Speaker For The Diodes - August 11th, 2010

05:24 am - QotD

[A long entry today where you usually expect something shorter, thus the multiple cuts. (I hope I didn't screw up any of the formatting.) After I had stuck one of the following quotes into the queue, several other relevant ones that seem to help explain each other (see end-note) popped up in other places, so I'm putting them all here on the same day in the hope that the shared framework will make it clearer why the dominant cultural narrative is hosed. While all the authors quoted are talking about the same stuff, there are multiple contexts being mixed-and-matched here. (Some quoted passages are responses to one recent offense or another, others address multiple contexts at once. They all wind up making more or less the same point.) If you're inclined to disagree because of something you think is "obvious" from a dominant-group perspective, please read the conversations these quotes are pulled from, before chiming in (see end-note).]

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"at what point in a dating relationship do you disclose your virulent transphobia?

"i mean, on the first date do you say 'oh wow, i'd totally kill you if you've ever had a vagina'? or do you wait until the intimate action is about to start and say 'if that isn't a flesh and blood cock you got there, i'm gonna bash your face in' as you're pulling down his zipper with your teeth?

"i mean, it's important that you're honest. trans people need to know who they're about to have sex with, and if you pose as someone who isn't transphobic but really are, then is it really consensual??

"no trans person would consent to sex with someone as transphobic as you -- i hope you carry around hardcopies of this thread just in case, so you don't rape any trans people fraudulently."

-- kynn, 2010-07-09

( Genderbitch, on the privacy angle ) ( rm, on expectations in perspective ) ( Sabotabby, on the need-to-know angle ) ( Lisa Harney, on the risk angle and the real root of the issue ) ( Laura Ess, on the double standard ) ( rm, on need to know ) ( Genderbitch, pulling a few of these threads together ) ( askeladden, with a good analogy ) ( Lisa Harney, on the very debate itself about this whole topic )

[If you think there's an obvious and simple rule to follow regarding disclosure, I'm going to have to ask you to do a lot of background reading on the subject before saying anything (especially since this'll probably get posted while I'm out of town). This is something that has been talked about and talked about and talked about and talked about within trans communities, it's something trans people think about and worry about a lot from both directions*, and you won't often see a trans person tossing in an opinion who hasn't already been through various debates and flamewars on the subject already, and/or had relevant personal experiences, so odds are high that whatever clear-cut solution you want to suggest is something we've already thought of and argued to death from eight different points of view. (As evidenced above, some cis people have also thought this through pretty thoroughly.) Seriously. (Please also note, in the discussions some of these are from, there are other Big Issues -- side issues and layers -- that colour the different debates interestingly.)]

[*] By which I mean both the pre-transition/pre-coming-out question of "when do I warn them that I don't see myself as the gender they see me as?", and the post-transition question of "do I need to tell them I used to have a different name and presentation / [have|used to have] genitals different from what they [expect|see on me now]; and if so, when?" (Note that I am seriously oversimplifying here to try to keep this short, since the quotes themselves are already long and I've just assigned y'all a big pile o' homework.)