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So there's two perspectives here: One from the trans person themself, who thinks they pass. One from everyone else, who sees that they don't pass. If someone "outs" them, it doesn't change anything to other people, but the trans person now knows that they don't pass -- i.e. the trans person now knows that everyone else knows that they are trans -- and if they didn't want to be outed then they might fear being attacked by transphobes. So because people recognize this, and because people don't want to cause trans people to fear for their lives, there is a social norm that we don't talk about someone's transness and potentially "out" them unless we know for sure they are comfortable with it. That's where "outing" comes from, and being able to "out" a trans person doesn't mean that they pass. That's what I mean when I say that trans people (especially trans-identified males) stick out like a sore thumb, but people are too polite to talk about it. If I'm being uncharitable, "outing" has value to people who want to bully others and make them fear for their lives, and this can still happen even when a trans person doesn't pass.
Has any "I was tricked" argument actually ever been used in a successful case? The closest I'm aware of is the so-called "trans panic defense", but every single murderer who has used it has still been prosecuted and sentenced for murder.
I'm having a tough time imagining a successful argument that someone was "tricked" based on this. Let's say you're both adults, you're both around the same age, there are no weird power dynamics going on, you're both mentally and physically abled, etc. and you're both sober and not under the influence of any substances. You're only attracted to natal women and you don't want to fuck men or anyone with a penis. You see what you think is a woman and she wants it too so you take her home. Your room is well lit. You both get naked and then see that actually, "she" is a man with a penis.
At that point, what reasonable person wouldn't just say "no" and stop the sexual contact entirely? If you still continue with sexual contact at that point, I'd argue that it's entirely your fault. If you come back later and bring suit or a police report alleging rape based on being tricked, I'd expect you to be laughed out of the room every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
I consider myself a representative sample of reasonable everyday average people. Just because there are some lizardman's constant amount of people who are so stupid/motivated to ignore contradictory evidence doesn't mean that it's not obvious to everyone. Am I not allowed to even say "It's obvious to everyone the sky is blue" when there exists a mentally ill man high on fentanyl who thinks the sky is purple? Should I qualify it with "it's obvious to most people"?
I think the toupee fallacy is a fallacy. I don't think that you citing the fallacy means you have a slam-dunk argument. I think that you citing the fallacy is just you making an argument that supports your position. I still disagree with your argument and I have provided counter-arguments to your counter-arguments. I am not just going "nuh uh" and refusing to elaborate, I am providing specific details and arguments that match the shape of your arguments.
Interestingly enough, in this comment, you haven't addressed my responses to the toupee fallacy in specific detail beyond reiterating that it's a documented logical fallacy, which I didn't ever disagree with.
How so?
Ok let's try it in a simple way.
I take the argument that all wigs are easily spotted as wigs.
I say that everyone can tell someone is wearing a wig except for all the wig wearers who think it looks natural.
Maybe you point out that lots of people who wear wigs get comments that imply others think their hair is natural. Maybe a bald guy said "you're lucky you still got your hair" to one or something.
I counter with "well that's because everyone is just being polite and they're all pretending to not know it's a wig"
You point out "then why would revealing someone is bald be a thing"
I say "well it was obvious, it's just that no one was willing to talk about it until they got the wig snatched off".
You say "well what about all the people who think someone is wearing a wig and then turns out wrong?"
I say "They don't matter, I can tell if someone is wearing a wig and I've never been wrong (how do I know that?) and wigs are obvious to everyone"
Now imagine this is done in a world where roughly 50% of the population doesn't like wigs as a concept and something like 10% or whatever thinks wearing wigs is a sin. One where some people with wigs who are actually obvious report being stared at or insulted in public, while others with wigs that look like more like natural hair report being treated like natural hair.
Imagine this in a world where politicians in some places even made laws saying that wig wearers had to disclose their wigs or else it was rape, despite my claims that it's obvious they have a wig on to everyone so non consensual sex with a wig wearer is practically impossible.
Doesn't that sound silly then? Yet this is the arguments and logic you are using. It justifies the "all wigs are obvious to everyone" viewpoint just as well. I have sparse evidence presented that all wigs are obvious to everyone, and there's tons of reasons to believe that some wigs do look natural and my only defense is actually everyone is just super polite and nice about this specific thing despite society being made up of tons of assholes who do stare at some trans folk/visibly disabled folk/etc other rare oddities. Wig wearing is the one thing and this one thing only where no one is a jerk (except for the times they are).
Firstly, I have to point out an important disanalogy in that making a wig look natural is much easier than making a man look like a woman.
Secondly, I have to stop and ask if this actually happened. With a quick search, I could not find any laws mandating that trans people must disclose their transness to avoid rape charges.
But continuing on, you seem to have tortured the analogy and stretched it beyond its limits to fit trans people. These arguments would be silly about wigs, if we were talking about wigs in our world, but then you introduced to this hypothetical world a social stigma against wearing wigs. And if there was a social stigma against wearing wigs, in the same way that trans people (claim to) face social stigma, I would expect the same social dynamics to apply. People would want wig-wearers to feel protected, so they would enact social norms where wig-snatching is prohibited, even when it's really obvious that someone is wearing a wig. So that is why...
...assuming these reports are accurate, they are perfectly explainable by the above social norm. If obvious wig-wearers are stared at or insulted in public, that's because they're in a space where that norm is lacking. If they get treated like they have natural hair, that's just the norm being upheld.
People are not a monolith. Different social norms apply in different places. Just because a trans person would be immediately outed if they walked into an evil alt-right Nazi bar doesn't mean that they would be outed if the same exact trans person walked into a gay bar in San Francisco.
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