For the sake of argument… is she supposed to assume he doesn’t know?
The whole situation seems like an unfounded fear based on ignorance. I know several trans people, I am part of a community that is very open to them, so there’s plenty of chances for this to happen, and the “led on by a chick who secretly had a dick” has never occurred. I’d say I’m skeptical it has ever happened in the history of the world, but I know the world better than that. I’m sure something like it has happened a few times over the years.
So what we’re left with is a situation that cis dudes seem unreasonably afraid of (if you think this song is bad, listen to Eazy E some time), but that nevertheless, if it ever happened, would be considered pretty absurd. The absurdity isn’t in the simple fact that a woman had a penis, which anyone who is aware trans people exist already knows – it is in the completely ridiculous and contrived situation whereby a cis man pursues a trans woman all night and somehow the topic of her having a penis never comes up until they finally get naked together.
So my take is that you could like (or perform) this song for completely harmless or completely bigoted reasons, and I for one refuse to assume bigotry unless there is no other explanation.
I didn’t listen to the song, but isn’t it possible the “bad” thing about the woman having a penis is that she never told him, and he had to find out himself after a night of pursuing the woman and finally getting naked with her only then to discover, in the heat of passion, that he’d been misled?
I don’t think the situation is nearly as common as ignorant guys think it is. Nevertheless, if it did happen, this straight guy would find it quite outlandish, and while not necessarily terrible, pretty damn disappointing.
It happens. I know of a few cases, but it’s in the tiny minority. I hung out with a another transwoman this weekend who was cruising bars to pick up a “stud.” She never tells any of them before she gets them home - then she tells them. Or if all they want is oral or anal, she gives them that and they never know.
How, you might ask, could a guy have anal with a pre-op transwoman and never notice anything? It happens. Alcohol may be involved, but then most (all) of Billy Tipton’s lovers never realized he had a vagina…
I only listened to the song once, but from my recollection it’s never implied that she led him on.
Is argue that it’s unwise, in that the woman is jeopardizing her safety, but I don’t think she’s done anything morally wrong. Finding an unexpected dick on a date is a legitimate deal breaker for a lot of people, but the actual harm to the surprised party is negligible at worst.
Pretty arrogant to disregard other people views of feelings on the matter when you perfectly well know that your views are not even close to be being universally accepted.
I’ve got a lot of uncommon views. Which specific ones are you referring to?
That may be so, but on the topic and in the forum you choose to be in here your views seem to be in the comfortable mainstream majority. Perhaps that is where such arrogance is born. Not being presented with alternative views one may get the impression that ones own views are the only ones possible, to such an extend that one is not even able to discern which are not universally held.
Otherwise I’d be interested to hear what views you have on the subject that are very uncommon on this forum, since the forum has a tedious tendency to the echo chamber of the likeminded.
Thank you for that elaborate non-answer.
Ok, no problem. Maybe you’d like to share your uncommon views on the topic so we may have something to talk about.
Okay, you’re right. My views, as expressed in post 26, are utterly mainstream, and shared by the vast majority of human beings.
I don’t think anywhere near a majority of heterosexual males agree with your view. If you are a transgender woman, it is your obligation to tell a man before you are getting naked in his bedroom that you have a penis. To do otherwise is, at best, inconsiderate.
You’ll have to take that up with Rune. I’m just going along with what he says, to the extent of my ability to figure out what he’s talking about.
Just how far does that obligation extend to the men? What should they be obligated to say before sex, in the interest of full disclosure?
I know if I were single and dating a guy I would need to know a LOT before I got to the point of sex. I’d need to have had a long-term relationship and got to know their family, history, etc. just like any normal couple does. I’m pretty sure by the time we had sex he would know exactly what I used to be, and I would know similar about him.
If on the other hand I let some guy at a bar pick me up, well, anyone with a brain ought to understand that whatever is in his pants is unknown. He could be a pre-op transman or drag king. So the situation could be called “Schrödinger’s penis” - it both exists and doesn’t exit until I unzip him and collapse the waveform in his pants.
Giggity.
You are absolutely correct. The narrator in the song obviously considers it a dealbreaker that the girl he loves happens to have a penis—that’s the “failure” of compatibility and the “flaw” in the relationship that he’s singing about—but he never suggests that she was deceitful or dishonest about it in any way.
If other posters want to take this thread in the direction of discussing exactly when and how much a pre-op transwoman* should tell a heterosexual male partner about her genitals in order not to be dishonestly “leading him on”, that’s up to them. But as the OP, what I was asking about was whether respondents thought the relationship in the song was being described in an offensive or bigoted or transphobic way.
- And oh well, as long as we’re discussing this, is anybody arguing that such an obligation also applies to a **post-**op transwoman? If a woman you’re dating used to have a penis but now has female genitalia that you’d find pretty much indistinguishable from a ciswoman’s, do you consider that she’s honor-bound to take the initiative in telling you that before you have any contact with said genitalia? How about a woman born with some intersex physical characteristics, whether or not she’s had surgery to modify them to conform more to cisgender norms?
In short, exactly what spectrum of present or past genital configuration do you consider it acceptable for a woman to possess in order NOT to be ethically obligated to describe that configuration to a man she’s dating BEFORE he touches her genitals?
(And btw, as a cisgender heterosexual woman I’m squarely in the camp of “anybody might have anything at all in their underwear and nobody is obligated to issue a report on the subject to any potential sex partner beforehand, unless of course we’re talking about something like an infectious disease that might actually harm a sex partner’s health”.
The flip side of that, of course, is that anybody is entitled to politely and respectfully end a sexual encounter as soon as they become aware that their potential sex partner’s genitalia aren’t the sort of genitalia that they personally happen to like, for whatever reason.)
“Vast majority of human beings” - way to put words in my mouth. Why don’t we try to limit it to what I actually wrote, specifically: your views on the topic which are uncommon on this forum.
Schrödinger had a pussy too? :eek:
In all seriousness, I consider it more than a minor detail when one has the genitalia of the sex opposite of how they dress. It sounds like the sort of thing you personally would certainly wish to be aware of beforehand.
Well, if you personally would wish to be aware of it beforehand, you are certainly within your rights to ask a potential sex partner about it beforehand.
What some people here are objecting to is the notion that women with male genitalia are for some reason ethically obligated to take the initiative in announcing that fact to a potential sex partner beforehand.
And as I asked a couple posts ago: Do you consider that such an obligation also applies to a woman who used to have male genitalia but doesn’t now? Or to a woman who has, or used to have, some intersex genital characteristics such as clitoral hypertrophy?
Exactly where do you draw the line about the type of genitals a woman is allowed to have without being ethically obligated to issue a description of them prior to a sexual encounter?
It nearly happened to me.
My best friend used to be a woman named Lette. She was a lesbian. I met her in high school and we were best friends for about 10 years after we graduated.
Anyway, on to the story. Lette was throwing a surprise birthday party for her roommate. She took her roommate (a gay guy) out to a couple bars while I and a few other people setup with suprise party. The party had a mix of straight and gay folks.
Anyway, I this very hot woman came up to me and started flirting. We flirted for an hour or so until Lette and her roommate came back. We did the whole !Surprise! thing, sang Happy Birthday and did presents. After that was done I went back to flirting with the woman.
At which point Lette grabbed me and pulled me into the kitchen. She let me know that the woman I had been flirting with for the last two hours or so was physically male. She also let me know that this person had a history of picking up straight men and ‘surprising’ them with a penis after things got hot and heavy. Apparently it was her thing and she did it on a regular basis. There were, according to Lette, a whole boatload of seriously pissed off men in this woman’s wake.
Anyway, after Lette told me, I let the woman know I wasn’t interested. I wasn’t particularly upset, though had it gone any further I would have been quite upset about the whole thing. After a while it became something of a joke between Lette and I.
Lette and her roommate didn’t particularly care for this woman. Besides regularly pulling the whole ‘Surprise! I have a Penis!’ thing she was also, according to Lette, extremely biased and intent on ‘wrecking’ (getting them in bed in the belief that once she had them in bed they would change their sexual preferences forever) every straight male she came across.
I don’t really care if a person is straight, gay, trans or whatever. However, it seems to me it is the responsibility of the trans person to be up front about the situation. At the same time, it is the responsibility of the straight folks to be respectful and honest as well.
Una Persson, you asked:
Well, the expectation of most of people is that a person who dresses as a woman and acts like a woman does not have a penis*. So it therefore seems reasonable that a trans person should let their perspective partner know ahead of time of their status. Thinking ‘Oh, well, they ought to just know’ is lame. At the same time, straight folks have lots of things that they ought to let their perspective partners know ahead of time as well. For example, STDs and relationship status instantly come to mind.
As an example, I had a situation in which I was sleeping with a woman who I had met at a bar where my band was playing. She was married but didn’t tell me. I was single and she said she was as well. I nearly got into a fight with her husband when he showed up at the bar a few weeks later, pissed at me for sleeping with his wife. I was quite angry about the situation and never talked to the woman again.
Slee
*If I phrased this badly please keep in mind no offense was intended.