Division.

[Brideshead]

Is there a divison between the gay and transexual communities?

[MacShreach]

Is there a divison between the gay and transexual communities?

Why you ask, grasshopper? Reference to this comes up quite often, do a search. The short answer is "yes." The long answer, FWIW, it being pissing rain outside and not a lot else to do, is there is a widely held perception in the TS/TG world that gay activists welcome TG/TS when they need to make up the numbers to make a social or political point, but at other times the "mainstream" gay community is at best embarrassed by and at worst hostile towards TS/TG. There are plenty of stories here about TS's being refused admittance to gay clubs and such-like. Allanah Starr made eloquent comment on this recently.

Modern gay men, at least in the US and certainly parts of Europe, have developed a modern expression of their gayness. This modern gay male self-image says it's okay for manly men to like other manly men, and they should be open about it. It seeks to leave behind the world of "faggotts" and "mollies", the world of gays like Quentin Crisp. Their argument would be that gay men should be open and admit their attraction to men and not dress them up as girls.

At the same time the gay male relationship has become more equal; both parties are seen as gay, whereas until recently, only the "sissy" or effeminate party was seen as gay; the other party was regarded as straight. This is very much in line with what is reported in both Thailand and Brazil now, where the role of "male" and "female" is not defined by whether one has a penis or not, but whether one is the penetrator or the penetrated.

Furthermore the idea that a man could be highly sexually attracted to a shemale, T-girl or whatever, is offensive to this newer gay-male sensibility. Such gays find the idea of someone being into she-males and NOT admitting to being gay ridiculous.


In this the gay men are taking a pretty firm line on what is and is not acceptable, mirroring the heterosexual community in a way. As it has become more socially acceptable for men to be "out" as gays, they are expected to conform to the rules of gay society and respect the gains that gay men have definitely made in social standing in recent decades. These "rules" would appear to be more rigidly "applied" in the US than in Europe, for the usual reasons. (Another thread.)

This leaves the girly boys somewhat out in the cold, and if you're so girly you start making changes to your body to be more so, you're coming into conflict with this newer gay-male sensibility and are clearly seen by at least some gay men as revisionist, and not helping their broader cause.


The TS/TG shemale phenomenon, whether it likes it or not, drives a cart and horses through the new gay-male political theory, and it is surely no surprise that this happens just as that philosophy crystallises. Indeed there is plenty of room to argue that in some part at least, the apparent increase in shemale numbers and interest is not a sympathetic parallel to the modern gay-male self-view, but a direct reaction against it. In other words, some boys like to be girls and some men like to look at and be with boys who like to be girls. Neither side wants to be part of a "clone" gay scene.

So suddenly we have girly-boys again, and not just that, modern technology has come to their aid in a big way, so they are very, very much more attractive to manly men. They can even go so far as to adopt all of the physical attributes, with SRS, that straight men find attractive. Indeed many are so attractive in a feminine way that it becomes hard to see how any "straight" man could NOT be attracted to them. In Europe, the Israeli singer Dana International, a fine looking woman by any standards, delivered a double whammy to a shocked general public after it transpired that not only was she SRS transexual but she had been a gay male before she transitioned.


This sort of stuff really, really upsets some modern gay political activists. It gets them right into witch-hunt mode.

For the TS/TG's side, I think they see themselves as having some relationship to mainstream gay society, but I'm not convinced they know what that relationship might be. It is complicated, simply because there is such a range of variation within the group. Indeed I wonder if it is a group at all and not two or more similar-looking but fundamentally different groups. There are TS's who genuinely believe they are women (or men) in the wrong bodies, and who want rid of the penis. There are those who present as women but want to keep the male genitalia. Some see themselves as women, some see themselves as a bit of both and some see themselves as men playing a particular role in order to attract what they find attractive, which is to say manly men. Others have other agendas. And the sexual persuasion of these people is often very much at odds with their sense of gender. So there are MTF transsexuals who only have sex with girls, and who see themselves as lesbians, and others who become intensely feminine but who like to penetrate men, to name but two examples.


The diversity multiplies once we look outside the US and Europe. Kathoey in Thailand do not see themselves as women or men; they see themselves as being part of a third sex. And Don Kulack's work on Brazilian travesti* clearly states the travesti he interviewed saw themselves as girly homosexual men. They would take hormones from a very young age and undergo surgery to become more attractive to the manly straight men they sought to attract. They were not trying to turn themselves into women, but to be more girly. Kulack also points out that while the travesti would be either passive or active with clients and "vicio", casual partners with whom they had sex for free because they liked them, their longterm boyfriends were not allowed to be anything other than absolutely straight. Any hint of homosexual desire and they were out the door-- the travesti playing out the role of deeply conservative straight girl here.

Now, before I suffer death by four-inch heels (way to go,) all I'm saying here is IMO that when you look at the TG/TS phenomenon, you are not looking at anything even vaguely homogeneous except insofar as it happens to involve people who look like girls but have, or have had, penises. The range of perceived gender and sexual persuasion is enormous. It's hard to see how it could be further from the classic "clone" gay male scene. And if you're in the habit of classifying people, then I assure you this lot is going to make you think again, pronto. It seems likely to me that the mainstream gay community is as confused about TG/TS as straight society is, and this accounts for some at least of the friction.

As Megabody somewhere pointed out, not that long ago there was no gay male movement. Now there is. At the moment TG/TS are a very much misunderstood, often mistreated and routinely miscalled minority. I hope that in the years to come they will get the broader recognition they deserve, which will I suspect come when the smart and articulate amongst them move on in life and need to occupy themselves in middle age.

R

* Br. Portuguese "travesti"= transsexual, "transformio"= transvestite, crossdresser, "vicio"= bad habit.

I didn't make much mention of FTM, sorry guys--It's a smaller group and I don't know enough about it.

[Brideshead]

Thank you for your post. It is cetainly something to think about.

[Ecstatic]

Excellent, intelligent, thought-provoking posts, ruairidh and MystiquEvolution. I pretty much agree with what both of you have written. There are so many divisions within what is, as pointed out, a "unified collective" only when sheer numbers are desired for political effect: the GLBT community. While I wouldn't even begin to suggest that bisexual guys go through anywhere near what TS do, I have experienced bias as a bi guy from different sectors of this community, including some TS who resent bi guys because they wouldn't want to be with a man who would also want to be with a man from time to time. And that's a very small element compared to what's been discussed. Thank you for your thoughtful comments.

[BlackAdder]

I think that some of the stuff ruairidh posted is amazing, particularly the way Thai and Brazilian transsexual percieve themselves and there partners....The Thai aspect i can relate with but the Brazilian perceptions blew me away!!!!

[Spiderman]

Divisions LOL dude this isnt the nfl league, divisions HA!

[MacShreach]

I think that some of the stuff ruairidh posted is amazing, particularly the way Thai and Brazilian transsexual percieve themselves and there partners....The Thai aspect i can relate with but the Brazilian perceptions blew me away!!!!

Why thank you. Kulick's (I misspelled his name earlier, sorry, very unprofessional) book "The Travesti of Brazil" is a really interesting read. He spent a year living with a group of travesti, and he got very close to them. His methodology has been criticised but IMHO his observations are very compelling and as far as I know it remains the only in-depth study of the phenomenon. It illustrates a juxtaposition of conservative thinking alongside radical sexual behaviour which really is startling, as is the very young age at which boys begin their journey towards becoming travesti. Having read it and then looking at some of the images of travesti I'm sure we've all seen, it does make me wonder. Anyway the book is well worth getting, I think Amazon.com still lists it. R

R

[Ecstatic]

No offense taken, MystiquEvolution. On the surface I can see where being bi might be perceived as being able to "pick and choose who you want when you want or when it's convenient," but it's scarcely that simple. For one thing, if your a guy and you like men (even if you like women and TS as well or--as in my case--a whole lot more), most of society will classify you as gay (the opposite doesn't happen to bi women: society seems very willing to accept women being into both men and other women). When I first started to see TS intimately, I though naively that being bi would make the situation more comfortable, but all too often it's the opposite. Most TS want a hetero man, so a bi guy is considered rather undesirable.

Now as I stated above, I don't think these "hardships" begin to compare with those a TS endures; TS I think have the hardest time by far compared with lesbians, gays or bisexuals. But as a bisexual, my real choice is either to keep it on the dl or be considered gay by most.

Anyway, I totally agree with you about the dissociation inherent in the collective LGBT / GLBT; there has to be order and respect amongst all or there's only the illusion of any unity. (Interesting side note: google turns up 5.5 million hits for LGBT and 3.7 million for GLBT, including many national organizations under both headings.)

[ARMANIXXX]

Damn ruairidh,


You must have a pulitzer or somethin. :P

[MacShreach]

Damn ruairidh,


You must have a pulitzer or somethin. :P

Fuck me I wish. However the bylines on the cheques at the end of the month do help ease ma pain.