I'm insightful enough to know that I would have difficulty getting into a romantic relationship with a post-op female and perhaps that does make me a hypocrite. I strongly believe however that it does NOT make me a bigot and when people compare it to racism or homophobia it just rubs me the wrong way. For that reason, I end up making somewhat defensive posts that represent me as being anti-transgender.
It doesn't make you a bigot - though note that transphobia is so widespread, so ingrained in western culture, so ubiquitous, that someone implying you may hold transphobic attitudes is...well, to be honest, it's a bit like them suggesting that you breathe oxygen. Many/most trans people have to overcome internalized transphobia in
themselves thanks to years and years of social conditioning, media bombardment, etc. It is very difficult to live in western society and not have at least SOME internalized transphobia.
Which doesn't make it
good, or anything, and it's generally a pretty good practice to try to work through it as much as possible. Also, obviously, there are degrees, some of which are genuinely pretty inexcusable. But anyway, you get my point, I hope.
So back to what I was saying - it doesn't make you a bigot, but for a lot of us, it does kind of...raise the specter of some pretty ugly stuff, notably the "everyone is just humoring me while smirking/rolling their eyes behind my back" kind of stuff I mentioned earlier. It's the idea that, sure, people may go through the motions, make the correct sympathetic noises, etc., but they don't
really buy it. They don't
really think of you as a woman (or a man, for those trans men out there). It's just a polite fiction, something like "Do I look fat in this?" extrapolated to a fundamental aspect of our identities.
And...I mean, there's really nothing we can do about it. We can't police people's thoughts, and even if we could, it'd be kind of a crappy thing to do. We can't read minds (thank god). It's often not even something that the other person is doing
consciously - it's just that damn social conditioning again.
So, yeah, it sucks. Hell, even the
subject of this thread - in essence, "Would you date a trans person?" - is a little dehumanizing, because it's just another instance of us being the "other", the off-brand version, the almost-but-not-quite.