How would you react to finding out you were making out with a transsexual?

[The Grand Nudger]

Yon can use any label that he wants, I'm only noting that the label he's employing is a common parody meant to produce exactly this reaction between "libtards".

[I_am_not_mafia]

Do we really need to decide what labels Yon can use?

We do if he claims to be a 'double' authority on the subject and giving out harmful advice to those leading an entirely different life to him.

It's like someone bisexual claiming to be gay telling people who lead a 100% gay life that they shouldn't do something gay. And then calling it rape when they object.

[Yonadav]

Do we really need to decide what labels Yon can use?

We do if he claims to be a 'double' authority on the subject and giving out harmful advice to those leading an entirely different life to him.

It's like someone bisexual claiming to be gay telling people who lead a 100% gay life that they shouldn't do something gay. And then calling it rape when they object.

You are such an ignoramus. 
I'm a transsexual who has been pondering trans ethics for several decades, have been an activist for trans rights for decades, have decades of lived transsexual experience, and I really do qualify as an expert. You're just an ignorant blowhard with extremely strong opinions about issues that you don't know anything about.

What makes the chick with the dick more 'authentically' transsexual than me? (That's not an attack on TaraJo, but Mathilda really wants to go there)
I have a surgically constructed vagina between my legs and spent 17 years living in the gender role of a woman.  
If you think that I'm not a transsexual anymore, then you really do have the incredibly ignorant opinion that clothing is gender.

When TaraJo is considering becoming intimate with someone, she has to decide when to tell them she has a penis.
When I am considering becoming intimate with someone, I have to decide when to tell them about my vagina.
During the 17 years that I spent living as a woman, I had to decide when to tell them that I had once been male.

So holy fucking shit, Mathilda! I actually have tons and tons of experience dealing with exactly what TaraJo is asking about. And you idiotically think that despite my tons of experience with exactly this issue, and my tons and tons of experience with trans ethics, that I am unqualified to discuss the matter because you are a clueless idiot who has incredibly strong opinions on issues that you don't know anything about. 

I enjoy having a woman's body and projecting a male persona. Transsexuals don't have to conform with your ignorant stereotypes. Dresses and lipstick don't have as much to do with gender identity as you ignorantly imagine.

[I_am_not_mafia]

You are such an ignoramus. 
I'm a transsexual who has been pondering trans ethics for several decades, have been an activist for trans rights for decades, have decades of lived transsexual experience, and I really do qualify as an expert. You're just an ignorant blowhard with extremely strong opinions about issues that you don't know anything about.


What makes the chick with the dick more 'authentically' transsexual than me? (That's not an attack on TaraJo, but Mathilda really wants to go there)
I have a surgically constructed vagina between my legs and spent 17 years living in the gender role of a woman.  
If you think that I'm not a transsexual anymore, then you really do have the incredibly ignorant opinion that clothing is gender.

No. I have the opinion that you are not transsexual any more because you are living as your birth gender.

I am not, and have never said that clothing is gender. I am saying that gender is more than just your body. You are making a claim more similar to that of right-wing transsphobes who say that someone assigned male at birth can never be a woman because their body was not born female. Living as your acquired gender is important. This is why you have to do the full life test for a minimum time before you get GRS. This is also why having to tell people all the time that you were not assigned female at birth is harmful. It stops you living fully in your acquired gender. Surely you must recognise this simple fact?

You do not in any way qualify as a trans expert because you have not fully transitioned. And more importantly you do not intend to.

Why did you spend 17 years living as a woman only to then go back again? That can't be a sign of someone who did succeed in transitioning properly.

There are massive differences between your life and those that have fully transitioned and stay transitioned until their death.

Transitioning does not stop once you managed to pass. Your entire life is spent catching up. Sure yes 17 years is a good go of it but believe me, don't for one moment think that it's all done and dusted by then.

What makes the chick with the dick more 'authentically' transsexual than me? (That's not an attack on TaraJo, but Mathilda really wants to go there)

What the fuck are you even going on about? Who said that?

When TaraJo is considering becoming intimate with someone, she has to decide when to tell them she has a penis.
When I am considering becoming intimate with someone, I have to decide when to tell them about my vagina.
During the 17 years that I spent living as a woman, I had to decide when to tell them that I had once been male.

I didn't disagree with any of that. My point was that if you are post-op and they can't tell the difference then they do not need to know. And you replied that that was date-rape.

I cannot even state how angry that makes me without breaking the rules of the forum. So please just imagine the worst ever language and imagine I said it to your face you despicable person.

Because if I actually say just how much this deeply hurts me then I may get banned from this forum.

So holy fucking shit, Mathilda! I actually have tons and tons of experience dealing with exactly what TaraJo is asking about. And you idiotically think that despite my tons of experience with exactly this issue, and my tons and tons of experience with trans ethics, that I am unqualified to discuss the matter because you are a clueless idiot who has incredibly strong opinions on issues that you don't know anything about. 

As I said for the umpteenth time. Don't make assumptions about me.

My god you are so fucking thick it hurts.

I enjoy having a woman's body and projecting a male persona. Transsexuals don't have to conform with your ignorant stereotypes. Dresses and lipstick don't have as much to do with gender identity as you ignorantly imagine.

I never once said dresses and lipstick have anything to do with gender identity. I made the point that being seen and treated as your acquired gender is just as important too and this shapes your brain to reduce gender dysphoria. Maybe the environmental influence is more important for some, maybe less but it is a fundamental part of being transsexual and you don't get that living as your birth gender. What you are describing is being transgendered. It doesn't have to be lipstick and dresses, it could be a fucking burkha or sack cloth if that's what the women in your culture wear. It doesn't matter. But transitioning involves being seen and recognised as your acquired gender. And coming out can mean being seen as less than a woman even though they would not otherwise known or treated you any different. This is why coming out is so deeply traumatic for some trans people that they can't even say it using an anonymous account on a fucking discussion forum. Yet your so-called expertise doesn't even fucking recognise this. The concept is alien to you. Which is why I say that your experience of being transsexual is limited. Not that I object to that. I object to you passing harmful judgement while at the same time claiming to be an expert on the issue when I can clearly see that you are not.



Maybe we should ask for this thread to be closed? I am not finding it good for my mental health and I suspect that you aren't either.

Edit: I'm going to ask for it to be closed before things turn really nasty.

[Yonadav]

You are such an ignoramus. 
I'm a transsexual who has been pondering trans ethics for several decades, have been an activist for trans rights for decades, have decades of lived transsexual experience, and I really do qualify as an expert. You're just an ignorant blowhard with extremely strong opinions about issues that you don't know anything about.


What makes the chick with the dick more 'authentically' transsexual than me? (That's not an attack on TaraJo, but Mathilda really wants to go there)
I have a surgically constructed vagina between my legs and spent 17 years living in the gender role of a woman.  
If you think that I'm not a transsexual anymore, then you really do have the incredibly ignorant opinion that clothing is gender.

No. I have the opinion that you are not transsexual any more because you are living as your birth gender.

I am not, and have never said that clothing is gender. I am saying that gender is more than just your body. You are making a claim more similar to that of right-wing transsphobes who say that someone assigned male at birth can never be a woman because their body was not born female.

You do not in any way qualify as a trans expert because you have not fully transitioned. And more importantly you do not intend to.

Why did you spend 17 years living as a woman only to then go back again? That can't be a sign of someone who did succeed in transitioning properly.

There are massive differences between your life and those that have fully transitioned and stay transitioned until their death.

Transitioning does not stop once you managed to pass. Your entire life is spent catching up. Sure yes 17 years is a good go of it but believe me, don't for one moment think that it's all done and dusted by then.

What makes the chick with the dick more 'authentically' transsexual than me? (That's not an attack on TaraJo, but Mathilda really wants to go there)

What the fuck are you even going on about? Who said that?

When TaraJo is considering becoming intimate with someone, she has to decide when to tell them she has a penis.
When I am considering becoming intimate with someone, I have to decide when to tell them about my vagina.
During the 17 years that I spent living as a woman, I had to decide when to tell them that I had once been male.

I didn't disagree with any of that. My point was that if you are post-op and they can't tell the difference then they do not need to know. And you replied that that was date-rape.

I cannot even state how angry that makes me without breaking the rules of the forum. So please just imagine the worst ever language and imagine I said it to your face you despicable person.

Because if I actually say just how much this deeply hurts me then I may get banned from this forum.

So holy fucking shit, Mathilda! I actually have tons and tons of experience dealing with exactly what TaraJo is asking about. And you idiotically think that despite my tons of experience with exactly this issue, and my tons and tons of experience with trans ethics, that I am unqualified to discuss the matter because you are a clueless idiot who has incredibly strong opinions on issues that you don't know anything about. 

As I said for the umpteenth time. Don't make assumptions about me.

My god you are so fucking thick it hurts.

I enjoy having a woman's body and projecting a male persona. Transsexuals don't have to conform with your ignorant stereotypes. Dresses and lipstick don't have as much to do with gender identity as you ignorantly imagine.

I never once said dresses and lipstick have anything to do with gender identity. I made the point that being seen and treated as your acquired gender is just as important too and this shapes your brain to reduce gender dysphoria. Maybe the environmental influence is more important for some, maybe less but it is a fundamental part of being transsexual and you don't get that living as your birth gender. What you are describing is being transgendered. It doesn't have to be lipstick and dresses, it could be a fucking burkha or sack cloth if that's what the women in your culture wear. It doesn't matter. But transitioning involves being seen and recognise as your acquired gender. And coming out can mean being seen as less than a woman even though they would not otherwise known or treated you any different. This is why coming out is so deeply traumatic for some trans people that they can't even say it using an anonymous account on a fucking discussion forum. Yet your so-called expertise doesn't even fucking recognise this. The concept is alien to you. Which is why I say that your experience of being transsexual is limited. Not that I object to that. I object to you passing harmful judgement while at the same time claiming to be an expert on the issue when I can clearly see that you are not.



Maybe we should ask for this thread to be closed? I am not finding it good for my mental health and I suspect that you aren't either.

Edit: I'm going to ask for it to be closed before things turn really nasty.

You're the one who made it nasty with your ignorant personal attacks.
I am a transsexual who has spent decades thinking about trans ethics. The only times that I have ever been in a flame war with anyone over trans ethics was when speaking with abysmally ignorant non-transsexuals like you who have strong opinions on issues that they don't know anything about.
I say the sorts of things that I have said here when talking with transsexuals all the time. It doesn't turn into a flame war, because we are all sincerely interested in the rights of those with whom we are intimate.
I have never in my life considered being intimate with someone without informing them that I am transgendered.
If they were attracted to me before I told them, and they were not interested in being intimate with me after I told them, then they aren't right for me anyway.
If I had ever been intimate with anyone without telling them, and then they later found out and were upset, and said that they wouldn't have been intimate with me if they had known, then I would completely feel that I had violated them. And yes, I would feel like I date raped them.
I absolutely have a right to say that.
And if you knew what the fuck you were talking about, you would know that we've been having discussions like this forever. And pretty much all of us has always agreed that we have to tell them. The discussion is usually along the lines of at what point we should tell them, with just about no one arguing that we don't have to tell them, and that rare individual who says that we don't have to tell them being regarded a pretty creepy.
We tend to be pretty clear that living our lives without ever needing to tell anyone ever, not even the people that we are intimate with, is basically a fantasy.
And by the way, the surgically constructed vagina doesn't feel the same as natural vaginas. Men can feel the difference. Stories of men having sex with transsexuals and not being able to tell the difference are myth. You can feel the difference with your finger. A man can definitely feel the difference with his dick. And anyone who has had any experience at all with surgically constructed vaginas can spot one immediately.

Your personal attacks against me have been shameful. And you know that. That's why you are asking for this discussion to be deleted. I don't have any problem with anything that I've said. I've been talking trans rights, ethics, and identity for a really long time.

[I_am_not_mafia]

And by the way, the surgically constructed vagina doesn't feel the same as natural vaginas. Men can feel the difference. Stories of men having sex with transsexuals and not being able to tell the difference are myth. You can feel the difference with your finger. A man can definitely feel the difference with his dick. And anyone who has had any experience at all with surgically constructed vaginas can spot one immediately.

It's not a myth. I am not talking about fingers but a penis. Even 20 years ago a neo-vagina could be constucted that was indistinguishable from a natural one visually expected from the outside by a cisgendered woman, or being penetrated by an experienced straight man.

But not all neo-vaginas are constructed using the same level of expertise.

A man can repeatedly have sex with a post-op trans woman and not know it.

[Yonadav]

And by the way, the surgically constructed vagina doesn't feel the same as natural vaginas. Men can feel the difference. Stories of men having sex with transsexuals and not being able to tell the difference are myth. You can feel the difference with your finger. A man can definitely feel the difference with his dick. And anyone who has had any experience at all with surgically constructed vaginas can spot one immediately.

It's not a myth. I am not talking about fingers but a penis. Even 20 years ago a neo-vagina could be constucted that was indistinguishable from a natural one visually expected from the outside by a cisgendered woman, or being penetrated by an experienced straight man.

But not all neo-vaginas are constructed using the same level of expertise.

A man can repeatedly have sex with a post-op trans woman and not know it.

OK, this is getting stupid. Surgeons have never been able to construct a vagina that has the infinite elasticity of a natural vag. The skin grafts are basically human leather. The colon graft adds depth to what is essentially a leather boot, and it also secretes a mucous that is sort of like that of a natural vagina. It's a leather boot. It doesn't even remotely have the elasticity of a natural vagina. There is a muscle down there in transwomen that doesn't like to be moved, and its presence is definitely felt. Visually, the most telling thing is the opening to the urethra. The 'pee hole' of transwomen looks very different than that of born women, and its placement is necessarily a bit off.

[I_am_not_mafia]

It's not a myth. I am not talking about fingers but a penis. Even 20 years ago a neo-vagina could be constucted that was indistinguishable from a natural one visually expected from the outside by a cisgendered woman, or being penetrated by an experienced straight man.

But not all neo-vaginas are constructed using the same level of expertise.

A man can repeatedly have sex with a post-op trans woman and not know it.

OK, this is getting stupid. Surgeons have never been able to construct a vagina that has the infinite elasticity of a natural vag. The skin grafts are basically human leather. The colon graft adds depth to what is essentially a leather boot, and it also secretes a mucous that is sort of like that of a natural vagina. It's a leather boot. It doesn't even remotely have the elasticity of a natural vagina. There is a muscle down there in transwomen that doesn't like to be moved, and its presence is definitely felt. Visually, the most telling thing is the opening to the urethra. The 'pee hole' of transwomen looks very different than that of born women, and its placement is necessarily a bit off.

Yeah but most people are not trained gynecologists. Many men don't even know where the clitoris is.

Even cisgendered women don't always know that much about parts of their anatomy.

Half Of British Women Don't Know This Basic Fact About Their Own Bodies

New research has found that half of people in the UK don't know where the vagina is. Perhaps worse, this includes the worrying information that only 45 percent of people who have their very own vagina are able to locate the vagina.

[Shell B]

Can't you be considered a transsexual if you identify as a genderfluid person with a vagina?

This just all seems a bit bizarre to me. I disagree that kissing someone without telling them what your genitals look like is sexual assault, but I don't know what that has to do with his sexuality.

[Yonadav]

Can't you be considered a transsexual if you identify as a genderfluid person with a vagina?

This just all seems a bit bizarre to me. I disagree that kissing someone without telling them what your genitals look like is sexual assault, but I don't know what that has to do with his sexuality.

Honestly Shell, there are a lot of understandings of what a transsexual is or isn't. But it is generally a taboo within transgender circles to try to shame someone over our personal prejudices about it, especially when we just do it because we are angry at them for disagreeing with us about something. For example, I have a personal prejudice toward those who self identify as non-operative transsexuals. For me, a transsexual is someone who has a gender identity problem that only a blade can fix. I generally don't say that out loud though, because every single transgendered person is vulnerable to some sort of personal attack. And I don't feel strongly enough about it to start a shooting war where everyone has a big bullseye painted on their backs. I would never tell TaraJo that she isn't really a transsexual, especially in light of her very strong feelings about not wanting to be with people who want her to do anything with the penis that she so clearly despises. So my prejudice isn't really directed at people like her. It's oriented more toward 'shemales' who like having penises and like using them.

I tell people that I project a binary sense of gender identity because I live in a society that has a binary understanding of gender. As a younger person before surgery, I would have eagerly taken a magic pill that would have just given me a normal sense of gender identity. I wanted to be a man who identified as a man. Or a woman who identified as a woman. But I identified as a woman and I had a male body. And the penis was just altogether too much. That thing had to go. So I got surgery, and I am glad that I did. I just couldn't live in peace with that penis. I hated it with a passion.

So after surgery I got on with my life pretty well. I was lucky, because I was rather attractive. People gushed about how much I looked exactly like Commander Susan Ivanova from Babylon 5. I didn't like men. My hatred of the penis that I had gotten rid of pretty much extended to all penises. I was fairly well accepted by gay women. I even coupled up with one for several years. Over the years, I actually did have some interesting straight men become pretty sweet on me. They were usually divorced men about two years out from their divorce. One of them I might have actually been interested in, had I not been in a relationship with a woman at that time. Hooking up with a man just never happened. Once I got over my hatred of men, it was sort of possible that I could consider a relationship with one. But I'm really, really picky with men.

The living as a man thing was sort of an accident. As a woman I didn't doll myself up very much. And I was always comfortable in jeans and a flannel shirt, which I looked pretty good in as a woman. I started to get interested in the religion of my people. I got sucked into it pretty heavy. No one told me that I had to live as a man if I was going to be religious. But I was poignantly aware that Jewish law says that you are always the gender that you were born as, and that it is prohibited for a man to wear women's clothing. At first, I dealt with it by attending services in the women's section of the shul, but wearing pants. That was sort of difficult, because Orthodox Jewish women do not wear pants to shul. So I was the only woman wearing pants. I was welcome there by the other women. But they did wonder why I didn't wear a proper skirt.

After a few months, I talked to my Rabbi about putting on men's clothing, cutting my hair, and attending services in the men's section. He consulted with his Rav, and his Rav ruled that it would be most appropriate for me to do that. So I cut my hair, got some proper male clothes, and started attending services with the men. My goal wasn't to stop being a transsexual. It wasn't to self identify as a man. It was just to comply with Jewish law. And it had been completely my idea to try it.

It was nothing like how much I had hated it when I had that super hated penis. It was a lot more tolerable. I didn't really think of myself as a man. But playing the role was now tolerable-- and even sort of fun. As far as I'm concerned, I am a woman who has been handed to role of playing a man and I enjoy playing my part.