Scenario 1: A straight man picks up a beautiful woman in a singles bar and takes her home, only to discover “she”'s a gay man in drag trying to seduce him. The straight man reacts furiously, curses the gay man with every slur in the book, beats him with a baseball bat and tosses his bruised and bloody self out into the street.
Scenario 2: A lesbian woman picks up a beautiful woman in a singles bar and takes her home, only to discover “she”'s a straight man in drag trying to seduce her. The lesbian woman reacts furiously, curses the straight man with every slur in the book, beats him with a baseball bat and tosses his bruised and bloody self out into the street.
In a perfectly fair world, the deceiver would be at fault. Yet in practice there seems to be a bias in favor of the homosexual person in each scenario. Many would say that the gay man didn’t deserve to be the target of violent homophobia, while they would defend the lesbian woman as justified in repelling yet another assault by the patriarchy. Your take?
My take is that the idea that the women might have feared a literal assault ‘by the patriarchy’ is not beyond the pale. It seems unlikely that the male could have such a fear motive.
The deceiver would be at fault for the deceit. The assailant would be at fault for the assault. Homophobia and patriarchy are side-issues in these scenarios.
Honestly, in both cases the person using the baseball bat is over-reacting, so they would actually be criminally at fault. Now, if you extended this to the deceiver trying to rape the deceived, then that changes things, but as you relate it? The deceiver isn’t really at fault in either case except perhaps that they misrepresented themselves…but that doesn’t warrant a beating as you are describing. My WAG is the attacker would be spending some time in jail, unless they are rich enough to have a REALLY good lawyer who can pick a very sympathetic jury…
I’m unaware that deceit is a criminal matter. Assault is. The phobias you mention might be motives for the crime, but are not justifications for it.
And I detect a hint of transphobia in the OP. In the first case perhaps the man identifies as a woman and thus the intentions are honorable? I don’t buy the second example, since the “seduction” would not get very far, but the same scenario is possible.
Just to make it clear, I’m pretty much agreeing with you.
The only legal crime I can think of for the deceiver is attempted rape by deception, and that’s a stretch.
Assuming no assault or attempted assault by the deceiver, I agree with this.
It isn’t self-defense if you beat someone up for mis-gendering himself/herself/themself. It’s a stupid and immoral thing to do, and certainly raises the risk of getting beat up or worse, but that is different from saying he deserves it, or it’s the just thing to do.
I don’t see how homosexual vs. heterosexual makes any difference.
I’m not qualified to speak on behalf of gay guys, but this meme seems awfully insulting to gay guys. It implies that they don’t want to connect with other gay guys but instead have an overwhelming preference for straight guys (since only the straight guys would be captivated in this scenario); it once again subsumes “having feminine characteristics” into “gay” – an annoying meme of its own that sissy males and gay males are tired of.
Not qualified to speak on behalf of straight guys either, but this meme is also insulting to straight fellows. It implies that they’d have sex with anyone who could entice them as far as getting them to take them home.
Differences so far between this scenario and the first scenario:
a) this isn’t a meme. never heard of such a scenario playing out in real life either.
b) what is a meme is that the lesbian woman would “discover that the woman she had picked up was a transgender lesbian and would go all TERFy on her ass, yelling at her and telling her that she’s not a woman, that she’s a MAN, and how dare he appropriate women’s identity.”
Whereupon the offended trans woman would beat the TERF up with a baseball bat and toss the lesbian feminist TERF out into the street.
Seriously, the assumptions that would attach to a person who presented as a beautiful woman who later (for reasons you did not detail) she discovers to be a “straight man” – what, false boobs, penis, something else? Does this sneaky misrepresenting person identify himself to her as a straight man?
Again, what practice? You saying there’s been a spate of news articles about this happening? Or that, contrary to my assertions above, this is a meme?
Methinks you bring an axe of your own to grind, but I don’t recognize it from the handle.
Yeah, and more than a “hint” IMO. I suppose that there might be gay cisgender men who identify as male and are biologically male, but who nonetheless try to seduce straight men by dressing up as women. Just as there might be cisgender straight men who dress up as women in order to try to seduce lesbians.
But I think it’s much more likely that the people described as “in drag” in these scenarios would actually be transgender women, the former a straight transwoman who likes men and the other a gay transwoman who likes women. Those transgender women would have a perfect right to dress and present as the gender they identify as, and to go to singles bars to try to hook up with people of their preferred gender.
TL;DR: Some women have penises. A person with a penis who identifies and presents as a woman is not trying to “deceive” you about her gender. If you’re not sexually attracted to penises then you don’t have to sleep with a woman who turns out to have a penis, but you’re damn well not entitled to assault her for “deceiving” you.
In your confused imaginings, I suppose this sort of thing happens all the time, and you see a horrible bias against straight people all the time. The old cliche of a lesbian beating a straight guy bloody with a baseball bat and tossing them out into the street, that old cliche happens often enough that you have a good sense of the predictable unfair reactions of the social justice warriors? And the predictable reaction you invented for them was that homosexuals are always right, and heterosexuals are always wrong?
My take is that without going to lengths of inventing extenuating circumstances not described in the OP, the person with the baseball bat is at fault for assault in either scenario.
Hm, but they do realize the correlation of [woman-presenting] & [no penis] is common enough to be taken for granted by a reasonable person. As such, they should realize the imminent encounter will likely contain a jarring surprise for someone. Keeping a lid on that until the last minute doesn’t strike you as deceptive? I’m a reasonably hip guy, but I would certainly appreciate a bit of, “Hey by the way, the uglies it looks like we’re about to bump have a lot in common.”
I’m assuming we’ve already established the beating part is right out irrespective of disclosures.
I’m hoping the OP comes back with some clarification about why the bat-wielder would be treated differently in these two circumstances because I don’t get it. In the meantime, though, I’d like to congratulate the OP for putting together a thread that seems to unite all sides of the SDMB – left, right, and center!
In my experience, gays, although happy to present their assumed identity rather than their birth gender, do not deliberately deceive potential partners.
