-snup?-
That's more a reflection on the person who gets the sex change, though, rather than on the concept of a sex change itself. If a post-op transgendered person doesn't tell their significant other about the fact that they weren't always a guy/gal, they're dishonest. That's it. Not all people who get sex changes are dishonest, nor are they transformed into dishonest people. Besides, wouldn't you feel a bit weird about telling someone something like that, especially if it affected the chances that you'd get to know someone better? You couldn't exactly fault someone for lying about that (initially, at least).
Sorry to seem vaguely confrontational, especially after your friend passed away.
Um excuse me? Why the fuck should you care what gender your partner was born? I think you really need to sort out your fucking priorities if it really makes that much of a fucking difference. Cisgendered people don't have to tell their partners that they were born with all the correct bits they felt they were supposed to, so why is it so important? You obviously like the person, you find them attractive, so why does the very idea that they used to be a different gender turn you off that fucking much? Does it hurt your poor fucking straight boy mentality that you might be dating/sleeping with someone who at one point in the past was perceived by the general population to be male? How fucking insecure do you have to be in your sexuality to not just accept the person for who they are? This isn't like finding out that this person actually long ago murdered your family and got away with it. This is something far in the past that never affected you in the slightest, and now they have all the looks and parts you prefer so it shouldn't fucking matter.
*Ahem*
Sorry, it's just a subject I have a lot of familiarity with, and if I don't get it off my chest it'll just fester and come up at some inopportune time.
Anyway, the gist of it is: Does it really matter to you that this person was, at one point in their life, perceived by the general population to be male? Does it really matter that this person, at one point in their life, had a penis? Does it really matter that much to you now that none of that applies anymore, and that you like the person for who they are now, and what they look like now? If so, why?
In fact, this is a real question I'm going to pose right now to anyone who feels this way. Why does it matter that someone that you like and find attractive was not assigned at birth the gender they identify as? If it's because it feels dishonest, why does it seem dishonest? Because it's no more dishonest than not telling someone that on their 7th birthday they had to try at least five times to blow out the candles and even then there was just this one last one that wouldn't go out. It's something that happened in the past, and honestly, has no bearing on the current situation besides the fact that their vagina is different. (And, news flash: everyone's vagina is different.)
As to why someone would feel hesitant to disclose that information? Well there are a ton of reasons, but chiefly among them are usually that people tend to become violent and angry when faced with this information, and the person disclosing it tends to get hurt. A trans person is more likely to get murdered over the sheer fact that they are trans in the US than any other cause of death, save for suicide. I don't know if you realize just how reviled trans people are in the US and even most of the world. In some countries, it's actually the law to execute someone for being trans.
In summary, it's really hard being a trans person, and none of us choose it. Some of us aren't really proud of it, and I think it's best to respect that, and not make a huge deal out of it if you like the person how they are now. Trust me, if they managed to keep it from you that long, chances are it won't come up again for a very long while.
Woah, geez! *comically pulls collar to one side with finger*
I'm not saying that anyone should necessarily care about it or that it should really be a big deal
in the relationship, but it is a significant event in the life of the person who underwent that process, and as such should be something shared between those two people. At no point did I say it was a choice to be born a different gender than you feel you are, and at no point did I make...hell, I don't even know. I can see you've taken a lot of shit about this in the past and you've had to make this rant to a million other people, and that's 100% cool because people need to be informed about this stuff. I'm sorry if I ruffled any feathers, I didn't mean to do so and I didn't even realize that what I'd said was really controversial (in this forum, at least). I'm almost certain that we would, if we were to outright state our opinions on the subject of this kind of thing, come to the realization that we agree on pretty much everything, but forum posts are not a very effective means of conveying opinions all the time so...yeah.
Basically, even if you've had shitty experiences in your life, you probably shouldn't make assumptions that someone on the internet is a horrible bigoted person just because of a less-than-one-paragraph post on a forum. Sorry. This is, of course, coming from a straight male who hasn't had much trouble with identifying my sexuality or dealing with it, so I don't really know the shit anyone else has been through. Just, uh...sorry. I guess.
I'm gonna hide in a corner now