I draw the line at where I personally am comfortable. I would want to know if a woman I was about to hook up with had a penis.
And I will fight to the death that a majority of heterosexual males feel the same way.
I’m not sure exactly where the line is, but there probably is one. I think in most other contexts the vast majority of us would agree it’s not OK to deceive someone in a sexual situation.
Why are you restricting it to this forum?
That’s fantastic for you.
Here’s a concept you might want to familiarize yourself with.
I’m only familiar with czarcasm around here. Thanks for the link though!
How about if she used to have a penis? Is it her responsibility, according to you, to tell you about it in advance of a sexual encounter, in order not to be “deceiving” you?
I certainly do agree that it’s not OK to deceive someone in a sexual situation.
Where I take issue with you, and where I find your position even somewhat offensive, is the contention that a woman with a penis is somehow “deceiving” anyone merely by dressing and acting in a feminine way without explicitly announcing the fact that she has a penis.
Guys, the fact is that some women (an extremely small percentage) do have penises. That’s just one of the (remote) possibilities that you should be prepared for in seeking sexual encounters with women whom you don’t know well.
It is not a woman’s responsibility to tell you in advance if she happens to have a penis. Any more than it’s your responsibility to tell a woman in advance if your penis happens to be extremely small, or if you happen to experience a lot of erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation, or you happen to be uncircumcised, or circumcised, or bisexual, or have any other genital/sexual characteristics that a high percentage of straight women tend to find unappealing.
Of course, as I said earlier, if you really feel uncomfortable not knowing in advance whether a woman you’re getting physically involved with has a penis, you are perfectly entitled to ask her. (Or simply to make it clear that you’re not comfortable with male genitalia in a sex partner.) And if she deliberately withholds the truth after that, then I will willingly join in with all the scorn and condemnation that deceiving someone in a sexual situation deserves.
But if you don’t bring the subject up and then you eventually find out through personal experience that she does have a penis, I don’t think she’s the one who should be blamed if you get upset about it.
Some women have penises. They’re not obligated to announce that fact in advance to every man who might otherwise run the risk of finding it out for himself. Get over it.
(I would also point out that a lot of this “problem” is due to the fact that trans people in general, as Una mentioned, are so unfairly and harshly treated in other aspects of their lives that many of them live in deeply closeted secrecy that their supportive friends and family must protect. If you want to reduce the chances of straight men being surprised by a penis on a prospective sex partner, then you should put some serious effort into creating a more inclusive culture where women with penises needn’t fear having their gender identities more generally known in their social circles.)
Now that does count as dickish behavior, if you’ll pardon the pun. It’s one thing for a transwoman to reject the unfair expectation that she should proactively describe her genitals to every prospective sex partner she encounters. It’s quite another for her to deliberately ignore or discount the known sexual preferences of prospective sex partners because she arrogantly assumes that she knows what they’ll like better than they do.
I’m reading this thread with interest, because before today I didn’t realize that this would even be considered controversial. I say this not to be snarky, but because I’m very interested in hearing what people have to say about this.
I didn’t take that position.
I’ve stated my thoughts. It’s not controversial. He’s expecting unreasonably accommodating behavior. He thinks a man should have to ask every woman he potentially will sleep with if she has a penis. Despite his own admission that the odds of it occurring are extremely limited.
Honestly, it wouldn’t be a big deal if a woman told me outright. But if she waited until I found out the hard way (no pun intended) I would respect her much less.
Wouldn’t you love the follow up argument/sudden end to sex that would arise. “Why exactly did you think you had to ask if I have a penis???”
I suspect more women would be seriously offended by being asked if they have a penis than there are women with penises.
Yes, actually, although ‘deceiving’ may be a little too strong a word. I would certainly consider it a disrespectful and counter productive omission. Without being transphobic or bigoted it is possible, even likely (especially in our current cultural milieu, though it may well be a biological reaction, I don’t know) for a heterosexual male to be uneasy with the idea of having sex with someone who used to have male genitalia. If there’s something about you that you know is likely to make your prospective sexual partner uneasy, I do think it is your responsibility to broach the topic and examine that partner’s views before you have sex with them. For instance, I know I cannot do relationships, and I know many women find that unappealing. I make sure to bring up the topic and make my position known in advance of any sexual encounter, even though it often results in that sexual encounter not taking place. It is the proper thing to do, and it is incumbent on the person who knows they have a characteristic that their prospective partner is likely to find unappealing. The same argument holds for extant male genitalia on someone you otherwise cannot expect to have them. (As you note, the possibility is quite small).
The transphobia in the song is historic. The deceptive trans person trope is being invoked. It’s kinda like how, on the surface, it’s not racist to show black people eating fried chicken and water melon, or painting your face in dark makeup. But both tropes have been used historically for racism, and are thus racist.
Even if the deception is entirely the guy’s fault, and the woman had nothing to do with it, you’re still invoking the trope. It’s just too close for comfort.
It’s similar to how that Avril Lavigne song was racist against Japanese people.
Nobody seems to have stepped up to this issue except bldysabba:
Emphasis added. Well, this is an interesting alternative approach, and though I don’t personally agree with your interpretation of the ethics involved, I acknowledge that at least your position is an ethically consistent and intellectually honest one.
If you consider that, for example, a transwoman is ethically obliged to declare to a prospective sex partner in advance of sexual activity that she has a penis (or even that she used to have a penis) because it’s “a characteristic that their prospective sex partner is likely to find unappealing”, then it’s only fair that everybody should similarly have to declare in advance any other characteristic that prospective sex partners are likely to find unappealing.
So let’s see if we can hammer out some general ground rules for the application of this principle. For instance:
Guys, in your opinion, what’s the minimum size that your penis is required to be to exempt you from having to declare its size in advance to a prospective sex partner? We know that small penises are on average “likely to be found unappealing”, but how small is small enough to require advance notification?
How about premature ejaculation and/or erectile dysfunction? How often, or how recently, must such a condition occur in order to entail upon you the ethical obligation to notify your prospective sex partner of it?
…Hmmm, this looks like being a long list. I can see how this ethical principle has the potential to make the lead-up to a sexual encounter quite complicated and/or embarrassing for a lot of people, but hey, what’s sauce for the transgoose is sauce for the cisgander.
After all, the most important thing is to ensure that nobody unexpectedly discovers in a sexual partner a characteristic that they find unappealing. Right?
If you possess a microphallus or are completely impotent, those seem like conditions that would merit a heads-up, to minimize discomfort for both parties. Being so grotesquely enormous that intercourse with the nulliparous is basically out of the question, I am always careful to ask my would-be partners if they have already given birth, and if not, would mind feeling as though they had.
But are you being “dishonest”, “deceptive”, “disrespectful”, “wrong” or otherwise significantly less worthy of “respect” if you don’t take the initiative in volunteering that information to a potential sex partner?
If people were merely suggesting to transwomen that information about their genitalia “merits a heads-up” because it’s something a lot of men will be uncomfortable with or turned off by in a sex partner, I could see their point.
But when they insist that failure to provide such a heads-up is some kind of unethical “deception” punishable by moral condemnation (if not worse)—but that this only applies to women with current or former penises, and not to genitalia that might be unappealing for other reasons—I detect a strong whiff of double standard.
To be honest with you, while I presented my opinion as the more ethical position, if I examine my own motivation behind my reasoning and my actions, it really has more to do with improving my own quality of life. To elaborate - in my experience, my life(and the life of my partners) is usually better off when our expectations from each other are reasonably clear. Unpleasant surprises tend to be unpleasant not just for the other person, but for me too, even if I’m the one doing the surprising.
Let’s take the case of your hypothetical man with the micro penis. He meets a woman, they hit it off. As you say, most women would likely find a micro penis unattractive. Do you think a good or a bad experience is more likely if he tries to have sex with her before having an idea of her views on the topic of really small penises? IMO, things will probably go badly for him.
And I think that’s probably a stronger argument for its application than the ethical reasoning, which, though not invalid, is a bit too judge-y for my comfort.
I don’t agree with what you’re trying to do here. The ground rule is simple. If you possess a characteristic that you think/know is likely to make your prospective partner uneasy, you at least find out what they think about it before you have sex with them. If your views on what is likely to be unattractive or not don’t match up with the views actually held by other people at large, you’ll learn. Why do we need a list?
I agree, except about the “not invalid” part. 
Because—and I think this is very important—if we don’t critically investigate why we think a particular characteristic is likely to make someone uneasy, we are just bringing in a mishmash of unexamined cultural prejudices.
It would have made a lot of people “uneasy” several decades ago to find out that one of their teammates or office colleagues was gay, for example. Even if they weren’t morally opposed to homosexuality, they would have felt entitled to know that fact about somebody before deciding whether it was okay to, say, go on business trips or share a locker room with them. They would feel somehow betrayed if they found out they had unwittingly been placed in a potentially compromising position (because the default assumption of lack of sexual attraction between two people of the same sex turned out to be invalid in this case).
Nowadays, of course, we (well, many of us) take it for granted that your colleague or teammate might be gay and you are not necessarily entitled to know that about them beforehand, no matter how “icky” you personally might consider it. What previously might have felt like a violation or deception, owing to ingrained cultural prejudice, has now turned into no big deal for many people.
The personal “ick factor” is IMO not a reliable yardstick for determining whether you are morally entitled to know certain personal information about another person at a certain predetermined stage of your acquaintance. And I think a lot of the “how dare she not tell me in advance that she had a penis” disapproval is coming from the personal “ick factor” which is largely based on ingrained cultural prejudice.
Mind you, I’m not saying that most heterosexual men wouldn’t still find a penis on a woman to be sexually unattractive on a very fundamental level. That’s not a cultural prejudice. But this idea that it’s somehow automatically an unethical violation or deception if they didn’t know about her penis well in advance, and that anger and condemnation are appropriate responses to that situation… well, I just think in a few decades that attitude’s going to look kind of old-fashioned.
Simplistically put, if I had a third nipple, a lá Chandler Bing, I’d bring that up with any potential see-me-nekkid partner. That gives them the chance to decide if they can deal with my extra nipply goodness or not. By the same token, as a firm supporter of LGBT issues, I’d want to know if a possible sex partner had the opposite equipment than I desired or had previously been the owner of same. I do believe failing to share this information with me (or me with them) would constitute deceit on some scale. Not because of my feelings toward them, but because I might need to inspect, and resolve, feelings within myself.
Let me offer an example from my own life. When I was a wee young lass and thought everything going forward when I became an adult should be perfect, I had one or two extremely shallow criteria for the men I dated. One of those was, I’m sad to say, no receding hairlines. Why this was a sticking point for me then, I can only hazard a guess, but regardless, when I had the opportunity to start seeing a man that possessed one, I hesitated. And then I really had to examine my reasoning on that and figure out if I could get over myself. I did, and we fell in love and were together for a time.
I understand the above isn’t exactly analogous, but I think most people have some sort of checklist in their head about what people they will and won’t hook up with. That’s why some won’t even bother with those that are too overweight, skinny, tall, short, divorced, a virgin, with kids, whatever. I think wanting to stick to your preferred gender, with no surprises, doesn’t make one transphobic.
In the scenario above, I’d have felt “deceived” as well, if my former lover had worn a hairpiece without telling me in advance. Some because it wouldn’t have given me time to work through my immaturity and would’ve probably prevented us from having a relationship. I would’ve missed out on so much; from our couplehood and from me growing the hell up. But mostly, because I would’ve wondered why he couldn’t have been himself with me, nor honest to himself. There’s undoubtedly more to it than all that, but that’s the highlights.
So, just another opinion. I don’t know if that muddies the waters further or not, but I do empathize with the position this would put someone in if it reduced your pool of potential partners drastically. I wish there’s was a better way.
Ok, but it didn’t seem like you were examining ‘why’ in the paragraph I quoted. You were trying to establish the characteristic(s), precisely. I don’t see how that part matters. If you want to examine why having sex with a transperson is likely to make someone uneasy, we should do that.
I’m not satisfied with this analogy. Even if, for the sake of argument, people had felt similarly entitled to know their teammate’s sexual preference, I would feel free to discount it not just because it was based on cultural prejudice but also because their interaction with each other was not directly related to sex.
You’re discounting that it’s not just personal “ick factor” in a casual interaction between two people. If you were discussing, as you did in your example, a teammate, a colleague, a person at your gym, a friend, then yes, ick factors and prejudice do not entitle you to anything. When it comes to an intimate sexual relationship with another person, your ick factors give you some rights, and other people’s ick factors give you an obligation. If you are idiosyncratic(in either preferences or characteristics), the most productive(and also, IMO correct) approach I can think of is to bring it up before sex. Anger and condemnation are rarely ever appropriate responses, and they probably aren’t in this case either, but that doesn’t make it ok(again, IMO) for you not to be considerate towards someone you’re planning to have sex with.
Well, obviously I was being kind of sarcastic about the likelihood of producing an actual consensus on the quantitative details. More to the point, though, it matters because it gets us thinking about the assumptions we make.
Many heterosexual males would reflexively feel that encountering a penis on a female sexual partner is “weird and gross” or some such reaction, so they assume that they’re entitled to be warned about it in advance. But are they using a consistently applied standard of “weird and gross”, or are they to some extent biased by social prejudice against transgender people?
For example, would they consider it equally “weird and gross” for a grown male to have an extreme micropenis (some forms of which are actually more rare than women with penises)? If so, how small would the organ have to be to count as “weird and gross”? And why that particular size and not, say, a millimeter longer?
My point is that a lot of the perceptions we have about what does/should “make someone uneasy” are based on distinctions that are fundamentally arbitrary.
Sure: they give you the right and the obligation to engage in only mutually consensual sexual activities.
IOW, if you find out that your prospective sex partner has some characteristic(s) you don’t like, or vice versa, you have the right to terminate the sexual encounter whenever you want to, and you have the obligation to accept the other person’s terminating the sexual encounter whenever they want to.
But you don’t have a right never to be surprised by some sexual characteristic that you personally find icky. Nor do you have an obligation to proactively describe every sexual characteristic of your own that you think a partner might be likely to find icky.
Mind you, I quite agree with you that it’s best when prospective sex partners are candid with each other, not just about their sexual characteristics but about their sexual preferences. If there are things that would be major dealbreakers for you in a sexual relationship, as well as things about you that you think might well be dealbreakers for the other person, it’s a good thing to get them all out in the open.
But that doesn’t mean that people are automatically being deceptive or unethical if they don’t take the initiative to reveal all those things in advance.