Sure, it’s fairly easy to be fooled, and nobody enjoys that. I get that part, even though I was pretty confident in this case.

But your original comment didn’t say the pictures looked like a man to you, so I didn’t realized you were “thinking it was a man” — all you said was that the name made you suspicious.

That’s the part that baffled me — if she looks like a woman, and you agree she looks like a woman, why be “thinking it was a man” in the first place, rather than just looking and enjoying?

Visual cues being “off” could certainly spoil my enjoyment of uncertain photos; but if the visual cues are right, I still don’t get where the worry comes from.

It sounds to me — and maybe you’ll take this as the bashing you were worried about, though I don’t mean it this way — like your level of concern about being fooled (titillated by someone who turns out not to be female) is turned up very high. At this level of remoteness (looking at pictures over the internet) it’s not a huge deal if it happens; I’m inclined to trust my eyes and shrug when their discernment fails me. Doing “research” before trusting what my eyes tell me sounds like a lot of effort, and for what?

Bacchus at ErosBlog has written about what he calls the “It’s a tranny!” gotcha game. You’re coming across as someone who has “lost” that game in the past or who is very determined never to lose it. I, on the other hand, don’t really “get” why the game is so important.

I think you’re nuts, to be honest; this is a woman, as you can tell from the photos.

But, for the sake of argument, if you’re right and she’s a very convincing M-to-F transsexual, why would you care? We’re looking at pictures, not negotiating a tryst. And if the pictures are good enough to be convincing, what more do you want?

I’m not bashing, I’m just asking, because your comments have left me baffled.