Transgenderism and Rape-By-Deception

[drac16]

You’re not the only one who thinks it’s madness-- I feel the same way. I would feel lied to if it happened to me. I’d break up with him/her immediately and would cry myself to sleep every night. I would also wonder why that person is practicing Islam, because transgenderism is contrary to the Shariah (some Shi’a deny that, but they are wrong).

So yeah; I’d feel abused, lied to and heartbroken if it happened to me.

 

[rae317]

I would certainly feel raped if a transgender person gained my consent/hand in marriage by pretending to be cisgendered/normal, but legally I wouldn’t be able to successfully claim rape or even emotional distress. Am I the only one who thinks this is madness?

Really? Is this is actually an issue in your life?

Anyway most transsexuals really are pretty normal in wanting the same things other people want - love, relationships, partnership, friends, happiness. When they reveal their past it is usually met with rejection or worse, which makes it very complicated. Mostly it is not about trying to deceive someone, but about trying to protect themselves.

My best friend went on a few dates with a guy early last year. She really liked him, and he seemed to really like her so she decided to tell him of her past before things got more serious. His reaction was to beat her up and try to strangle her (she escaped). She was trying to do the right thing.

What are we supposed to do wear signs around our necks proclaiming we are trans stay away? Isolate ourselves from the rest of humanity?

 

[ProdigalSun]

I’m glad somebody here doesn’t think my concern is dumb.

I mentioned marriage because many on this forum tend to oppose pre-marital sex, but you are right that one night stands should also be considered in the question about consent.

I agree that I found this a possibliity to happen because waiting for marriage to have is a reasonable and normal action.

I would never call this rape however, and would think anyone thathas actually been raped would be insulted by this being called rape. THis in my mind is nothing short of fraud and I would be incensed to the point of having the person charged with fraud and recouping any montetary losses due to this fraud.

There would be no consequence to having this sham marriage reversed by the church if it was a church wedding and can’t imagine a court not allowing a civil divorce also.

What a shame this is for the person who would do this to another person.

 

[ProdigalSun]

OP, I’m not saying it isn’t wrong to lie to people to convince them to have sex with you and/or marry you.

But, I’m wary of calling it “rape”, because we already have a tendency to call a lot of things “rape” that aren’t. As I type this, here’s a Moral Theology topic asking if gossip is “spiritual rape”. There’s a post in Non Catholic Religions about ex-Catholics that actually equates poor cathechesis to priests raping boys, and claims "People leave because they were intellectually, morally and physically raped by the leadership. "

And in the secular world, many gamers will brag “oh yeah, I totally raped him” to simply mean, they defeated their opponent in some overwhelming way. Some also will say “I got totally raped” to simply mean, “I got cheated”.

If we just keep expanding what “rape” means the word will become meaningless. And then you wind up with people questioning the whole concept. Or differentiating “real rape” or “legitimate rape” from the other types.

Now, last I checked, lying to people is sinful anyway. It’s also wrong to lie to people to convince them to, say, invest in your business, or contribute to your charity. I’m not sure I’d call someone who does that a “thief”, though. Just a liar.

The word rape is thrown around alot and I believe it is and insult to real rape victims!

 

[ProdigalSun]

This reveals a very immature understanding of marriage. Take out the issue of transgender for a minute. If I found out that my husband lived a significant portion of his life under a different name and identity and never told me until after we married, I would feel (and be) very betrayed. I would look at him and wonder who he really was, who I married, and what else I don’t know. This would be compounded by the fact that everyone else in his life would have known (parents, siblings, long time friends, etc).

The devastation that would cause is almost unthinkable.

This !!!

 

[ProdigalSun]

Prior to getting married, I had to get an official copy of my baptismal certificate (which, if I recall correctly, would have also recorded on the back the date of my confirmation, and whether or not I had been married previously).

While I know that in some states it is possible to get things like name and gender legally changed on one’s birth certificate, I can’t imagine that that would extend to getting one’s name changed in a church’s sacramental records. While I don’t recall whether or not I also had to get an official copy of my birth certificate, wouldn’t a mismatch between the names on one’s birth certificate and one’s sacramental records raise a flag?

Very good point. It is also possible that this may be missed because who would really think to look!

The Expense a man has to go through for a wedding can be very costly. I would thik there would be a great case for fraud.

 

[ProdigalSun]

The fact they were married for 19 years & he didn’t have a clue. I know a lot of men are pretty clueless about women, but this is well beyond the norm.

Oh boy I missed that part. 19 years!!! you are right their is something not right about this story!

 

[ProdigalSun]

Really? Is this is actually an issue in your life?

Anyway most transsexuals really are pretty normal in wanting the same things other people want - love, relationships, partnership, friends, happiness. When they reveal their past it is usually met with rejection or worse, which makes it very complicated. Mostly it is not about trying to deceive someone, but about trying to protect themselves.

My best friend went on a few dates with a guy early last year. She really liked him, and he seemed to really like her so she decided to tell him of her past before things got more serious. His reaction was to beat her up and try to strangle her (she escaped). She was trying to do the right thing.

What are we supposed to do wear signs around our necks proclaiming we are trans stay away? Isolate ourselves from the rest of humanity?

Your friend did the right thing by telling him the man did not react properly and indeed acted criminally. I would suggest your friend makes sure he knows who he is getting involved with before taking that step. hopefully mitigating this abuse in the future!

 

[BornInMarch]

Your friend did the right thing by telling him the man did not react properly and indeed acted criminally. I would suggest your friend makes sure he knows who he is getting involved with before taking that step. hopefully mitigating this abuse in the future!

I have to agree. It is unacceptable to physically assault another person, and it should not be normalized.

 

[BornInMarch]

Anyway most transsexuals really are pretty normal in wanting the same things other people want - love, relationships, partnership, friends, happiness. When they reveal their past it is usually met with rejection or worse, which makes it very complicated. Mostly it is not about trying to deceive someone, but about trying to protect themselves.

I understand that transgender people have small dating pools and can find difficulty with that, but a relationship with another person is not a right. Everybody has the right to accept or reject a potential relationship partner for any reason, and withholding information that might be relevant to this choice is to deprive that person of the right.

Generally if you let me live my life and let other people live theirs then I will let you live yours. Swing your fist around as long as you like, just as long as it doesn’t hit anybody in the nose.

My best friend went on a few dates with a guy early last year. She really liked him, and he seemed to really like her so she decided to tell him of her past before things got more serious. His reaction was to beat her up and try to strangle her (she escaped). She was trying to do the right thing.

Your friend *did *do the right thing; it’s not her fault that the man she told this to was a violent nut. The fault lies entirely with aggressor. This violence isn’t normal and shouldn’t be normalized, a trans person should not be afraid of violence. Ideally a trans person could be open about being transgender and never once be attacked or threatened for it.

What are we supposed to do wear signs around our necks proclaiming we are trans stay away? Isolate ourselves from the rest of humanity?

No, of course not. There are lots of people in the world who have no qualms about being in a relationship with a transgender person, and who would pursue such a relationship even knowing that his/her partner is transgender. Those people would also make better partners for trans people in the long run because there would be no fear in the back of the mind of them finding out and being upset; they’d already know and wouldn’t mind.

People (both trans and cis) get romantically rejected, often for things that can’t be controlled or changed, but as hard as that can feel at the time nobody is entitled to have another.

 

[BornInMarch]

You’re not the only one who thinks it’s madness-- I feel the same way. I would feel lied to if it happened to me. I’d break up with him/her immediately and would cry myself to sleep every night. I would also wonder why that person is practicing Islam, because transgenderism is contrary to the Shariah (some Shi’a deny that, but they are wrong).

So yeah; I’d feel abused, lied to and heartbroken if it happened to me.

It’s good to know other people understand how I am feeling.

If being being assigned male at birth is a deal-breaker for me, than that is my business and I am well within my right to reject somebody for that just as others are well within their rights to reject me for whatever reason they see fit. To withhold information out of fear that it would trigger rejection would be a violation of my rights.

 

[shockerfan]

Anyway most transsexuals really are pretty normal in wanting the same things other people want - love, relationships, partnership, friends, happiness. When they reveal their past it is usually met with rejection or worse, which makes it very complicated. Mostly it is not about trying to deceive someone, but about trying to protect themselves.

It is not complicated. While I don’t have statistical data, I would imagine that most cisgendered men want to date a cisgendered woman, and vise-versa. If I were “in the market” again, I would be very irritated wasting my limited dating time with a transgendered person. I would be angry if the charade went beyond a single date. I realize that being upfront is risky…but I would appreciate the honesty myself.

My best friend went on a few dates with a guy early last year. She really liked him, and he seemed to really like her so she decided to tell him of her past before things got more serious. His reaction was to beat her up and try to strangle her (she escaped). She was trying to do the right thing.

She did the right thing.

What are we supposed to do wear signs around our necks proclaiming we are trans stay away? Isolate ourselves from the rest of humanity?

No…just be cognizant that its a fair bet cisgendered people want to date other cisgendered people. If I were a young man, I would want to marry a biological woman able to bear children.

 

[Mystic_Rose_1]

Calling such a thing rape is a slap in the face to anyone who has been raped. Obviously, if two people fall in love, marry, and have consensual sexual relations, that is not rape. It would be a case of withholding information, or deception.

 

[BornInMarch]

Calling such a thing rape is a slap in the face to anyone who has been raped. Obviously, if two people fall in love, marry, and have consensual sexual relations, that is not rape. It would be a case of withholding information, or deception.

In some jurisdictions deception is considered rape. In Israel, for example, a man was imprisoned because he lied about his religion to convince a woman to have sex with him. Do you think these laws, which already exist and are on the books, are “a slap in the face to anyone who has been raped”?

Also consider this; in instances where people discover that their spouse/lover was secretly trans, the deceived person often is mentally harmed by this. In a story I linked to some ways above (a belgian man divorced his wife after finding out she was biologically male) the deceived person had to go to a psychiatrist.

 

[shockerfan]

Calling such a thing rape is a slap in the face to anyone who has been raped. Obviously, if two people fall in love, marry, and have consensual sexual relations, that is not rape. It would be a case of withholding information, or deception.

Dictionary.com:

unlawful sexual intercourse or any other sexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, other body part, or foreign object, without the consent of the victim.

Consent in this case was only given due to a fraud. Sorry, if the transgender person did not tell the person they were engaging in relations with that they were not an actual, biological male or female, then a fraud was perpetrated and yes, a rape occurred.

 

[Kielbasi]

Imagine you meet somebody who looks like a woman and who you think is biologically a woman. You talk to this person, hit it off, and eventually get married. Then later on, after you’ve gotten married and slept with this person you discover that this person is transgendered, is biologically a man, and has been keeping this secret from you the whole time.

The marriage would be annulled for sure no questions asked, the church doesn’t recognize sex changes.

The man would had to have been a convert, otherwise his sex at birth would have been noted on the baptismal certificate and he would have had to be deceptive.

This would be a pretty distressing situation I’m sure, but also pretty rare and unlikely.

 

[shockerfan]

This would be a pretty distressing situation I’m sure, but also pretty rare and unlikely.

Certainly a situation that is growing more likely given the current social climate. Many lawmakers (along with former President Obama) are seemingly very concerned about bathroom access for transgendered Americans, about them being identified according to what sex they identify with, and about being accepted by society in the context of how they identify. There have been recent stories about transgendered Americans participating in sporting events (high school wrestling, women’s MMA, etc).

Fine. I’m not looking to attack anyone about their desire to be accepted as to how they identify sexually (although we do need to develop fair rules about participation in sports.)

However, equally important is the right (yes, right) of citizens to know the truth about the person they are planning to have a sexual relationship with.

 

[Rau]

Imagine you meet somebody who looks like a woman and who you think is biologically a woman. You talk to this person, hit it off, and eventually get married. Then later on, after you’ve gotten married and slept with this person you discover that this person is transgendered, is biologically a man, and has been keeping this secret from you the whole time. Would you care, and if so would your reaction to this new information be negative?

If you are like most people than you would care and would have negative feelings, but don’t expect sympathy from the transgender community or from liberals in general because both groups have large numbers of people who think your hypothetical spouse did nothing wrong. If you look up “should transgender people out themselves to potential romantic & sexual partners” there is a large number of people who argued that they should not, that potential partners don’t have a right to information that might influence their decision, and that they shouldn’t even mind.

Am I the only one who thinks this is very unethical? Sex isn’t a right, convincing someone to sleep with you by use of deception (which includes withholding or otherwise hiding information that might cause them to reject you) is rape, and most reasonable people would consider the biological sex of their potential partner to be relevant information. I would certainly feel raped if a transgender person gained my consent/hand in marriage by pretending to be cisgendered/normal, but legally I wouldn’t be able to successfully claim rape or even emotional distress. Am I the only one who thinks this is madness?

If you knew you could not father/mother children with your spouse, is it ethical to withhold that fact prior to marriage? Of course it’s unethical. One’s history as transgendered is patently information owed to a future spouse and to withhold it amounts to a serious deception on an issue foreseeable relevant to the partners decision to marry.

 

[Rau]

…If my potential mate didn’t want me to know they were trans that is up to them. I would feel hurt for not being told sooner, because they felt the need to hide it from me, but I would accept them and love them all the same.

The partner didn’t do anything wrong. It is their privacy on their bodies. They are the ones who decide whom to tell. Again I would feel hurt that they felt they needed to hide but I would love them all the same.

I guess I am not most people because the person is what matters not what is between their legs…

Perhaps one could make this argument for “friendship”. But marriage? You can’t be serious. On what basis could you assume your spouse would be unconcerned with your biological sex in choosing a “mate”?

 

[Qoeleth]

I think the situation is a bit far-fetched. If you meet a ‘nice looking’ ‘woman’, surely before one married her, you would realise if it was really a bloke in makeup or whatever.

Would anyone ever really fall in love with a ‘drag queen’? (Whether they call themselves a transvestite, transgender, or whatever, it’s the same thing). It is not merely the clothes that make a person be a man or a woman, but its the whole physiology, and indeed, a certain ontological quality.

If a transvestite went to the extreme length of marrying another man, under deception- what would they expect to happen? It would be a very bad situation, but I doubt if it’s ever happened.