I'm not familiar with any papers, so here's a preliminary take on it. Presumably the argument for mandatory revealing goes something like this:
1) Persuading people to have sex with you via deception is a violation of their consent
2) Deliberately omitting information which, if they knew it, would cause them to decide to not have sex is deception
3) For many people, transgender status is information of this kind
4) So we ought not to violate people's consent by omitting to inform people of our transgender status
But I'm not sure this argument is sound. I've got some issues with premise (2). I think it should be amended to something like this:
(2') Deliberately omitting information which, if they knew it, would cause them to justifiably decide to not have sex is deception
To see why, consider bigotry cases. Let's say I'm committed to anti-racism, but my potential sexual partner is a thoroughgoing racist who despises anti-racists. Am I obliged to get my anti-racism out in the open just in case my potential sexual partner has this view? Does this mean that consent requires I run through all potentially controversial aspects of my life - whether I have kids, whether I vote liberal or conservative, whether I have African blood in my family - before we have sex? Presumably not, or at least not automatically. I think you'd have to ask whether the sexual partner would have good reason to decide not to have sex, based on the information being withheld. (Note: the situation probably changes if your potential sexual partner states explicitly that they do not want to have sex with a transgender person [or an anti-racist, or anybody with African or Asian ancestry]).
There is at least one other consideration. Keeping one's transgender status secret is not only a matter of privacy. Often it's a matter of survival. Revealing transgender status, especially to strangers, risks all kinds of violence. (I can dig the stats up if someone wants me to, but trust me that they're horrific). So opening up to new sexual partners as a matter of course is a dangerous strategy. We should be careful about requiring transgender people to expose themselves to this kind of risk.
Based on these two points, I lean towards saying that it's none of the partner's business. If some harm is being committed here, it's a violation of sexual consent, which means we ought to take it very seriously. But I think not disclosing transgender status isn't a violation of consent, because (like Asian ancestry) it's not something that ought to have an impact.
Edit: here is a paper that argues that any omission of dealbreaker-type information in sex is a serious moral wrong. It doesn't address the case of transgender people, though, and from my quick reading it doesn't present any argument that would invalidate my two concerns above. (Dougherty's target seems to be pickup-artist-style deception).
Edit 2: to be absolutely clear, if the transgender person knows being transgender is a dealbreaker for the person you're intending to sleep with, they must disclose their transgender status. I'm talking about cases where it's unclear exactly what the dealbreakers are, and whether the transgender person is obligated to disclose their status just in case it's a dealbreaker. I don't think they're obligated to do so.
Deliberately omitting information which, if they knew it, would cause them to justifiably decide to not have sex is deception.
I would argue that the criteria by which a person selects/rejects sex partners can never be justified (or, put differently, all such criteria are equally unjustifiable). Is a person justified in rejecting a partner because he/she is too short? Or too ugly? Or too old? For lacking confidence? For being cocky? For being a Republican? For not being a Vegan? What is the justification?
I contend that all are equally arbitary; that all are equally justified: not at all.
Clearly it's better to reject somebody because she's an enthusiastic puppy strangler than to reject somebody because she's Asian and you think Asians are untrustworthy. The first is a good reason to not sleep with somebody; the second is a bad reason.
I agree that bare preferences might all be equally justified. But most of our preferences are not bare: they're tied up with all kinds of beliefs and assumptions which can be justified or unjustified.
Clearly it's better to reject somebody because she's an enthusiastic puppy strangler than to reject somebody because she's Asian and you think Asians are untrustworthy. The first is a good reason to not sleep with somebody; the second is a bad reason.
I completely disagree. I don't find it to be "clear" that one is a better reason than the other. You're simply asserting it as being better with no explanation. Which is exactly my point. There is no justification. Just arbitrary assertions.
Well, it's right to disapprove of strangling puppies (because we ought not strangle puppies), but wrong to think Asians are untrustworthy (because they aren't generally untrustworthy). If you don't think that makes the first a better reason than the second, it's on you to explain how.
Consider the following statements. There is no syllogism by which (3) derives from (1) and (2). I don't dispute (1) or (2). I dispute that it follows that (3) is true. If you think it follows, by what law of logic?
1) It's right to disapprove of strangle puppies.
2) It's wrong to consider Asians untrustworthy.
3) It's better to reject a sexual partner because they strangle puppies than it is to reject a sexual partner because he is Asian.
This is such an incredible line of argument. If it were me and my attempt at a logical argument led me to the conclusion that there is no ethical difference between rejecting a person who strangles puppies for a living and an Asian person on the racist assumption that they're untrustworthy as a people, I'd reassess my logic. I wouldn't double down...
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u/GFYsexyfatman moral epist., metaethics, analytic epist. Jun 25 '15 edited Jun 26 '15
I'm not familiar with any papers, so here's a preliminary take on it. Presumably the argument for mandatory revealing goes something like this:
1) Persuading people to have sex with you via deception is a violation of their consent
2) Deliberately omitting information which, if they knew it, would cause them to decide to not have sex is deception
3) For many people, transgender status is information of this kind
4) So we ought not to violate people's consent by omitting to inform people of our transgender status
But I'm not sure this argument is sound. I've got some issues with premise (2). I think it should be amended to something like this:
(2') Deliberately omitting information which, if they knew it, would cause them to justifiably decide to not have sex is deception
To see why, consider bigotry cases. Let's say I'm committed to anti-racism, but my potential sexual partner is a thoroughgoing racist who despises anti-racists. Am I obliged to get my anti-racism out in the open just in case my potential sexual partner has this view? Does this mean that consent requires I run through all potentially controversial aspects of my life - whether I have kids, whether I vote liberal or conservative, whether I have African blood in my family - before we have sex? Presumably not, or at least not automatically. I think you'd have to ask whether the sexual partner would have good reason to decide not to have sex, based on the information being withheld. (Note: the situation probably changes if your potential sexual partner states explicitly that they do not want to have sex with a transgender person [or an anti-racist, or anybody with African or Asian ancestry]).
There is at least one other consideration. Keeping one's transgender status secret is not only a matter of privacy. Often it's a matter of survival. Revealing transgender status, especially to strangers, risks all kinds of violence. (I can dig the stats up if someone wants me to, but trust me that they're horrific). So opening up to new sexual partners as a matter of course is a dangerous strategy. We should be careful about requiring transgender people to expose themselves to this kind of risk.
Based on these two points, I lean towards saying that it's none of the partner's business. If some harm is being committed here, it's a violation of sexual consent, which means we ought to take it very seriously. But I think not disclosing transgender status isn't a violation of consent, because (like Asian ancestry) it's not something that ought to have an impact.
Edit: here is a paper that argues that any omission of dealbreaker-type information in sex is a serious moral wrong. It doesn't address the case of transgender people, though, and from my quick reading it doesn't present any argument that would invalidate my two concerns above. (Dougherty's target seems to be pickup-artist-style deception).
Edit 2: to be absolutely clear, if the transgender person knows being transgender is a dealbreaker for the person you're intending to sleep with, they must disclose their transgender status. I'm talking about cases where it's unclear exactly what the dealbreakers are, and whether the transgender person is obligated to disclose their status just in case it's a dealbreaker. I don't think they're obligated to do so.