I Don't Care

[bennyboy]

You clearly see trans-women as men in disguise. This nullifies everything they have been through, their struggle to be accepted and erases part of their core identity. It detransitions them. This dehumanises them. No matter what you say, you cannot get away from this.

First of all, let me say thank you for a well thought-out and well-expressed post. I will answer with the care that it deserves.

I would say that not identifying someone the way they identify is not dehumanizing. I'm not putting a negative valuation on any body form or psychological association with it. I don't think trans-women are men in disguise. Nor do I think they are identical in all regards to most females of the human species. They are something different than either-- but they are certainly fully human, and I wouldn't want to put them down for expressing themselves however they like.

Now, if someone wanted to be treated as a woman, then I'd be happy to oblige. If she wanted to engage in sex (something I think is pretty unlikely anyway), then I'd decline, because I'm not interested in having a sexual relationship with a trans person.

Eh, I'm calling bullshit.  I'm 100% certain if I was face-to-face with a vagina, I'd recognize if it was the real thing or not.  There's so much going on there-- the textures, the smell (it changes from start to finish like a Willy Wonka's everlasting gobstopper), the milky lubrication if you're doing it right, the ways the muscles ripple during orgasm.  You simply can't fake all of that.

I know for a fact that a straight transphobic man can sleep with a transsexual on repeated occasions and never know. I have seen it with my own eyes. Deny this and you are calling me a liar. I have also personally closely inspected two neo-vaginas and can tell you, unless you are a gynecologist, you would not know the difference. And by closely inspected I mean legs wide open on her back for my personal perusal.

It may be that I'm wrong about this, but I don't think so. I think the things I mentioned-- the way the smell changes during lubrication, the way the walls of the vagina pulse during orgasm, and so on, cannot be reproduced. I don't know how many men notice those things, but I'm particularly fascinated by the female body, and I've definitely noticed them. In fact, if I were unable to stimulate a woman to get those results, I would probably be worried that she found me unattractive.

However, there may be XX women who might not respond the way I expect, either. I'm perfectly open to the possibility that I'd be less able to tell than I thought.

Absolute disagree 100%. Do you also advocate gay conversion therapy? After all, by your standards people aren't born gay therefore it can be counselled away. Whereas many transsexuals know from their earliest memories when they came to recognise that male and female exists, that they identified with the gender that they weren't assigned to at birth.

I wouldn't advocate conversion therapy for anyone. I WOULD advocate some recognition that trans people are in a pyschologically sensitive group, and that moderating demeaning language toward people who've identified as trans would be a good idea. But the same goes for gay XY men.

As for my comments about PC-- I don't agree that all trans people are as you've described: just realizing in due course that due to circumstance, they've ended up with a body that doesn't match their view of themselves, or the gender they were labeled with at birth. There are plenty of cases where sexual abuse and other factors contribute to an identity crisis, and there are plenty of cases where the psychological stresses aren't only due to external prejudices. I think pretending this to be so is dangerous. Different people are different, right?

At the risk of presuming too much, why did Yonadav transition to female and then back again? Might it be that there's more to his sense of gender than just aligning external appearances with internal feelings about his identity?

Whatever you think about my motivations or my sincerity, can we not agree that calling people pieces of shit, or calling trans people "creature," are things we can live without? 

I'll happily agree to that.

Okay, then.