“You have disrespected me by having thoughts about me I did not permit you to have” is REALLY not a road I want to go down.
So thinking about a trans woman as a man isn’t disrespectful?
Seems about the same to me – if your thinking some way distresses other people, it’s considerate to stop, but you don’t have to, and some times it’s not controllable.
Well, said trans woman isn’t going to know about that unless you express it to her, right? That’s the issue, not the thought itself. Some things are inappropriate and hurtful to say out loud, absolutely. But what goes on in your head belongs to you and you alone. Thoughts aren’t free-floating toxins that hurt other people just by existing. They’re only relevant once they turn into actions.
I dunno, if Topher hated me and was pretending to be in love with me out of pity, and he was really good at pretending such that I had no idea that he wasn’t genuinely in love with me, I would think that he was harming me. I want to date someone who is actually in love with me, not someone who performs the actions associated with being in love with me. I do not think this is an uncommon or unjust preference.
(this is actually analogous to the ‘experience machine’ thought experiment)
I think we sometimes really need to think about the kind of examples we’re using for these debates.
For instance, if I occasionally think my coworker is a wanker, but at the end of the day we’re polite to each other and get the job done? That’s ok.
If I sometimes think a trans person is a “he” when she prefers “she”, but I use their correct pronouns and am working to change my thinking? That’s not ideal, but it’s better than the alternative.
And then we have @ozymandias271‘s example, where Topher has become a serial killer mastermind and I’m screaming at the TV for Ozy to figure it out before zie’s killed by the end of the episode. RUN, OZY, RUN!
That last example is the kind of thing that makes me torment myself but worrying that maybe I don’t REALLY love my friends and family, I’m just trying to do the best possible imitation of someone who does, because surely I wouldn’t second-guess myself so much if any of this came naturally, and that’s a rabbit hole none of us need to go down.
Mooncustafer 