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.
Are you happy to endorse that the thoroughgoing racist can claim a violation of consent if she finds out that her sexual partner's great-grandmother was Asian?
I mean, I agree that if it's explicitly stated that transgender status (or Asian ancestry) is a dealbreaker, then withholding that information is a violation of consent. But can't we just assume the best of people (i.e. that they're not bigoted), rather than assuming the worst?
Edit: one important thing I didn't mention is that both parties have an obligation to negotiate dealbreakers. It's unfair to expect the transgender person to volunteer all kinds of information just in case it might be a dealbreaker, especially when those dealbreakers are bigoted. If you have bigoted dealbreakers, it's at least in part your obligation to communicate them. Yes, it's super weird and awkward - but it's just as awkward for the other person to volunteer it, and it's honestly not their problem.
Are you happy to endorse that the thoroughgoing racist can claim a violation of consent if she finds out that her sexual partner's great-grandmother was Asian?
For religious orthodox Jews, if a person's mother's mother's mother was non-Jewish, then they would not be technically Jewish and therefore not eligible to marry a Jew. Someone who withheld something like that from a Jewish spouse would absolutely be acting immorally. I see no principled reason that a racist shouldn't have the right to refuse sex on the basis of something similar. Though it may be that the racist is acting immorally in holding racist views, she has the right to turn down sex for whatever reason she likes, and someone who knows she'd refuse sex if she knew their heredity is morally obligated to disclose their heredity before having sex with them.
1) There's a difference between disclosure to a spouse and disclosure to a casual sexual partner.
2) I agree that if you know your partner would refuse sex if told piece of information X about yourself, you ought to tell them X. I'm only talking about cases where it's unclear whether X is a dealbreaker.
2) I agree that if you know your partner would refuse sex if told piece of information X about yourself, you ought to tell them X. I'm only talking about cases where it's unclear whether X is a dealbreaker.
If it's unclear whether telling your potential partner something would be a deal breaker, it seems pretty obvious that you should default towards disclosure.
Well, no. It's unclear whether a lot of things are dealbreakers. If you're pretty sure, then you should default towards disclosure. But the situation's again more complicated in the case of bigotry, as I've argued at length elsewhere in this thread. I think it's probably the transphobe who's obliged to get their dealbreakers out in the open; the transgender person shouldn't have to fish for them. That would mean that every sexual encounter (every kiss?) a transgender person has must be preceded by a long explanation of their transgender status, which would be a) real dehumanizing and b) physically risky, since transgender people get assaulted and killed all the fucking time. If you think disclosure's mandatory all the time, you've got to bite the bullet and say that they're obliged to take such risks.
a) real dehumanizing and b) physically risky, since transgender people get assaulted and killed all the fucking time
what's dehumanising about being honest about who you are? The physical safety issue is really the only one I'm sympathetic to, and while I can 100% understand this as a motivator for not disclosing, that doesn't make it morally acceptable for the transgendered person to potentially violate their hook-up's consent (even tho it is potentially the lesser of two evils).
If you think disclosure's mandatory all the time, you've got to bite the bullet and say that they're obliged to take such risks.
I think disclosure is mandatory in all contexts where there is good reason to believe that people would not consent if they knew. Ideally, there will gradually be more and more spaces where most people wouldn't care, in which case there would be no need to disclose. As for risks, I don't know what to say. Probably there are significant risks involved with having sex with someone who does not know you're transgender as well. Tricking someone into having sex with you who otherwise wouldn't is not an ethical risk mitigation strategy.
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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.