(no subject)

[yagathai]

Recent comments by Seth McFarlane, creator and writer of Family Guy, have caused controversy in circles where such controversy is wont to occur. You can read about it in more detail here, but the short of it is that one of his straight male characters threw up after he learned that he'd had sex with a post-op male-to-female transsexual. McFarlane was criticized for saying that he didn't think that this was an out-of-the-ordinary reaction for your average straight dude.

I got into a bit of an ugly scrum over at redstapler's LJ, where what I thought was a productive discussion with redstapler quickly got derailed by your usual-type flailers and shriekers accusing me of being the devil, so I was hoping maybe we could have a more civil discussion of the topic here.

It remains to be seen if that's possible.

My points, briefly, are that:

It is not unreasonable for a straight male in modern Western culture to be distressed upon learning that someone he thought was a ciswoman, that is to say a woman that was born a woman, with woman bits, who was acculturated as a woman was actually a transwoman, that is to say a woman that was born a man, with man parts, acculturated as a man who later got top and bottom surgery and is now a woman*.

It is, further, wrong for a transperson not to notify their partner that they are in fact trans, and not cis, if they can reasonably assume that the fact that they're trans might affect their partner's decision to consent to sex. In other words, their partner has to be given an opportunity for informed consent. Without such a notification, their partner is incapable of informed consent and that's wrong, because sex without informed consent is a form of rape -- in fact, it's one of the primary definitions of rape.

The arguments against me, as best I can understand them, are:

A transperson should never have to reveal their trans status because they are constantly in danger of being transbashed, that is to say, violently assaulted because of their transsexual status. Concern for their personal safety overrides any other considerations, including their obligation to inform a potential sexual partner.

If you have sex with a transperson and you can't tell that they're trans, then what difference does it make? You never need to know, and they never need to tell you. No harm, no foul.

yagathai is a racist and a transphobe and a homophobe and a terrible human being**.

Discuss.

*Yes, there may be ways to be a transwoman that don't involve getting a whole bunch of surgery, but this was the scenario as presented in the TV show and it's the one I'm going with here.
**For the record, I think you could make a legitimate case for only one of those four things.

Comments

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

I am willing to agree to disagree on your second point, but on your first, I want to try and explain my reasoning:

It is not unreasonable for a straight male in modern Western culture to be distressed upon learning that someone he thought was a ciswoman, that is to say a woman that was born a woman, with woman bits, who was acculturated as a woman was actually a transwoman, that is to say a woman that was born a man, with man parts, acculturated as a man who later got top and bottom surgery and is now a woman*

The reason this line of thinking is a problem is because it leads, as you acknowledged, to trans-bashing.

The problem is that this line of thinking is culturally taught. You are taught revulsion and distress to this situation.

Until the reaction to the discovery of a person's trans-status is no worse "Oh, sorry, that's not my bag," in the same way that some people don't like their lovers to have tattoos, facial hair, or the wrong body type, jokes reflecting trans panic, and even yes--a person's deciding to disclose is not your right.

I agree that in a happy shiny world, that info could be given freely and without issue. But that's not the world we're in.

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

First of all, I don't know if I agree that sexual preference for cispeople is culturally taught. I believe someone's sexual preferences are hardwired more or less from birth, and those preferences go far beyond simply gay/straight/bi.

But OK, even if I agree with you, and I concede that not wanting to fuck transpeople is a learned trait -- so what? A person still has the right to exercise choice about their sexual partners based on a learned trait. You may not agree with their sexual preferences, but that doesn't mean that their sexual preferences shouldn't be respected. Our bodies, our choice, right?

Bottom line, just because that revulsion is culturally taught does not make it wrong for a person to feel revolted where their sex life and their sexual choices are concerned. I frankly cannot believe you are coming down against a person's sexual sovereignty here.

(This verges into point 2), but I'm going to bring it up because it also speaks directly to your point:)

Your argument, that a transperson is at such high risk of getting the shit kicked out of them that their risk level trumps their partner's right to informed consent, only holds water if those are the only two choices -- either come out and almost certainly get bashed, or lie to your partner and let them make a decision based on false pretenses. In that case, fine, you've got an argument. I still don't know if I buy it, but it's a much stronger position.

But there's a world of choice that occurs between those two options. You could, for example, not fuck the person you know wouldn't fuck you if s/he knew you were trans. That's the most obvious choice. That way you don't risk getting bashed, your potential partner doesn't have his or her sexual identity potentially violated and everyone's happy. Or you could look for someone that's trans-friendly in the forums that we now have available to us where people like that congregate. If you meet someone in a trans-friendly chat room, for example, the odds of getting transbashed drop precipitously.

So no, I'm sorry, I don't buy it. If I know that you'll be upset if you know the truth about me, but I go ahead and let you assume a falsehood anyway just so I can fuck you -- that's not right, Jill. It's wrong!

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

I am not saying that a sexual preference for cis-people is culturally taught.

I'm saying that a revulsion and disgust for the discovery of trans-status *is.* The danger trans-people live with is the result of long-standing, systemic, culturally-ingrained hate.

I'm not saying everyone needs to go fuck everyone regardless of one's preference. I'm saying that we need to change the fact that disgust and revulsion is the response.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

Your argument, that a transperson is at such high risk of getting the shit kicked out of them that their risk level trumps their partner's right to informed consent, only holds water if those are the only two choices -- either come out and almost certainly get bashed, or lie to your partner and let them make a decision based on false pretenses. In that case, fine, you've got an argument. I still don't know if I buy it, but it's a much stronger position.

There's not much I'd want to say here that isn't getting said, but I did want to offer this:

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) has released its statistics regarding LGBTQ hate violence for 2009. According to their report, twenty-two victims of hate murder were reported by the NCAVP, and this may not reflect the full number as hate crimes tend to go under reported. One police district was recording rapes under a different category so as not to have to worry about all of the potential testing and paperwork involved in a rape case.

The twenty-two victims of hate murders is the NCAVP’s second highest in a decade. The majority, just near eighty percent of the victims of hate murder, were racial minorities, and the bulk of the victims were transwomen or feminine-presenting.

From this page. (http://lezgetreal.com/2010/07/ncavp-releases-2009-hate-crimes-statistics/)

I know that you're not cool with transphobic violence or homophobic violence. However, I think what you're not considering is that for cisgendered LGB or Q folk, their partner's willingness to involve themselves sexually is a good sign that they're not about to get hurt. Even having to consider the question of whether a sexual encounter is going to turn into a violent attack is horrible, but at least once a gay person has you in bed, they know that they're probably past that question because you are PROBABLY comfortable with them being gay (being as you're potentially about to have gay sex with them).

Trans people have no such assurance. There is no point before everything is bared and everything is done where they can say, "Okay. At this point it's probably safe to say they're cool."

Would you be scared?

With rates of violence like what LGBT people get (with the bulk hitting racial minorities or feminine-presenting transpeople), if I were trans, I don't even know how often I'd leave the house. With rates of violence like that, the fact that a trans person is even engaging in sexual activity at all requires a hell of a lot of courage. This is sad, because it shouldn't take some kind of courageous hero to let someone near one's body, but for trans people, it kind of does.

As a result, I find you disbelief that conditions are so dangerous and so potentially frightening for trans people to be deeply misinformed at best, and trivializing of the violence they are threatened with at worst.

Even if you personally would blink and say, "Huh. Y'know, this does change things and I sort of wish I'd known before we got to this point," it might be a good idea to temper that with even a little bit of compassion for how frightening it probably is to tell you at all, and the trust that has just been placed in you to not murder your aspiring sexual partner.

[phaetonschariot.livejournal.com]

There is no way to know if the cool liberal-seeming person you're attracted to is going to have a freak out. Even if they profess opinions that trans people are all good, they may still freak out. Every time you come out as trans, you're not only risking that this person might react badly, you're risking that they might tell someone else (out of spite, out of confusion and a need to talk it over, out of gossip, as a "well I'm dating a trans person!" ally credential, for all kinds of reasons). If it becomes in any way public knowledge, it can make you basically unemployable, it can make it hard to find places to live, it can turn people against you. You can be completely confident that there won't be bad consequences to telling someone and be flat out wrong. There's no way to tell.

Also, not all trans people are part of trans communities or even have the internet. So, those people don't deserve to have relationships if they're concerned about their personal safety?

There's a whole world between knowing someone will be upset (which personally I wouldn't want to shag someone if I knew they'd be that hateful towards me) and knowing someone won't be, and 99% of cases fall into that.

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

The reason this line of thinking is a problem is because it leads, as you acknowledged, to trans-bashing.


And really, what do you propose as an alternative? That it's NOT OK for a guy to be upset that he feels he was decieved into sex? That he should be fine with it, and that a professional satirist and provocateur should self-censor and pretend that he's fine with it too? That's just not smart or right or realistic.

I don't even think your argument against my point #1 makes sense from a strictly utilitarian point of view, even if you ignore the ethical implications which comprise my point #2. The way to eliminate transbashing and effect a cultural shift is not to have more transwomen fuck more unwitting straight guys. In fact, it's a great way to polarize popular opinion against transpeople on a grassroots level.

I guarantee you this, Jill. The average straight guy -- and even most of the not-so-average, fairly socially and sexual liberal straight guy -- that finds out that he unwittingly slept with a transwoman and liked it is not going to suddenly be OK with fucking transwomen. He will not be like a kid you tricked into eating and liking beets. He will, instead, feel betrayed, confused and upset -- maybe upset enough to throw up, maybe not -- and then he's going to be angry. Very, very angry, as only people who have had their sexual choice taken from then can be.

Think about all the guys that, if approached by a transwoman who tells them that she's a transwomen, would say either "no thanks, that's not my bag" or even "no, ew, get away!" and not proceed beat the living shit out of her. I think people are fundamentally good, and tolerant, and a lot of guys would have exactly that reaction. They might be amused, or disgusted, or indifferent, but not violent.

Now of those guys, how many would in fact beat the living shit out of her if she slept with them and then revealed her status?

Those are the folks whose support you are losing with your line of reasoning. Those are also an awful lot of transwomen getting bashed instead of just rebuffed.

[stegoking.livejournal.com]

I agree with you entirely, Mike.

(And I love me some tranny porn.)

[ornythopter.livejournal.com]

Um. Who gets to decide what information is required for the consent given to be informed as opposed to, you know, like you say, the act becoming a form of rape?

"So you didn't tell the young lady you were a saxophone player prior to intercourse?"
"No, your honor, I did not."
"Welcome to the Sex Offender Registry. Hope you don't live near a school..."

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

I'll repost what I said over on the other thread:

Here's where you draw the line with consent: If you know, or can reasonably assume, that a person would not consent, or at least would have major second thoughts about consenting, if they knew something about you that you chose not to reveal -- that's depriving them of informed consent.

Like anything else, it's a sliding scale with a lot of grey. Would most guys care if a woman was a bottle blonde instead of a natural blonde -- or at least care strongly enough not to fuck her if she was otherwise acceptable? In other words, would the peroxide 'do become the dealbreaker? Probably not. Would most women care if a guy was married to their sister, and might that concern be a dealbreaker? Probably so. Are there situations where the opposite of both scenarios might be true? Yeah, you bet, but most people don`t hear hoofbeats and expect zebras, you know?

In general, I think the average person living in our culture can assume that a straight man or straight woman would want to know whether or not their potential sexual partner was trans, and would weigh that factor in whether or not to give consent for sex. Consequently, I think that it's something that goes on the disclosure list.

[ornythopter.livejournal.com]

On a more relevant note, does anyone find it strange that Brian, THE DOG has sex with humans AND other dogs?

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

It's one of those things like whether or not everyone can understand Stewie talking. Family Guy is no paragon of internal continuity.

[hippoiathanatoi.livejournal.com]

Informed choice: never wrong.

[synchcola.livejournal.com]

Hmm, as a transwoman, I'll try and answer this, if that's okay.

First, I hope that it's okay with you* if most transwomen do not personally consider themselves disgusting or whatever. So basically, the atmosphere is nice and a guy is interested in me. It's obviously time to think about how people consider me to be a revolting piece of trash.

Can you imagine having to remind yourself that, despite the way the person is really friendly and nice, and they are interested in what you're saying, they probably actually hate you and will beat the shit out of you for not stopping them, and that that is your fault and you have to do something about it, while simultaneously believing that there is nothing wrong with you?

I personally, from this kind of rant and other stuff I've read on the Internet, I have internalized quite clearly that many straight guys would consider me an incredibly revolting sexual partner because I am transsexual. And that is why I freeze up or pretend not to notice when I get any flirting or sexual advance from a guy, because if I led him on he would feel terrible for having made the mistake of flirting with human trash like me.

However, I am insane.

Most people don't consider themselves to be secretly trash. There are even some transwomen who don't.

So however reasonable the strategy of going "hey you're acting like you like me but do you secretly hate me for stupid reasons, which is my responsibility to find out and then probably get treated like shit" may look to you, in practice a sane person who doesn't hate themselves can't do it.

Like for example, if you believe that, then it seems like you should also...

Say you were gay. And you went swimming at a pool. But in the men's changing room, you can see members of the attractive sex naked. And obviously that's peeping, looking at men naked under the false pretense that you're straight. (I picked guys in particular because I think a lot of guys used to consider having a gay guy in the changing room sexually violating. And, I mean, it is peeping at least as much as having sex without telling your partner that you're transsexual is nonconsensual.) So... gay men shouldn't use the changing room, would you say?

But these days nobody thinks that way. Why not? Because it's so fucked up for the people who would have to live the way you're theorizing about.***

*: Everyone has their own pet theories about transsexuality, and the great thing is that all of them are right!

**: But not me personally, I'd feel guilty about tricking him into treating me as attractive even this much.

***: As a thought experiment, wouldn't it be more natural for the transphobic straight guy to take the responsibility of asking his partners if they were transsexual? What would that be like? Why does that seem so ridiculous?

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

I don't think that simultaneously not hating yourself and realizing that a lot of people may not be attracted to you if they know something about you that you're withholding is impossible. I'll absolutely concede that it's a tough row to hoe, and it utterly blows that the current culture makes that such a fraught and difficult process -- but just because doing the right thing is difficult or frightening doesn't mean that it's OK to skip that part.

Was a time when a gay person had the virtual certainty that if they came out they'd be gaybashed and lose their friends and job and having their coming out treated with unmitigated revulsion. Nowadays that's still a problem in some places and in some circles, but it's absolutely not a problem in many others -- and all that change made in, what, two or three generations? There are people who were alive then that are still alive now. There's hope, and I think it's a very realistic hope, for that level of social acceptance.

I think that in certain social circles it's already not that big of a deal -- not that the straight guys in those circles are necessarily champing at the bit to sleep with a transwoman, but if confronted with the prospect they're not going to react with revulsion or violence -- and I think that the attitude is spreading. Things are getting better, and hypothetically it may end up that having sex with a transperson will be seen as such a nonissue that you've no longer got to seriously worry about informed consent issues. But we ain't there yet, and frankly I don't know if we ever will be.

Your locker room analogy doesn't hold water, really, when you're comparing it to one-on-one sexual encounter. When you change in public, you're getting naked, and when you get naked it's reasonable to assume that people may look at you with prurient interest. It might actually hold up in certain sex club or orgy scenario, where you show up to fuck whatever looks good and the implied agreement is "no names, no questions" -- in that case, if someone has sex with a transperson the onus of responsibility would be on them, not the transperson.

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

Hypothetical: Seven of your great-grandparents are Caucasian. One of your great-grandparents is African-American. You have blue eyes and straight, light-brown hair. You have consensual sex with a Caucasian woman. Afterwards while conversing you mention that you have some non-white ancestry, and she calls you a disgusting Octoroon, calls the police, and tries to get you arrested as a rapist. Is it your fault for not assuming in advance that she was a horrible racist piece of filth and disclosing the ethnicity of all eight grandparents pre-emptively? Or should people in this society treat those who deny the humanity and equality of other people as the ones with the problems, and not allow them indulgence or special consideration for their irrational hatred?

[teleens-journal.livejournal.com]

Beautiful analogy. :)

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

Nice.

Actually happened

[unix-vicky.livejournal.com]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10717186

Person or Lifelike Blowup Doll?

[teleens-journal.livejournal.com]

It's funny, I came here originally because I thought that you had a valid point and in fact was prepared to log out of this journal, create a sock account and tell you so, because I found this through someone else and didn't want her to know that I didn't agree with her.

Then I asked someone I care about, who is as hetro as they come, the following question, "If you had sex with a woman and she later told you that she'd been born a man, how would you feel?"

He first asked, "She'd had the operation?"

I nodded.

"Then it wouldn't affect me having wanted to have sex with her. If I'd wanted to have sex with her before, the fact that she'd had an operation wouldn't change that."

And that's what this issue comes down to.

Are you having sex with a person or a lifelike blow-up doll? Under what circumstances is the sex occurring? In the case of the Family Guy episode, they had sex after a hookup in a bar. They liked each other, had a sexual attraction and hooked up.

When I saw the episode, I thought that Brian's reaction was over-the-top, but still in some ways reasonable. And your arguments all sound very reasonable on their face. Again, I came here to agree with you and it took some deep thought for me to determine where we've gone wrong with our idea that a trans person not revealing their genitalia at birth is wrong.

First of all, a trans person IS the gender that they are living as. A trans woman IS a woman. She feels feminine and to her, her penis is something that someone born with an extra finger would see that as: a birth defect.

If a man has sex with a trans woman, he's having sex with a woman. Period. He found her attractive enough to have sex with before he knew that she'd had unwanted appendages at birth - why does that change when he finds out her chromosomes?

If procreation is not the goal and attraction is present, getting upset after the fact may be something that's "reasonable" in our old-fashioned, misogynistic society, but it's not rape.

Unless Joe Millionaire is also a rapist? He misled women into thinking that he was a millionaire and you won't convince me that none of them had sex with him. Is he now a rapist for the lie? No court would say yes because it's assumed that you're supposed to be having sex with someone because of what sort of person they are, not how much money they have.

It's only rape if who the person is doesn't matter. It's only rape if every lie to get someone into bed is rape. And I would also argue that a lie of omission (i.e. not telling someone whom you're just hooking up with that you're Arab or trans) is far less than lying about marital status or yearly income or any of the other things that people lie about to get other people to have sex with them.

Your arguments that this is rape are based upon a flawed premise. The premise is that one casual sexual partner owes the other anything more than courtesy and safety.

To me, courtesy is caring for he other person's pleasure and not telling everyone later how good or bad they were in bed. Courtesy is NOT telling someone you've just met about the mostly difficult and painful thing you've ever done, whatever that may be. Would you tell a random hookup in a bar that you'd once attempted suicide or something else equally painful?

As for safety, STD disclosure is a MUST because the life of the partner may be changed forever. Having sex with a trans person will only change your life forever if you're ignorant and closed-minded about what being trans really is.

So I ask again - are you having sex with a person or a blow-up doll? And if it's the latter, which lie is the deal-breaker? Makeup to cover scars? Bottle blond hair? Fake breasts?

You have a decision to make here.

Do you care for the person or is every sexual partner you've had merely an extension of your own masculinity, an affirmation that you're a heterosexual male, or a convenient opening to deposit semen in?

Are you willing to really take a look at yourself and figure out precisely why you think that non-disclosure is rape?

Or are you just going to stay secure in the idea that you're right because thousands of years of hetro-normative thinking says that you are?

Re: Person or Lifelike Blowup Doll?

[il-volpe.livejournal.com]

Your arguments that this is rape are based upon a flawed premise. The premise is that one casual sexual partner owes the other anything more than courtesy and safety.

Yes.

And the understanding of informed consent. Informed consent is supposed to mean that the person consenting is adequately capable of reasoning at the time, and in possession of all the relevant facts.

yagathai is presuming that the fact that a person has a hang up about trans people makes someone's trans-ness a relevant fact, and supports this impression of relevance by pointing out that lots of people have hang ups about trans people.

I don't think this works.

It makes the hypothetical passing-for-white bi-racial person a rapist in 1967 because it's 'reasonable' to suppose that partners might have a hang up about it then, but less than twenty years later the same act isn't rape because by then we're expected to have gotten over that shit. It'd mean that I'd have to tell anybody I picked up in a bar here, where people are often religious bigots, that I'm an atheist, or I'm likely to commit a rape. But I don't need to worry about that if I drive for an hour to the more liberal city down the highway, where there it'd be even more absurd for people to suppose that everybody they meet is Christian.

Bad craziness.

Speaking of, the stickin' it in the crazy analogy is really pretty good, because "I am schizophrenic," is a disclosure not so unlike "I am trans." It's personal and probably painful, it's not actually relevant in a consequences way where casual sex is concerned, it freaks people out, and revealing it can have very bad consequences. Trans people have fewer protections in terms of jobs and housing than the crazy, and both may suffer serious social consequences.

yagathai wouldn't trust most people not to steal $20, but does trust them not to beat up trans women? I'd trust more people not to steal $20 than I'd trust not to gossip. I wouldn't give my ATM-card and PIN to a one-night stand. I wouldn't tell her my mental health history or my trans status either. Those things are more powerful than my PIN when it comes to allowing somebody to hurt me and fuck up my life, and I can't call the bank and have them change that stuff, and in this grand old age of information I probably couldn't even undo that harm by moving.

So, this 'For me, trans is a dealbreaker so it's wrong of you not to tell' thing which sounds so reasonable ends up in the practical meaning that you expect people to give you a huge amount of power over them before you'll even consider sex with them to not be a horrible crime against you. You demand they restrict their sexual activities to those they'd trust with their super-whole-life-PIN, because respecting your personal hangups is a moral obligation that ought to limit other people's lives. That's not fair.

(And respecting that hangup is, in itself, a problem. Trans people are put in a really absurd position about disclosure -- don't tell people unless you trust them, because it's dangerous and they can fuck you up and it's just TMI. But don't take too long to tell, because they're liable to be furiously upset that you didn't give them a chance to reject you for the freak that you are before they became attached to you. What's a monster to do?)

[mrbelm.livejournal.com]

Not completely relevant, but I should point out that the Family Guy episode is blatantly referencing "The Crying Game." Did that movie trigger a similar discussion back in 1992?

[teleens-journal.livejournal.com]

Not that I can remember and I can remember a LOT of the hype that surrounded that movie.

[il-volpe.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[pocketseizure.livejournal.com]

I think I am going to have to defend to the death Seth McFarlane's right to make fun of transgender people and the "straight" reaction to them through Family Guy. Everything about that show is tasteless, and that's why it's funny. The fact that Brian pukes after he learns that he's slept with a transgender woman isn't supposed to be business-as-usual, it's supposed to be funny. One of the blog posts you linked to said that it's "too soon" to make jokes about transgender people, but I came away thinking that the joke was on the straight male Brian (i.e., McFarlane making fun of himself) for overreacting. In a show that is all about offensive humor, puking after having had that particular sexual experience is funny because it's offensive.

That McFarlane considers such a reaction as normative and still makes fun of it is a good thing. Things that are hidden or glossed over or handled with kid gloves are scary, not things that are openly mocked. I'm personally more concerned about shows like Modern Family that present a gay couple but never allow them to kiss (unlike all of the other characters in a relationship on the show).

I'm not sure whether or not it's the responsibility of a transgender person to disclose their sexual identity (or whatever) before having sex, but I would tend to think not. In a perfect world, sure, but sometimes people fall in love and get drunk and do stupid things. Sex is always kind of screwy in any case, which is why comedians have been making fun of it in all its various forms and manifestations forever and ever and ever.

[il-volpe.livejournal.com]

I'm with you there. I am a transsexual man. Actually, I kinda like 'Family Guy.' I am not concerned about the behavior of an alcoholic cartoon dog. I don't think it's 'too soon' to make jokes about trans people. It may be that it's a little too late for a lot of them, what with the way these jokes are not only mean, but soooo fucking old.

However, I'm pretty sure that nobody is trying to restrict McFarlane's right to make a cartoon dog do anything, no matter how offensive. They're just saying that he's a dick. I don't really think that making a cartoon dog have sex with a cartoon trans woman and then vomit makes him a dick.

Now, he didn't just say that this reaction is normative, he said it's 'biologically wired' and that's saying that not only is it normative, it's immutable. That probably makes him a dick. (It is also demonstrably false.)

Then again, he did say this in an interview for 'Details,' a bizarre periodical featuring pictures of male models in various stages of dress and undress giving sexy smoldering stares towards the camera and tips on fashion, grooming, shopping, shaving your nuts, and being homophobic. Knowing that McFarlane probably knows what 'Details' is, I can't possibly unravel what that might have meant.

Could I give a shit? Not really. But I do give a shit when people, in seriousness, suggest that having sex while stealth trans is rape. That is bullshit. It validates the 'trans panic' murder defense that has been used to get away with killing us, it suggests that it's evil of me to maintain my medical history as private and that trans people are not worthy of privacy or of casual sex. It is a political view that, if enacted as law, would allow cis people to use the might of the state to fuck trans people over.

And anybody can see, perfectly easily, that it'd be fucked up if it was something they don't have such a hang up over that magically turns a consenting adult to a rape victim when he finds out. If some wonk had an intense desire to avoid having sex with somebody who was once raped, somebody who'd had an abortion, somebody who wasn't a virgin, somebody who has epilepsy, somebody who's middle name starts with an R, somebody who is an atheist or somebody without an account with Smith Barney, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Probably most people would say that even if the person was asked directly and responded with a lie that the behavior was assholery, not rape, and we'd tell them person with the hang-up, "People lie. Go fuck yourself," instead of suggesting that the lie was equivalent to a heinous act of violence.

Oh, and also. There's the assumption that a trans person who doesn't disclose is not disclosing in order to fool people. (In this case, to fool them into having sex. But this is closely related to the generalization about trans people being frauds who are merely posing as members of their gender group.) This is not the case. Not everything is about you. I don't want to disclose willy-nilly and give everybody I meet the 'Trans 101' class because I, like most trans people, have talked about this with psychotherapists and any number of other people for hours and hours and it's actually really damn boring at this point. Another reason is the same reason I don't tell everybody all about how somebody I love blew his own head off with a shotgun one day. "I don't want to talk about it," and "I don't want you to know," are not the same thing and when people assume that only the latter motivation is a possibility for me, they are assuming me less than human. (This is not a trans specific problem, people with disabilities or illnesses often don't disclose them because they'd like to have a conversation about something else, and get the same self-centered 'keeping secrets from meeeeee! waaaaaah!' reaction.)