Jew cooties and trans disclosure

NOTE: This post is an analogy between different kinds of discrimination. While I normally avoid these, I thought it was necessary here as I’ll explain below. Still, take it for what it is, a limited and necessarily-flawed analogy.

A man and a woman hook up. The next day, the man finds out the woman is Jewish. He is outraged that she was so deceptive in not telling him. “If I knew she was a Christ-killer, I wouldn’t have touched her with a ten foot pole! What she did is disgusting and grossly immoral.” He presses sexual assault charges.

How sympathetic would you be to the man’s claims? Hopefully not at all. But let’s be more specific about the different parts of his complaint:

• Was the man harmed? Yes: his distress is genuine. It only exists because of his bigotry but it does exist. Perhaps he even has the religious belief that he is now irreversibly hell-bound. Still, he hasn’t been harmed in an objective way, just relative to his terrible beliefs. Jew cooties aren’t a thing.
• The legal dimension: I’d say there should be no recourse despite the genuine psychological suffering he might endure. If the act was consensual and without coercion, I don’t think it can be sexual assault. Even when someone incurs an objective harm (eg. getting HIV from lack of disclosure), it would make sense to pursue a non-sexual-assault charge. There are very limited examples of an actual rape-by-deception conviction and it’s not a well-accepted principle, for various good reasons I think.
• The moral dimension: I don’t think the woman did anything wrong whatsoever. The harm was in the man’s head from his bigotry. There was nothing about the act itself that was duplicitous. You would only expect her to disclose if you think it’s really important to make sure that anti-Semites are 100% comfortable in all their pursuits and never have to endure the unpleasantness of crossing their self-imposed boundaries of racial purity.

I hope everyone’s with me so far; if you’re not there’s not much more I can say. Let’s add some changes to the scenario:

• What the percentage of anti-Semites was extremely high? While this would make it more likely that the decision not to disclose was conscious, does it really change the moral calculus? I don’t think that someone’s obligation to bigots increases just because there are a shitload of them out there and it’s likely that the man she is hooking up with is a bigot.
• What if the woman had lied, instead of just not saying anything? The idea that we should always be honest as a matter of some “higher principles” evokes the privilege of getting to be honest and civility politics bullshit (see a previous post for a longer discussion). In the above scenario with a world full of anti-Semites, the woman puts herself in a dangerous situation, risking her life. Her obligation to keep bigots comfortable and able to live out their bigotries doesn’t outweigh her personal safety or any of the other reasons she might not disclose.
• What if it was a relationship instead of a hookup? If the man was not an anti-Semite, it wouldn’t make a genuine difference. And if he is, it’s a very sad situation and has the potential to be an abusive relationship. In which case, all the more reason against placing the ethical burden on the victim/potential victim to disclose.

Now, crank up the bigotry by some LARGE factor and you have the world that trans people are often forced to live in. The percentage of transphobic people is higher than the percentage of anti-Semites even in the above fictional example. The chances of assault, torture and death are also higher as the tragic stats show.

This even explains the reason for my use of the analogy. The general public are so used to dehumanising trans people that I thought the only way the arguments would be given a chance is if they were applied to a case people might be more sympathetic to. In addition:

• People often cite the idea that “most people would not want to have sex with a trans person” as a reason FOR disclosing. The analogy should explain why that’s fucked up. It’s like saying “because most people in the hypothetical world are anti-Semites, you have an EXTRA obligation to coddle them”.
• The idea of trans people lying by omission implies that they’re some aberration.
• The idea that trans people must disclose is fundamentally confused. We can’t be talking about a case where a person’s body doesn’t match their partner’s cis expectations. In that case, the disclosure is automatic and inevitable. We are only talking about a case where a trans person’s body is read as cis by their partner.

My [ignorant, lay] theory is that until someone is explicitly trans-inclusive (including not expecting people to disclose), their ability to counteract sexism and homophobia are very flawed. Those of us who are cis bear the collective responsibility of creating a world where trans people are reviled, dehumanised, denied every life opportunity imaginable and even tortured and killed — all on a regular basis. And yet it’s the cis person who hasn’t been disclosed to that feels like he (most of the time it is a he) that’s the victim. Chutzpah to the max.

For more info, I recommend this excellent essay by Natalie Reed which first got me thinking years ago.