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In new book, gender studies professor says it’s time to abolish these labels
“Sexual identity” labels should be abolished because they “harm trans people” in their dating and sex lives, a UC Riverside professor argues in a new book.
Brandon Robinson, a professor of sociology, gender, and sexuality studies, wrote the book “Trans Pleasure: On Gender Liberation and Sexual Freedom” based on interviews with men who identify as women (“trans women and trans femmes — trans people who identify with a feminine gender expression”) and their Reddit conversations about dating and sex.
The book documents these individuals’ experiences in “the bedroom,” “restaurants,” “dating apps,” and other typical dating spaces, and the discrimination that they often face, according to Robinson.
“… dominant understandings of sexual identities—which center desires around gender and genitals—harm trans people. They also limit how everyone can love and feel pleasure,” according to the book description.
In an interview with the university, published Friday, Robinson summarized the argument:
First, I want people to question why we privilege gender and genitals above all other attributes — like height or race — when we conceptualize our sexual identity.
Secondly, these categories often rely on gender essentialism. If being “gay” means being a man attracted to men, it assumes “man” is a stable, inherent category, when history shows the definition of manhood is constantly changing. Gender essentialism also harms trans people, who often complicate those binary boundaries.
“Identities limit us,” according to the book. “And the fact that we keep creating new identities — such as gynosexual, finsexual, sapiosexual, asexual, or pansexual — shows how these categories fail to capture the full complexities of gender, sexuality, and desire.”
When asked if getting rid of the labels “risk[s] dismantling the communities that have formed under their rubrics and, by extension, the political protections” that they have fought for, Robinson replied:
I think the risk is worth it. While those communities are important, moving beyond those labels allows us to see people more accurately. It leads to a more complex — and more biologically accurate — understanding of ourselves as human beings. It allows us to explore our desires beyond labels that often confine and constrain us. And it allows us to explore our desires beyond shame that often comes with many labels as well.
A few years ago, Robinson, who wants to be referred to as “they/them,” also wrote a journal article that linked heterosexuality to “white supremacy,” The College Fix reported.
Robinson wrote that the term “super straight” was coined by a “white and Asian heterosexual” TikTok user to push back at the notion that not wanting to date transgender people is “transphobic.”
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