What don’t you understand about my point? A TG who does not reveal his/her condition on a date increases the likelihood of a negative emotional reaction.
Well, yeah. That particular statement is pretty inarguable. Nobody likes being lied to, although I question the use of “condition,” especially if it’s a post-op. At that point they’re no different from a sterile man or woman.
Now, please explain how “a negative emotional reaction” suddenly means:
One simply doesn’t follow from the other.
Frankly, if the TG person doesn’t exercise proper restraint in deciding who to tell, they’re more likely to be at risk, because they may tell someone who would otherwise not have known and would be likely to commit violence against someone they see as a freak. The publicly known TGs have a measure of safety both because they’re with people who can provide security and because they’re abstracted. They’re not a part of the violent person’s community. Someone who wouldn’t give two shits about Cher’s kid would be extremely opposed to having to work in the same office as a freak.
Also, think about it: is a person who would be prone to violence upon finding out he was deceived about TG going to be someone who’s not prone to violence upon being told immediately and up front? I would say that stretches plausibility, and if it does, then it has nothing to do with TG at all for that person.
It does not follow at all that someone who would be violent at finding out they’d been dating someone who didn’t tell them they were TG would aslo be randomly violent at any TG that reveals themself to him at all. There’s a pretty huge difference there. Someone telling him straight up isn’t going to trigger a bunch of homophobic panic and self-doubt and fear of public perception and all kinds of other things.
Potential violence isn’t the only issue anyway. It’s just not wise to start a relationship based on deception.
I’m not even inclined to consider it deception. The whole point is not to be TG, but to be the other sex. A post-op is no different from a sterile man or woman. It is necessary to some degree in order to make past history consistent, and I do think it’s something a trusted person should know, but I don’t like the word deception in this.
And I wasn’t talking about “any random person.” When I said immediately and up front, I meant at the start of the relationship. And it seems like a pretty heavy topic to be bringing up on a casual date over coffee anyway.
In a situation like the Orthodox Jewish dating system, the TG should be upfront about their situation before a date or even the appearance of dating occurs. And there a degrees in which people are prone to violence. Someone who is told an individual is TG on introduction is more likely to say, “Meh, whatever, but no I don’t want to associate with that person because the kind of marriage I want could never occur with them,” and that would be the end of it. Someone who has invested time, emotions, and their reputation in the dating system only to find out they have been deceived is probably going to be more prone to violence. In fact, depending on the strictness of the Orthodox community, an Orthodox women could easily feel compelled to out the TG in order to protect her own reputation (i.e., her currency in the marriage market) and the reputation of her family (her siblings changes at a good marriage).
I think it’s disingenuous to say it isn’t different.
If the partner would never have known without being told, I don’t see how.
Not in the religion tenants of some potential partners. Incidently, sterility is an acceptable reason for divorce among the Orthodox and certainly a consideration in most marriages.
If only I had addressed this earlier.
Oh, yes, I did.
Because everyone has the right to their religious beliefs as long as they don’t interfere with anothers. If an Orthodox Jew sincerely believes that they should marry a person of the opposite sex and believe your is gender is what your chromosome say it is willingfully defrauding them represents an act of anti-social depravity. A TG person who has so little concern for another person’s emotional well-being does not deserve to be in a relationship with anyone. Furthermore, who is to the say the partner would never have known without being told. In a marriage, there will probably be doctor’s appointments and hospitalizations. Financial records will be shared. Many TG require hormone injections. How are they going to explain that? And in most Orthodox marriages, children are central concern in life.
Bosstone, how on Earth will someone’s partner never know? Setting aside any physical matters (potential shortcomings of surgeries, unchangeable features like hand size, etc.), is it possible that the partner will never, ever meet someone who knew the person before they transitioned (including any and all family members) who might mention it, come across any old photographs or memorabilia, or see a piece of mail from a mailing list that still has the person’s old name?
As a larger matter, it’s critical to me, at least, to know Important Matters from my partner’s past, because that’s what made him who he is. If someone isn’t comfortable enough with me to discuss such matters, we definitely shouldn’t be in even a medium-term relationship of any sort.
There is no way anyone raised in or converting to Orthodox Judaism, could not know the difficulties being TG posed to their romantic life. It’s not like some of the Christian conversions where you profess Jesus and then they dunk you in pool or sprinkle a little holy water. There is considerable study of the faith and counciling before conversion and the Orthodox position on transgender would have been made very clear.
It’s a rule within the TG community that you don’t ever out a TG person to anyone who is not TG themselves. Yes, it is something that must be revealed to a partner before starting any kind of serious romantic or sexual relationship; in that regard it’s no different from having cancer or being allergic to peanuts. But the majority of people who go through a gender transition want to have as close to a normal life as possible living as a man if they’re FtM or a woman if they’re MtF. Transexualism is a difficult condition to be born with. Going and outing one to everybody so that the person gets regarded differently and possibly treated differently is just adding insult to injury, aside from the safety issues.
Even people who are accepting of the LGBT spectrum will usually see transexuals as something other than “real” men/women.
I disagree; most if not all TG persons have the basic sexual drives, emotional responses, and thought patterns typical of the gender they identify as. If you (generic you) are dating a transman, you’re dating a man regardless of the wrapper he is contained within.
What about concern for the transgender person’s emotional well being? You’re saying they are supposed to give their own identity, which has reproducible evidence to back it up, less importance than some devout person’s irrational beliefs, which are without any empirical backing at all?
One person’s right to honest emotional well being ends where it infringes on the another person’s right to honest emotional well being. What they are suppose to do is tell the truth about the gender they were born into. I don’t think you understand the difference between dating in the Orthdox religious world and dating in the mainstream. As was said upthread, Orthodox dating is basically an interview process for a spouse. It is not dating for fun and companionship.
You’re not actually arguing against me, you know.
Another thing.
In states that do not allow a person to legally change their sex, transexuals are not able to marry a person that the state considers to be the same sex as the TG person. For instance in a state where a FTM transexual is still legally recognized as a female, regardless of any surgery or self-identification, that person would not be permitted to marry a woman. That makes genetic status relevant to relationship partners. People have a right to know if they’re in a relationship with someone that the state will not permit them to marry.
So should transgenders avoid the Orthodox community altogether? I don’t see why it’s fair that a person should reveal a highly personal aspect of themselves to a group that won’t respect them because of it.
To be honest, yes. It would be one thing if one had been born into such a community, and had strong ties to it, but why would any person choose to join a committee that he or she knows will reject him or her? Even setting aside dating/marriage/family (almost impossible to do in the Orthodox community, where anybody who is single above their mid-twenties is generally very stressed about it and is inevitably the object of much pity, there’s no concept whatsoever of being childless by choice, and communities are built around the family unit), there is no way that a transgender person would ever be accepted at all. Orthodox Judaism doesn’t recognize the concept of a gender identity different from one’s birth characteristics, and doesn’t make any accommodations for transgender folk.
We’re fast approaching sunset-on-Friday, that time when all the really good discussions about Judaism here really get going, so au revoir!