I’m trans, but I have a genital preference. What should I do?

Navigating sexual limits without being transphobic — or needlessly pressuring yourself.

I got this question in my Tumblr ask box today, and it struck such a personal chord with me that I immediately wanted to dive into it:

Hey Anon, thanks for the question. I think it is good to be asking yourself a bit about what your limits are, what they might mean about your attitudes toward fellow trans people, and how you ought to be navigating them. Whenever someone does have a hardline preference regarding the embodiment of their partners, I think it’s worth at least asking where those biases come from and how they relate to the prevailing prejudices of the day.

That said, I think that even if you were to search your soul and conclude that your attitudes were transphobic, I don’t think the solution would be pushing yourself to have sex you didn’t want to have, or trying to force yourself to “get over” the associations you have with penises. That won’t work, and it’s not your fault for having them. Those feelings are neither bad nor good; they merely are, and they’re real, and your life will always have to negotiate the reality of them rather than making them go away.