I’m 26, straight, and male. I consider myself a socially progressive person, have been a vocal supporter of LGBT issues since high school, and was president of my college Gay-Straight Alliance. Here’s my issue: I fully support the trans community. I have numerous friends in varying states of transition and I’m 100 percent behind them. But in my own dating life, I wouldn’t feel comfortable dating/having sex with a woman who had at one point in her life been a man. I realize I wouldn’t be fucking a dude, but it’s a mental hurdle I can’t clear. All my LGBTQA friends—be they trans, gay, bi—call me a transphobe, because if I were truly on their side, if I truly “understood,” then sex with a MTF straight woman would be no different than sex with a cisgender straight woman. Do I have the right to not feel comfortable with the idea (or reality) of having sex with these women and still consider myself a supporter of the trans community? Are my friends being unreasonable? Or am I a hypocrite?
Fears Real Activism
Undermined [by] Dick
“He’s not transphobic—not in my book,” says Kate Bornstein, author, performer, “advocate for teens, freaks, and other outlaws,” and herself a trans woman. “One more thing he’s not is straight. Sex-positive, supportive of trans folk, and heterosexual? Cool! He’s a queer heterosexual—and some of my best friends are queer heterosexuals.”
As for your specific issue—you’re not attracted to trans women—Bornstein says that by itself isn’t evidence of transphobia.
“A queer heterosexual is just as entitled to the fulfillment of their sex and gender desires as anyone else,” says Bornstein. “Sometimes those desires depend on the nature of their lover’s body. Well, trans people have bodies that are different than cis people’s bodies. We’re two (or more) mints in one—a physical blend that attracts a lot of people. FRAUD just doesn’t happen to be one of them. The fact that he’s sensitive to that blending of genders in our bodies does not make him transphobic.”
What can you do about it?
“Go have good sex with cis women,” says Bornstein. (Don’t know what “cis” means in this context? See: tinyurl.com/cisdefine.)
Whatever else you do, FRAUD, Bornstein wants you to stop identifying as straight.
“He’s part of our queer tribe,” she says. “And who knows? One day, he might meet the right trans person.”
And who knows? One day, your cranky LGBTQA friends might accept who you are just as you’ve accepted them. Make an effort to use “attracted to cis women” in place of “wouldn’t feel comfortable dating” trans women, and you’ll hasten that day’s arrival.
Kate Bornstein’s new memoir, A Queer and Pleasant Danger (Beacon Press), will be published in the spring. Follow her on Twitter @katebornstein. (Follow me @fakedansavage.)
I’m a 26-year-old guy in a polyamorous relationship. As this is my first kick at the poly can, I wasn’t dying to tell my family, “Hey, I’m dating a married woman!” However, through the magic of Facebook, my brother found out that the girl I’m seeing has a husband. Once I was “busted,” I discussed the situation with my sister-in-law. The issue is that my GF and her husband have a 10-year-old son. My brother has compared the poly community to drug addicts and stated that CPS should remove my girlfriend’s child from her home, etc. My brother and his wife are now threatening to cut me out of their lives—as well as their children’s lives, whom I care for a great deal—if I don’t dump the girlfriend. Thoughts?
Forced To Pick
Right off the top of my head: Your brother is a shit-smeared asshole, your sister-in-law is an ass-smeared shithole, and they’d be doing you a huge favor if they cut you out of their lives.
Pick the GF, FTP. That might mean you won’t see your nieces/nephews for a while, which would be sad for you and bad for those kids (children with crazy, controlling parents need to spend quality time with saner family members). But if you dump your girlfriend at their insistence—if you fail to stand up to them—you will have established a dangerous precedent: Your love life isn’t yours to manage, it’s theirs, and all your future partners will be subject to their batshittery/scrutiny and, if they disapprove of any future girlfriends (concurrent or subsequent), they will attempt to exercise the veto power you ceded to them during this conflict.
Your brother and sister-in-law are bullies, FTP, and you’ve got to defend yourself. So long as your GF and her husband aren’t doing anything inappropriate in front of their son and they’re not placing unfair burdens on their son (they don’t expect him to keep secrets, if they’re not out about being poly; they don’t expect him to be out about his parents being poly, if they are out and he’s not comfortable sharing that info with his friends), you need to come to their defense, too. And you might want to consult a lawyer now, just in case your brother and sister-in-law call CPS.
I am a 29-year-old male with a fetish for snapping pictures of women’s legs and feet in nylons. I look for women online who will allow me to pay them to take these pictures. I recently posted an ad and received a reply from a coworker. I find her very attractive and would like to photograph her legs and feet. How should I handle this?
Sent From My Mobile Device
Here’s a relevant story from the files: Vanilla Gay pays a social call on Kinky Gay. KG informs VG that there’s a Hot Dude tied up in his playroom. KG invites VG to view HD. KG is right: HD is hot. HD is also, as it turns out, one of VG’s coworkers—one of VG’s straight coworkers.
It was an unexpected twist of fate—HD didn’t know that VG and KG were friends—that resulted in VG discovering something about HD that HD didn’t choose to reveal to VG. (A twist of fate and the rules HD agreed to when he played with KG: HD had consented to KG showing him off.) While it’s possible that HD wouldn’t have cared that VG knew his secret, it was likelier that HD, if he knew VG knew his bi-for-bondage secret, would’ve felt embarrassed around his coworker—not to mention compromised during any routine workplace conflicts with VG.
I urged VG to keep his mouth shut.
In your case, SFMMD, while it’s possible that your coworker doesn’t care who knows that she does fetish modeling on the side for extra money and/or thrills, it’s likelier that she would be embarrassed to learn that someone she knows professionally discovered what she’s doing. There are plenty of other women out there, and plenty of other legs and feet to photograph. Keep your mouth shut.
I was reading a letter in your archives from a woman who didn’t have much libido. I was disappointed that you didn’t mention that decreased libido is a common side effect of almost every form of hormonal birth control. The first thing a woman with low libido should do, if she’s been on the same pill for years, is to switch methods. I would love it if you’d mention this in your column.
Spread The Word
Done and done.
@255 – rereading, I see you brought up comparisons used to make many different points, so I’ll just say that my comparisons were intended to create a space for empathy.
@248 Wow I hope you’re right…and that it applies to other states. I’ve never heard of CPS caring if someone is in an open marriage.
Commenters like #152 make me think “Polyphobia” is the new wave of bigotry to erupt, now that homophobia and transphobia are on the decline.
FTP’s letter just shows how desperate people like FTP’s brother are for a morality police. They believe there should be one. They look around. They don’t see one. They remain certain that FTP’s behavior is wrong and that it’s hurting children. They’re so convinced that there has to be a morality police that they see it in CPS. I imagine they’re bitterly disappointed when CPS doesn’t live up to their expectations.
The first letter was so made up just to speak w/ that expert. “All” of his friends call him a transphobe? Why does this even come up in conversation? He shouldn’t have to talk about who he’s attracted to/not attracted to.
Fake.
God save us all from bigoted relatives who either do not understand LGBT issues or are simply shit-heads. The B-I-L & S-I-L did not understand my defence of a family member finding her true love and marrying her. They are more fundamentally religious (Orthodox Jewish) and boycotted the wedding (a lovely affair BTW) & stated that if I defend their lifestyle, I am probably a closeted gay as well. (Did not use a PC name – jeez for religious people, they sure do use the Q word without any good context)
My response, at the dinnertable BTW, is that they are likely shitheads and will remain so.
@254: Yep–you remain a cloud of carbon monoxide spewing mystery to me.
How’s your private helicopter to and from Bellevue Square running?
This story is not really convincing. What if the person with the fist is your father? Does that mean that you should not rule out incest? What if it is a 10-year old? Does that mean that you should not be prejudiced against pedophilia?
@264: There are social taboos against incest and pedophilia. We don’t use the derogatory word “prejudice” in those circumstances, because our society approves of those prejudices. So we call them taboos, instead.
To put prejudice against the transgendered in the same category is harmful to real people. It should not be socially acceptable to say “I would never have sex with a woman whose sex chromosomes are XY.” Think whatever you want inside your head. But the only reason for announcing that general rule is to win other people’s reassurance that you’re still a good person. If you want to be a good person, think of people as people first, not as categories you will or won’t fuck.
@119, 122, 123: Here’s my take on poly as it relates to the term queer.
As 119 says, being to be poly is to be a member of a sexual minority, but it is independent of the hetero-bi-homosexual spectrum. “Straight” is commonly understood to mean heterosexual, and while it sometimes has other connotations, that seems to be the vast majority of its meaning. So if a person is poly and heterosexual, I don’t think it’s strange for them to identify as straight; in fact, I would expect them to do so.
One thing I think is interesting in this thread in general is that “queer” and “straight” are presented as opposites, and I personally don’t think of them that way. I often see straight, kinky people or straight, poly people identify as queer because their experience as a member of a sexual minority makes them feel more at home identifying as queer. I personally think that this makes sense: the “t” in “LGBTQ” isn’t an identity on the gay-bi-straight spectrum either, and poly and kinky people experience a lot of the same kinds of prejudice as other sexual minorities.
Basically, I think that all hetero people should identify as straight, but that if they are straights who are also members of sexual minorities, they should be able to call themselves queer without people telling them they’re wrong. Or not adopt the queer label if they don’t feel like it fits.
Ms Cute – Well, it is true that one might react quite differently, in the sentence, “I don’t date/boink anyone’s who’s X,” X being one point of identity or another, if the verb were changed to HIRE (except, I suppose, if X=under legal age, although that’s temporary).
I can’t believe we’re even HAVING this discussion.
It makes me want to tear out my hair just to watch you all do it.
And now I’m doing it! AAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!
Ms Erica @265 – I like your point, but wonder if the degree of volition in a particular case changes anything for you. Just as an example, I think I can visualize your saying, “I will never have a relationship (knowingly) with a hard-line Republican.” Not that it would shock me if you would, just that something such as religion or politics might be different.
@269 I guess the point of announcing that (rather than keeping it to myself) would be in hopes of inspiring my fellow Democrats and demoralizing hard-line Republicans. Not sure how well that would work, as a political tactic.
But telling people that I’m (sexually) repulsed by some aspect about them that is permanent and involuntary does seem even less acceptable.
Not wanting to sleep with a MTF trans person doesn’t make a person straight. If you survey what turns off gay men the most, the answer is “fems.” Ironic, huh? Well, as one guy said, “if I wanted a woman, I’d be straight!” In truth, I’ve known drag queens and transsexuals and the men who loved them, and they’re neither gay nor straight. They’re something else, since they’re not attracted to macho gay men nor to straight women. They like trannies, period. But this guy ain’t one of’em.
I suppose the one thing that makes sex so difficult to accept as “my own choice” — I am working on my sexual happiness, which concerns me, and if it so happens that I’m not attracted by the idea of a sex-change opperation, to the extent that it turns me off, i.e., I couldn’t be sexually happy with a trans person and I would make her unhappy if I tried — is that it involves other people.
Sex and love, love and sex. If I’m not sexually attracted to the idea of trans people, that means I’m “transphobic” at some level.
So if you’re not attracted to the “idea” of BDSM, or watersports, or scat… if they cross a boundary for you, to the extent that you would terminate a relationship if your partner suddenly revealed an interest in these activities and wanted to icnlude you… then you’re a bigot?
So you no longer have the right to define by yourself the parameters within which you’re willing to look for sexual happiness?
I cannot exclude something I don’t like from my search path for sexual happiness simply because there are people who identify with it — people I respect and whose decision to act in accordance with their nature I also respect, but who I would not like to have sex with — without being a bigot?
I cannot dislike chocolate as food without being a bigot, since there are people who like chocolate as food?
I think the only reason why people feel strongly that me not being sexually attracted to some group of people — by the idea that defines this group even — is still the confusion between sex and love.
The implication that I cannot really fully respect someone if there is something about him/her that turns me off as an idea. So, if I, as a straight man, really don’t like to sleep with men, am I prejudiced against males? Does that imply that I cannot respect, like, and have deep relationships with other males?
Sexual preference is sexual preference. It is what works for me in bed. It does not determine how I treat people. And in the end, it’s how I treat people that determines whether or not I’m a bigot, consciously or unconsciously.
By confusing lack of sexual attraction with ‘ickiness’, ‘disgust’, ‘impossibility to connect’, this confusion illustrates one of the most interesting philosophical dangers in the confusion between sex and love, attraction and connection, desire and admiration, that is so deeply embedded in our culture.
The most famous husband of a trannie in American History was Sitting Bull, whose wife was “winkte” which is Lakota for a trannie.
@EricaP, who wrote:
I’m not so sure. I can see people making the claim for the reason you mention, but I can see also other reasons — for instance, simply making a statement of fact (as people will state their preferences in dating sites, or will discuss them later on with their dates, etc.).
When a gay man comes out of the closet, he does make the claim — implicit or explicit — that he does not want to have sex with women. Just as trans people, women (cis or trans) did not ‘choose’ to be women, but were born like that. One could claim that the gay guy who claims he would never sleep with them is thereby being ‘bigotted’ (or conversely, the straight guy who claims he’d never have sex with other men).
There are of course reasons for our preferences, just as there are reasons for having this kink rather than that kink, and so on. But ‘bigotry’ is something else, to me; bigotry is acting on one’s feeling/belief of superiority with respect to some other group so as to harm them. But when I simply define the limits within which sex would work for me, I am not doing harm to others — unless you think denying access to my body is such harm.
If we admit people are entitled to their kinks, then they’re entitled also to their anti-kinks. If we’re entitled to our turn-ons, we’re also entitled to our turn-offs. As long as all they do is define sexual happiness for us, as long as we’re not imposing our criteria on others and their sexual happiness, there is nothing bigotted about that. It’s simply being who you are.
@271 I’ve known drag queens and transsexuals and the men who loved them, and they’re neither gay nor straight. They’re something else, since they’re not attracted to macho gay men nor to straight women. They like trannies, period. But this guy ain’t one of’em.
oh great, now we are back to square one, theres so many transphobia on this thread its not even funny. Why would you compare “trannies” to “drag queen” can a man not identify with being straight while still be in a relationship with a transsexual? Do you know its offensive to call someone a tranny especially when you are not? especially when you are basically saying drag queens and “trannies” are the same thing?
@274
I think there is a difference between saying transsexual women can never turn me on for some reasons, as opposed to saying I am not comfortable with the idea of having sex with women who were once a man, which is how the original poster put it.
In fact now that i read more closely, FRAUD never made the claim that transsexuals cant turn him on, or that he cannot be attracted to trans women, he just “cant feel comfortable” being with one because he couldnt get through the “mental hurdle” of ” dating/having sex with a woman who had at one point in her life been a man. “
I do feel that if he truly understand that alot of trans women do not ever identify as being a “man” , than he would maybe get over his “mental hurdle”.
Yeah, I cant believe a week later I am still talking about this but just as a side note, I cant tell you how many times men would say they can always tell if a woman is transsexual, hence, they can control and affirm their belief that they will never be attracted to a transsexual.
This is not about a man saying he is not turned on by bigger women or Chinese women or tall women. This is not a matter of sexual turn on, because there is no way a man can tell before hand if a woman has XX or XY in their DNA, so it boils down to the idea a man has about trans women, why doesn’t he feel comfortable in his mind despite the fact their body is saying yes or interested to a woman who’s transsexual?
Its KIND of like saying, you know, I don’t mind fucking a sex worker, I just don’t feel comfortable with the idea of dating a sex worker.
Thats really what i got from the FRAUD’S question. If he had said to Dan, whats wrong with me? I tried to look at transsexual porn everyday and i just cant get hard looking at those women, am i still an ally of trans community??? , that would have been a different story, but FRAUD is dealing with something else that is at least partly his fault.
@73 and @82, you make some good points but you seem to assume that all biological markers of sex line up and that it’s only the subjective experience of gender that doesn’t match up in pre-operative transsexuals. However, there are three biological markers and they don’t always line up: chromosomes, genitals and hormones.
There are some babies born with ambiguous genitalia. Parents in those cases are often forced to make an arbitrary decision – is it a boy or a girl? And sometimes the kid grows up and decides the parents made the wrong decision. How do we know who was right and who was wrong? How can anyone possibly ever know for sure?
Disorders of the chromosome can make biological sex ambiguous as well. For example, XX male syndrome:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syn….
Different hormone levels are also associated with different genders. Maybe an XY person with male genitalia has excess “female” hormones and lowered testosterone and that contributes to his feeling that he should have been born a woman. Now I suppose you could argue that hormones could “fix” the situation, but how can we be sure that the hormones were wrong but the chromosome and genitalia combination were correct? Which of the three should we decide reins supreme? And if there is no good way to decide, why shouldn’t we take the transexual’s subjective experience into account?
So when someone says they feel like they aren’t the gender they were supposed to be, or they were born the wrong gender, etc. how do we know there is no biological basis for the ambiguity? Maybe it’s not all in their head. Maybe we don’t know as much about the sexes as we think we do. There is a lot more grey area than people realize or would feel comfortable with.
The best five words ever to come out of the Savage Love comments section? I think so.
Whatever turns you on, turns you on. I’m not trying to blame anyone for that. Even if there may be psychological reasons why someone likes to be beaten, or only likes one kind of sex, or only with one kind of person — that’s just the way their wobbly bits work. Sure, fine.
But I do care how you treat people around you. If you’re on a dating site, feel free to be specific, in a generally, positive way: “I’m looking for a cute, sensible blond Christian woman, shorter than me, who likes giving blowjobs, and who has no children but would like to in the future.”
But know that if you say it in negative terms, it sounds offensive: “Don’t contact me if you’re black, lesbian, male, Muslim, were ever molested or raped, had reconstructive surgery of any kind, have fertility issues, have a bad relationship with your mother, are insecure, have bad teeth, or have any kind of Brooklyn accent. Those are all turn-offs, and I am not comfortable even thinking about sex with you.”
There’s a difference between having self-knowledge of what your wobbly bits like, and, on the other hand, telling people that they fall into some category that turns you off.
This isn’t rocket science, people. In elementary school you’re allowed to invite only your friends to your birthday party. But you don’t get to go around telling everyone else about your fun party and how they’re not invited. And if you say – “I would never invite someone Jewish to my party,” then, yes, you’re a bigot. And that’s different from simply inviting your friends, none of whom happen to be Jewish.
Also, Mr. Hunter “my dick longs for woman” 78: for fuck’s sake, leave Erica alone. I know she’s perfectly capable of looking out for herself, but from a bystander’s perspective, your compulsive need to bait her is both pathetic and creepy.
@281 no warm-up or lube. But hardly relevant to the discussion at hand.
@280 “when someone says they were born the wrong gender, etc. how do we know there is no biological basis for the ambiguity? Maybe it’s not all in their head. Maybe we don’t know as much about the sexes as we think we do.”
Well said.
@272 “it’s how I treat people that determines whether or not I’m a bigot.”
But what you say to them is part of how you treat them. And if you treat transwomen as “fake” women by emphasizing in conversations that of course you could never be attracted to any of them, or anyone like them (and with a look of disgust on your face, as you imagine their body), that’s treating your friends badly.
@279: Hunter—-you’re back!!
How was your Thanksgiving?
@278: EricaP, who said that anyone would ever say things to someone like “I could never be attracted to you or any member of a group to which you belong,” especially with a “look of disgust” on one’s face as one imagines their body?
That’s plain old bad manners, and neither the lw nor anyone else has suggested that anyone is doing that.
Of course we should all treat everyone with dignity and respect and there’s absolutely nothing in the original letter or in any subsequent posting in this thread to suggest that anyone has either done or advocates doing anything else.
@289 The LW didn’t keep his disinterest to himself, politely declining any transwoman who overtly came on to him. He talked with his transgendered friends (and to Dan) about how he couldn’t see any transwoman as a woman he might consider sexually.
If he called himself an ally to women in a feminist organization, but he insisted on telling them that he could never think of them sexually, because they’re not real women, they’re feminists… they would rightly feel offended.
Ms Erica – In the spirit of my imagining you meeting Mrs Bachmann and the two of you getting on brilliantly until you realize she’s a fundamentalist and she realizes you’re into BDSM:
You are at lunch with a group of about half a dozen like-thinking women. A frenemy comes in late and pronounces herself too distraught to eat. She’d had what had seemed like a pretty good date the night before, only she found out after they had sex that she’d just boinked a Gingrich campaign strategist. If the mood of the table were about right and the woman in question just the right sort of frenemy, I can see it.
I think we can all agree if FRAUD wants to be 100 percent behind trans women he wouldnt say this
“I wouldn’t feel comfortable dating/having sex with a woman who had at one point in her life been a man.”
I am kind of disappointed at Kate. B ‘s response overall. I dont know why she called the man a queer heterosexual and i dont know why she didnt call FRAUD up on the fact that he said trans women used to be men and thats why he can’t feel comfortable being with them like other women who were born biological female.
Fraud should be aleast ware that part of his discomfort comes from purely his idea that trans women were once men, an idea that alot of trans people disagree with.
Yeah I am splitting hair, but so what? how often do we get to talk about how men see or treat trans women on Dan savage?
I want to hear stories of men who fall in love and get married even with both PRE op and POST op trans women, i want to hear positive love stories, otherwise its just too depressing for me.
oops–I meant #287
I feel like i need to say this over and over again, FRAUD never said he doesnt feel sexually attracted to trans women, from his question, it could very well be that he can be sexually attracted to trans women, but he doesnt want to be with them nevertheless because he cant get over the fact that they were once men!
So it is Fraud’s idea that needs to be challenged, and rightly so, if he choose to be 100 percent behind trans women as he claim he is.
you cant quite compare this to any other example.
@290:
Oh, EricaP, I can’t believe I’m getting dragged into this, but you’re being so deliberately obtuse, I can’t stand it!
Read the letter again. Nowhere in it does FRAUD give us a verbatim account of the discussions he has with his friends. He never once gives a direct quote of anything he has said to anyone else.
Indeed, I can think of many, many reasons that anyone would phrase a letter to an advice columnist, especially one in which the lw was questioning his own attitudes or values, differently than he’d discuss the same issue with friends and co-workers.
Maybe the lw’s friends/co-workers had noticed that he laments about the dearth of available women to date and suggested he open his dating pool to include them, and he politely declined. This could have led to a challenge, which in turn could have led to FRAUD’s being called transphobic, which led to him wondering if he is indeed transphobic and writing to Dan about it.
You’ve got no clue that FRAUD was ever disrespectful or hurtful in his direct conversation, yet you insist on going on ad infinitum accusing him of bigotry and claiming that he deliberately makes insensitive comments about his preferences. This has led you to suggesting that to have any preferences at all in the matter of sexual attraction is to be “naive” and “prejudiced.” It has led you to absurd “what if” scenarios involving anonymous, blindfolded fisting sessions. It has led to your assumption that no one is capable of graciously turning another person’s advances down, and assuming that every sexual rejection is couched in hurtful language, WHEN THERE IS NOTHING IN THE ORIGINAL LETTER TO JUSTIFY THIS.
I find it telling that you’d rather see him as an utter asshole than give him the benefit of any doubt.
“deliberately obtuse”? really.
FRAUD says: “All my LGBTQA friends…call me a transphobe, because [I think] sex with a MTF straight woman [is] different than sex with a cisgender straight woman.”
Sex with any particular woman is different, of course, from sex with any other woman. But there is no way in which sex with a transwoman is specifically, identifiably different from sex with a generic woman. Except in his head. (And in the head of most of the people in this thread.)
@291 vennominon, feel free to call me obtuse, just not deliberately so. I’ve no idea what your point is. Would this “frenemy” be a covert Republican? Is she upset, or feigning upset? If the mood were right, what would the table of half a dozen like-thinking women do? And what are the odds I could find “half a dozen like-thinking women” at this point, anyway?
@295 >> This has led you to suggesting that to have any preferences at all in the matter of sexual attraction is to be “naive” and “prejudiced.” >>
Preferences are fine. Absolute predictions are naive, as in your statement @206: “I could never like having sex with a woman.”
@291/298 oh, wait… the frenemy is my rival? So I seize the opportunity to point out how ‘prejudiced’ she is, showing her up among our friends by demonstrating her unreasoning bias against Republicans? Am I closer to your point?
I’d have to say that, if I were in his position, I’d at least go on the down low about my poly relationships. His relatives may be bullies, but I care much more about my family than about any here-today, gone-tomorrow hookup. Family is forever.
This is rapidly devolving into an X-rated Green Eggs and Ham. (Would you like it with a fox? Would you like it in her box? )
If somebody says they aren’t interested, and they are sure enough of their disinterest that they aren’t even interested in considering a hypothetical, it isn’t your job to go all Sam-I-Am on them and insist “well, you just haven’t met the right woman yet.”
@302 Hunt: So did we! All the best. I hope you realize I was kidding with you in past blogs, and not hitting on you!
@303 avast2006: How did you get THAT idea, Dr. Seuss, from someone’s just wishing a fellow blogger and his family a Happy Thanksgiving?
Good grief, Charlie Brown, what next–Lucy Van Pelt should be called upon being “Real In”?
@303: I don’t recall posting anything particularly X-rated.
Ms Erica – It’s just a made-up scenario; I hope it didn’t offend you. It was just that your earlier post made me wonder if you might ever say such a thing. And that was what came to me.
I can see a couple of possibilities here. One would be if your frenemy’s distress started an honest round table discussion in which each one in the group gave an honest self-appraisal of her own capacities in that direction.
However, as the hardest part of the scenario to visualize would be your being at lunch with a group of women (given that, from much of what you post, it’s just easier to visualize your dealings with men), I might write it up as it being a group you’ve known for a long time, the frenemy in question brings out your Catty-Mc-Kit-Kat side, and you could use a good score over her. I’ll gladly stipulate that you catch yourself mentally after you say it, but perhaps just feel that, given the group dynamics, you’re better off not backing down.
@280/286
This IS a biological basis for this ambiguity. They’ve studied it. And I’ve mentioned it before.
Jesus, Erica.
Sex is not a birthday party.
I think people should be comfortable telling their friends both what they like and don’t like. That’s the fun of having friends, isn’t it? My friends know my very picky, very long list of restrictions.
None of the rules are “bigoted”, I don’t think, but most of them are painfully shallow.
I have a good friend who’s Asian but doesn’t really dig on girls that are. Big deal.
The LR is having these conversations among his friends – not wearing a tshirt of his don’ts and won’ts. Maybe some of his friends fall into this catagory but big deal – I think they’ll live. Pretty much any male friend I have falls into the ‘won’t’ catagory for me too. So?
P.S. I know it was an analogy and I usually quite like your points but that one was way off in my books. I feel like this is probably your lady-socialization showing. You were taught to be “nice” and letting someone know that you’re not sexually interested in them isn’t “nice” so it should be avoided at all costs? It’s as “not nice” as a small child finding out you’ve excluded them from your birthday party? I’m not trying to be offensive but that comparison seemed rather telling to me.
Ms There @292 – I don’t think you are splitting hairs at all, and I was just last night thinking something similar to your conclusion. I realized that I haven’t bought any new books in ages, and had to think a bit to recall the last fiction I read involving a cis-trans relationship. The most recent one I can recall is in one of the novels of Bill Mann. I recuse myself from appraising the work of an old friend, though, and therefore offer no further comment.
I definitely agree about the 100% part. If today were Friday, I might start a side line about pinpointing, but it would get too detailed for too little benefit.
Ms Cute – You have reminded me that I can Christiesplain this. FRAUD’s discomfort potentially reminds me of Major Palgrave’s blood pressure.
In A Caribbean Mystery, nobody at the resort is shocked when Major Palgrave dies. He was old, fonder of Planter’s Punch than was prudent, everybody says he had high blood pressure and a bottle of medicine for it was found in his bungalow. Only Miss Marple knows that Major Palgrave was about to show her what he claimed to be a picture of a murderer when he saw someone and hastily put his snapshots away.
Luckily for Miss Marple, when some women on the beach lament Major Palgrave’s carelessness of his health, Mr Rafiel contradicts them. Major Palgrave didn’t have high blood pressure; he’d told Mr Rafiel so. Evelyn Hillingdon or Esther Walters counters that one doesn’t go saying that one hasn’t got something, while Miss Marple gets in a gentle dig by telling Mr Rafiel that the Major was probably boasting; gentlemen do. But it turns out that Mr Rafiel, on an occasion when Major Palgrave was overindulging, had told him he should drink less and think of his blood pressure. But Major Palgrave’s doctor had assured him that he had nothing to worry about in that line.
I see that Ms Driasis has made a more explicit post addressing this point, but I am not going to erase a good Christiesplain. Miss Marple would be displeased with me.