Still not seeing what makes these two comparable. Heterosexual Christian has an irrational prejudice which causes real tangible harm to other people; transwoman is rationally self-interested in preserving a stable relationship, and does so in the least harmful manner possible.
As you can see from other posts in this thread, there are people who think trans people are irrational and harmful to themselves and others, too. The prevalence of such opinions would be much higher out in the general public as compared to this board, too.
So, the point here and the commonality between the two examples is that we shouldn't act in ways which involve other people's lives and futures if it requires that, in order to do so, we need to be dismissive of their feelings and beliefs which we have deemed to be irrational.
Some beliefs in some areas of life can be much more objectively determined to be irrational. What people want for themselves romantically isn't really an area which lends itself to cold hard logic and firm determinations of whether someone's being rational or not. Best to just let people have their preferences and to honor those preferences, at least if we are going to be involved with them directly.
We shouldn't be involved with someone romantically or sexually if we don't at least have enough respect for their desires and their sexuality so as to not hide important information from them which pertains to it.
Don't you think there's something pretty messed up about being in a sexual relationship with someone and knowing there is information about you which, if they became aware of it, would likely enrage them and make them repulsed that they've been intimate with you? (using "you" in the generalized sense here obviously)
I don't see how a relationship can be healthy or mutually respectful if one party is hiding information from the other when they know the other would likely be horrified by that information and want to end the relationship based on it.
I also think a person owes it to themselves and the other person to FIND OUT if that would be their reaction. If it doesn't bother the other person, hooray for both of them and things can continue.
I can promise you that "screwing around with someone else's life choices and sexual existence" is not a motive which remotely factors into a transwoman's decision to go stealth.
The thing about screwing around with other peoples' lives is that a lot of people exist in our society who do it without ever consciously deciding to do it, or without ever being consciously malicious. It tends to be an outgrowth of selfishness and not thinking sufficiently about other people and their feelings.
It does not tend to involve cackling "muhahaha" as lightning flashes around one's castle tower.
Perhaps a comparison example would be a straight cisgendered male stringing along a woman he knows wants to marry him and/or have kids with him, and burning through her youthful, fertile years creating an impression in her mind that they are headed in that direction, when in reality he isn't really interested in that.
He could be "aware" that he isn't interested in that while still maintaining just enough plausible deniability to appease his own conscience by telling himself "well maybe, I mean I'm not sure"
Does he have an obligation to disclose his ambivalence about these matters? Does he have an obligation to really do his level best to soul-search and determine what he wants, so that his partner can have that information ASAP and make her own determination about whether to continue?
One person's transition is not a "big thing" to anyone else. The only demand placed on strangers to accommodate another's transition is politeness and courtesy. Most trans people go about their days being completely invisible and unobtrusive.
Right but when you are getting involved with someone sexually/romantically it would be a big deal that someone had been born with certain genitalia, to a very great number of people.
It seems to me like you think this is on exactly equal footing with informing your sex partners that you had your tonsils removed when you were 8, or something.
I assure you, in the eyes of the vast bulk of our species, this is on a very different level of importance. You don't need to agree with them, but you do need to acknowledge that they feel that way, particularly if you're a trans person looking to get sexually involved with one of them.
Yes, you will get percentages in the high 90s with a carelessly worded polling question like that.
How would you word it differently? Would you word it carefully to achieve a desired result, and avoid certain information being made available to the person being asked the question?
A lot of men have anxiety that they might be attracted to transgender woman, even those are are post-op and conventionally attractive. I don't know what this anxiety is based on, but I can can bet it isn't anything rational.
We are not obligated to be rational in the realm of our sexuality or our personal choices about how to live our lives.
If I want to visit my grandmother's grave every week for the rest of my life because I feel I need to do that in order to have her keep watching over me from heaven (I don't believe in the supernatural, this is just an example) that may indeed be very irrational, and other people in society are welcome to feel it is very irrational and be very dismissive of it.
But there is a very different level of respect and acknowledgement of my irrational, but dearly held beliefs, which I should be able to expect from anyone who intends to become intimately linked with my life.
I can be pretty dismissive about someone's ideas who I'm seeing on a TV show, appearing as an interviewee on 20/20 or something. If I were going to entertain entering an exclusive romantic relationship with said person and therefore cut them off for a long period of time from pursuing other partners, I would say I need to be taking their ideas more seriously than back when I was just an observer. Agree?
If some woman were desirable as a romantic or sexual partner, why would learning that she is trans make her less desirable?
For me? Absolutely.
Would it be acceptable for a transwoman to say that she is sterile, instead of outing herself as trans?
Not to me, it wouldn't.
Sure, why not. But some people's preferences are quite petty and unimportant. I personally prefer women long hair to short hair, but I doubt I would accuse a woman who piqued my interest of "screwing around with my life choices and sexual existence" because she didn't tell me up-front that she wears a wig to cover her alopecia.
That's just the problem I keep coming back to, though. It's pretty arrogant of us to declare that other people's preferences are petty and unimportant when it's someone we are going to be intimate with.
I'm guessing a lot of lesbians would probably be pretty upset if a male used deception to sleep with them under the pretense that they were female. Would you be more inclined to respect their feelings since they're part of the LGBTQ world?
Lastly, I want to thank you for your detailed response and taking the time to write it, as well as the other ones. I appreciate you respectfully engaging with me on this, I know that I'm coming at it from a perspective which is quite different to yours.
There was one point I thought I made that was pretty solid earlier that you didn't respond to, though. If you're willing to here it is again:
Well the problem is that it's quite common for people to get pretty far into a relationship without the subject of kids ever coming up. These days, people will have been together, intimate, and deeply intertwined in their lives (living together, etc.) for a long period before any discussion of kids ever comes up, in many many cases. It may be that neither partner had even given it any thought, but as they age and start to feel "this is the person I want to be with for the rest of my life" a natural outgrowth of those life developments can be that they start thinking they'd like to start a family with that person.
