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Thinking of the Rocky Horror Picture Show & how things have changed. Back then we all knew Dr. Frank-N-Furter was a "sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania"—A MAN! Transvestism & transsexualism were linked, & it was all kinda kinky, fun, open-minded & open-hearted. /1
Nowadays Frank-N-Furter would be insisting he's really truly a woman, whining about pronouns and demanding the legal right to get naked & shower in the women's changing room at the community pool & gym. This re-framing of trans was deliberately crafted by rich straight males. /2
They didn't want to have to admit that their habit was rooted in sexual feelings. This was too embarrassing for such upstanding conservative leaders. They saw what gays & lesbians were doing & they hatched a plan to co-opt our movement & frame their kink in identity politics. /3
A perfect storm was born: recently the gay rights movement has run out of rights to lobby for (we've won them all) & all that infrastructure—all that money, all those jobs—doesn't want to dismantle itself. So they happily joined forces with the rich straight males in dresses. /4
This union is a superpower of captured hearts (everybody's sympathetic to gay rights by now) & captured money (every major economic powerhouse has been corralled into the trans lobby—Disney & Google are lobbying the UK gov't to let males who ID as "trans" into women's showers) /5
Some scientists are so eager to "affirm" transvestites & transsexuals' feelings they're pretending sex is a spectrum: you can't easily tell males from females, letting you fill in the rest (it's too preposterous to say out loud) "this must mean transvestites are in the middle!"/6
Transvestites & transsexuals are lobbying schools to teach children from as early as kindergarten that boys who like girls' things & girls who like boys' things "might be trans" & encouraging the kids to "look inside and see" if they're innately a transsexual/transvestite. /7
Teens in distress are encouraged to blame their teen angst on transsexualism/transvestism to the point that OVER 2% of ALL U.S. TEENS are presently self-identifying as transsexual/transvestite—mostly girls, who are particularly susceptible to social contagions (eg anorexia) /8
Surgeons and pharmaceutical companies are having a bonanza—the transsexual/transvestite lobby has created a multibillion-dollar new market with a loyal brand following (everybody loves gays! Giving teens trans surgery and drugs is the new way to affirm that you love the gays!) /9
This whole thing is a disaster. Vulnerable children and teens (especially gender-nonconforming kids, gay kids, autistic kids and abuse survivors) are being harmed by powerful drugs and surgeries with brutal side-effects. When the backlash comes it will hurt transsexuals. /10
Imagine if things went differently. Let's go back to Rocky Horror. Imagine we went forward from there & framed transsexualism/transvestism not as an innate identity but as what it really is: some men are sexually attracted to having a feminine appearance & that's perfectly OK!/11
We could make the lives of transsexuals/transvestites better and safer and more comfortable by working to reduce the stigma around sexual paraphilias & acknowledging that everybody has a sex drive & some men's sex drives compel them to adopt the appearance of women. /12
This would prevent countless girls & young women (and many young men too) from the unnecessary suffering and medicalization they endure because of this fad of telling everyone they're "trans." It would prevent women & girls losing the sanctuary of their safe spaces to males. /13
The more I think about it, the more I hate the word "transgender." Goddamn that fucking word! That's the thing that has unhinged us all. It has camouflaged the readily understandable phenomena of transvestism & transsexualism in magic pixie dust. It's set us all back decades. /14
So let's bring back those words. When a male is dressed like a woman, that's a transvestite. When they've gone further and had medical procedures, that's a transsexual. Same with females. You're trying to look like a man? Transvestite. You're on T & had a mastectomy? Transsexual.
/FIN
