Since I also share all the reactions you describe to the first scenario, I find it overly fine-grained to distinguish that from feeling revulsed at the thought of a baby in a trash can. But whatever.
Re the second scenario:
You quite mistake what I'm equating to what, but that's a common error.
"he is terminally stupid." Very good point! And "terminally stupid", rather than "transphobic", seems to me a better approach to contemplating the man who vomits at the thought of dating a trans woman.
"A trans woman is not deceiving anybody; she is a woman. She is not required to reveal her history and she is not deceiving anybody"
Well, now, that depends on circumstances. In non-romantic dealings, whether a person is trans, or their sexual preferences, are of no interest and I'd rather not even know them, unless it becomes relevant - say it's the topic of discussion and the person wants to provide personal testimony.
I cannot speak well to casual hookup culture, which has no appeal to me and which I do not claim to understand. But certainly not knowing much about your partner seems part of the point there, and for the transphobic pursuing such a lifestyle, from their point of view they'd have to acknowledge caveat emptor. So in that context I'm entirely in agreement with you.
But in a serious romantic relationship, I would not accept a "mind your own business" attitude like this. In such a relationship, your partner's life is your business. (Mind, I have neither seen The Crying Game - I started watching it, but gave up in terminal boredom after 20 minutes - nor read Almost Perfect, so I don't know where on the spectrum the relationships they depict lie.)
I've always held that, before getting very far into a serious romantic relationship, your partner should know all the major facts of your life, unless they really don't want to know. Being trans would qualify. So would a lot of other things. (Exact number of sexual partners, I wouldn't care, but some vague idea of how experienced one was, yes; and you can give that off without being specific.)
I know a case of a man who didn't discover until just before the wedding that his fiancee had been married once before. It had been brief and over long ago and left no fallout - no children, alimony, or stalkers - but he was very upset. He felt deceived. He felt he had been lied to. I count a noble spirit that he went through with the wedding.
I have, to my knowledge, dated one trans woman. She was entirely upfront and open about this. And this was thirty years ago, when being out was even dicier than it is today. You speak of the risks to a trans woman of being out, but from the stories being told here, the risk seems a lot greater to not being out, if one's status is then discovered.
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Date: 2015-08-16 02:40 am (UTC)Re the second scenario:
You quite mistake what I'm equating to what, but that's a common error.
"he is terminally stupid." Very good point! And "terminally stupid", rather than "transphobic", seems to me a better approach to contemplating the man who vomits at the thought of dating a trans woman.
"A trans woman is not deceiving anybody; she is a woman. She is not required to reveal her history and she is not deceiving anybody"
Well, now, that depends on circumstances. In non-romantic dealings, whether a person is trans, or their sexual preferences, are of no interest and I'd rather not even know them, unless it becomes relevant - say it's the topic of discussion and the person wants to provide personal testimony.
I cannot speak well to casual hookup culture, which has no appeal to me and which I do not claim to understand. But certainly not knowing much about your partner seems part of the point there, and for the transphobic pursuing such a lifestyle, from their point of view they'd have to acknowledge caveat emptor. So in that context I'm entirely in agreement with you.
But in a serious romantic relationship, I would not accept a "mind your own business" attitude like this. In such a relationship, your partner's life is your business. (Mind, I have neither seen The Crying Game - I started watching it, but gave up in terminal boredom after 20 minutes - nor read Almost Perfect, so I don't know where on the spectrum the relationships they depict lie.)
I've always held that, before getting very far into a serious romantic relationship, your partner should know all the major facts of your life, unless they really don't want to know. Being trans would qualify. So would a lot of other things. (Exact number of sexual partners, I wouldn't care, but some vague idea of how experienced one was, yes; and you can give that off without being specific.)
I know a case of a man who didn't discover until just before the wedding that his fiancee had been married once before. It had been brief and over long ago and left no fallout - no children, alimony, or stalkers - but he was very upset. He felt deceived. He felt he had been lied to. I count a noble spirit that he went through with the wedding.
I have, to my knowledge, dated one trans woman. She was entirely upfront and open about this. And this was thirty years ago, when being out was even dicier than it is today. You speak of the risks to a trans woman of being out, but from the stories being told here, the risk seems a lot greater to not being out, if one's status is then discovered.