Given that one of my former employees was arrested, fired, and charged with assault because of an altercation with a transgender woman, I wonder how much of an outlier it can be. Combine that with overwhelmingly high incidence rates for rape and murder among the transgender population, and it paints a far more dangerous picture for those who have been outed unwillingly.
Don’t be facetious; it should be beneath you. You’ve been educated on this issue in depth by participating in the numerous transgender threads you seem drawn to comment on (oddly).
No, it’s not. There’s literally no reason for it to ever come up. Friends tell each other secrets, and a good friend keeps those secrets unless there is some life-or-death reason not to.
I have a friend who has had an abortion. I don’t tell anyone about that. I have a friend who had a one night tryst with a married man. I don’t tell anyone about that. I have a friend who has a foot fetish. I don’t tell anyone about that. I have friends on here with mental disorders they don’t want to reveal to everyone else. I don’t talk about that. And I have had gay friends who weren’t out, and I did not tell anyone about that.
A trans person, in general, does not want people to know about their trans status. It is therefore a secret. So I don’t tell anyone about that. I’m pretty sure that I have a new friend who is trans (and sexy as hell). But she has not told anyone about that, so I just don’t bring it up. It’s easy.
Keeping secrets for friends is not problematic. It’s what friends do.
Well, you kinda just did…
Not really, since we have no idea who any of those people are.
It’s called a joke, son.
I don’t get it. Why is this such a difficult concept? If it’s not my shit, I have no business talking about it. Period.
I’d guess a lot of people who don’t understand this don’t have very good relationships with others.
You’d think that, but it’s not necessarily true.
I don’t think anyone in the thread is advocating loudly going around proclaiming to all and sundry “HEY DID YOU KNOW JANE USED TO BE JOHN???”. I’m certainly not.
What is being suggested, however, is the problematic nature of pretending Jane was never John. If someone at a party or an event comes up to me and says “Hey, Jane seems pretty masculine looking for a woman” (or something like that) then depending on the context and the person asking my response could be anything from “I haven’t really noticed. I was just going to get another drink, though” to “Well, Jane used to be John when we went to school together, but it’s a touchy subject.” If someone outright asks “Didn’t Jane used to be John?” I’m not going to say “No”, basically.
IMO it’s not hugely different from someone asking about a mutual acquaintance who’s been in prison, or something like that.
“I haven’t heard from Fred in a really long time and since when did he have tattoos?” could elicit a response ranging from “I don’t really see much of him either, but work has been crazy. How about that local sports team, eh?” to “Yeah, the twit robbed a bank, got caught and ended up in jail, but he’s out now and seems to have learned his lesson” depending on the person asking, how well I know Fred, and other factors like that.
There’s no hard and fast rule, in other words.
I think a common misconception in this thread is that it’s always obvious when someone has transitioned, so it feels weird tho pretend you didn’t notice.
I guess I know more trans people than a lot of you. I can tell you that you are wrong. There are trans people who look like completely ordinary members of their gender, at least while wearing ordinary clothing. That guy with the “no more boobs” scars? He’s a little short for a guy, but that’s the only “tell”, and 5’4" is short, but not impossibly short.
In is more common for trans men to “pass” than for transwomen, due to how we tend to perceive gender. But some people succeed in each direction.
As for the people who don’t pass… They are trying, and pointing out that they don’t pass is like telling a woman she’s fat. Yeah, she probably knows that, but it’s still likely a hurtful thing to say.
The statement in the OP that started this implied that many in the room didn’t know that Jane used to be Joe. (Or maybe that’s backward? I forget.) So we can assume that person looked like their current gender.
Yeah, that would be dumb. A transwomen came to my high school reunion. Everyone who know her knew her as a guy. She obviously intended to come out to all of us as a woman. And yes, her close friends did talk about it, because that was pretty much the point of her being there.
Yup
Oh, and I adore Miss Manners. Miss Manners is very much a real (not caricatured) social justice warrior, who has been battling for people to be polite to non-white, low-class, foreign, gay, blind, disabled, trans, etc. people consistently since her first column. If you’ve never noticed this, you probably haven’t read her column, nor her books.
This is basically what the person described in the original IMHO thread did. If everyone in that thread had agreed that this was rude then it would have been a pretty short thread, and this BBQ Pit thread wouldn’t even exist.
The original thread was not about “pretending that Jane was never John”, it was about a blabbermouth who for no particular reason decided to “out” Jane as being transgender. I have a difficult time believing that someone who was not in favor of transgender people being outed in this way would choose either of these threads as the place to take a stand against “pretending Jane was never John.”
If you genuinely do not support the actions of the blabbermouth then I’d suggest saving your arguments for another thread.
Because it’s too much of a stretch to say instead “Ask them.”
Right.
Questioner: “Hey, did I hear Dave used to be in prison or something?”
Right Response: “Ask them.”
Wrong Response: “Yeah.”
SDMB Response: “Yes, he was prisoner number 3347845, and was sent up for 2-4 on a drunk driving homicide - he had too much Stoli and rammed his car into a busload of Girl Guides, setting it on fire while trapping them inside. They say the smell of burning flesh was inhuman, and the screams, my GOD the screams! After all, you need to know all this, because it would be ‘Orwellian’ to ever withhold any details from anyone else who knows Dave and is his friend. It would be creepy not to talk about all the details of everyone behind their back, as opposed to, you know, letting THEM tell their own story.”
You know what I do in real life if I have a personal question about someone? I ASK THEM TO THEIR FACE, or if distance prohibits, directly by electronic communication. Why? Because I’m not some sniveling busybody or clueless tool who spreads gossip about people, true or not.
You see, the thing is asking someone in person brings the real issue into focus, because all of a sudden you have to climb out from behind your D&D books or turn off Netflix and face another human being. And that’s when you start to think “hey…maybe it’s hurtful to ask them this unless I have a really compelling and important reason to know this.”
~
Despite several on here talking like they are erudite as Alec Guinness or charming as Olivia DeHavilland, I suspect in real life those advocating outing transgender persons are the usual sort of introverted, closeted, bigoted glowering losers I see in real life who do this sort of thing all the time. I hear it all the time - “Sara’s baby is REALLY tan - do you think she had an affair?” “Steve looks really hung over today. You think his marriage is having problems?” “What the fuck is that person supposed to be, a boy or a girl?” And I’m the one who shuts it down, and then they talk about me behind my back…and you know what, I don’t give a fuck about people talking behind my back about my being polite and minding my own fucking business.
And you know who are the absolute most nosy, gossiping, conniving, backstabbing people I meet? Conservatives, you know those “let’s stay out of other people’s business” conservatives. Imagine.
I’m also wondering about a persistent group of people on here who by their own admission have no connection to the transgender community, claim they don’t know any of us or haven’t met any of us, and claim they mean us no harm…yet keep appearing in the few threads on this board about us. Posting their concern about bathrooms, how we dress, equal employment rights, keeping our personal information private…it makes one wonder what the real attraction is. Are the topics of my people just a car crash too juicy to keep from slowing down as you pass, or subconsciously are you just really bothered by the concept of our existence and feel the need to chip away from the edges, to satisfy your need to “do something” in a passive-aggressive way?
Not quite there. Apparently the true SDMB Response goes like this:
Questioner:
SDMB Response: “Well, nobody asked me but I’m going to tell you about that time Dave went to prison…”
I’m going to put in a good word for gossip. I think gossip is part of what makes us human, and helps knit communities together. Of course, there are different kinds of gossip:
Good gossip: Hey, did you hear that Sue and Dave are getting married?
Bad gossip: Hey, did you hear that Frank raped Sue, and knocked her up, and she had to have an abortion?
I think it should be obvious that it’s better the share good gossip than bad gossip. Of course, sometimes it’s worth spreading bad gossip, possibly edited to protect the innocent:
Hey, that guy you were just flirting with? I heard he raped one of my friends. You ought to be careful around him.
There are, as I see it, two special problems with outing people as trans.
One problem is personal safety. Unfortunately, we live in a world where trans people can be shunned or beaten or lose their jobs due to being trans. That makes it potentially very harmful to out someone – you should damn well know they are okay with it before doing that.
The second problem is that trans people face a lot of negative social interactions of the “I don’t believe you are a girl/boy, I think you are really a boy/girl” sort. That makes it much ruder to comment on their transition than it would be to comment on a woman’s boob job, for instance. Trans people kind of need their friends to support them, or at least to give them respite from constantly dealing with that sort of frustration.
QFT.
It’s really cognitive dissonance. It’s the old conservative disgust-factor (which is more highly tuned than others’) in conflict with basic human decency. They have to be here because they can’t reconcile their bigotry with the facts.
I’ve been down this road before, not here but with a conservative fundamentalist pastor ‘‘just asking questions.’’ I enlisted the help of my biology-adept friends and gave him the full run-down on the biology of sex and gender identity (an educational experience for me, anyhow.) Then we talked about the social stuff. And after weeks of back and forth exchange, that fucking asshole posted something just as goddamn ignorant on his FB as if I’d never said anything at all.
It’s really not that fucking hard. I’m straight, cisgender, can’t fathom not feeling like my inner self didn’t match my parts. I have not lived my life interacting on a totally regular basis with trans people, but I’ve met and hung out with some trans friends occasionally in grad school and stayed connected with them socially online. Despite not understanding gender dysphoria on a fundamental level, I’ve somehow managed not to treat other people like shit and to take their word for it what they need and want. It’s as simple as, ‘‘Hey, I don’t have this experience, I should probably not decide for other people about things I have no idea about.’’
Eventually it becomes like any other thing: a part of what makes that individual uniquely who they are. We may be a diverse nation but Americans have a real problem with self-imposed segregation, and I feel like so many of our problems would be solved just with basic exposure. Not just opinions on a message board, but actually knowing and interacting with someone outside of the framework of their ‘‘transness’’ if that makes any sense. I would love a day when someone could meet a trans person for the first time, and their first question wasn’t ''So what’s the situation with your junk?" but instead, ''What do you do for a living?" or ''How do you feel about cheesecake for dessert?" I dunno, maybe I’m an idealist.
FTR, Una, next time you’re in San Francisco, you are 100% invited to Taco Night.
You’re also welcome in my home anytime.
Gotta say, Una just absolutely rocks.
Yeah Una, I’ll take you out for tacos anytime.
It’s ALWAYS time for tacos. Although if Una came to Pittsburgh, I’d have to take her to Primanti’s or something like that. Because that’s what you do.
What bothered me about the OP and the resulted flurry is that in the friendly social gatherings I attend an introduction to the effect of “I knew Jane back when she was John,” would have been basically de regueur for a transsexual friend. It would have been considered downright rude not to infer that you did not fully supported their trans decision.