The right to mis-define oneself

[bennyboy]

Hey, fuck off.  You're trying to lay the accusation even as you deny it. "I think you're lying" is an accusation of lying, but you apparently don't even have the guts to own your positive assertions, much less your unspoken premises.

Stop making everything a pissing match. I don't have the guts? Well, I'll show you, you yellow-bellied good-for nothing low-lying snake in the grass!

Seriously, though, "I think you're lying because X seems so obvious to me that it's hard to believe others don't see it" is not the same as "You're a liar."

Thankfully, your education is not my responsibility.  We're exchanging opinions here.  You're uncomfortable because your opinion is being challenged, but you want me to do your homework for you.  That isn't happening.  I know what traumatized means. I don't think most men in the circumstances you're laying out would be traumatized. My stepdad was traumatized by his combat in Vietnam; he woke up in the middle of the night screaming often enough for me to think that your feelings about being bamboozled on a hypothetical one-night stand wouldn't be of that caliber.

Okay, so you and I have different perceptions of how the average male may feel. You suggest that's because I'm projecting my own attitudes on the general population-- but I've seen enough men express similar opinions that I don't believe that to be the case. I think it's likely that you are ALSO projecting your own values onto others, and that those have been validated by your own different experiences of other's men's behavior in certain situation. But whether it's rape, or assault, or just rudeness, it doesn't really matter with regards to the OP. The OP is about the difference between living AS something and the reality of BEING that thing, and I do agree that gender issues are less cut-and-dry as other issues. At least I hope nobody here will draw a line from transgender issues to transracial ones as in the OP.

Except that you didn't until I pointed it out.  Not the height of intellectual honesty there.

I think you're being an asshole right now. You challenged me on backpedalling and I fucking agreed with you, and stated why I was changing my tack. What more do you expect?

I'd be pissed, and embarrassed, too -- no doubt.  I wouldn't be traumatized, nor would I feel like I'd been raped.

Well I WOULD be traumatized, and why should I be embarrassed to state so? In my life, I've had an old guy pee on me, a middle-aged guy jerk off to me when I was a teen in a catholic charities hostel, another guy pick me up off a cold bench, take me home (again as a teen) and ask me if I ever masturbated, and a variety of other near-misses and mishaps. None of this is rape, but it made me feel dirty and uncomfortable, and I think in all cases it was a form of self-validation through sexual or pseudo-sexual aggression.

And that's what you're not getting. A woman who went home with me and had sex with me is providing me with a happy and validating experience, because I'm straight. A transwoman who goes home with me and surprising me is acting aggressively in a situation which makes me vulnerable, which I think is a non-trivial violation of my personhood. The trauma doesn't come from the wiener. It comes from the fail to disclose

 And before you ask what I know about sexual abuse, I'll tell you -- I was molested as a child.  I know a little about carrying psychological injury around.

Join the club.

Again, I've never argued against your main point, only the thoughtless comments you've made supporting it. Unless you've been raped, you would probably do well to leave rape comparisons out of it. That has been the only issue I've had with your points in this thread. If you're going to compare a TS/TG surprise to rape, then tell us: what grounds do you have for this comparison? Have you been raped?

I don't need to compare it to rape. My point is that if a natural-born woman and a transgender person with a penis go into a sexual encounter with the exact same behavior, then I'd consider the actions of the former as validating, and the actions of the latter as aggressive, invalidating, and offensive. The difference matters, and cannot be trivialized. . . because one is a woman, and the other, at least physically, is not-- no matter how he/she identifies.