Yesterday in my Gender class, a student asked me whether I thought that a transgendered person has a moral obligation to disclose that he or she has had sexual reassignment surgery. Wow! What a question!
This sparked much debate in the classroom to say the very least! The person that asked the question thought it would be terrible to find out after falling in love that his girlfriend used to be a man. His biggest issue with all of it was to find out that the person he thought of as a woman, was incapable of bearing children. Then the issue came up about general male expectations and stereotypes…that most men would be freaked out to find out their girlfriend used to be a male.
Most women would too, but women tend to be more gender flexible.
Do you remember the movies “Crying Game” and “Boys Don’t Cry”? Well, it didn’t go over too well when each of the main characters came out or were found out. People don’t like to be deceived especially on that level. And a lot of men really have trouble with issues surrounding masculinity.
It also seems to be a difficult concept to grasp; one’s mind not agreeing with what they see when they look down. How can that happen? Can’t therapy help? They are just confused. Well…research shows that therapy can’t help and that it may happen during a hormone release in fetal development. They aren’t just confused.
How do we help these folks? Be supportive and even if we don’t understand, be tolerant. We would want the same if we were facing some confusing personal issues.
The class agreed as a whole, that yes, there is a moral obligation to disclose that
kind of information. The class, however, could not agree as to what point one should disclose that information…other than not on the first date!
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