Belz...
Fiend God
You have to admit that the terms "woman" and "man" are becoming a bit muddled. Maybe we need to update our language to fit a more enlightened understanding of sexuality and gender.
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Leelah Alcorn, transgender teen, commited suicide
- Thread starter patchbunny
- Start date
You have to admit that the terms "woman" and "man" are becoming a bit muddled. Maybe we need to update our language to fit a more enlightened understanding of sexuality and gender.
Butter!
Rough Around the Edges
Well, not to contribute to too much of a derail, but I don't see how a preference itself can be wrong. Pedophiles do not ask to be born with or develop their desires. There's nothing they can do as far as that goes. So the preference itself isn't right or wrong, it just is.
What is wrong, of course, is acting on those urges in any way. But a person born with such desires who lives his/her life working to suppress them and never acting on them isn't wrong. They're just quite unfortunate.
Do you disagree?
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Belz...
Fiend God
Why ?
newyorkguy
Penultimate Amazing
Just having read some things about transgender people and sexual reassignment surgery leads me to wonder:
There have always been gay men who had strong feminine feelings. There have always been cross-dressers aka drag queens. Is the percentage of men who believe themselves to be females on the increase? Or is it just that people are more willing to talk about? To acknowledge those feelings?
Physicians call this "Gender identity disorder:" People who express strong discontent with the gender they were assigned at birth or develop an aversion to it based on the gender role society expects them to play. A role that feels inappropriate to them.
Is there any physiological basis for these feelings or is it emotional in origin? In males -- like Leelah Alcorn -- who say they have always felt more female than male, is there a brain chemistry or chromosome marker associated with this? Apparently there is. Researchers now believe that there are quantifiable identifiers. Variations in genetics, hormonal variations as well as differences in brain functioning and brain structures. One research team in the Netherlands found:
There have always been gay men who had strong feminine feelings. There have always been cross-dressers aka drag queens. Is the percentage of men who believe themselves to be females on the increase? Or is it just that people are more willing to talk about? To acknowledge those feelings?
Physicians call this "Gender identity disorder:" People who express strong discontent with the gender they were assigned at birth or develop an aversion to it based on the gender role society expects them to play. A role that feels inappropriate to them.
Is there any physiological basis for these feelings or is it emotional in origin? In males -- like Leelah Alcorn -- who say they have always felt more female than male, is there a brain chemistry or chromosome marker associated with this? Apparently there is. Researchers now believe that there are quantifiable identifiers. Variations in genetics, hormonal variations as well as differences in brain functioning and brain structures. One research team in the Netherlands found:
Tony
Penultimate Amazing
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Doesn't matter. It is their right to love and make love with whom they want. Your efforts to bully them into accepting partners they're not attracted to are akin to people trying to "cure" gayness.
And a gay man's aversion to sex with women seems to be a level of gynophobia.
ponderingturtle
Orthogonal Vector
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But by their admission they are attracted to them. It isn't about their lack of attraction, it is that all gets thrown off by something in the past that they don't have anymore.
It is the rage at the most frightening aspect, that they find out a partner they had sex with is really trans. They clearly went into that being attracted to the person, but that all changes by learning that they used to have a penis. That is what I don't get.
So show me the gay man afraid of accidentally sleeping with a woman and then react violently to that and we have something comparable.
Who is saying that trans women are objectively not women? Many of the comments, certainly mine, have been about men and women meaning different things in different contexts and hence there being no such thing as "objectively a/not a woman", certainly not without more context and qualification. I'd thought that the comments that seemed to imply that there was such a thing as "objectively a woman" were claiming that trans women were women?
Who is saying they would be angry about finding out their partner is trans? You make it sound like it's the trans-ness that would make people angry. I haven't seen that. I might be angry that somebody had failed to reveal something that they could reasonably have expected one would find important and potentially had non-trivial social consequences, but that isn't specific to this issue and in any case is completely dependent on the specific circumstances. I don't think that anybody is claiming that getting angry would be the best reaction. It would be a lot to absorb though. Given the suicide rate amongst trans people and the lack of acceptance, they clearly have a lot to deal with. Presumably partners of trans people have to deal with some portion of that. It's a lot to absorb. If I was hit with it suddenly I'm not sure that I'd react as I would if I had time to process it. That last part has nothing to do with trans. I don't turn on a dime when my expectations are turned upside down by a run of the mill born-women either. I definitely regard that as a character flaw, but for reasons outside the current topic.
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Tony
Penultimate Amazing
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Only before they find out more relevant information. There are a myriad of things that can kill what was an initial attraction. People have said that learning that someone smokes cigarettes can ruin any feelings of attraction they might have had. Why are you singling this out?
And I don't get how a man can be attracted to another man. But so what? It is none of my business. I don't see how someone not being attracted to a transwoman who used to have a penis is any of yours.
Not really. You said it is the shift in attraction upon learning a transwomen formerly had a penis that you don't get. How the individual reacts to it is incidental.
Maybe you need to expand on what you mean by wrong? Words keep being used in this thread as if they have a single well defined meaning with nice hard lines around them and relate to real world objects that respect the boundaries of the definition. I have no idea what you mean by "wrong" in this context.
I'm way behind you. I don't get how anybody can be attracted to a penis. Yet, I bow to, and am endlessly grateful for, empirical evidence that such a phenomenon in fact exists.
Belz...
Fiend God
I do: it bothers you. But don't we live in a society where we tolerate the things we don't like ? Isn't that a laudable goal ? As long as said pedo doesn't actuall harm real children, he is free to like whatever he wants.
Butter!
Rough Around the Edges
In my case - of course not, but see, that's a big part of being an ethical pedophile. They avoid situations which might lead to temptation.
An alcoholic who truly wants to recover shouldn't take a job in a bar. If they do, their desire not to drink can be called into question. I would question the sincerity of a pedophile who didn't want to offend but took a job like that.
Butter!
Rough Around the Edges
Tony
Penultimate Amazing
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Because acting on their desires is wrong.