Tuesday, June 6, 2023

NIMBY

Are there people who exhibit sporadic gender variance who don't much care for transgender people? Well yes and in fact we have historical precedent to prove it.

Mid twentieth century "crossdresser" clubs did not want much to do with transsexuals. After all, these were straight married men getting together on some scheduled frequency who rejected the idea of hormones or surgery and simply advocated expressing one's feminine side on a temporary basis. Transsexuals were nothing like them and they wanted no part of their presence. Virginia Prince was quite emphatic about this in her early writings.

What is fascinating here is that some of their members (the most notable being Prince, Katherine Cummings and Susana Valenti) ended up being much further along the identity side of things than they perhaps had originally anticipated. Prince in particular consulted with and advised Harry Benjamin on trans issues and ended life as a pre-operative transwoman.

Things have changed of course and there isn't necessarily animosity any longer except that the same type of divide continues to exist in how each views themselves and how they need to live. Thus I can imagine a scenario where a conservative republican politician who likes to dress up occasionally, looks down on a trans person and their desire to lead an open and happy life by voting to deny them gender affirming care.

It's why I continue to think that we need to be very careful with umbrella concepts as human behaviour is simply much too expansive for that.

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