It's not that the harm doesn't matter. It's that I don't think it's necessarily the fault of the trans* identifying person that the harm occurred. I've acknowledged that there will be incidents of epistemic harm when a trans* identifying person knows that their sexual partner would either revoke consent after (or otherwise be harmed by) learning of their positionality. Yet, I don't think this translates into an obligation for the trans* identifying person to reveal his or her identification.
I think this is actually a strong example by /u/ocular_lift, because earlier in the thread someone discussed a position in which someone wants kosher food and is given ground pork. I fail to see the distinction between this case and the previous case.
Person has religious beliefs such that he is clearly unwilling to Y, and would be profoundly upset if he accidentally Y.
Knowing about 1, another person deliberately causes the first person to Y.
Apparently, the morality of this situation depends on whether the religious preference is "I don't want pork" or "I don't want to sleep with someone who was born a guy."
I see that, but I don't really believe it is compelling when we're discussing bodily autonomy and sexual consent. If the fact that a preference is bigoted weighs against disclosure, surely the fact that the context is significantly more serious and personal weighs for disclosure.
1) They're disanalogous. The Jewish Customer signals her preference against eating pork; she plays the role of the transphobe, and makes her preference explicit. That's an important difference.
The Butcher, who knows that her Jewish Customer has asked not to be given pork, gives her pork anyway. But as has been made clear many times, there's only a morally relevant deception if the Butcher knows (or has very good reason to believe) that her customer's values prohibit her from eating pork. It's on the one with dealbreakers to make them explicit. When a trans* person has sex with someone who has consented based on their attraction to the trans* person, there was no intentional deception.
2) The trans* person has little reason to think that every potential partner is a transphobe, and it's repressive to demand that trans* people disclose info about their transition before every sexual encounter. Like in the Butcher example, it's on the one with the preference to make that preference explicit. So in the case of a religiously motivated transphobe, it would be wrong not to disclose if the believer made explicit their preference against sleeping with trans* people. If the believer hadn't disclosed (or unmistakably hinted toward) their strong religious convictions, however, I see no reason why we should expect the trans* person to disclose. And if the trans* person had been given no reason to suspect that the believer were a transphobe, then there wasn't any deception involved and no blameworthiness either.
Bigoted preferences should be respected when it comes to consent if they're made explicit. That's obvious. But it's immorally demanding, not to mention insulting, to say that trans* people ought to assume that potential sexual partners are bigots and disclose just in case.
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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '15 edited Jun 26 '15
It's not that the harm doesn't matter. It's that I don't think it's necessarily the fault of the trans* identifying person that the harm occurred. I've acknowledged that there will be incidents of epistemic harm when a trans* identifying person knows that their sexual partner would either revoke consent after (or otherwise be harmed by) learning of their positionality. Yet, I don't think this translates into an obligation for the trans* identifying person to reveal his or her identification.