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I’m 27, male, and heterosexual. According to me, it is possible to be male without a penis, and possible to have a penis yet not be male.
And there it is. It wasn’t “You deceived me and I’m mad!”. The killers’ motive was “We must prove we’re not gay!”. Hmm. anybody have more information? Is it possible that the killers knew Gwen (must wrack brain for exactly right phrasing without possible misinterpration) had a penis, before engaging in sexual activity with her? -They have sex. At the party, the boys discover that their peers know they’ve had sex with Gwen. The boys plead ignorance of Gwen’s genitalia. A bathroom check is done. The boys pretend they hadn’t known. They make a show of their rage.
Or maybe they really didn't know and were just acting with the same loving kindness as Brandon Teena's friends. "You have a vagina? We must prove we're not gay! First, a gang rape! Then, a beating!"
Bomzaway: So, are you saying that “just about any hetero male” needs to be locked away because he is unable to conduct himself in a manner that does not violate the law or endanger the safety of others?
Punching someone in the face (or in fact anywhere) because you were confused about their physiological sex is not justified and is illegal. What I expect is that an adult will behave in an adult manner. And that includes not beating up people who confuse or upset them. Those who cannot do this do not deserve the title of “adult”, nor do they deserve to move freely throughout society.
I will not accept any degree of violence as an appropriate reaction.
It is not understandable.
It is not excusable.
It is not what can be expected of men.
Lying about your gender is bad, but murder is a thousand - infinitely more than a thousand - times worse. I have tried like hell to disassociate myself from this kind of thinking, and it didn’t work very well.
If you support violence like this - even remotely like this - get off my side. I am having enough trouble with the people who disagree with me.
In the abstract I certainly agree with you. Though for the most part I’ve found that if it waddles like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck then it is probably a duck. When you think of a woman does it cross your mind that she might have a penis? Probably not.
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I suppose it is possible. I imagine it is possible that there was more then one single motive. As I said earlier I don’t think this is simply a case of Gwen being targetted for being different.
Since Brandon Teena didn’t sleep with any of his male friends I don’t think that was part of their motive.
You use the word confused but I think many others would use the word deceived. Brandon Teena’s girlfriends were not confused about his physiological sex they were deceived into thinking he was a physiological male.
So you at least recognize the possibility for emotional strain? Is it only narrowly minded people who risk emotional harm from such encounters?
I can, Homebrew, which is why I posted ad nauseum that I rejected any justification of the connection. Violence and sex should never be associated. Neither should deception and sex, or (generally) deception and any kind of interpersonal interaction.
In the same way, I might have posted
and still object if anyone proposes that ‘failure to wear a seat belt’ should be subject to the death penalty.
No one deserves to be killed for cheating on their taxes. But tax cheats are still behaving wrongly. Calling your wife ‘a stupid bitch’ is a cruel and wrongful action, but she cannot stab you for it.
Robert Louis Stevenson said that there were two kinds of people who get paid back in the end - fools and knaves, but the fools get it first. I think we can say “Poor fools”, without necessarily accepting their foolishness as if it were wisdom.
Masculine displays do not always include violence. But assuming that deception was involved, one would have to be incredibly naive or downright stupid to think that such a deception wouldn’t likely evoke a violent response.
So much has been said on this thread about the confused nature of homosexuals dealing with their sexuality. However, that’s not the personal hell of the gay community. Sexuality in general can be confusing, tormenting, and aggravating, regardless of gender or preference. It’s part of life, no matter what race you are, how old you are, how much education you’ve had, or any other parameter. Therefore, if someone throws a wrench into the delicate works of this thing we call sexuality, the reaction may be unpredictable, but I think that in all cases it hurts.
If I were the guy being deceived, I’m sure I wouldn’t kill Gwen, but I’m not sure if I wouldn’t physically or mentally abuse Gwen. I know that’s not the PC answer, but I’m trying to be honest about this, and I honestly do not know if I could hold back from doing something to hurt Gwen. That could be a punch or two, to driving Gwen out to the middle of nowhere and leaving him, or any number of other things done out of the need to retaliate for what happened. I don’t know. I might do anything. I might do nothing.
One thing I am sure of is that I’d be hurt. And the pain would last for quite some time. Much longer than any bruises that I might inflict on my deceiver. I am quite sure this would be true for anyone in the same situation.
So assuming that deception was involved, Gwen is not entirely blameless. Deceiving someone in such a manner is not just stupid, it’s callous, mean, and irresponsible.
Things got really messy here since I posted way back on page one, and I think I’ve figured out how I feel about all this:
In our society, like it or not, we have certain strictly-defined gender roles, and people have certain expectations. For that reason, if I were a transsexual, I would probably - just to be considerate - explicitly mention to any potential sexual partner that I might not be what they expected if there was any possibility of misunderstanding.
However, if you’re a straight male who does something sexual with someone you think is a traditionally-defined “woman” and then find out that the person was transsexual, then you have the right to feel deceived maybe, but you have to understand that the possibility of being deceived is one of the hazards of casual sex that you have to accept if you want to engage in it. Besides, did you get your shit off? If so, then you got what you wanted. Ooh, you’re afraid you might have done something gay? Get over it and move on. You don’t have to fuck that person again if you don’t want to.
Jesus Christ, dude. I don’t know whether to commend you on your honesty or call the FBI.
I think you’d have every right to feel hurt, but come on! Bruises that would last for quite some time? You went into the thing in hopes of getting some casual sex, a cheap thrill, nothing wrong with that. But like I said above, if you got off, you have nothing to complain about - except the deception, I’ll give you that, but when you get right down to it, what serious, long term harm has been done?
No - this thread has said a lot about transgendered people dealing with their sexuality and dealing with their identity - and about how other people deal with transgendered people.
Just to spell it out for you - transgender does not equal homosexual. A transgendered person has a gender identity in opposition to their genital sex. You hear the phrase “a woman trapped in a man’s body”? That’s the general idea. The woman can be straight, gay, or bi, by the way. Who she is sexually attracted to is not tied to either her gender identity (feeling like she’s a woman) or her genital sex (having a penis or a vagina). And there are female-to-male transsexuals too.
(First of all, let me again make clear that murder is an unacceptable course of action. That said…)
Whether or not you accept, understand, excuse, or expect a violent reaction is not the issue. A violent reaction to something like this stems from most basic aspects of the male psyche. Men have an innate need to maintain a level of masculinity and will take action to defend it. The minimum masculinity level varies from man to man, but most all would view sex with another man to be well below acceptability. Granted, some men might take the stance as cuauhtemoc has stated and think, “Hey, I got mine!” and not let it bug them. But I think the larger cross section of males would not be so nonchalant about the issue.
You need only talk to 10 different men on the street and pose the same scenario to each of them and I guarantee that most, if not all, would come back with, “I’d kick his ass!” or something similar. Whether or not they’d actually follow through with that action is a different matter, and after some thought, some of them might change their stance. But most assuredly, the initial reaction would be the same and that would involve re-establishing their masculinity through some sort of action.
Unfortunately, the most masculine action that most guys can think of off the top of their head is, “Kickin’ ass”.
It’s like that story that Forrest Whitaker tells in The Crying Game about the scorpion riding on the rats back to cross a river. “I can’t help it” says the scorpion to the stung rat as they’re noth sinking, “I’m a scorpion. It’s in my nature.”
Shodan, let’s say for an instant that you were involved in an accident and had your penis and testicles removed leaving some type of gaping hole. Also, the absence of testicles can sometimes lead a man to grow breasts (and lose facial and body hair), let’s assume this is the case with you too. Would you still identify as a man? I can bet you would.
Now, let’s say that your mother or grandmother has had a hysterectomy. If you don’t know, a hysterectomy typically removes the ovaries and uterus of a woman. Do you still consider them women? I bet you do. Let’s get rid of their last secondary sexual characteristic. Now let’s say that one of the two women above has also had breast cancer and thus had to have a mamectomy (having the breasts removed), are they still women now? Following your logic they would be.
Why do you think that is? They people above don’t have sexual organs anymore but you still likely consider them to be whatever gender they were originally.
So far we have established that neither the absence or presence of genitalia determines the gender. Pretty simply too. So what determines the gender, it is how the individual perceives themselves. Easy enough.
You identify yourself as male because you believe yourself male to start with. Easy enough. You identify the women above as female because that is what they identify themselves as. The absence or presence of genitalia doesn’t engender the person, it is what the individual person believes.
I do not believe that this is an accurate summary of Brandon Teena’s specific case. Brandon told his girlfriends that he had been raised female and did not possess a normal set of male genitalia. He claimed to have been born intersexed. His girlfriends seem to have believed this, although some later learned that Brandon was born biologically female – and continued to be romantically involved with him.
It is clear that Brandon was not completely honest about the circumstances of his birth or his current situation (he sometimes claimed to have already had a sex-change operation, or to be farther along in the process involved in getting one than he actually was), but it is inaccurate to say that he decived his girlfriends into believing that he was an average biological male.
So are you saying that if you found out tomorrow that you had to have a double mastectomy and a radical hysterectomy, you’d not have any sense that part of your womanhood was gone?
I don’t understand.
Personally, my body is a part of what makes me feel female. Looking at myself naked, knowing I’ll get my period, that I have to get PAP tests and that I’ll face the same concerns about ovarian cancer and the like that the other women in my family do.
I’m having a hard time seeing how that’s totally irrelevant.