(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

[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.

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

But her thought experiment does--why shouldn't it be the responsibility of the transphobic to police his own sexual encounters? Why is it the job of the marginalized group to make things happystraightnothreathere for the dominant group?

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

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.

I'm not sure that comparing "fucking while trans" to "fucking someone who didn't consent" is going to help that, though. Truth-value of the comparison aside (which I find problematic as a separate topic), I think this is as helpful to transpeople getting accepted as serious discussion of whether gay people are more likely to be child-molesters. You can sit down and curiously pore over the data to answer this vital question all you want, but the fact that this is even a matter for serious discourse is both a sign of a problem in the way we view transpeople, and a really really good way to perpetuate transphobic attitudes like "trans people are liars" and "trans people are rapists."

[teleens-journal.livejournal.com]

This.

[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.

[synchcola.livejournal.com]

Haha, that didn't make a lot of sense, sorry. >_>