Well, that's a very interesting thought you've posted. I think it's obvious that there are a lot of things a couple knows about each other before they get married. Not all of them are particularly important (your first kiss, what kind of pets you like, etc.) but there are some things to know that are definitely important. I would agree that a person's race or origin, while interesting to know, should not have any bearing on whether or not the relationship continues.

But I get the idea from the slightly sarcastic tone you've taken in the last two posts that you're trying to say that a transsexual shouldn't ever have to reveal their transsexualness. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I don't feel like you're talking to me straight so I'm guessing your intention. And I'm also guessing you don't like my standpoint either.

But based on that guess, are you saying that the time to find out your partner is a transsexual would be after you've both gotten in bed?

Well, first of all I was totally serious when i said that bigoted people should have to reveal themselves. What if a transexual and a person who was bigoted against transexuals accidentally got together? Certainly, that is a consummation to devoutly avoided! But i question your implication that it is the transexuals job to "disclose" something.

I say, if anyone is worried about dating transexuals, you should make a clear point of that to your partners on the first date. Just tell them up front that you don't date transexuals. Isn't that fair? Why is it the transexuals job to "disclose" things?


Secondly Hawk, I feel like the ground is shifting under my feet here. Earlier, people were talking about things that had to be said outright and up-front, like, at the first date. Then we were talking about things that had to be talked about in a serious relationship, and now you mention things that people should know before marriage! The goal-posts are moving too fast!

I would say that the correct time to tell your partner something is the moment you feel safe, and the moment you want to share things.

To take any other position is to say that transexuals have a special responsibility to reveal their personal lives to "protect" people from their terrible secret. And come to think of it, that does sound like the kind of things that bigots say, if we go by the dictionary definition of bigot.

Thanks for being up-front.

StaceyMontgomery
To take any other position is to say that transexuals have a special responsibility to reveal their personal lives to "protect" people from their terrible secret. And come to think of it, that does sound like the kind of things that bigots say, if we go by the dictionary definition of bigot.

Worded that way it certainly does sound intolerant. But maybe the reason a person wants to know isn't always because it would be a reason to end the relationship. There are other relevant issues, specifically sex and having children, which I think justifies a person's curiosity. You're the first person to refer to it as a "terrible secret", so maybe it would surprise you to find that not everybody was regarding it that way.

Maybe you can see why we can't go around asking the people we love if they're a transsexual or not. That's why I place the responsibility of sharing the information on the transsexual. I don't think that's unfair.

Hawk
Worded that way it certainly does sound intolerant. But maybe the reason a person wants to know isn't always because it would be a reason to end the relationship. There are other relevant issues, specifically sex and having children, which I think justifies a person's curiosity. You're the first person to refer to it as a "terrible secret", so maybe it would surprise you to find that not everybody was regarding it that way.

Maybe you can see why we can't go around asking the people we love if they're a transsexual or not. That's why I place the responsibility of sharing the information on the transsexual. I don't think that's unfair.

Hawk - I'm still not sure about the goalposts. What about people who cannot sire or bear children for whatever reason? Do they have to disclose at the same time as transeuxals? Or is that less pressing?

You see, to the extant that it's important to disclose important things to the ones we love, I'm with you. There are things we have to tell, when the time is right. If you want to marry me, you have a right to know about my credit card debt. I'm totally there.

(Of course, let's not forget that 'marriage' really only applies to people who live in a place that allows them to marry their current partner - not everyone lives in a place like that!)

But it seems to me that you set transexuality apart as being more important than these issues, though I admit you have been hazy on the point. If Transexuality is just one more thing we should all be honest about, then fine. But you - and others in this thread - DO seem to treat it as a terrible secret.

I say that transexuals are just like everyone else - complicated people with complicated and tangled lives and all the rest of the baggage real people have. With the same obligations, no more, and no less.

StaceyMontgomery
Hawk - I'm still not sure about the goalposts. What about people who cannot sire or bear children for whatever reason? Do they have to disclose at the same time as transeuxals? Or is that less pressing?

I'd think for somebody you're going to marry, whether or not they're sterile/barren would be just as pertinent information. Hopefully a person isn't shallow enough to end the relationship based on what they find out, but it's important to know.

StaceyMontgomery
But it seems to me that you set transexuality apart as being more important than these issues, though I admit you have been hazy on the point. If Transexuality is just one more thing we should all be honest about, then fine. But you - and others in this thread - DO seem to treat it as a terrible secret.

I read back through all my posts, and I really have to say, I think you've entirely imagined this.

StaceyMontgomery
I say that transexuals are just like everyone else - complicated people with complicated and tangled lives and all the rest of the baggage real people have. With the same obligations, no more, and no less.

I think that's a way of putting it that we can both agree on.

Hawk
I'd think for somebody you're going to marry, whether or not they're sterile/barren would be just as pertinent information. Hopefully a person isn't shallow enough to end the relationship based on what they find out, but it's important to know.

I am comfortable with this. I admit, I am not sure that I fully agree - but i can hardly object.

Hawk
I read back through all my posts, and I really have to say, I think you've entirely imagined this.

I apologize. I fear I may have attributed to you things said by others earlier in the thread, which is terribly careless of me.

I'd think for somebody you're going to marry, whether or not they're sterile/barren would be just as pertinent information.

I don't see these two situations as equivalent. For starters, if you do know that you are infertile or sterile, then it is important to tell someone you plan on marrying that information. Still, it isn't necessarily first date material. A lot of people find it creepy to talk about kids on a first date. It comes off as being too fast when the first date is about making a social connection more than about planning out the rest of your life.

The other problem here is that the fact that the partner is transexual doesn't effect you in any particular way if you can't tell. In their eyes they are a man or woman, not some third category, and their prior gender is irrelevant. Saying that they have to divulge this information up front only helps to feed people's insecurities about themselves and establish a divide between transexual and natural born men and women. It's like saying they aren't what they claim (which goes back to KingRidley's "deluded" argument) and people are justified in rejecting or shunning them on that basis.

I read back through all my posts, and I really have to say, I think you've entirely imagined this.

I can see why she might get that impression, not that I necessarily agree.

Again a lot of what is being discussed goes back to each partner's confidence in their sexual identity. If one falls in love with a woman who is a transsexual and was once male when in a committed relationship, then they disclose their secrets.

The way it's presented here you'd think that one should reveal their whole sexual history on the first date.

If you are confident in your sexuality, your partner choice will not matter, transexual versus what they were born as. It could be seen as an accident of birth the same as skin color. Natural selection does make mistakes and it takes forever to get things right.

Theory on why homosexuals exist (based on some reading on human sexual selection) Our species is moderately polygynous (multiple wives/concubines) And the custom extends across the great majority of human cultures. So, what do the males who can't get a mate do? The same thing that other polygynous species do; mate with their own gender. Since the group of wives/concubines cannot all mate with their male at once (whatever fantasies you guys may have) the behavior of mating with another woman could also have arisen for similar reasons. It makes sense and since we've been around for at least 40,000 years as Homo Sapiens and far less time in settled agriculture and large groups... Our behavior probably comes from what we were long before there were cities and bearded guys coming down from mountains with ten laws on tablets and trying to tell us we all came from one couple living in a garden on the Tigris. Or then again maybe not. ;)

isukun
...the fact that the partner is transexual doesn't effect you in any particular way if you can't tell. In their eyes they are a man or woman, not some third category, and their prior gender is irrelevant.

Yes! Amen! If you can't tell, why should it matter? If you get into a relationship with someone, become intimate with them, and still can't tell, then why worry?

If my girlfriend told me right now that she used to be a man, I'd just say "Well you're a woman now! That's all that matters!"

KingRidley
Man unless that confession is the first thing that comes out of their mouth when you see them then they're 'telling' you a lie of omission.

There is no such thing as a "Lie of omission" This is a specious term coined by religious "inquisitors" to justify their torture of persons who refused to 'confess.' Why do you think the U.S. forefathers were careful to create the "Fifth Amendement" to the Bill Of Rights. No convictions for "Lies of Omission". Gaahhh. I really hate when people use that term...

The idea that transexuals are essentially "telling lie" is, alas, pretty standard. It is a common justification given when denying trans people access to housing, jobs, medical care, and police service. It is simple bigotry, and that always leads to bad places - so it is proper that we call people out on it.

StaceyMontgomery
It is simple bigotry,

The "Lie" idea can be a flimsy justification for prejudice, true.
But people are also used to the simple binary difference in the sexes, and when they're not acclimatised to it any deviation from that confounds and disturbs them, so they try and explain it, rationalise it, in order to understand it.

It might turn into bigotry (it usually does), but it's not always simple. Is King Riley really an out and out bigot, or is he just relatively inexperienced with transgender people and so seeking to try and understand it in his own way? If that's the case he might still be finding his way.

ozoneocean
]The "Lie" idea can be a flimsy justification for prejudice, true.
But people are also used to the simple binary difference in the sexes, and when they're not acclimatised to it any deviation from that confounds and disturbs them, so they try and explain it, rationalise it, in order to understand it.

It might turn into bigotry (it usually does), but it's not always simple. Is King Riley really an out and out bigot, or is he just relatively inexperienced with transgender people and so seeking to try and understand it in his own way? If that's the case he might still be finding his way.

We are all still finding our own way. No one is just at a dead end of being "wrong." I don't know that anyone is "an out and out bigot" I just know that most people say and do bigoted things at different points in their lives. I certainly have said and done bigoted things - and it is good that others stood up and called me on it when they did.

But i would never call anyone an out-and-out bigot. That would imply that I can never rise above the mistakes I have made in my own life.

Just because a person is your friend and you don't have sex with them doesn't mean the relationship isn't close or meaningful. Jay and Silent Bob are soul mates, lovers? no.

I take argument with the idea that a soul mate is someone you must be having sex with. And I have plenty of doubt relating to the idea of a soulmate in the first place.

In the real world I know perfect love partners are very screwed up people, but screwed up in a way that dovetails the way YOU are screwed up. A quality that is limited but never unique to one person.

Lastly sex itself is mysterious and not scientifically understood. It does happen that a straight man will find one guy, often just the one guy - to be sexually hot (some comedians suggest Prince is the hot guy for them). It happens the other way too- Tom Robinson sang in the 1970s 'sing if you're glad to be Gay!' and was totally gay at that time, he's now married to a woman!

mykill
Jay and Silent Bob are soul mates, lovers? no.

Hetero-lifemates FTW!

I agree with you. A lot of times you will befriend a person because subconciously you feel an attraction to them. Now there can be different situations. (curiosity, attractions to the sex you normally aren't) But the difference between male and female is so great that the person would not have the same experiences growing up that they could not possibly be the same person unless the gender swapping happend recently.