Yesterday, I was lurking at Feministing when I found
this thread. It's called "Transphobia in Seventeen."
Short version: A girl starts dating a guy. He tells her he's wearing chest bandages for a sports injury, and won't let her see/touch him below the belt. She eventually finds out he was actually a biological female, presenting as a man, and eventually wanted to get gender reassignment.
An argument erupted in the comments over whether or not a transgendered (in this case, pre-op) person needed to tell their boyfriend/girlfriend about their "situation." It broke down into two camps:
A) If you're going to be in an intimate relationship with someone, there needs to be honesty. The girl in the story was heterosexual and thought she was in a relationship with a biological male. It was wrong of her partner to deceive her.
Transgendered people are under no obligation to "out" themselves to anyone, even a partner. The partner has no right to know anything about their biological equipment. In the story, the "boyfriend" was presenting as male, and that's all that matters.
Now, I can see that a post-op transgendered person wouldn't necessarily "need" to reveal their "state," since they physically match the gender they are presenting as. But pre-op is a little different. I mean, what happens when you have sex? Isn't that kind of a bad time to "reveal" things?
What do you guys think?
Posts
This.
Would you really want to be with someone that might leave you if you ever told them a pretty major truth about yourself?
Thread pretty much over.
I'm a big supporter of transgendered rights, but this is stuff you need to share if you're going to truly be close to someone.
A shallow "Let's fuck" relationship needs sexual attraction. If this gets in the way of that, it's not going to work out.
Yes.
You kind of are unless you think it's cool to be the only one that makes the decisions.
I mean, if someone doesn't want to be in a relationship with a transgendered for whatever reason, it's kind of a dick move to ignore their feelings on the subject.
That's what blew my mind when I read the thread, because some of the feminists on that site were definitely saying that a person had no right to choose a partner that wasn't transgendered. That knowledge simply wasn't theirs to have.
The rights of the transgendered to remain anonymous are quickly rendered moot in any potentially sexual relationship. Your partner will find out, they have a right to know.
Imagine hiding any other serious complication from your significant other. "Oh, hey, honey, sorry I forgot to mention I'm married and have three children." Would that be acceptable? Can we say the married have a right to out themselves when and where they choose?
There's really no way to base a healthy relationship off of deceit and dishonesty. Any "rights to privacy" or "right to out yourself how you choose" don't change that simple rule.
Though in general if that is the one and only barrier they might have a problem too.
While I agree there is no obligation to do anything, really, it is best practices to be honest with someone in a long term relationship.
So I guess my answer is both?
Don't they see how much worse it would be if the person found out separately on their own later on? That's the sort of thing that can really flip some people out.
That said I've heard about the procedures and it sounds like it's still pretty easy to tell once you start getting sexually intimate.
Also, on an unrelated note I met the lady who runs Feministing recently and she is very nice.
On the other hand, that's your problem, and you should respect your partner's sexuality. Yes, I know not outing yourself is your choice, but never telling the girl that I'm trying to lay that I'm not actually Tom Brady is my choice, and I think we both know how the morality plays on that one.
I think it really depends if we're talking pre or post op here. I can say with all certainty that I, being straight, would enter a relationship with a girl with an understanding that she has a vagina. Because that's what I like. If we take off our clothes and I suddenly realize she has a penis - no deal. That's not my thing.
Now, if surgery has been involved and you can't even really tell, the situation becomes a bit less obvious, but it's still a situation.
this is a transphobic statement.
It's pretty drilled into everyone's heads due to the culture we live in, but saying "x isn't really x" is not a happy position no matter how otherwise accepting you may be.
See I don't get this. Sure, they get to decide as anyone gets to decide anything for themselves... masters of their own decisions/whatnot. But it seems horribly self destructive, irresponsible, and perhaps even spiteful not to not tell someone early.
Well, it's hard to really call that specifically transphobic. There's a lot more involved there.
I mean, take children. Most couples tend to have them. Many, many people expect to have them unless both they and their partner do not want such (and take great pains to prevent it - or, maybe, infertility). Say a guy married a post-op woman. They never discussed children. Maybe he assumed she would want them someday. He doesn't know she doesn't have the necessary equipment.
Really, these decisions need to be made with full consent. You need to know all the necessary information.
Sex, not gender.
It may be a poor decision to make, but it's still their decision.
I will not disagree with you that withholding that sort of thing from a long term partner is bad news.
He never said he wouldn't be fine with it if he found out early in the relationship.
Besides, even if he wasn't fine with it early in the relationship, I don't feel like its always transphobic. Sexual attraction is often a large portion of relationships and feeling close to someone and not really liking the look of his/her partner's bits might color the whole thing eventually. Its not a simple one note issue.
A guy isn't gay so obviously he won't sleep with other guys but he still thinks gays are good people and hangs out with them. This doesn't make him homophobic, it just means he's not gay.
It's a new layer of complexity to the whole situation and I think using the word transphobic is a bit sensitive for it.
Enlightened self interest probably leads them to not date anyone in your neck of the woods.
Perhaps I'm operating under false assumptions, but last I recall there are still some very big differences between someone born a specific gender and someone surgically altered to be a different gender.
It's transphobic to say that somebody "isn't really a woman" because she's transgendered.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
That's kind of a pesky word. Is this a choice? Getting surgery obviously is, but whether it's a choice how one feels internally that they are one gender or another seems as difficult a question as the other thread about homosexuality.
By and large.
Frankly I think that level of disrespect is worthy of an asskicking, but I'm aware that I'll very much be an outlier on this issue.
More to the issue at hand, of course it's the transperson's choice when and how to come out. But they have to make that choice in a world and with the understanding that some choices are more likely to have negative outcomes than others.
I can only imagine that the opinions would get thrown for a loop if we supposed it was a homosexual who found out that his/her partner was of the opposite biological sex.
Whether you want it to or not, presenting yourself as a certain gender communicates certain things to others. And those potentially incorrect assumptions could very well be integral to the bond you are forming with them.
I was taking issue specifically with the phraseology here.
I'm not particularly condemning the sentiment, which is understandable.
Sure. It's also true.