Walking home with my two-year-old son earlier, I stumbled upon this billboard on one of the bus stops. As someone who is allergic to wokeness, I couldn’t help myself but recall the good old days when this garbage only appeared in Marvel movies and on Netflix. It is now everywhere, apparently, including bus stops. You can’t even commute without being reminded about the curse of being a straight white man.

Hinge, the dating site, as it seems, has decided to invade my local town centre with their attempt of raising awareness to the issues trans-women face in the online dating world. Oh the discrimination! Oh the injustice!

After feeding the toddler and putting him for a nap, I googled it to see what it was all about. Mainly because the words that stood out to me before the billboard disappeared and was replaced with an ad of McDonald’s latest vegan burger (another thing I wouldn’t be getting my hands on, thanks very much), were “If you match with someone who identifies as straight and is hesitant or scared […]”. IDENTIFIES? It sounds like whoever wrote this, and as it turns out it was a trans-woman, tries to imply that someone’s sexual orientation is not really set in stone and can be bent and changed as if they weren’t born with it. It sounds a lot like this person thinks being straight is a choice and it is a discriminatory one, too. None of them ever say that being gay is a choice, do they? Somehow we have arrived in a world where it is believed that being straight is bad. Even though we have arrived here precisely because of straight people. LGBTQXYZ+ 0, nature 1.

My Google search landed me in Hinge’s help centre, where I found the entire post. The author says that, if you’re a trans-woman and you match with a straight guy who might be scared or hesitant, you have to remain strategic. STRATEGIC? What does that even mean? Do you mean hiding your cock? Just folding it and gradually sneaking it out hoping he wouldn’t make a big deal out of it? What is the strategy here? You can play hard to get for a while, but eventually, guys get tired of endless hand jobs, especially if the grip is a little too strong and forearms too vascular. Eventually, we want to get to the main meal and we sure as hell hope it’s not a sausage.

The post goes on to say that “as a trans-woman”, you don’t owe anybody an explanation of your gender, sexuality and body. After a few more self-righteous sentences, this person – to emphasise their point – ends on the word “period”, which is another thing they don’t get.

Don’t get me wrong, if you like to put on women’s clothes and pretend you’re a lady, go for it. If you go as far as changing your pronouns and your name and the way you present yourself, more power to you. But don’t expect others to change the way they live, the way they view relationships to make you feel comfortable. You may feel strongly about your decision to transition, but don’t think it doesn’t come without consequences. One of these consequences is that your love life will never be normal. If you’re a trans-woman and you’re attracted to straight, masculine men, chances are, you will not find happiness and you better off getting a cat. The closest thing to a pussy you’ll ever have.

I’m sorry if you’re offended, but I’m offended too. I’m offended on the behalf of men who use dating sites and discover that it is a total minefield out there. When they’re not getting rejected, they get tricked by OnlyFans girls trying to get subscribers or other attention whores fishing for Instagram followers. Now they have to deal with trans people and be nice about it. It seems like nobody stops to consider how men feel about this situation. It’s all about you, isn’t it? The world must revolve around you. It must accept you and your new identity. Men must date you or they are bigots. I’d rather be a bigot than compare cocks with my girlfriend, to be honest.

We need to consider men. A man, often referred to as a partner or the other half, deserves to know what he is getting himself into. Straight men don’t want to date trans people. They might match with you if you hide your Adam’s apple, but as soon as you reveal the truth or they realise it, they will want nothing to do with you. Whether it’s your deep voice, firm handshake or the bulge in your crotch when you’re happy to see him that gives you away, it doesn’t matter. He will run for the hills. You may have all the surgeries done and everything, but no matter how hot of a costume you’ve put on, no straight man will want a relationship with you. It’s kind of like seeing that vegan burger and thinking it looks nice and really convincing, but then realising it’s not a real burger and it will never be the same as the real burger. A real burger is less processed. A vegan burger has to be created because it doesn’t exist in nature. It’s fake and not good for you. Am I still talking about burgers?

If you don’t want to be “constantly coming out” to every potential romantic partner, you have to take a long and hard look at your dating approach. You have to realise that it IS a big deal. I will say it again – looking like a woman is not enough. Nobody gets into a relationship with someone just because they LOOK like the gender they are attracted to. Attraction has so many layers and goes way deeper and way beyond your mascara. Attraction is biological. We are attracted to the opposite sex for the purpose of having children. I know, I know – it’s controversial to say that people mate in order to have kids, but it’s true. We can CHOOSE not to have kids but the mechanism and instincts that motivate us to pursue a mate and sex are still there whether you like it or not. Nature was even so clever (knowing how lazy we are) that she/her even invented orgasm to convince us to have sex with a desirable partner. Of course, we have now outsmarted Mother Nature herself by inventing all kinds of anticonception so we can keep having sex without consequences.

In Evolutionary Psychology this is known as proximate and ultimate explanations. When a man is attracted to a woman, the proximate explanation is that he finds her feminine traits attractive. She has desirable characteristics such as attractive waist to hip ratio, curves in the right places and beautiful, symmetrical and feminine face. When asked about it, he says she’s just hot. The ultimate explanation explains why he finds these characteristics “hot” and it is to do with health, youthfulness and fertility. An attractive adult female body will show signs of good fitness, youthfulness and fertility and these will be enhanced by makeup and clothing by many women. Ultimate explanation, then, tells us that by finding these traits desirable, the man is selecting for a partner to have healthy children with. These are not conscious choices and happen behind the scenes of man’s consciousness. The concept of proximate and ultimate explanation is fascinating because we can investigate any human behaviour using this method.

Using this method, we can assume that sexual attraction is guided by an ancient process that is invisible to us. We get into relationships without consciously thinking about having kids (and like I said earlier, we can override this “need” as many people do), just like we don’t consciously think about providing our body with energy and nutrients when we get hungry. If you’re still with me on this, a trans-woman can change her entire body to appear more feminine, but in the eyes of a straight man, she will always have something missing and will be undesirable. The most she will ever be is “looking very convincing” or “looking good for someone who was born male”. His eyes might like what they’re seeing but as soon as the image is interpreted by the brain, it rejects it because the brain operates in the ultimate explanation which is – be attracted to the opposite sex. Eyes might be attracted to looks but the real attraction happens in the brain. Trans activists hate to be reduced to their genitals, but even though we can’t see what’s between your legs, straight men are attracted (with their eyes) to someone who appears to be a woman BECAUSE she likely has the correct parts and is able to bear children. In other words, men are attracted to feminine traits because they tell them that the person they like is a woman. To make it even simpler – men are attracted to women because they are women. We can say that a straight man is attracted to outside features because they advertise the sex of the other person. If the man is mistaken, he is quickly repulsed by the same trait he just found desirable.

When my wife and I were in early stages of our relationship, she received a Snapchat from a guy who she had talked to around the time we first started seeing each other. We decided to send this guy a snap of my ass pretending it was hers. The guy got aroused and excited. Does that mean he was gay? Absolutely not… I mean, perhaps. What it means is that he found it attractive because he thought it belonged to a female… you know… with a vagina.

This reminds me of something me and my friends laugh about to this day, and it may help illustrate how we can’t just rely on our eyes for attraction.

We were taking a break from playing football all morning. We were about sixteen years old and very interested in the opposite sex. One of my friends wore glasses. I guess he was pretty blind without them. A small group approached the football ground on the other end. His glasses were off. As the group appeared in the distance, he straightened his back and let out a sound of excitement. To get a better look, he put his glasses on and immediately let out a sigh of disappointment. He discovered what we all knew – it was a group of boys. It all happened so quickly but we laugh about it to this day. It’s been twenty years.

It shows that we may be deceived by our eyes. It also shows that, in the context of trans-women, our eyes can be deceived, but upon finding out the truth or taking a closer look, our brain takes over and tells us that this person should not be pursued. The brain acts like my friend’s glasses and tells us that even though the person might appear feminine, they are not a woman.

The author of the Hinge post argues that trans people shouldn’t have to explain themselves to straight people. That they should just enter the dating market and be accepted as they are and that their identity is not a big deal. I mean, you literally used to be a man. You didn’t just change your opinion on the movie Avatar, you chopped off your dick. It’s a pretty big deal. You’d want to know if someone you’re dating used to be married or in prison, right? It’s a big deal. Trust me, I’m a man – your target audience. You try to normalise the idea of trans people not having to explain who they are and how they’ve become who they are. I want to normalise the idea, very controversial, I know, that straight men shouldn’t have to explain why they don’t want to date trans women. I’ve just used two thousand words which could just be narrowed down to – no, straight men don’t have to date trans women and they don’t owe you an explanation.

Think about it.

Think about why you’re hiding the truth from somebody in the first place and ask yourself if it’s even worth getting romantically involved with a person who’d end it if they knew the truth. Your personality might be truly amazing – it’s never going to be enough to override that you are not a real woman. I shouldn’t have to explain it. Without being horrible, straight men feel repulsed and embarrassed at the very idea of performing any sexual act with another man. Yes, it includes trans-women. I’d say these negative emotions and physical disgust act as a defence mechanism against making bad sexual choices that will never lead to procreation. And before you say anything – it’s not the same as putting on a condom. Our brain hasn’t caught up to the invention of condoms so the only information it’s processing in it’s ancient, ancestral software is – “about to put penis in female”.

Sex and food are so powerful that we have created whole subcultures around them. We celebrate sex and worship orgasm by inventing different position to do it in, creating porn and living out our kinks and fantasies. What simply is a matter of survival, we have made into a buffet of flavours and pleasures. Sex and food are both about survival – survival of the genes and of the individual. You can’t feed someone with a plastic apple even if it looks a lot like a real apple. Similarly, you can’t make a man feel attracted to or even aroused by another man even if he looks a lot like a woman. It’s nature’s way.

Normalise men dating women and not having to apologise for it.