In tandem with this piece, please go read “Big Scary Penises” which is available to my subscribers or as a one-time purchase on Payhip.

Question, dick or pussy?

Do you care? Do you have a preference?

You do? Why?

Don’t say it’s just what you like, say more.

Is it because it’s your sexuality? Because you are straight, or gay, or a lesbian? Sure…

I know it’s called sexuality, but since when have we been so literal about it? Is our attraction not based on more than sex organs? What about a person’s appearance, their personality, the way they relate to you? Despite what the transphobes say— it’s not like you can know every single person's genital situation right when you meet them. What if someone possesses the charming swagger, style, and compatibility you’re looking for, then you find out they have different genitals than you predicted, would your attraction go away so easily? Just like that? Isn’t that a bit…

I understand attraction is multifaceted. This is not to demonize people for having preferences or even dealbreakers— that's quite normal. But are there not reasons behind these dealbreakers, reasons for these boundaries? I’ve written about the roots of attraction in previous work. Desire is built on a collection of experiences and connections. It may not be easily traceable or defined, but there are some explanations.

For me, I’m not attracted to cis men who aren't even a little bit effeminate. I find masculinity, even hyper-masculinity, hot in women, non-binary, and trans men/masculine folks. Most times it feels safer, less toxic, and more expansive. But in a cis man, I find it boring and uninspired— simply sticking with the default.

Is this presumptuous wariness I feel for these men fair to all of them? Maybe not. There are masculine men out there who are honestly expressing themselves and are doing the work to undo internalized toxic masculinity, I'm sure. But I'm still not checking for them and I do not care to work on this bias against them. Whoops, sorry not sorry.

Whenever the gay internet reignites the discourse on genital preferences, it tends to go poorly. The topic pushes us to unpack how the ways we have connected sexuality to the body are not only gender essentialist (and therefore transphobic) but also reductive and contradictory to the ways we actually desire people.

“I don’t care who you sleep with,” and “I don’t care about what you do in the bedroom,” are low-bar pro-gay sentiments expressed by those trying to show a baseline respect for gay people. This ambivalent stance not only hyper-sexualizes being gay but also reveals how much sexuality is inaccurately equated to sexual desire. Heteronormativity can only make sense of Queerness in this way because that is the only way heterosexuality makes sense of itself.

Stick with me.

Men and women are very different under traditional binary understandings of gender roles. Men are strong, rough, emotionless people who are averse to and insulted by femininity. Meanwhile, women are soft, feminine, overemotional beings who need to be dealt with gently. How are these opposing groups supposed to get along? In this binary, these groups could not even like each other; they are scared and disgusted by one another. Heteronormativity explains this coupling by claiming that the innate sexual attraction these groups have for each other is what brings them together despite their differences.

There are many straight people out there who are willingly in relationships with people they do not like. He finds her annoying; irritated by how picky she gets about her appearance, by how dramatic she can get, by how she talks too much. She finds him infuriating; he hardly opens up about anything, he’s too unconcerned about his appearance, and he talks to her like she’s stupid. One of the few reasons they are together is due to their sexual attraction. While there are just as many straight couples in healthier dynamics than this, this opposites-attract mentality is how heterosexuals explain themselves.

It is this mentality that drives the homophobic argument that gay people simply have not found the “right dick” or “good pussy.” As if to say, “Well you’re not supposed to like the person, it’s about the sex.”

In turn, heterosexuality defines sexuality as not about who you click with, but instead, it’s a primal sexual attraction you feel for someone. It makes sense of homosexuality in a similar way— it must be a sex thing.

The other layer to all this is gender essentialism, the belief that each gender holds innate qualities that are biologically determined. Being born with a penis makes you a man; and to have a penis and be a man is to be rough, emotionless, and hyper-masculine by nature. That to have a vagina is to be a woman; and to have a vagina and to be a woman is to be soft, feminine, and overemotional.

The mainstream explanation of being transgender is that a person is “born in the wrong body,” and while there are Trans people who do in fact feel this way, this definition permits the existence of binary Trans people while still upholding an essentialist understanding of gender. It maintains the belief that women are supposed to have vaginas, and men are supposed to have penises.

What then of dysphoria? If gender is not rooted in the body, then what of the real misalignment many Trans people feel in their bodies? I would argue (and I know y’all might jump me for this) that society telling someone they can never be the person they are because their body does not align with the standard of what it means to be a woman or a man is what ignites gender dysphoria— it is not because bodies are innately gendered. Trans people are not the only ones who feel this misalignment. Many cis women get breast implants and other forms of plastic surgery to affirm their womanhood. Cis men with low levels of testosterone are given T, and it’s rarely because they’ll die without it, but because it affirms their gender.

Most of the Queer people I surround myself with have a similar view of Transness, but many of them, whether they admit to it or not, have genital preferences. This seeming hypocrisy is not because they do not truly believe these things, but instead, I believe, it points to the incredibly loaded associations internalized within genitals.

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If you are someone who wants to have sex with a woman and are told your whole life that women have vaginas, then having sex with someone who has a vagina is intrinsically linked to having sex with women. Vice versa, if you want to have sex with a man and are told that men have penises, then it will only feel like you are having sex with a man if he has a penis.

For queer people, these links are especially nuanced. There is a violent history of lesbians being told they just need to find “good dick” and, in especially violent circumstances, are assaulted by cis men in order to “convert” them. Gay men also told that they simply haven’t fucked “good pussy.” At times are coerced and forced into situations where they “have sex” with women. They are met with a baffled shock by straight men who cannot understand why a man would turn down pussy and for that reason, gay men are often regarded as “wanting to be women.” Their masculinity is stripped of them because to have sex with a penis is to be “fucked” which is designated as “the woman’s” position.

The action of “fucking” is packed with implications. Penetrative sex is deemed by many as “actual sex.” Many people feel as though they can only way to “get fucked” is with someone who has a penis— therefore a man. Sure there are strap-ons, but it’s not only about the literal action of fucking. It is about the energy of dominance, ferocity, and masculinity associated with the person doing the “fucking” and thereby the penis is also directly associated. To not have a penis can mean that person might not possess those traits. Sure someone can put on a strap-on and fuck the shit out of you, but it’s about them being able to possess that energy outside the bedroom as well. It makes those traits seem like a costume and not innate to the person.

For this reason, penises are an especially loaded genital because of these patriarchal connections. Its associations are rooted in histories of violence, control, and dominance. For so long, I held this fear-based attraction to penises because of all the toxic and coercive experiences I had with men. Inversely, the vagina is deemed as the safe sex part, the passive of the two genitals. In penetrative sex, the penis is viewed as the one doing everything, and the vagina is just there taking it all in. I know of many people with fluid sexualities, but will only have to pursue people with vaginas because it feels not as scary as having sex with a penis.

These associations are not flippant or baseless generalizations. The baggage they carry is incredibly heavy. They are filled with trauma, learned behaviors, and popular misunderstandings of biology.

It does not make it less transphobic though.

This is all still enforcing gender essentialism. If we are trying to move away from binary understandings of gender, acknowledging this about genital preferences is essential.

So what am I saying? That people need to start having sex with genitals they’re not comfortable with just to work on their internalized transphobia? No, absolutely not.

The fact that I know many will jump to this conclusion is exactly the problem. This happens so often in conversations about internalized isms. I’ve seen it when it comes to discussing Anti-Blackness. You could tell a non-Black person that Black people are not the beauty standard and have to do so much to be seen as beautiful, and then all of a sudden that non-Black person starts doing the most. They will go on and on about how Black women are the most beautiful people they’ve ever seen, that Black skin is just the epitome of beauty, or that Black people are so irresistible— once you go Black you can never go back.

It becomes fetishy and, most of all, insincere. The solution is not to suddenly view every Black person as the epitome of beauty, but instead to rethink the structure of beauty itself. What does it truly mean to be beautiful? Why does it matter so much? What are your standards of beauty rooted in? That is honest.

Same thing with genital preferences. The key is not to start fucking Trans people for the sake of solidarity. I am not telling people to simply get over sexual traumas in order to be the pinnacle of Trans allyship. You can recognize the root of these biases within yourself and still prefer to munch on some box.

Does that make you complacent to transphobia? I honestly don’t know, maybe it doesn’t, maybe it does. Do I think it makes you a bad person? No. Does it make you a good person? No. It just makes you a person.

We live in a violent, harmful, oppressive world, and as a result, we are all products of the society we live in. We so often view these things in such extremes. Either you’re as transphobic as Trump’s whole cabinet or you would take a bullet for Dylan Mulvaney. This leaves out the ways that individuals perpetuate these systems on micro and interpersonal levels. I am not going to placate and say, “It’s okay to be ethically grey,” or “It doesn’t make you a bad person.” Enough.

Some people only take accountability to feel like a “good” person again or they avoid taking accountability because they do not want to think they are capable of being a “bad” person. We need to grow up. We don’t know how to own up to harm without punishing ourselves. Without feeling overcome with guilt and shame. Without feeling like we are “bad” people. This carceral way of viewing wrongdoing is not only unfair to ourselves but also unproductive. The time spent beating yourself up about how you’re secretly a bad person, could be more effectively used to have an honest unpacking about your harmful subconscious beliefs. It does not make you bad. It makes you a person. It is what it is.

Accountability is tricky. A very careful balancing act. It relies on a neutrality that must carefully not dip into apathy. It requires a self-compassion that still uncomfortably challenges yourself. It demands deep introspection, while also being just as considerate about other perspectives.

Perhaps this is an odd time to bring this discourse up again given all the right-wing anti-Trans legislation right now. So many people who call themselves supporters and allies will find themselves feeling called out right now, but often it feels like we build “supportive” understandings of Queer and Trans identities from a place of counter-arguing against those who refuse to understand these identities. But that is incredibly limiting. Not only could we be breaking down the biases within ourselves, but we could be truly expanding our understanding of gender and expression.

We know that staunch transphobes are not going to want to understand Transness until they are truly compelled to change their mind. We should stop having conversations using their framework. Perhaps this is a perfect time to bring this discourse up again because the pipeline to Transphobia is especially slippery right now. If you don’t wish to slip, it’s time to be real with yourself.