On the contrary, I consider lies of omission to be a form of compulsion: it’s a deliberate removal of another person’s ability to make an informed choice.
You’re not physically forcing them to have sex with transsexuals, true–but you’re talking about a form of fraud.
Again, I think a difference between us is that you consider it legitimate to judge other folks’ desires and, if they don’t meet a particular standard, ignore that desire. I disagree: people have the right to their desires, and unless they’re going to violate your rights, you do not have the right to deceive them through commission or omission.
You keep accusing me of deliberately twisting your words to “score points”. How am I supposed to defend myself against that accusation if not by explaining how my interpretation is perfectly consistent with the words you posted? I’m not just going to roll over and accept being accused of dishonesty.
You accuse me of not being willing to have an honest discussion, but you chose to ignore all but one sentence of a rather long and IMHO thoughtful post to focus on how I supposedly twisted your words. You could have explained what your intended meaning was then, but you didn’t. You could have explained it in any of your last several posts, but you didn’t. Instead you’d rather play “Say the magic word and I’ll tell you!”
Well, I don’t care what your secret special explanation is. I don’t even believe you have one. I’m feeling pretty burned out on the subject of transgender issues right now, so if you don’t want to discuss this topic anymore then that’s fine with me. I’d be happy to see this long, ugly thread die and never think of it again. But if you’re going to keep accusing me of twisting your words then I’m going to keep pointing out that I have done no such thing.
If you weren’t attracted to this person, then why would you be sleeping with her in the first place? If you weren’t attracted to anyone born with a penis, this situation would never come up.
…hence the bigotry. M-F transsexuals are the gender they claim to be, the gender the OP example guy claims to be attracted to. Refusing to acknowledge that is the bigotry in question.
A racist is still a bigot even if he just sits on his porch and grumbles about “the upity negros” under his breath. You’re the one blankly asserting that bigotry equates to harm, which is not actually backed up by the definition. Bigotry is about the values you hold, not the actions you take.
Laugh all you want.
No, I don’t. But that’s not the issue. The man in the OP did want to fuck the TS.
I disagree. You have not removed the ability of the person to ask questions pertinent to their interests or hangups.
For instance, say I like a nice trimmed or shaved pubic area. Hairy crotch repels me. It then behooves me to ask potential partners about this before I do the deed, not act all offended when it turns out my partner is holding on to the 60s down there.
Or what about my biracial example?
It’s only a kind of fraud if you ask and they lie to you, IMO. Otherwise, it’s all on you - I mean, you’re going with a (correct) default assumption - that they are a woman. Anything else is a detail that falls under “interests and hangups”, where I assert the onus is on the one with the hangup to find out.
Don’t want to accidentally sleep with a biracial woman? Ask.
Don’t want to accidentally sleep with a Jew? Ask.
Don’t want to accidentally sleep with an atheist? Ask. What makes this formula different for the transsexual?
Yep. I judge other people. It’s what I do. It’s what we all do. We’re just quibbling over the actions to take in response. Welcome to ethical debate.
[QUOTE=MrDibble;11100864Don’t want to accidentally sleep with a biracial woman? Ask.
Don’t want to accidentally sleep with a Jew? Ask.
Don’t want to accidentally sleep with an atheist? Ask. What makes this formula different for the transsexual?[/QUOTE]
As we’ve said before, it’s highly different:
-People who would be seriously bothered by sleeping with a Jew are a very small minority; it’s up to them to keep that from happening.
-People who would be seriously bothered by sleeping with an atheist are a very small minority; it’s up to them to keep that from happening.
-People who would be seriously bothered by sleeping with a transsexual person are almost certainly a large majority; transsexuals are a vanishingly small minority. It’s the transsexual person’s job to be up-front.
I think with Shodan, you’re still nitpicking. Why ought heterosexuals be able to discriminate between men and women in sexual choices without being a bigot, but (let’s go for neologism) bioheterosexuals (substitute your own value-neutral neologism instead if you don’t like this one, I don’t like it either) not be able to discriminate between natural-born partners and surgically-altered partners? What makes the first an unbigoted choice and the second a bigoted choice?
I reject a claim that it’s because the person was attracted to the post-op before finding out they were post-op: sexuality isn’t just about sensory inputs, it’s about the whole package. At least, it is for some people. If not for you, congratulations–but it’s absurd to call someone a bigot because their sexuality encompasses more than their partner’s appearance.
This also needs a response, as you elided a key word. I don’t judge other people’s desires. I judge their actions. And I therefore welcome you to the ethical debate.
No, they’re not. The gender the OP example guy wants to have sex with is “women who were born without a penis”. Debates about transsexuals often wind up with long dissertations on how people should be allowed to choose their own gender, and, as I mentioned, often it winds up totally confusing word games. But those who want to assert such a right, ought (in my view) to extend it to everyone. If you get to define “woman” as a MtF transgender, fine, but then when I say I only want to have sex with a “woman” I get to exclude MtF transgenders from that definition.
Refusing to acknowledge it in this case is refusing to have sex. Sexual preference isn’t bigotry, unless it is, in which case anyone with a sexual preference is a bigot.
No one is doing anything analogous to that. Refusing to have sex with someone is not like calling them an “uppity negro”.
Then as mentioned - anyone with a sexual preference is a bigot.
Isn’t this the basis for arguments against gay marriage? Gay marriage doesn’t harm me, but I don’'t like the preference it expresses. So I call them nasty names - bigot, or faggot, or whatever.
No, not quite - he only wants to fuck people who were born with XX chromosomes and were born without a penis.
That’s the preference you are saying causes one to lose the right to decide who to have sex with, and whose proponents can be ethically lied to (by omission).
And I disagree. I think sexual preference is personal.
May I suggest you do an end-run around this annoying word game by conceding that MTF transsexuals are women, and saying that a person has the absolute right to refuse to have sex with anyone for any reason, and that one of those reasons is their surgical history? Whether a mtf transsexual is really a woman or not is immaterial, I think, to what you’re saying.
The question is who gets to define “woman” for the purposes of deciding whether or not you want to have sex with them. The person who wants to avoid sex with transsexuals defines “woman” in one way; the transsexual wants to define it another. My idea is to allow each person to define it for themselves.
But if it avoids the distraction, cool - MtF TS are “real” women. I don’t want to have sex with “real” women unless they were born without penes.
Why? Why does the amount of people with the hangup matter as to who does the asking? It’s still their hangup, not their partner’s. Being in the majority doesn’t remove their adultness somehow. Essentially, you’re claiming a lessening of responsibility for discovery simply because of being in the majority.
Because the second choice (which they are still free to make) directly contradicts the gender choice of the TS. It is saying you refuse to agree that the TS is the gender they are. It amounts to a denial of transsexuality as a real phenomenon, ultimately.
When the only difference between the package before and the package afterwards is the acceptance of transsexuality as a truth, then it certainly is where the bigotry lies.
They wouldn’t be a bigot if they didn’t want to sleep with a married person, or a clingy person, or someone their best bud slept with.
But transsexuality is different. It’s like the biracial example which neither you nor Shodan has addressed yet.
Judging is judging. Don’t blame me if I have more trust in my own judgement sufficient to extend it to preferences.
I’m sorry, but you get three choices, and that isn’t one of them.
What about my biracial example?
I disagree - it’s exactly like that, except you’re on your porch calling them “not a real woman” instead.
Good grief. First, I have addressed it earlier in the thread. Second, it’s exactly like the Jewish example.
As for why the number of people with a “hangup” matters, it’s because, again, you’re responsible for the foreseeable outcomes of your decisions. If you fail to tell someone that you’re Jewish, and it turns out that they’re extremely upset by having sex with someone who’s Jewish, you couldn’t have foreseen that. If you fail to tell someone that you’re transsexual, and it turns out that they’re extremely upset by having sex with someone who’s transsexual, you could have foreseen that. That’s the difference.
As for claiming that you’re denying their gender by refusing to have sex with them, there’s a weird implication there: are you suggesting that there’s zero difference between someone born with female genitals who identifies as a woman, and someone born with male genitals who identifies as a woman? If you deny that there’s any difference, I consider your argument so out of touch with reality that there’s nothing further to say. If you acknowledge that there’s a difference, I’d appreciate an explanation for why you think it’s bigoted for someone to take that difference into account when considering their own sexual identity.
That would be because cosmetic surgery does not make someone a woman any more than implanted whiskers makes this guy a tiger. I’m sure it makes him feel grrreat but he’s still a guy with cosmetic surgery. It fulfills a psychological need.
Which is pretty much the problem - you are attempting to overrule someone else’s choice. I choose not to have sex with transgenders. You are insisting I have to.
Maybe you noticed that I was willing to stipulate that, for the purposes of the discussion, transgenders are “real women”. So I am doing exactly the opposite of what you claim. So now I am not at all like a bigot talking about uppity negroes. I am like a person expressing his sexual preferences just like everyone else.
Why should I feel any moral obligation to have sex with “real women” who used to have penes, any more than gay people should be obligated only to have sex with the opposite gender?
Shodan–perhaps you can clarify because I am confused by this analogy.
There’s no reason gay people should be constrained to having sex with the gender they are not attracted to. However, the situation in question involves having sex with someone whom you apparently find attractive in the first place. If you desire a woman enough to have sex with her, then what difference does it make if she was born with a penis? Furthermore, assuming for the sake of argument that this is an undesirable trait, why would she have a moral obligation to disclose this particular trait before you have sex any more than she has a moral obligation to disclose any other potentially undesirable trait?
A situation I find more analogous is that a straight person discovers that his current partner has a past history of homosexual encounters and chooses to reject her because he has a strong aversion to homosexuality. I don’t know if I would say that he has an “obligation” to continue to stay with her, but rather that his sudden disinterest is an indication of his bigotry towards homosexuals.
Does a person with a history of homosexual behavior have an ethical duty to reveal their history to partners before having sex? I would say no, even if she is aware beforehand her partner might find it objectionable should he find out. The same holds true for transsexuals, in my opinion.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the “weird implication” you’re referring to is that the only reason a person would not want to have sex with a transsexual whom they would have otherwise found desirable is because they don’t consider the transsexual to belong to their presented gender.
What other reasons could there be? Imagine two women of equivalent attractiveness, personality, and character. If you find both of them equally desirable to begin with, then why exactly would you lose interest in the second upon learning she was a transsexual?
Even there were some benign reason, like wanting to find a woman who was able to carry your children, it still would not explain the discrepancy in emotional response among many men between discovering that one’s former partner is a transsexual versus discovering some other undesirable trait. I can’t imagine any other trait that could provoke the same level of revulsion and outrage. What is it about being a transsexual that is so objectionable as to require disclosure before the sexual act? Please tell me, because I am genuinely curious. The only thing I can think of is the discomfort due to the cognitive dissonance at believing yourself to be heterosexual yet having slept with someone whom you no longer perceive as a real woman.
What, only a small minority of KKK members would be bothered by sleeping with a biracial person?
Really? You’re saying this holds everywhere, everywhen? 'cos I can think of lots of places where a majority of the people wouldn’t want to sleep with a Jew/Christian/atheist right now. You’re saying in those places it behooves the person without the hangup to be upfront about their “status”?
I get why you think the circumstances are different, but you fail to justify why that should matter. Once again - in all those cases, it’s not the ST who has the hangup. Why should the TS cater to the other person’s hangups? Just because majority rules? That’s barbaric.
If they’re fully transitioned, then as far as sex goes, yes, there’s zero difference. Of course, if I wanted kids/marriage etc, it becomes a different story. But that’s not the OP’s dilemma.
OK then.
WTF? I’m** not** insisting you have to do anything. I’m saying you’re a bigot if the only reason you won’t, is because you don’t consider the TS a real woman.
Yeah, putting it into scare quotes every time somehow makes me doubt the sincerity of your concession…
No, the cosmetic surgery doesn’t make the TS a woman. Being born a woman makes the TS a woman.
Would you guys have the same problem with someone born intersex, who was surgically assigned to female?
Do you have those goalposts in the back of your pickup truck or something? We weren’t talking about fucking at a Klan rally.
YOu did the line-by-line thing that annoys me, so I’ll only respond to one point. If you live somewhere that most of your potential sexual partners are Klansmen, then you have bigger problems than disclosing your race. But to answer the ridiculous hypothetical: yes, if you live somewhere where most people would be seriously disturbed by having sex with someone who’s biracial, AND where biracial folks are vanishingly rare, then it’s your job to let potential partners know, because a foreseeable outcome of not telling is someone getting very upset.
I reject the idea that a sexual preference requires justification. Would you similarly ask a gay man to justify why he would refuse oral sex from a woman?
Even if someone’s reason is that, at a gut level, they believe there’s a difference between transsexuals and biological women, that’s their right, that’s their preference, that’s their desire, and it deserves respect. It absolutely trumps the desire of someone else to trick them into sex.