If someone is a post-op transsexual, are they obligated to tell the person they are pursuing/dating?

DEAD34345

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Mortai Gravesend said:
Lunncal said:
Morally obligated, yes, definitely. If it gets anywhere beyond just flirting, anyway.

You might not think it is important, but there is a very high chance that your potential partner will think it's important, and it should be his/her right to choose. If you're worried that they might not want to be with you if they find out, then DON'T BE WITH THEM. It's their right to decide.
And maybe they don't feel comfortable telling the person yet? Just because someone might care does not mean that it isn't also very private information they might not feel comfortable sharing with others until they get to know them quite well, especially consider the general attitude towards transsexuals.
If they really can't tell anyone that, then they shouldn't date anyone, ever. Or they should get to know the person well enough to tell them *before* dating them. Certainly before having sex with them. Tricking someone who wouldn't want to sleep with you into sleeping with you is WRONG. It's like a (relatively mild but still very bad) form of sexual assault.
 

gazumped

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Only as much as any other thing that someone has gone through that they don't like to talk about. Would you bring up that you've had depression to a potential partner? That you had a horrible childhood or that you suffered from horrific self esteem issues? That you've faced bullying and abuse or similar in your lifetime? I don't think anyone would bring those things up to every person they may potentially become involved with and for transpeople some or all of those things are probably true.

But obviously when you get serious with someone, with anything a person doesn't really like to talk about, it gets to a stage where you'd have to lie about things ("Childhood photos? Oh, they all got burned in a big... house fire...") to keep them a secret (as opposed to just not mention it) and that's when these things come out.

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.
loc978 said:
...pretty sure those nerves can't be synthesized...
From what I've heard, fertility notwithstanding, they're pretty good at doing girly parts (although guy parts aren't always as good) and nerves are already existent but just need to be relocated so orgasm can be reached as easily as for original girl parts (which, to be fair, isn't very easily already...). There's problems with self lubrication, I think, but again, girls who were born girls get that problem sometimes too.

Just realised someone already covered the technical ins and outs of this on page 3 but I guess mine's the tl;dr version. :p

Ledan said:
And they would feel like homosexuals if they engaged in sex with someone who is trans.
See, I don't get that. If a person slept with someone and then later found out they used to be fat, would they feel like they must fancy fat people now? Of course not, that person only fancied them when they were slim. Just like the hypothetical person you're talking about only fancied them when they're the opposite sex. (I'm not saying that you're wrong that people think that way, I'm just saying that I those people have no reason to think like that... except a deep seated uncomfortableness with being associated with homosexuality!)
 

gazumped

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Actually, something that's occurred to me is that a lot of people are saying that some people don't feel comfortable about transsexuals and so transpeople are obligated to tell everyone, even if it's a one night stand, because their potential distaste of the matter would mean that they may then choose not to date/sleep with them.

I'm not entirely sure if I think this is a good or a bad argument but I'd just like to put this out there:

If a black person picks up a white person at a bar, and the white person is blind, do you think the black person should say "Oh, by the way, I'm black," out of respect for the possibility that the white person may be racist so that the racist person knows what they're getting into and can back out?

It just seems to me that transphobia is tolerated more than other kinds of prejudice, and I know it's more complex than just being born a certain colour or even with a certain kind of sexuality but it still stems from being born in a certain body with an opposing sense of self.
 

Bradeck

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I think it's the persons obligation to tell their partner straight up, I used to be Dan, or Christina, and now I have a cooter/dong.

The feelings or worry's of the trans person are irrespective of the point. It is essentially a lie until the other person accepts it. We are talking about not telling, or essentially making a decision for the partner, without their consent.

And to all the people saying the trans individual are not comfortable telling people, then what did you get the operation for in the first place? If you're not comfortable in who you are, a surgically altered sexual partner, then you shouldn't be deciding if your partner is comfortable with you either.
 

Something Amyss

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bahumat42 said:
so even if you could magically change all the biological and physical differences, there's still the matter of psychological state and how they were socialised when growing up.
Completely untrue.

Its where things like "men are from mars women are from venus"
You mean psuedo-intellectual garbage?

and "a leapord can't change it's spots" come from.
Oh, folk wisdom. The problem with folk wisdom is it's usually crap.

Do you have any insight into the mind of a transgendered individual? It sounds like you don't.
 

DoomyMcDoom

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If I was in a relationship with someone and they told me that say, a year into it or something, hell any more than a month or two, and I would dump them on principle, thing is I am open about who I am, and how I am, and I expect a partner to at least try to be the same, if someone doesn't tell me something major like that I consider them to be untrustworthy individuals, not to mention bad communicators, and relationships need trust and communication to work.

I'm a very nonjudgemental person for the most part, and I would rather deal with any potential issue as soon as possible in relationship situations, just because when it comes down to it, if you get the big stuff on the table you can see it and talk about it, and get it dealt with before it becomes a looming shadow of relationship killing size.
 

orangeban

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No, it's an incredibly private and personal thing for many people, being transsexual, and you are in no way obligated to know. If you are told that your partner is transsexual, then you should feel honoured that they trust you enough to tell you.

If one partner has an issue with dating transsexuals, then it should be up to them to point out their discrimantions to their potential partners.
 

Chalacachaca

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CrystalShadow said:
OtherSideofSky said:
CrystalShadow said:
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.
I was referring primarily to problems with self lubrication and child-bearing (is it not the ultimate function of reproductive organs to, you know... reproduce? Shouldn't people at least be aware if someone they're with can't do that?) in the case of artificial vagina, and you yourself admit the differences in the case of penises are quite obvious when it comes to having sex. I would add that most images of such organs I have seen were more visibly apparent than you suggest, although the research and images in question are now six years out of date (I am not in the habit of reading medical reports on these matters regularly), so great advances may have been made in that time.

In any case, operating on the assumption that the fact could be easily concealed in all instances, I do think that there is a moral obligation not to conceal it from a long term partner. It seems like something that would be too indelibly tied to identity and personal history to admit of an honest relationship in the absence of such a disclosure. There is no obligation to parade it through the streets, but it seems... wrong to conceal such a large part of one's past from a person with whom one is on intimate terms.
Well, child-bearing is an important function yes. Without it the whole reproductive system wouldn't exist.

But it's hardly the only function. And when you think about it, probably the least used functionality overall.

Aside from which, there are plenty of other reasons why a person might be infertile.
But anyway...

As to pictures, I'm not sure what you were looking at if you did research it at all. One of the inherent problems with that kind of stuff is it's easy to be biased, both in terms of what you end up seeing, (if all the pictures you saw were from one surgeon for instance), and in terms of your frame of mind when looking at them.

For instance, if I showed you 1000 women at random, without telling you anything about why I'm showing you those pictures, would you pick up on the same things as if I showed you 1000 women and asked you to tell me which of them are transsexuals?

The mere suggestion that some of them might be would probably influence what you're thinking.

Or... Let's say I ask you to give me an impression of what a transsexual looks like...
What are you going to base this off?
Presumably, whatever images you've seen that you know are of transsexuals.

But... If someone doesn't stand out as being unusual, how will you know they are transsexual, unless they tell you so?

And if you take this into consideration in general, would it not seem quite obvious that since the only transsexuals anyone notices are the ones that are obvious, that they then conclude that all transsexuals can be easily identified?
(Because they formed their idea of what a transsexual is from a sample set that did not include those which are not easy to spot.)

For that matter, if I show you a really tall woman, you'd probably find that somewhat unusual, but otherwise think nothing of it.

If I tell you it's a transsexual though, there's every chance you'll assume that this is an obvious reason for why this person is tall, even though they may be totally unrelated facts.

Or, if someone sees a woman, and find out it's a transsexual, it's surprisingly common for them to point out 'male' features that 'prove' this...
Yet, these features are frequently within statistical realms of what's normally possible anyway.
So it is in fact not 'proof' of anything, just a person using a whole heap of meaningless details to back up and find evidence for something which they found out about through totally unrelated means.

Did you realise what something really was because of it's unusual features?
Or did you notice it's unusual features solely because you were told in advance there was something unusual about what you were looking at?


Lightnr said:
Uhhhhhhhhh ARE you SERIOUS???
They should say something on the spot!
If for nothing else - the other person needs to know that they are with someone they cannot reproduce with.
Chalacachaca said:
Yes, I want to have kids someday and it would be quite akward if Sandy can't conceive because she was born as Andy.
Lol. Oh right. How silly of me.

Because the first thing anyone does when they meet a prospective partner is ask if they're fertile right?

Because everyone, everywhere will blurt out within 5 seconds of meeting someone that they are infertile, and cannot have children.

You know, yes, that's important. If you're in a long-term relationship.
But does telling someone you're infertile immediately oblige you to tell them in exact, painstaking detail, why that is the case?

Meh. ;p

Well if we're in a long-term relationship then yes, I believe I have the right to know in painstaking detail why my partner is infertile.
I could go on about how I do indeed ask someone if they're fertile almost straight away but I would go off-topic.
 

Weaver

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I feel yes. It's an important thing. You don't need to reveal it right away, but it's a big issue. Like if you have kids, you should tell the person you're dating; right? If you've gone to jail for something or used to be an alcoholic, etc. They're important things about your past that I feel your partner deserves to know.
 

theevilgenius60

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Yes, this is a landmine waiting to hurt a relationship. It's for the best to go ahead and get it out of the way as the longer the post-op partner holds the secret, the more it is likely to seem a betrayal. Come clean, if the person is disgusted or plain old doesn't like you for it, then it wasn't meant to be anyway. Less of the post-op's person's life wasted with someone that won't be happy with/give happiness to them.
 

spartan231490

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Obligated is the wrong word. No, they're not obligated to do anything. But they have a moral responsibility to inform the other person pretty early in a relationship.
Abandon4093 said:
I think it is

It's certainly something I'd like to know about a potential partner. If they didn't tell me I'd consider it a HUGE breach of trust.
and this^ any adult relationship is built on trust. If you can't trust that person with who are and and who you have been, then you have no business being in a relationship with them.
 

mjc0961

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axlryder said:
For all intensive purposes
*facedesk*

krazykidd said:
Absolutely , be honest from go . If you are ashamed to admit something like that then don't get it done . I cannot believe so many people are saying no to this. Not TELLING the other person is absolutly disgusting and disrespectful , not to mention creepy . And anyone that doesn't should be ashamed of themselves . I have nothin against transgendered or whatever , live and let live and all that jazz , but once you decide to have an intimate ( physical/mental/emotional) with another person , you DO NOT hide things like this . I you are afraid of the other persons reaction then they probably aren't the person for you.

And if a person decides to NOT tell their mate and the relationship has lasted for a substantial amount of time , the they deserve to rot single and alone for the rest of their lives for being a liar . This is NOT something to lie about , and yes lying by omission IS lying .
This pretty much sums it all up. Don't lie to your partner if you're having a serious relationship, no matter what the lie is. If you can't trust them enough to tell them everything, you probably shouldn't be together in the first place.
 

CrystalShadow

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Chalacachaca said:
Lightnr said:
Uhhhhhhhhh ARE you SERIOUS???
They should say something on the spot!
If for nothing else - the other person needs to know that they are with someone they cannot reproduce with.
Chalacachaca said:
Yes, I want to have kids someday and it would be quite akward if Sandy can't conceive because she was born as Andy.
Lol. Oh right. How silly of me.

Because the first thing anyone does when they meet a prospective partner is ask if they're fertile right?

Because everyone, everywhere will blurt out within 5 seconds of meeting someone that they are infertile, and cannot have children.

You know, yes, that's important. If you're in a long-term relationship.
But does telling someone you're infertile immediately oblige you to tell them in exact, painstaking detail, why that is the case?

Meh. ;p

Well if we're in a long-term relationship then yes, I believe I have the right to know in painstaking detail why my partner is infertile.
I could go on about how I do indeed ask someone if they're fertile almost straight away but I would go off-topic.[/quote]

Mmm. Well, that's very interesting. It sounds like a really strange way to behave, but hey, if you ask those kind of questions, so be it.

Odbarc said:
CrystalShadow said:
Odbarc said:
Would you keep dating a woman who was born a man?
Would you date the person if they said they were a man before you started dating?

"I'm a man. Want to have sex?"
Lol. But no transsexual would say that, because no transsexual thinks that way about themselves.

You (and those making comments like you are) are missing a crucial point in that regard.

You're asking someone to tell you they are actually a man, but they don't think they are.

So... You are in a way asking them to be 'honest' with you by telling you something that in their own opinion is a lie.

How is that supposed to work exactly?
I am a woman who was born without a vagina or uterus.
I am a woman who was born with a penis and testicles.
I am a woman who had her penis and testicles surgically removed or altered to appear like vagina.
I require taking pills to look feminine or I grow a beard.
I am a woman whose name used to be Jim.
That's great, but why would you say any of those things at random to someone?

the first doesn't answer anything. (Believe it or not that happens for other reasons too.)

the second and third are just ridiculous ways of saying things, and again I don't see anyone saying that unless asked outright.

the fourth is factually incorrect. (And assuming you've had surgery, and no longer have your original genitalia, the effects of not taking those pills would be quite different... Not to mention that most of the effects take months if not years, and quite a few are permanent. - Once you have breasts, they're not going away again, for instance.)

Again, why would anyone say anything like that?

All quite ridiculous things to say.

Aside from which it requires the following mindset:

1. I am something unusual
2. People could react badly to this.
3. I should tell people how odd I am because of how they might react.


It requires as a first step that you constantly remind yourself that you're some kind of freak others might not approve of.

That's the problem I find with this. Having to tell someone is not a problem as such.
But having to spend all your time thinking of yourself as a freak, in case someone else takes offence to you forgetting that you're not normal is not a particularly healthy thing to be doing.

Telling someone what you are if they ask about it is one thing.
But 'lies of omission' depend on the person's self-image being messed up.
It would require pre-supposing everyone you meet is going to care so much about this that you have to go out of your way to point it out to them.
I don't consider that an acceptable requirement to burden someone with.

bahumat42 said:
racrevel said:
Sonic Doctor said:
By nature, the "woman" was a man. By my standards, with the info revealed, no amount of work will convince me that "she" is a real woman. The only person it would be unfair to is me, if I had been lead on into such a relationship.
That scentance alone just shows that you really don't understand and probably never will, the problem is how you see yourself and not with them and the one really being unfair is you.

There is no leading on, you met them as a woman, inside and out they are a woman, and a genetic defect doesn't make them any less of a woman, past is of no concequense.

Also your makeup argument is flawed, you are purposefully trying to deceive at that point, had you had plastic surgery it would be different and you wouldn't need to lie as it would be your actual face, If the girl you tried to get with Was actually a man and was just tucking it in maybe your point would be valid...
Not so, your past stays with you, want an example, one of my good friends recently changed from being Jewish(some of the stereotypes are true) to atheist. He is always going to have certain traits from having grown up Jewish.

The way you were nurtured and brought up stays with you to some extent whoever you are. And in most of the world boys and girls are brought up slightly differently. And that differentness is apparent in how people act, so even if you could magically change all the biological and physical differences, there's still the matter of psychological state and how they were socialised when growing up.

Its where things like "men are from mars women are from venus" and "a leapord can't change it's spots" come from.
That goes both ways I'm afraid.

While your past never goes away completely, you also never stop changing.
This inevitably implies that a transsexual will probably have a mixed psychological state, which doesn't quite match either.

Socialisation doesn't just stop at some arbitrary point in time; It's an ongoing thing. So you can't just dismiss a person's more recent experiences in favour of their distant past.

(Not that even that is always so clear. That depends both on how strictly your environment enforced gender roles when you were young, and how you were perceived as a child; physical sex characteristics in children aren't all that distinct.)

Besides, a lot of research shows psychological effects from physical causes are stronger than most people typically want to accept.
Many transsexuals can recount from first-hand experience just how much of an impact changes to your hormonal balance have on your state of mind...

It disturbs certain groups of people to accept this, but the way it affects your emotional state, and even the way you think in general is far from trivial.

But whatever. As usual it's just the kind of thing where people make an effort to argue why their own point of view is valid.

The truth of the matter is a transsexual, both physically, and psychologically, is not quite the same as either sex.
Arguing they are now their new gender, or insisting they are still their old one is mostly a matter of perspective, because the only truly accurate answer is that they are neither, or something that consists of a mixture of different traits.

Then again, very few people are clearly one thing or the other when you get right down to it. People aren't homogeneous interchangeable objects. Everyone is different, and no-one has a clear set of characteristics that are exclusively and 100% unique to a given gender.

Lunncal said:
Mortai Gravesend said:
Lunncal said:
Morally obligated, yes, definitely. If it gets anywhere beyond just flirting, anyway.

You might not think it is important, but there is a very high chance that your potential partner will think it's important, and it should be his/her right to choose. If you're worried that they might not want to be with you if they find out, then DON'T BE WITH THEM. It's their right to decide.
And maybe they don't feel comfortable telling the person yet? Just because someone might care does not mean that it isn't also very private information they might not feel comfortable sharing with others until they get to know them quite well, especially consider the general attitude towards transsexuals.
If they really can't tell anyone that, then they shouldn't date anyone, ever. Or they should get to know the person well enough to tell them *before* dating them. Certainly before having sex with them. Tricking someone who wouldn't want to sleep with you into sleeping with you is WRONG. It's like a (relatively mild but still very bad) form of sexual assault.
Ah, but see, I disagree entirely. About the sex bit anyway.
Mostly because it's not a trick. And I don't buy any argument that implies it is.
Besides, it makes no sense in general. They clearly would want to sleep with you, all else being equal, otherwise they wouldn't be trying to get you to...
Well, anyway, Something about the logic behind this just doesn't add up.


Now, I certainly don't think it's a good idea to keep something like this to yourself in a long-term relationship.

But sex? I don't see why that is anything significant.
(Of course, perhaps that's circumstantial. I've never tried to get anyone to have sex with me. It's always the other way around.
How can you 'trick' someone into having sex with you, if they are the ones making all the effort? If they weren't pushing for it, it would never have happened in the first place, yet you're implying it's sexual assault because I'd let them get what they wanted without explicitly telling them something that might change their mind?
No. Sorry. I don't get it. Seems like a complete perversion of everything.)