MarsAtlas said:
Lets just be honest here - do you think that the intention of the joke are the exact series of conditions you provided above (which still overlooks some indicators - "mistaken identity" requires a lot of separate conditions), or just a joke at the expense of trans people?
I'm being honest when I say that I don't believe it to be 'a joke at the expense of trans people.' Hell, it could be argued that there isn't even a trans person in the poem.
And that's a bit of a false dilemma there. It doesn't
have to be 'the exact series of conditions,' I was just throwing out possibilities. It's open for interpretation, obviously, or we wouldn't be having a row about it.
Its just a paranoid delusion thought up of by a bunch of heterosexual men who live in perpetual fear of having their sexuality questioned, and I'm not going to entertain the thought of its relevance or significance.
So...ya
don't know? Cool?
So then why defend the point?
Why not?
Just because I don't think something is common doesn't mean I don't think it's possible or that it couldn't potentially be occurring in this specific example. I mean, I don't think it is, but ya know what I'm driving at.
The man in the poem killed himself out of shame. That is the exact words used are "crying in shame".
This shares a blatant real life parallel regarding the suspicion of transgender people.
Er. I think we're having a bit of a miscommunication here.
You said,
What it is saying is that "there's men pretending to be women to have sex with straight men and cause them emotional distress".
And I'm disagreeing with your interpretation that that's what the poem is suggesting. I didn't assume malice on the part of the 'woman' in it. I just viewed it as, funnily enough, a miscommunication that led to unintended results.
The guy offing himself afterward just speaks to his own insecurities and...well, that's the extreme part of the joke. It's the bit that's beyond the pale and meant to be so over the top ridiculous, by way of his reaction, that it's funny.
I just didn't assume a negative to begin with is all.