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?
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timeasmymeasure
Person or Lifelike Blowup Doll?
Date: 2010-08-07 11:20 pm (UTC)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?