling attempts to explain this without invoking sex…https://t.co/GUuXkqxRr9 — Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) June 18, 2019

He also tweeted “The point is that people’s attraction patterns, at root, largely have to do with biological sex cues. You can’t ideology your way out of that.” Finally, he tweeted:

3/ As more and more elites in progressive organizations decide either that they don't think sex is a thing anymore, or that it's too costly to defend the position that yeah, it's a thing, you're gonna see some weeeeeeeeeird stuff emerge — Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) June 18, 2019

Singal makes a salient point: By nature, people attracted to others based on obvious sex cues. This concept is easily observed in social settings, in television and film, and has been studied ad nauseum within the scientific community. When those innate cues are erased in favor of gender “reversals” or an androgynous or “non-binary” appearance, the natural anchors for attraction either disappear or are muddled.

If I am a man, why would I be attracted to someone who wants to look like neither a man or a woman? If I am a woman, why would I be suddenly attracted to someone who identifies as a woman yet retains many masculine traits? This is confusing and goes against nature. Blair’s refusal to acknowledge these possibilities could actually be damaging to gender-natural and transgender people alike.

Race and Ethnicity Are Not Delusions

Blair compares the quest for including transgender people in the broader dating pool to how interracial dating was viewed decades before:

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.

Neither of her conclusions could be further from the truth. A lack of interest in dating a transgender person has no parallels to interracial dating. Being black is not the same as choosing to dress “non-binary” and denying reality.

The extrapolations of this study are painfully obvious: The results indicate that biology-affirming people fail to be attracted, sexually or romantically, to people who have chosen to live outside biological norms. This is not only ideologically sound but biologically normal and healthy. Because of this, many people will continue to find love, and heck, even procreate.

Frankly, I’m relieved to see that romance has yet to fall prey to social justice inanity. The majority of people who are just average male or female folks do not need to start dating transgender people. Rather, transgender people need to accept that adhering to biological norms is healthy, not discriminatory. In fact, socially pressuring people to date them is far more prejudiced — against reality.