sundries

[rm]

Last night we had awesome Indian food. After being totally disappointed by this place's dopiaza in the past (to be fair, it's not on their menu, but they will make what's not there) and not being able to get a table at the place we wanted to try, I had their palak ghost and it blew me out of the water. So yay. And we picked up gluten-free cupcakes for me beforehand and went for icecream (I had honeydew icecream -- not sorbet, icecream!) afterwards.

writerinadrawer Round 4.08 voting still on. Only six stories to read this week, because this will decide the top 5. Also, this was a prompt near and dear to my heart, so I look forward to when voting ends and we can discuss.

graduate_maria auctions continue through tomorrow. I'll post a list of 1 and no-bid items later today.

Officials, including the governor, in CA are pushing to have the stay on the Prop 8 overturn lifted. While this is unlikely to happen, it is more likely now than it was. Boies, meanwhile, thinks the 9th Circuit will rule on the case this year, and that it is a "dead certainty" it will go to the Supreme Court, presumably in 2011. I've been involved in conversations about equal marriage cases and the Supreme Court since 1990. I can't believe it's taken this long; I can't believe we're here already, and wow, is it profoundly nerve-wracking.

A few days ago bitsyrant posted a thing about transphobia on Family Guy and then, more problematically, from the creator of Family Guy when asked about the thing on the show. This led to a discussion in redstapler's LJ that you can't read because it's friendslocked, but it included someone asserting at length that not disclosing trans-status before a sexual encounter is like rape. That conversation has now turned into this post.

Look folks, you are not entitled to other people's bodies being the way you expect/desire them to be. When you start taking someone's clothes off and what you find isn't the expectation in your brain and you're not into it anymore? You know what you do? You cool things off, explain what's not your bag, and call them a cab.

Here's what you don't do: You don't berate a woman for false advertising because it turns our she was wearing a water bra. You don't hand a woman a razor, shove her into the shower and tell her to groom herself better because her choices related to how much hair she likes to keep on her body don't work for you. And yes, I've been the target of both of those moments, more than once, and I sucked them up because I was stupid enough to think I was in the wrong and thought I should take whatever help was to be offered to me in matters of how to be a woman, correctly and appropriately.

I have, conversely, had people disclose all sorts of things to me before we went to bed because they were afraid being human was a dealbreaker and they had been conditioned to believe that the only way to talk about their flesh was to confess it. Once: "I'm fat, you know." I know, I am touching you through your clothes right now and I totally know you are fat and I am totally into you.

So when a trans person doesn't disclose to you right off? When you don't find out until after or during your moment of desiring them, or kissing them, or engaging in sex with them? Guess what? You didn't get raped. Or tricked. Or used.

What you got was a moment with someone hoping, not just that you'd still like them when you found out, but that you wouldn't beat them to death for wanting someone for which you might not get societal approval points for having.

The people you fuck aren't a game. You don't get to level up if you score the girl with the right hair color, breast size and landing strip. If you're ashamed of screwing someone whether it's because she has short hair or hairy legs or a penis, that shame is your problem and not her damn fault, not for a second.

And you know what the best response is if you suddenly find yourself wanting someone and hating yourself for it? Don't fuck them. And if you do it anyway or change your mind later, and can't get over your shit? The best response is not making completely inaccurate, devaluing, dehumanizing statements about fucking rape.

Nobody owes you most of the shit you think you're entitled to. It's just that damn simple.

Also? Before anyone makes another annoying analogy, yes, it's reasonable and appropriate to hope/expect/desire someone disclosure their STD-status to you.

But guess what? Being trans is not a communicable disease. Neither is having small tits or hairy legs. You aren't owed this information in advance because you are not actually harmed by not having it.

Are you writing Inception fanfic? If so, this is useful and hilarious.

Women prefer men who wear red. I feel less shame about the awesome brick-colored Ianto-esque dress shirt in my closet now.

South Cape May: the town that was.

Last night on Buffy, "Storyteller" and "Lies My Parents Told Me." "Storyteller" is a great fucking episode, even if what it has to say about story is at times something I radically disagree with and/or unclear. But it's funny and poignant and advances the plot and makes Andrew awesome and solves narrative problems.

"Lies My Parents Told Me" is a stranger, more complicated episode. We have to contend with Spike's incestuousness and the costumes of no actual discernable historical era. Also, Robin being in this anti-vampire gave to avenge his mom? Fine. Robin being in this anti vampire game to kill Spike? Fine. Robin having his creepy, osessive, cross-covered shed for vampire killing? Makes Robin a way less interesting character than he could have been. Blarg. Also, Giles, you're an idiot.

Comments

[shoiryu.livejournal.com]

Oh, so that guy didn't get enough attention in the original post, I guess! That was a pretty textbook example of the intersection of homophobia (WHAT IF HAVE SEX WITH A MAN???!) and transphobia (HE'S TRICKING ME INTO THINKING HE'S A WOMAN) into a gross privilege panic loop of disingenuous arguments in a desperate attempt to convolute the actual base of the issue (that being, of course, that he's a fucking bigot.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

AYUP.

And if he wants attention, there are 1,100 people reading this who can give it to him.

[dremiel.livejournal.com]

Also? Before anyone makes another annoying analogy, yes, it's reasonable and appropriate to hope/expect/desire someone disclosure their STD-status to you.

But guess what? Being trans is not a communicable disease. Neither is having small tits or hairy legs. You aren't owed this information in advance because you are not actually harmed by not having it.

THIS. OH, GOD THIS. THANK YOU!

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Very much yes!

bottom line on information. IM[not so]HO.

[amberite2112.livejournal.com]

in my view, anything that happens inside your head, is your responsibility.
whether it surprises you, or scares you, or enlightens you, or educates, or turns you on or off - what you do with it is your responsibility. there's a brain in there for many reasons.
one of them is that it is a control panel of sorts. it allows you to control what you do and how you do it. if you cannot use it for that purpose, i maintain that you cannot be called truly human.

[tod-hollykim.livejournal.com]

South Cape May is not that unusual.

I grew up on Long Beach Island, north of Atlantic City and south of Seaside Heights in Ocean County.

There was a small island just off the south end of LBI called... Tucker's Island I think it was. Had a lighthouse and a few homes there. One weather there was a bad enough storm that just wiped out the island. An uncle who ran charters down to Florida from LBI and usually spent the winter down in Florida, came back that sprint and sailed over Tucker's.

It mostly stayed drowned until a few years ago when most summers a largish sand bar would pop up and folks would go out and party. Not big enough to build anything on and it would disappear most winters.

And in 1962 there was a bad nor'easter that almost cut the north end of the island, aka Barnegat Light, off from the rest of the island. Wiped a lot of houses off the island. Since then people have rebuild- a LOT of McMansions and million dollar homes- which will probably get wiped off the island sooner or later.

[elisi]

That's a brilliant rant! *applauds*

[gement.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is me so not jumping into that disclosure post.

I had to be clue-batted regarding trans disclosure/consent arguments about a year ago (though not to this jerk's degree) and I just can't even go there. (My fail was from the "but why wouldn't you trust me?" school, and I'm better now.)

I personally for my own emotional protection would, if I had [significant body scars/not the genitals someone's expecting/something else that I expect to get a startled or negative reaction] mention it before the relevant article of clothing came off so they can opt out or brace themselves before I have to deal with their strong negative reaction. But that's my own deal, and if someone else has a different standard and I'm startled, then I'm startled.

Edit to add addendum: I don't pass well enough to ever have this come up (sad face), but I'd be way too chickenshit to ever try to pull something like the first scene in The Leather Daddy and the Femme. I logically respect people's option to do so. In my personal case, it would hit both my fear of rejection and my over-developed sense of disclosure* way too hard.

* I also have trouble doing entirely appropriate levels of non-disclosure in work situations because it feels like dishonesty and hiding even though it's a perfectly reasonable 'none of their business' boundary.

[sunhawk.livejournal.com]

Amen to your transphobia rant!

[regyt.livejournal.com]

What Indian restaurant was that?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Banjara. Patty's loved what she's gotten both times. The first time was just "ok" for me. What I had last night was as good as any curry I had in London.

[bitsyrant.livejournal.com]

I really appreciate you calling attention to this recent transphobic outburst and what you said was so spot on. I am not always so capable of being reasonable when someone who claims to be sympathetic to the struggles of trans people conflates nondisclosure of transness with rape and does so by appropriating feminist language for misogynistic intent. What you said got right to the heart of the issue and it means a lot that you would take the time to share your thoughts since, as you deftly pointed out, this is important and relevant to trans and cis women alike.

I'm actually contemplating putting up a poll to see what people think would happen if something like this ever went to court. Like, for example, if a white, hetero, cis male claimed to be raped via nondisclosure by say, for example, a trans woman of color in oh, I dunno, one of our countries many red states... what would the result be? Would a judge actually find that trans woman guilty?

[contrarywise]

Thank you for your original post on the subject. All of it. I don't know McFarlane or his work, but that's just not on.

[rax.livejournal.com]

So, first of all, I absolutely agree with you on trans disclosure and who has responsibilities where and thank you for saying it. However:

So when a trans person doesn't disclose to you right off? When you don't find out until after or during your moment of desiring them, or kissing them, or engaging in sex with them? Guess what? You didn't get raped. Or tricked. Or used.

The only thing I'd say, cautiously, is that you might feel raped or tricked or used, and even thought you weren't, those feelings are real and merit consideration in any serious approach to this problem. Personally, I think it's on the person who feels that way to deal with those feelings --- but in arguing passionately on behalf of our rights to inhabit our bodies safely, we should not ignore those feelings or we may not come across very well.

[ravenskye8.livejournal.com]

This. Thank you - I was trying to figure out how to word what I was thinking...

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

All I can say is a big YES to your post on the onus of disclosure. That person is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

Nothing more at the mo'.

[contrarywise]

Yes, yes, and more yes to your rant. I'd moved on from redstapler's post before that highly problematic comment thread showed up, and I *really* don't have the mental/emotional bandwidth to read it now, but from the initial few comments plus your rant, I can guess the tone and content of much of the rest, and that's quite enough.

What you got was a moment with someone hoping, not just that you'd still like them when you found out, but that you wouldn't beat them to death for wanting someone for which you might not get societal approval points for having.

This. A thousand times this.

[christinenorris.livejournal.com]

Cape May proper is a lovely bit of Victorian America, where the homes and B&B's still sport gingerbread trim and many houses are pink. We have time-travel towns here in the Southern part of the state, which is nothing like the North and we should be separate states.

Just up the road from Victorian Cape May, where you can stand at the very end of the state and see the concrete ship sinking on a beach called Sunset, where you can search through the stones for a Cape May Diamond, and the lighthouse beach with leftover bits of WWII on the beach, is Wildwood, where the 50's and Doo Wop never left. It's like a Annette Funicello movie. Even new businesses design their buildings to fit into the decor.

Yes, we in NJ are weird, but we like it that way.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

I really need to get back to the Jersey shore sometime, not least to show my wife where my family has spent many summers (at my great-aunt's place in Townsend's Inlet), especially now that I can actually appreciate the Victorians in Cape May.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

I went off and actually responded to the guy. I had to pull out once I got to the guy who was "not taking sides" but was referring to post-op trans genitals as "disfigurement" and talking about "natural" vs. "man-made" genitals. I had to stop myself from going in with the whole large percentage of male genitals in the US are surgically-altered and could therefore be considered "man-made" and... yeah. Feh.

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

Nobody owes you most of the shit you think you're entitled to. It's just that damn simple.

This. All over the place, in all sorts of ways. Drives me up the proverbial wall.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

The whole trans = rape thing depresses me more than I can express clearly right now. Like, great. I need another layer of guilt, anxiety, and self-loathing to go with the rest of my layers of shame.

It's psychotic rubbish born of anxious masculinity, but reading about this is sort of like an express train to feeling more like a character in a Morrissey lyric than usual.

Fuckers.

[phaetonschariot.livejournal.com]

*huggles*

My Privilege Is Showing - *headdesk*

[teleens-journal.livejournal.com]

I didn't get it. I really didn't. And the arguments as to why it was wrong for a trans person not to disclose seemed so damn reasonable.

So I asked hubby, who is as hetro as they come, "If you had sex with a woman and they told you later that they were trans, how would you react?"

"They'd had the operation?"

I nodded.

He shrugged. "Then it wouldn't affect me having wanted to have sex with them."

It's funny - I often think that of the two of us, I'm more open-minded. I'm not. I'm just more PC. He's been known to spout biased language about any number of groups of people, but when it comes down to individual human beings, he's a better person than I am.

He's open-minded where it counts, on a human level.

We both saw that Family Guy episode and I remember thinking that Brian's reaction was over-the-top and the perpetuation of a trans stereotype, but still... Not unreasonable. Not abnormal. In other words, part of me could see yagathai's point, to the point where I was ready to create a sock to tell him so because I didn't want you to know that I disagreed with you.

My disagreement came from two places.

One is a fundamental place, where I was raised to believe that men are men and women are women and we each have defined roles, forever and ever, amen.

The second comes from the 'informed consent' argument. Issues of consent are very near and dear to my heart and yagathai's argument was persuasive to me on that level.

For all of my talk about supporting GLBT rights, I still lost my way where it really counted, on the human level.

In comment right before mine on yagathai's post, askeladden makes a beautiful analogy that I wish I could have thought of, that reminded me of the essential humanity of a trans person, something that was lost in the shuffle here, for me and presumably, yagathai.

Our arguments are based on flawed premises and when one starts with a flawed premise, every conclusion that comes afterwords is flawed, no matter how 'reasonable' it seems.

tl;dr

Just.

Thank you.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to open my mind. Thank you also for being someone that I was able to respect enough through your other posts to really be able to see that I had to be going wrong somewhere in my thinking here if I disagreed with you this fundamentally.

I only hope that the next time I'm this wrong, I'll do what I did this time and stop to really think before I comment. Or if I do wind up saying something bone-headed that you'll let me know, :).

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Once: "I'm fat, you know." I know, I am touching you through your clothes right now and I totally know you are fat and I am totally into you.

OK, I can't imagine I'm the only one of your readership who didn't exactly mind reading this exchange, OK? Thank you.

[julesndairyland.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your "rant" which is not a rant at all but fucking reality that needs to be said.

But guess what? Being trans is not a communicable disease. Neither is having small tits or hairy legs. You aren't owed this information in advance because you are not actually harmed by not having it.

BRAVO!

When people take responsibility for their behavior and emotions and really own them the world will be a much better place. Until then, keep your BS expectation out of my life.

[nicoli-dominn.livejournal.com]

I always knew there was something about Family Guy that pissed me off. Now I know what it is: the creator feeds on prejudice to fuel humor. Just like the majority of "average" people in existence.

yagathai's claim that nondisclosure of one's trans status prior to sexual activity is the same as rape disturbs me deeply. As you said, transsexuality/being transgender is not a disease, nor is it communicable; STDs, on the other hand, are. To equate the former to the latter is not only insulting, it perpetuates transphobia; now, all of a sudden, it seems that people who are already afraid of being ridiculed and abused for their trans status in everyday social situations are forced to disclose everything to someone they might have only met for the first time, risking not only rejection, but in many cases, their personal safety and their lives. That risk cannot be justified unless the trans person is willing to take it. No one should force them or even bully them into it by calling it rape when they choose not to talk about their trans status to a potential sexual partner.

I think I'm more alarmed by this rape idea than I am by Family Guy's stupidity.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

The rape idea is definitely more alarming because the Family Guy stupidity is one incident, whereas non-disclosure = rape is a widespread belief.

[featherofeeling.livejournal.com]

This post and the one to which you linked brought up so many questions for me of informed consent and how to balance one cherished principle against even more cherished ones. If you or anyone else cares to discuss them, I'd like that. I consider myself a trans ally but am not as familiar with this terrain as I could be, and I'm fully aware that some of the things I'm about to say might be considered...lagging. But I also think that some of these questions could be productive.

If you're ashamed of screwing someone whether it's because she has short hair or hairy legs or a penis, that shame is your problem and not her damn fault, not for a second.

Amen. Thanks for so much of what you say in this post about how the onus of dealing with shame or disgust about another's body is on the person who feels it, NOT on that person's (potential) partner. I know that and I've been fortunate in not having my conviction of that tested too severely, but all the same, your examples hit home to an uncomfortable degree. I'm still wincing and nodding in recognition and feeling sad about them. Also, thanks for the implied statement that ashamed reactions to having desired a transwoman are phobic.

However, in the quote above, you're addressing a different issue than the one brought up by the OP. That other discussion isn't about women who have penises, because presumably the other person'd know that before anything got seriously hot and heavy. Likewise:

And you know what the best response is if you suddenly find yourself wanting someone and hating yourself for it? Don't fuck them.

Yes! However, as you know, the post that you linked to is talking about when that isn't the case - when that moment of choice whether to go through with it or to call the cab never happened. For me, the case gets harder at that point.

And I feel like that's an area with a lot of difficult questions that it would be worthwhile to debate in full, even when your conclusion will probably be the same as your statement that Guess what? You didn't get raped. Or tricked. Or used. Questions like, to what extent does disclosing trans status before having sex prevent the other person from giving informed consent? Are some kinds of informed consent more important than others, and should our own convictions decide which is which, or should other people's subjectivities be the gauge, even if they seem wrong? Do some omissions of informed consent amount to rape while others do not, and can those others be important anyway? If not saying anything about trans status does impede informed consent, can it be justified anyway? Given that people who are disgusted by trans status exist, even though we don't like that about them, should they have the right to have control over their own sexual interactions? In other words, if there's ever tension between respecting personal control over sexual interactions / informed consent, rejecting transphobia, and prioritizing safety, how do you choose? I think that those are harder questions than "is it rape to not disclose trans status" (no) or "should people be turned off by trans status" (no).

I don't think that it's just because I'm not as immersed in anti-transphobia that I don't make the jump from A ("is it rape?") to D ("of course not") without wanting to have my hand held through the intervening steps, although that's part of it. It's also that it feels more worthwhile to me to be able to say, yes, there are concerns with informed consent that might be valid here, but in this case, concerns with safety take precedence - and here's why. So I can acknowledge the parts of the OP's argument I find compelling while feeling strong in my overall decision against it, so I can use similar reasoning to work out answers to other situations, so I'm not just conforming to the opinions of people I respect without being able to defend them convincingly myself other than with a gut feeling. I'd love to know what you or other people here think about those questions.

(re-posted due to italics mistake.)

[sanat.livejournal.com]

What a dipshit remark from Seth McFarlane. I haven't seen the episode, but sans that quote I would have assumed Brian's reaction was just a reference to The Crying Game (seeing as how at least 25% of any given Family Guy episode is homage to past films and TV shows), and while still offensive, not really meant to be taken seriously. But for him to validate throwing-up as a reasonable reaction is just so ridiculous.

As I said upthread, what if you (hypothetical cis-hetero-you) slept with a woman who lied about being a virgin because she feared judgment? Would you feel sick and tainted then, too? Or if she "passed" as white but had non-white ancestry as someone else said? Feeling raped or tricked in either of those cases would be seen as excessively prude or bigoted by most of mainstream society. But apparently if a woman's past or genetic makeup involves surgical reassignment or Y chromosomes, that's still considered fair game for scorn and revulsion, and cause enough to get hysterical and worry about your own sexual/social status and/or purity.

In other words, agreement and recapitulation of your ranting points.

[lurkitty.livejournal.com]

Here through gwyd With respect to your position on transphobia: This.

I went through and read the background post and had a rather visceral reaction to someone equating not being told his date is a transwoman with rape. there is a vast ocean of difference between having control over the most intimate act wholly taken from you and feeling repulsed because you discovered you had sex with someone who wasn't what you wanted. It reminded me of the crap I heard growing up in the sixties from the racists when they discovered they were dating a woman who was "passing". Sick, just sick.

I'd like to friend you, because this is yet another time I've admired one of your posts and I'd like to read more.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Robin having his creepy, osessive, cross-covered shed for vampire killing? Makes Robin a way less interesting character than he could have been.

I think he created it recently, specifically for Spike. Does that help?

Also, Giles, you're an idiot.

Agreed.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Agreed to the hilt