WETMATTOS'S PROFILE

author=Corfaisus

author=WetMattos

author=Corfaisus

author=WetMattos
I don't care about your intention, i care about impact.

Let's discuss this.

Also, I've gone back and corrected my mistake.

*sighs*

Thanks for the redaction.

Very well. What is there to be discussed?

Everything. What do you mean? How is it applicable? How can one create in a way that properly reflects what their work says with what they mean to say to everyone who might come across it? How do we stop people from being people or creating what we don't want to see? Is there a time and a place for nudie pics?

How do we make the world a better place for all?
When does the hurting stop?

In order.

1) I can't judge you for your intentions because i can't know of your intentions, but i do feel the impact of your actions. As such, i can only evaluate things on their consequences and means, but not in their intended ends.
2) Most relevant in social justice conversations, honestly i apply it to everything with good results. Specially in the "so, this is hurtful, and you might want to reconsider the way you help" way, since being mentally ill makes us very inviting to yoga inductions, apparently.
3) Oh, boy. Listening. Studying. Exploring. Making mistakes in controlled environments with people who are willing to be vulnerable to eventually suggest ways to circunvent them - like me, now. Making mistakes nonetheless, owning both intention and impact, and correcting oneself in face of criticism. Understanding that some people won't get it anyway, but that doesn't mean you must wholly ignore them. Understanding that different people have different stakes involved in some content, and how that affect them, both socially and individually, and being mindful of those differences.
4) This is a bit of a pitfall question. Do we stop people from creating things we don't want to see? No, we don't. Does wanting to limit the creation of perceived harmful content is a desire of 'stopping people from being people'? Not at all, because this is not the only way to be a person.
5) Negotiation goes a long way. Every person has their own time and place for nudies, and asking about it - and subsequently respecting their answers and reactions - works very well :3
6) Among other things, creating media that better reflect people's realities and their lived experiences, so we can change our cultural narrative about some groups.
7) Never. Pain is a part of human experience. Though some pains can be subsided with community effort and social change.

Anything else you feel like listening me on? :D

author=Solitayre
'Intentions vs Impact' to me is getting into some 'death of the author' territory where you could find whole essays on the subject, and probably belongs in its own thread. And if you guys want to talk about that I think it would be a very interesting discussion that I'd probably want to take part in, but we should probably decouple it from this discussion.

Yes, I know this whole page was basically a derail already but we should try to keep some organization.

At this point, i'm just cherishing the fact that we have been mostly civil, and fostering this position in hopes that the next time we enter a conversation about social justice, we have precedents on it :3

author=Corfaisus

author=WetMattos
Also, and this will come as a double post, because i need you to read this, comparing us to a fucking sexist murderer is a very violent slippery slope, and one particularly cruel given how many of us are fucking murdered because, though we have all the 'right parts', somehow not having the 'right parts' in a distant past makes people angry.

So, back off.

You mistook what I said as a personal attack or at the very least an attack against trans people. What I very clearly meant was that this idea of "people don't find me attractive means they're bigots" is faulty.

So no, assuming this is the one reason in which I'm obligated to do so, I'm not going to "back off". If I back off, it's because I've run out of valid things to say.

No 'mistaking'. I am saying this particular comparison is hurtful and cruel in our circunstances, whether your intention was attacking or not. I don't care about your intention, i care about impact. And on it's consequences, this is a cruel, callous and hurtful comparison.

The least you can do is recognize this, and be mindful of what is being said. You can make this point without comparing the murdered with a murdered, no?

author=Corfaisus
There's also a lot of shitty people who are biologically one way or another. It's not just the physical, but that's a pretty easy place to start. It's what we all do.

What I feel you're slipping into is a misconception that sexuality is in some way unnatural, which has been used to dehumanize gays, lesbians and bisexuals throughout history.

So, let my clarify my starting point.

Sociologically, my perspective is the social constructionism, which postulates that all definitions and concepts are socially constructed and as such, our understanding of the phenomena they describe is also socially mediated. A very good overview of this perspective can be read here.

With this said, yes, i think all sexuality is socially constructed, and, you could argue 'unnatural', though the earlier may be a better definition. By this, i also mean that heterosexuality, cisness and other 'traditional' ideas are social constructed as well, and thus, there's no 'biological reality' that determines our conceptualization of reality - that is, we're not biologically obliged to call people men and women because there are penises and vaginas, but rather this is a social construction meant to parse this reality.

If i acknowledge that our conceptualization of sexuality is socially constructed, and not natural and/or innate, i also must acknowledge that it is worthy of criticism, and that's what i do. To conflate this with biological essentialism - that is, the idea that 'natural' is 'good', 'unnatural' is 'bad' - is a big misreading of my stance ^,^

And, oh, deconstructing. This might take some time, though very honestly? The link i gave here does a very good job of starting the conversation, and i would suggest its reading before we go further, else i'd need to get very verbose to further explain my starting point on this.

Hoooo, boy, here we went in a very, very curious - and very damaging - tangent.

Let me try to address this point, but be thee warned, this will be a very big wall of text.

author=Kaliesto
I understand there been cases when a person thought the other person was such-and-such a gender in the relationship, but turned out to be the other, and usually the drama never ends well. Does this happen alot? I'm thinking that is part of why transphobia exists because people don't want to get surprised like that, and usually it is quite upsetting for both parties emotions.

There are, among many, two approaches here. One of them depends heavily on feminist critique and critical theory, the other not so much. By the latter, we could say that yes, part of what transphobia is is fear of the unknown. We have had cases where trans people haven't disclosed their original gender assignement, and have been prosecuted on the basis of fraud, among others. The issue is that this does not explain all of the rest - that is, just fear of the unknown don't justify the violence we usually suffer after people discover out original gender assignement, unless we rationalize that this violence is reasonable in these cases. Moreover, the suggestion relies on the idea that all trans people - and here i feel this applies more to trans women - to some degree, have the same characteristics, and these are noticeable at first glance. As Corfaisus put it:

author=Corfaisus
If you have an interest in pursuing someone, you need to lay yourself bare for them from the get-go instead of hiding behind who you think they want you to be. I personally am biologically driven to desire a lifelong, romantic relationship with a biological female. I'm also morally driven to desire a monogamous relationship. If you're biologically male but associate with being internally female (post-SRS is a different and complicated bucket of fish that I haven't yet put much thought into), we can be friends but I'll have to politely decline if you want to go out on a date. Nothing against you personally, this is just who I am.

Here we have an issue. I know of trans women who, despite having made no physical transition whatsoever, have vaginas and a femme presentation. Does these people count as valid for your relationship purposes, or what?

author=Mirak
@Kaliesto: A very long time ago I posed a similar case in another forum i visit and was pelted with stones for even daring to propose it, hopefully here i'll receive more calmed responses.

If you allow me the tangent, quite unsurprisingly - i know of very few people who would have the patience to educate cis folks on this. I, myself, am shaking here - this is a very sensitive topic, and one i'm not sure i'll be able to convey properly. In any other day, my response would be 'go research the damn thing', and quite honestly, i'd feel pretty justified to do that.

author=Mirak
Say that you get into a relationship with someone, that someone never let's you know they are trans, so you make a mistaken assumption that the person, for example, is a woman (and not a trans woman) and engage in a relationship with that person, but then a time comes when you find out they are trans (for dramatic purposes let's say when you're about to have sex), and then drama happens. The lack of communication was a big issue here and if people had known what they were getting into then proper action could have been taken a long time before it got to that point, either by accepting the person regardless, or by politely turning them down if your preference lies elsewhere.

The assumption here is that all trans people - specially trans women - have the same set of genitals.

author=Mirak
When posed by this scenario, people (who claim to be part of the trans community) in that forum then proceeded to aggresively* state that 1) You're transphobic for some reason if you turn the person down regardless of your preferences or likes, 2) When with a trans person, sex should be unnecesary (or preferably non-existent) and never a focal point of the relationship, 3) The fact that you were even surprised means you're a piece of shit, 4) They never had the obligation of letting you know they were trans because apparently that's hurtful, 5) It's your fault if you have a preference to be with a cisgendered person because you most likely haven't critically analized why you have that preference and you definitely have internalized issues that you need to sort out (in other words, you're not allowed to have preferences if you don't want to be transphobic).

Let's unpack these arguments.
1) "You're transphobic for some reason if you turn the person down regardless of your preferences or likes". No. You're transphobic - though i'd argue the most adequate term here is ciscentric - because you have internalized social values that define collective characteristics of attractiveness that, more often than not, leave trans people out of it.

That's because no attraction happens in a vaccuum. And despite the gay movement staunch activism in the direction of the 'born like this' argument, we have no evidence of its validity. Much to the opposite, what we know is that attraction - specially sexual attraction, which is a social construct in itself - is built by both individual idiosyncrasies and social interaction. This is relevant, i'll come back to it later, but let's follow the points put earlier.

2) "When with a trans person, sex should be unnecesary (or preferably non-existent) and never a focal point of the relationship". This is a part of a broader, ongoing discussion about relationships, sex, and something we have been calling allosexuality - which, in very simple terms, a social expectation that human beings are sexual. The point is that the expectation of sex in relationships rely on some very specific, potentially very harmful social tropes, and should be questioned instead of thought of as natural and so on. Though a very, very interesting discussion, it's tangential to what we're dealing with here, and so i'll give myself the right to skip it. But! Bring it up later and, mayhap, i'll have some time to fetch some better written things about it ^,^

3) "The fact that you were even surprised means you're a piece of shit". Ok, so this is a bit of a leap from some early concepts you most possibly haven't had contact with, which is why it sounds so weird at first. The idea is that you folks are still thinking of trans people as not 'real' people. That is:

author=Mirak
Say that you get into a relationship with someone, that someone never let's you know they are trans, so you make a mistaken assumption that the person, for example, is a woman (and not a trans woman)

This here is the second assumption your arguments are being made upon. Trans people aren't 'really' of the gender they say they are. And oh, boy, this comes with a whole lot of theory, from many different perspectives, to unpack and disprove this notion. So, since this is already humongous, i'll do it like this. This is Introduction to Transness and it is the best overview of transness i have on me right now, though there are others. I suggest you folks to read it all - because it's very good - but for the purposes of the argument, reading about Transness, Cisness, Sex and Gender might be enough for now.

4) "They never had the obligation of letting you know they were trans because apparently that's hurtful". For many trans people, being reminded of their assigned sex is hurtful. As in, remembering all the bigotry and discrimination and suffering associated with this is really damn hurtful. And, given that this is only a demand if we understand that trans people aren't 'really' of their respective gender, it comes with an extra layer of pain involved.

5) "It's your fault if you have a preference to be with a cisgendered person because you most likely haven't critically analized why you have that preference and you definitely have internalized issues that you need to sort out (in other words, you're not allowed to have preferences if you don't want to be transphobic". So, if we understand that trans people are actually of the sex and gender they recognize themselves to be, and that attraction is built socially and skewed against trans people, than yes, the idea of not having a relationship with trans people because they are trans, with all the attached assumptions about physiology, behavior and else, is transphobic.

author=Corfaisus
If you have an interest in pursuing someone, you need to lay yourself bare for them from the get-go instead of hiding behind who you think they want you to be. I personally am biologically driven to desire a lifelong, romantic relationship with a biological female. I'm also morally driven to desire a monogamous relationship. If you're biologically male but associate with being internally female (post-SRS is a different and complicated bucket of fish that I haven't yet put much thought into), we can be friends but I'll have to politely decline if you want to go out on a date. Nothing against you personally, this is just who I am.

So arguments like this, though most certainly not in an intentional manner, become bigoted, because they are based on flawed premises about the workings of both trans people and attraction in general. Makes sense?

author=suzy_cheesedreams
...I think the question lies more in why someone who is transgender would feel the need to conceal that part of their identity... In this case it is because the society at large is very hostile to anything that deviates from what is supposedly "normal". And then the reaction of the other party; why do they react the way they do? There are so many variables for how and why people would react/act in that situation, that oversimplifying it like that is already pretty insensitive.

No one appreciates being lied to, but in a scenario like that you would have to think critically about why the person would lie in the context of where they and you fit into society, I think. You don't even have to BE in that situation to think about it, seeing as this is a already a hypothetical.

And no, I don't think that is a "thing". People grouped together by one shared trait or state of being are not identical; they are different people with different attitudes to what they've experienced just like anyone else. In this instance, because of how people who are transgender are typically treated by society and portrayed in culture there is like more cause for someone who is transgender to react negatively to someone else saying something that is insensitive, even if it is well-meaning or that the person thinks they're just asking an innocent enough question, or whatever.

Like WetMattos said earlier, people who aren't transgender would likely not recognize a lot of the idiosyncratic bigotry directed at them and so perceive people who do experience that as being overly sensitive and to have some kind of victim complex. That is extremely harmful and ignorant.

Using this as my closing point because damn, it sums it up pretty nicely.

author=Yellow Magic
It's fair enough if Soli, like yourself, feels strongly about these issues, and he has all the right in the world to call people out on it. It's just that the idea of him outright banning people, or changing the rules to say, idk, NO dissenting opinions allowed (even if said dissenting opinions include stuff like mentioning how they're against sexuality) that, quite frankly, scares me.

For most part, i can't take responsability for what have been said before me, but if anything i have said in any way suggests that i want to ban people who disagree with me, here's me saying that i put that wrong, and that was not what i meant.

That doesn't mean that i support Free Speech as it has been put here, which is a very different point to be made.

author=Sated

wetmattos
That's a way to put it, and honestly here i won't be arguing with you. If, in your perspective, all positions have equal weight and important in all matters, well, who am i to disagree?

I don't think that all positions have equal weight. I'm just aware that I'm not the only one with a set of scales.

That was directed to SnowOwl.

Which does brings me to this...

author=SnowOwl
Please stop it with the whole martyr thing, it's not helping any sort of discussion. Act like adults. If you want respect, don't act like a coddled baby needing protection.
And yes, I do believe that each and every person has the right to an opinion, as long as they state it in a respectful manner. If you don't, you're the one in the wrong.

No martyrdom here, i'm just really tired from having to deal with stubborn folks on a forum on the internet who appear to get really upset that i'm not liberal. Also, if you do believe that people need to act as something, anything, to deserve respect, i feel in the right to call you a bigot, because that's the very definition of respectability politics and i'm not here for it.

With that said, well, i have never questioned the right of people of having opinions. I have, however, pointed out that not every opinion has the same weight in all conversations, and that some opinions, however politely stated, still carry hateful discourses, and thus should be moderated on their repercutions, rather than their presentation. Evidently, what consists of hateful discourses depends on the viewer, but that's what moderation is for, right?