you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]MarkTwainiac 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I agree with you. I've always thought a lot of "flamboyant" gay men who like to dress and act in stereotypically "feminine" ways - "feminine" as defined by the male gaze and male mind and twisted to suit male sexuality, that is - have AGP, or elements of it - just as they have many narcissistic traits.

Ray Blanchard's taxonomy dividing male trans into two broad [sic -LOL] categories - heterosexual males with AGP, and gay males with internalized misogyny and an attraction to straight men (HSTS) - has been widely (mis)interpreted to mean that no HSTS males have AGP. But my understanding is that from the start, sexologists have observed that a good number of HSTSs have AGP as well.

Men who were transvestites FT or PT used to be very common amongst gay men, just as a small number of gay men have been transsexuals since CSH, androgen blockers and "sex change" or rather sex mimicry surgeries became a thing. But now all the men who in the past would've been simply transvestites have rebranded themselves to a man as transgender, and the definition of transgender has been broadened to include both transvestites and transsexuals and a whole bunch of others such as people with kinks and edgy haircuts.

However, it's only been very recently that transvestites, transsexuals and men with kinks and a host of mental disorders in vast numbers have started claiming that they actually are women and demanding that they must be recognized as such and given access to female-only spaces, services, programs and sports - and centered in feminism to boot.

My own impression from closely observing the scene since the 1960s is that the sea change we're seeing today is not because gay "masc" culture has started pushing feminine gays out.

Back in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, gay male culture and communities had room for all sorts: the transvestites co-existed with the leather boys, the bears, and the vast majority of gay men who back then, like today, were "normal" appearing and acting fellas who didn't stand out in any obvious way. In the late 20th century, as the Village People's song "Macho Man" and the work of Mapplethorpe shows, tons of gay men were hyper-masc. But they co-existed easily with the preppies and yuppies, the drag queens, the ball scene boys, and all the hyper-feminine "swishes" who were PT or FT transvestites like Jared Leto's fictional Rayon in "Dallas Buyers' Club" or similar real-life figures like the marvelous and gorgeous Marilyn Peter Robinson and the endearing Patrick McCabe of "Breakfast In Pluto" fame.

I don't think gay masc men have pushed the transvestites out of male gay culture. I think what's happened and is happening has more to do with the spread of regressive gender ideology and transgressive queer theory; the dominance of Big Pharma in the post-Prozac era when psychiatry has adopted an ethos of medicating away all discomfort rather than working through it in talk therapy; the normalization of cosmetic surgeries and endless body modifications; social media; internet pornography and "sissification" fantasies; social isolation; cosplay, LARPing and gaming, etc.

I also think that all along male transvestites keenly observed the favorable treatment given to early-70s era transsexuals like James Jan Morris and Richard Raskin Renee Richards, and saw how easily those men were allowed to make inroads into women's spaces, sports and services. So they decided to seize the opportunity and follow suit. Out of misogyny, envy, covetousness, opportunism, and male entitlement and supremacy.

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    Glad that a longer-range view is appreciated.

    If you're young, you can't remember this - but to us older people, it seems that all this gender ideology and talk of "gender" have only gone mainstream in the past 15-20 years, and become really pronounced and widespread amongst the mass of the populace only in the past 5-10 years.

    In the second half of the 20th century, everyone spoke of very plainly of sex, sexism, sex stereotypes, sex roles, sex discrimination, sexual harassment, sexual violence, sexual misconduct, etc - never of gender, genderism, gender stereotypes, gender roles, gender discrimination, gender harassment, gender violence...

    In keeping with this, nobody (except perhaps academics of the Judith Butler school) prior to the current century used terms like "GC" or "GNC" in everyday parlance because back then it was assumed that pretty much no one of either sex entirely conformed to the rigid sex stereotypes associated with their sex. Similarly, the term "GC feminism" would've seem redundant because by definition feminism has always been critical of, and opposed to, sexism and sex stereotypes - and sexism and sex stereotypes are really all that "gender" and "gender identity" boil down to.

    Feminist writers used to speak and think about sex, not gender. Hence famous texts were called "The Second Sex," "The Dialectics of Sex" and "Sexual Politics." Not "The Second Gender," "The Dialectics of Gender" and "Gender Politics."

    Prior to the 1990s, pretty much everyone writing and speaking about sex, sex stereotypes, sex roles, sexual violence, sexual politics etc used the word sex, not gender - and this was true not just in feminist circles, but in mainstream journalism and publishing throughout in the Anglophone world. In the 60s, 70s and 80s, all the standard journalistic style guides and grammar and usage books said use sex - none suggested go with gender instead. Anti-feminists too used the word sex rather than gender, as is shown by Norman Mailer's 1971 book "The Prisoner of Sex."

    I distinctly recall when the NYTimes first started using "gender" when it really meant "sex." This alarmed many at the time because it seemed to indicate a the beginning of an unfortunate new trend of replacing the clear, specific word sex - whose meaning everyone understood - with a sloppy, imprecise, misleading euphemism that had the unfortunate effect of conflating sex with sex stereotypes, and suggesting that sex stereotypes were innate to sex.

    That was in 1990 - only 30 years ago. The change didn't go uncontested at the time:

    https://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/27/opinion/l-gender-can-t-replace-sex-but-what-can-667090.html https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/18/opinion/l-dictionaries-recognize-gender-for-sex-561591.html

    [–]mangosplums 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    So would you agree with me that Judith Butler was also doing wrong with the way she used the term gender? I’ve always thought this, but I know that radical feminists usually disagree. But it seems to me that Judith Butler was also guilty of using the term gender instead of sex. Discrimination against women has never been because of this imaginary thing called gender, it’s always been about sex. Judith Butler participated in the switch to taking about gender instead of sex.