Macgyvercas said:
Personally the question on my mind is that if you have sex with a post op transexual who used to be the same gender as you, is that considered homosexual or not?
Oh, and yes, they should disclose, but I don't think they're legally required to.
That's a very common question, but I find it incredibly silly. It implies that a person's sex is based on some magical immutable quality completely divorced from any physical reality.
I mean, the basic question this implies is:
If a man is attracted to someone that looks and acts like a woman, are they gay?
Stated like that the answer should be blatantly obvious, yet somehow we get drawn into some kind of mythological 'gender at birth' thing that doesn't really seem to make much sense.
requisitename said:
Epiku said:
requisitename said:
"Snip" seems so wrong here.
See, this is why I thought I had taken quite a distasteful route.
You are right in what you say. I was more trying to compare the pain of being brought back to a horrible place, and, yes, some TG people are okay with that title, okay with that life. But others, just want to have it in their past. (perhaps I should have used a "killed another human in wartime" thing, but many people can get upset with that, too. My apologies. ;_; )
For some, it is a conscious choice to "go through with surgeries" in the way that it is conscious choice to choose life over death. (for some, not all, I can only speak from the perspective I understand.)
I can understand the being upset over feeling deceived or betrayed. That's where I see the "honesty is the best policy" way.
But, I also see the amount of pain something like that can bring up in the TG person. It is something that can kill them (emotionally and maybe literally if they are suicidal over it).
But then that always brings up the question of if they are so willing to deceive, then are they worthy of love anyways? And.. that's where I get hung up.
But I do see how it is a betrayal of trust and how many would be upset to learn their partner deceived them.
I don't view it as necessarily distasteful. I apologize if I came across that way. I just don't see them as at all comparable.
I can see killing someone in wartime as being much more comparable because it is technically a choice you make (regardless of the reasons). I don't think there's really a
good analogy, though.
I have a friend who was transgendered in high school and is now a guy. He and I have discussed at length what went into the decision making process and I must admit that, although I accept it and I'm glad he's happy, I don't understand it at all. I really think it's something that you probably *can't* truly understand unless it's part of your own life. I would think, for instance, that once you've made the decision and gone through with it, it would be so
freeing to be able to be who you are. But, as I said, I can't claim to understand it.
As for worthy of love.. I really think that everyone is, regardless of what they do. It's perfectly possible, however, to love someone and not want to be with them because they deceived you.
The analogies made here are problematic, though I can see where they're coming from.
So let's look at the implications.
A transsexual changes their body. This is a choice. But it's only a choice because it has to be. Their body won't change itself.
This is one of the main things separating it from homosexuality insofar as how you are confronted with it.
Being homosexual isn't usually considered a choice. It's just something you are. And when you 'come out' all you are actually doing is being honest with yourself about this.
Transsexuals face the idea of 'coming out' as well, but to them it is merely a first step, because what you're facing if you are trans is an issue that isn't resolved merely by admitting you are. Your body is a source of conflict, and it takes a lot of effort to cope with. All that surgery and hormonal intervention isn't done just on some kind of whim, it is a medical intervention intended to reduce this innate, ongoing discomfort as much as possible.
But... This discomfort is
caused by feeling as if you are one thing, when the biology of your own body mostly implies you are something else.
Being reminded of this fact is generally traumatic in and of itself. All the more so if you think you've finally managed to put it behind you.
So, this is more than merely a question of honesty, but also a question of being expected to constantly revisit something you'd rather forget.
Now, not everyone is that insecure, but on the whole, a transsexual doesn't want to be constantly reminded of what they used to be. (Or that some people
still think of them that way, which in some ways is even worse.)
OK, so you can't expect others to play along with that just because... But at the end of the day you are expecting someone to basically do themselves psychological damage for the sake of being 'honest' with someone else.
In any event, while I can't tell you this expectation of 'honesty' is wrong, I do find it somewhat disturbing how much it potentially trivialises the transsexual's own perspective.
TehCookie said:
darkcalling said:
In the short term no, especially if sex doesn't come up.
But in a longer relationship I think honesty is important.
That said it probably wouldn't matter to me that much since I'm not sure I want kids, and If the relationship had gotten that far without the influence of booze and whatnot then they've obviously fooled me.
Heck if you met this girl
http://www.sarinavalentina.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/sarina-valentina-012.jpg
just walking down the street, would you ever think she was born a boy? She was and I wouldn't care.
I would have to question if that was born human and not some plastic alien race.
However if you're having sex wouldn't you notice? If I was gay I would have a hard enough time dating someone with fake boobs, I couldn't date someone with a fake sex. I wouldn't say that they're obligated though, but I think they should.
OK, this kind of doesn't make sense.
... 'If I was gay?' - ah. OK, That makes more sense if you're a woman.
Still, it's interesting you choose to call it a 'fake sex'. Though I guess I shouldn't really be surprised that people think things like that.
As to whether you'd notice if you were having sex, that really depends on how observant you are, and whether or not you're actually looking for it.
I mean, how many vaginas have you seen? Enough to be confident you know what's normal and what isn't?
What do you think you'd see (or feel), that obviously different if you were confronted with a 'fake' one?
Yes, there probably are differences in most cases. They say fake breasts feel different to real ones, owing to the implants having a different consistency to normal breast tissue.
(Not that a transsexual's breasts are necessarily fake in this sense. Some have implants, some don't. Almost all have been taking hormones, but while this is artificial in some sense, the breast development that results is really no different from what any woman develops during puberty.)
But the point remains, how would you know what's fake and what isn't without a point of comparison? To say you'd know, is to say you've experienced something else which looked or felt different. (It also implies that what's different is specifically because it's 'fake', and not say, just random variation; No two people are alike, after all.)
OtherSideofSky said:
Well, I'm pretty sure the state of modern surgery means it will become obvious as soon as they decide to have sex, so it's probably a good idea to broach the subject before then. As much as cosmetic surgery has improved, doctors still cannot, to my knowledge, give people new, functional genitalia. Whatever discussing that in advance would do to the relationship is nothing compared to what it would do if left to be a surprise.
Functional in what sense?
It's true that genitalia is not functional in the sense that you are infertile. But I don't think that's what you meant.
I have it on reasonable authority that quite a few people can't tell the difference.
(This has included gynaecologists, whose job kind of requires they know what a vagina is normally like.)
There are functional problems at the moment, yes. But they don't exactly stand out like a sore thumb, and they mostly cause issues that have nothing to do with anything you'd want to be doing with another person.
(But do affect keeping it all working correctly long-term.)
That is, artificial female genitalia is pretty good. The latest experimental techniques solve almost all remaining practical issues, except those related to actual reproduction (which admittedly is a much bigger challenge.)
I have no idea how close it would seem to a real vagina, but it has no remaining functional issues that directly affect the ability to have sex, and it solves the much bigger problem of the tendency of artificial vaginas to try and close up (as if they are an open wound)
The mainstream techniques are a little less good, but still far from 'non-functional'. There are frequently problems surrounding self-lubrication, and the afore-mentioned tendency for the body to try and treat it like a wound, which requires constant work to counter-act, but otherwise has no bearing on it being 'functional' or not.
Results vary depending on the skill of the surgeon, but assuming the surgeon is skilled, look pretty much like the real deal.
There's also no problem with sexual pleasure. The ability to orgasm is there in about 2/3 of cases, which is pretty much identical to the figures for the female population.
The only thing that is usually very apparent is the lack of a cervix...
Which might be something you'd notice if you are a gynaecologist, but I doubt it's something you'll pick up on otherwise unless you go looking for it.
Artificial penises are a little less successful. They usually look reasonably OK, though not exactly perfect, but they do have some obvious problems.
The big one is that they do not have normal erectile tissue, so a pump is used instead.
This works just fine for sex, but it is of course a little strange, so it'd be difficult to hide.
Again, it doesn't present any problems for sexual pleasure, though it's somewhat further removed from ordinary men because there's no ejaculation, and generally no real need to stop the way most men usually would need to.
I'm curious where you get your information from though with regards to why you think surgically created genitalia isn't 'functional'.
You're hardly the first person I've heard say that, but it quite clearly is at least partially functional, so whatever you mean by that is a little unclear to me.
(I mean, you can have sex with artificial genitalia... So whatever 'lack of function' you're referring to has to be more subtle than that. - Aside from which, more people than you might think can't tell the difference, so it's not even something that's necessarily really obvious to others - even if it does present a few issues that are quite obvious to the person whose genitalia it is...)
Eh. Sometimes I'm really not convinced people have a realistic understanding of what things are really like. (And that's to say nothing of people that look at research from the 1970's and conclude it's obviously still like that in 2012...)
But then again, we're discussing a topic here that relies for it's very validity on the idea that you'd be able to be in a long-term relationship with a transsexual and not know about it.
It's kind of ironic that you've got groups of people saying they'd be able to tell, while at the same time discussing something that has at it's heart the idea that it's something you'd easily be able to hide from another.
