So I can't be attracted to something without being rebellious against something else?
You can be who you are and like what you like. I wasn't addressing you. I was answering BoringGuy's question from my own perspective. I am also not thrusting anything on to you. This is a message board where people share opinions.
I don't think that is a particularly fair way to pigeonhole anyone or their preferences. Actually I get quite sick of people that tell me I'm just trying to be different. I like what I like and I don't need to be rallying against something else to like it.
Fine. For you. For some, the personal is political. I guess my own preferences partly stem from being a child of the 70s, where dumb and jock were synonymous in certain circles. I am not attracted to big muscle men, partly for political reasons ingrained in me in my young hippie days.
I like edgy people. Men with a feminine edge, women with a masculine edge, or when they dress femme, do it with a certain knowing irony. As I do.
Are you also insinuating that people choose what they are attracted to and that if they somehow aren't attracted to everything under the sun then they are being discriminatory?
I wasn't. Discriminatory, probably not. Somewhat brainwashed by our culture, certainly. No, no one is required to be attracted to "everything under the sun," but our choices are probably sent in certain pathways early on by our culture. Either the mega culture or a micro culture, perhaps.
I don't mean to be harsh, but I don't think anyone in here has been trans-phobic in any way. No hate has been spewed. Maybe for some their preferences of who to date and engage in sexual activities with is limited to born sex, but there is nothing wrong with that if they are content to live and let live. It doesn't mean that they are saying that transgendered or transsexual individuals are less than human, just that they aren't people they are interested in dating at the moment.
A straight person is not homophobic by default. A homosexual person is not heterophobic by default. Attraction =/= fear or disgust of whatever you aren't attracted to.
But heteros can be casually homophobic or transphobic, or culturally insensitive, without even meaning to. That is why I made the comment upthread about the edgy, "hip," liberal Conan O'Brien thinking it was fine to be making all the jokes about how disgusting transpeople, drag queens and cross dressers are. He just needed a little "consciousness raising" by my gf's letter (and probably others) to see his mistake. He was implying transpersons were "insane" and "disgusting" just for fun. And the audience was in stitches. Ho ho ho
I don't think anybody in here meant to offend in any way at all, but in your perceived offense you are starting to say some things that may be hurtful or offensive in and of themselves. You are pigeonholing people and reading their minds without their consent when you say things like someone who is attracted to androgynous/gender-queer/transpeople is anti-establishment. The two are not one and the same and it isn't fair to thrust that on others.
Surely people can offend without meaning to be offensive. You also used the term "born sex" after I corrected another poster about why that is offensive and in fact, incorrect. A vagina does not make the woman, a penis does not make the man. The accepted term is cis-gendered.