Your gender identity is connected to how your culture and society categorizes gender-including how many genders there are and the traits of each one-and the ways in which you embrace or reject those categories.īut sometimes even people who grasp that gender is complicated believe, deep down, that the sex someone was assigned at birth is what really determines their gender. Other people understand that gender isn't just about your body it's about how you think and feel, and how you express yourself. Some people treat that assignment as the final word not only on a person's sex, but on their gender: men have penises, women have vaginas, end of story. When a person is born, they're assigned a sex (most often male or female) based on the kind of genitals they have. However, it happening multiple times gave me a chance to identify the thought process behind the question, "But, like, does this mean you're gay now?"Ī lot of it comes down to people assuming that genitals are what determines gender. Sometimes the people who asked me that were genuinely curious, sometimes they were looking to invalidate one or both of us, and sometimes they were trying to get a rise out of him. I found myself explaining over and over that no, my attraction to him did not change my sexual orientation because I liked guys and he was a guy. I've been in your situation, Rose, although I identified as straight when I fell in love with a trans guy. After all, if you're bi, dating a trans guy could be an expression of your attraction to women right? I do want to acknowledge that if you started dating this guy, there are people out there who would use your bisexuality as "proof" that he isn't really trans. But that may have less to do with him being trans and more to do with things like bi erasure, where people assume that a woman dating a man (or a man dating a woman) is straight. That means using the right pronouns (he/him), the right name, and treating him as the expert on his gender.Īs for how other people might treat you as his partner, it's true that some might assume you're straight. Treating a trans guys as a guy is just respectful. Heterosexuality is when someone is attracted only to people whose gender is different than their own (like men being attracted only to women).
It's not heterosexual to treat a trans guy as a guy. If you identify as bi, your feelings for him don't have to change that, since attraction to men falls within the usual definition of bisexuality. How that fits into your sexual orientation depends on who else you're attracted to.
If you like a trans guy, then you like guys, because a trans guy is a guy. Let's tackle the question with the simplest answer first. By that, I mean you're viewing things as only having two possible options, when really there are more than that. There are a lot of binary ideas and definitions happening in your questions.
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