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[personal profile] 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 [livejournal.com profile] redstapler's LJ, where what I thought was a productive discussion with [livejournal.com profile] 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.

[livejournal.com profile] 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.
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Date: 2010-08-07 11:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] teleens-journal.livejournal.com
Beautiful analogy. :)

Date: 2010-08-08 03:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] synchcola.livejournal.com
Umm, here's another giant comment, I'm sorry u_u

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.

No, that's not impossible, but I think it becomes more and more difficult if you change "may not be attracted to you" to "will treat you like shit". Because you can imagine attracted vs. not interested, but it's impossible to hold people in tension as like 50% probability of totally okay with you and 50% violent disgust. I think people can't be like "Well, I'll be an awesome friend to X, while investigating him as a suspect for the murder of my father."

It's just (depending on your psychology) way easier to believe that people who act like they like you actually do like you. In a relationship or in a friendship, usually people are willing to decide if they're okay with your problems as they come up, without you having a special self-loathing moment where you run down the list of everything wrong with you. I think transpeople are usually aware that transsexuality is a huge thing with a lot of people and make sure to disclose at some point, but not everyone is aware. And you know, maybe their last boyfriend was like "Why would I have a problem with that?" Wow, maybe people aren't such hard-asses about it, oops no wait.

One other thing is: sometimes you're stealth and nobody knows. Worse than getting beaten up, disclosing could bring your life down around your ears. I mean it's still super questionable not to disclose but it gives you some perspective.

...and when you get naked it's reasonable to assume that people may look at you with prurient interest.

This is a bit of a digression, but, I totally disagree. You're in a single-sex locker room, the only people there are men, and you assume that everyone is straight (for whatever strange reason). Why would you expect to get looked at sexually?

And even if it were reasonable to expect that, it doesn't constitute implicit consent. (Obviously! Like it's reasonable to expect that you may get groped on a crowded subway car, but getting on the subway is not consent.)

Well, wait, I'm not actually trying to say that gay people shouldn't be allowed to swim, but I think it is a situation where you could say "Oh, you're under false pretenses* and it's peeping," and you have second thought because it's too fucked up to prohibit gay people from changing rooms.

Also, re: yuki_onna,

But her thought experiment does--why shouldn't it be the responsibility of the transphobic to police his own sexual encounters?

Umm~ I wanted to at least ask that question, but my thought experiment was just a thing that I don't really take seriously. I think it's unreasonable to ask guys to do that because a) transpeople are fairly rare so it would be a huge waste of energy and b) asking a woman if she is transsexual happens to be an enormous fucking insult.

*: Because the assumption used to be that someone was straight, right, just like the assumption used to be that someone was not transsexual.

Date: 2010-08-08 03:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] synchcola.livejournal.com
Haha, that didn't make a lot of sense, sorry. >_>

Date: 2010-08-08 03:42 am (UTC)

Date: 2010-08-08 06:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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?

Date: 2010-08-08 06:19 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] teleens-journal.livejournal.com
Not that I can remember and I can remember a LOT of the hype that surrounded that movie.

Date: 2010-08-08 07:38 am (UTC)

Re: Person or Lifelike Blowup Doll?

Date: 2010-08-08 10:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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?)

Re: Person or Lifelike Blowup Doll?

Date: 2010-08-08 10:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] teleens-journal.livejournal.com
Beautiful points all, :).

Date: 2010-08-08 10:36 pm (UTC)

Date: 2010-08-08 10:42 pm (UTC)

Date: 2010-08-09 12:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] phonoirlex.livejournal.com
The approaching man could more easily warn potential partners, "Hey, just so you know, I'm transphobic," and thus avoid tricking women into sleeping with a bigot.

Also, a fundamentally good person would not say, "no, ew, get away!" when told that one woman has had a different life experience from many other women. Emotional abuse is still abuse.

(reposted to fix typo)

Date: 2010-08-09 09:32 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com
"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, [...]"

To borrow outright steal a meme from kynn, why isn't it the cis person's responsibility to preemptively disclose, "By the way, if I find out you're trans, I'll beat|kill you," as an even more certain way of not having trans people get bashed by their lovers?

(Hint: one of the places you went wrong was when you wrote, "you know wouldn't..." Until we can mandate 'phobes wearing some sort of warning symbol, that's not always so easy. Another place you went wrong is blaming the victim instead of the perpetrator of the violence,/em>. Bashing is never the right answer, and regardless of how confused someone is after having their worldview challenged by the existence of someone who isn't what they expect, the shame, blame, guilt, culpability, etc. for bashing rests squarely on the basher, not the victim, because violence is simply not acceptable morally, ethically, or technically legally (though to our whole society's shame, the "trans panic" defense has worked before in court). )

Date: 2010-08-09 11:56 am (UTC)
lokifan: black Converse against a black background (Default)
From: [personal profile] lokifan
His sexual identity had been violated? I'm sympathetic to emotional distress but that idea is transphobic bollocks. Brian's a hetrosexual, male character who fucked a woman. A trans woman, but inarguably a woman.

Date: 2010-08-09 01:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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.

Date: 2010-08-09 06:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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.)

Actually happened

Date: 2010-08-11 09:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] unix-vicky.livejournal.com
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10717186
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