(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.

[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..."

[ornythopter.livejournal.com]

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

[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?

[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?

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?

[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?

[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.