Objects of Desire, Transgenderism, and Disclosure

There has been some public discussion about transgender people and whether they have a duty to disclose their transgender status to their prospective romantic/sexual partner. There appear to be a growing number of folks saying that trans-people shouldn't have to disclose, and I completely disagree.

First, I'll give a sketch of the opposing and affirmative arguments before moving on to my critique.

The gist of the arguments against obligatory disclosure is something like this:

One of the transgender movement’s goals has been to allow individuals to decide for him or herself whether he or she identifies as male or female, or ‘elsewhere’ on the androgynous spectrum of sex and gender. Given this insistence on individual choice, the imposition of a moral duty on trans-people to disclose their transgender status to potential partners is to prioritise a cis-gendered conception of that trans-person’s identity (i.e. as a man, because the trans-person was assigned male at birth) over that trans-person’s own conception of their identity (i.e. as a woman). This is cis-normativity – the assumption and privileging of the world view that men and women are two distinct and mutually exclusive categories – and this disrespects the rights of transgender persons to self-identify.

And the gist of the arguments for disclosure is as follows:

In sexual intimacy, the right not to associate trumps the right to associate (this is most obvious in terms of consent). The person who wants or doesn’t want to have sex with someone of the same sex or opposite sex has the right to make up their own mind as to whether the potential partner ‘counts’ as a man or a woman – and knowing about the partner’s assigned birth sex or the extent of the transition is informative in that decision. 

When the above argument against is made, usually it is met with charges of transphobia. I personally think that transphobes should still be allowed to be transphobes, and just because one is transphobic doesn’t mean that they should be having sex with trans-people against their will - either by willful deception or lies of omission. 

I think that there is another issue that is neglected, here, and its neglect allows for some false assumptions and quick arguments to be made which, ultimately, end up being guilt-trips. The issue has to do with a person's object of desire.

Now, the issue with a lot of post-modern social justice stuff is a confusion on the part of such thinkers between the relationship between the world, words, and the mind, and the ‘world altering’ capacities of speech. To them, speech and language are primary - and we're to believe this because we think and communicate through linguistic signs, and since our experiences with each other and the world are so mediated through those signs, and all of their constituent contingencies, we cannot hope to 'get at' the world in a fully accurate sense.

We speak and act in ways that relate to the world all the time, and the ways in which we relate to the world are facilitated through our mental states (beliefs, desires, perceptions, and intentions). Our mental states can be divided up into two categories:

I. States that currently exist,

II. States that are yet to exist.

Mental states of type I are belief, and depict the world as being in a state that is held in that belief. Such a state is said to have a mind-to-world relation, or direction of fit. 

So, a belief depicts the world as being in a state such that the belief is true. A belief is satisfied when it fits the world. Beliefs concern with facts.

Mental states of type II are desires and expresses a yet-to-be-realised state that matches the desire. Such a state is said to have a world-to-mind relation, or direction of fit. 

So, a desire expresses a wish that the world be such that the desire is true. A desire is satisfied when the world fits it. Desires concern with what is to be brought about.

In short, the mind-to-world relation of beliefs is about getting the words (more strictly their propositional content) to match the world, whereas the world-to-mind relation of desires is about getting the world to match the words (propositional content).

So, what does this have to do with transgender disclosure in intimate scenarios? 

I think it has everything to do with it. First, I think that beliefs and desires are integral to our behaviour, and to not adequately account for those in the pursuit of explaining human social  phenomena is to miss the boat entirely. Secondly, there probably no arena more complicated than sex wherein beliefs and desires play a significant role, and so we should take that seriously. There is usually a rejoinder to the insistence on trans disclosure.

In a case where a heterosexual man says that he is only attracted to biological women, and so trans-women don’t cut it since they’re not biological women, the response is usually: ‘so you are a man who is solely attracted to 'woman with vaginas', and one day you see a woman - who unbeknownst to you is a trans-woman - and you think she is attractive. Are you not attracted to a trans-woman? It seems like you are since you felt attraction to a trans-woman, and since trans-women are ‘women’, I fail to see the difference, here’

I think this misses the key point.

The question is about a man who is solely attracted to ‘women with vaginas’ experiencing attraction to a trans-woman (without a 'vagina' - to add further fuel to the fire: post-op trans-women still don't have vaginas, but a facsimile of one). Unless that man knew that the person he was feeling attraction towards was trans, then he wouldn’t be feeling attraction to a trans-woman as a whole. I think that he’d be feeling attraction to the characteristics he is attracted to that are being projected on the body of a trans-woman. In short, he'd be feeling attraction to what he thought was a woman. 

To make this clearer, I hope, here is an analogy: say a man is walking down the street and sees a young female approaching him. She is, by his lights, a beautiful young woman with all the sexual characteristics he is attracted to. They start up a conversation and he finds out that she is 15. Once he finds this out, he politely ceases the conversation. She’s far too young for him. 

Now, was this man attracted to a 15 year old girl? I do not think so. I think that he was attracted to the typical female mature sexual characteristics that happened to be broadcast on the body of a 15 year old girl. Sexual attraction is not merely a set of feelings: they’re feelings that are directed at a certain thing: men, women, animals, inanimate objects: anything under the Sun…. including the Sun. Surely people can be attracted to trans-people. Some trans-folks pass well enough for some. Some folks may not even care about passing. That said, I fail to see how a heterosexual male, for example, a biological male who is attracted to biological females, is a bigot because that male won’t date a biological male who broadcasts facsimiles of the sexual characteristics of a female.

In this scenario, the man couldn't have been attracted to the 15 year old girl because the 15 year old girl was not what he desired, nor was she what he had initially believed her to be (an attractive adult woman). 

In such a case, and I take this to be analogous for the trans-disclosure issue, the belief was false: it depicted the world as being in such-and-such a state, but that belief wasn't satisfied because it didn't fit the world. (The 15 year old girl was not an attractive adult woman). 

For the man's desire, it certainly expressed a yet-to-be-realised state of affairs that matched the desire, but it also wasn't satisfied since the world didn't fit it. (He didn't desire a 15 year old girl, but an attractive adult woman). 

Now, the same goes for the transgender scenario. Certainly advocates would call such people transphobic, but that doesn't mean these people are actually attracted to trans-people but just won't admit it to themselves, in fact, it'd be the opposite, and it certainly doesn't mean that trans-folks are owed any sexual duties from them since the right to not associate always trumps the right to associate. 

The arguments from the trans-advocates regarding disclosure are essentially attempts at guilt tripping others into sleeping with trans-people, and if they cannot convince someone, then they revert to the ad hominem, 'transphobe'. This strikes me as quite odd given the insistence on consent and it's primacy, as well as the notion that it can be withdrawn at anytime and for any reason. No one should be forced to do anything that they don't wish to. Consent has to be affirmative and enthusiastic, etc. 

Fine, then. Here's some sex advice: if you don't want to have sex with someone because you don't like their face, the way they talk or walk, their political stances or taste in music: don't. Having sex with someone for social justice is never, ever, obligatory.