The reality
So, speaking of the likely gap between the rah-rah rhetoric around trans idenniny and the realities of trans daily life, and the likelihood that that gap is why the rhetoric and bullying are so intense – here’s one snapshot of that reality of trans daily life.
The whole dirge:
Where are all the trans allies? Why aren’t they rushing to date and fall in love with and marry and have children with their trans beloved?
We know why, and they know why, and that could be the very reason they get so busy raging at feminist women for continuing to defend women’s rights. Displacement activity; shifting the blame; distraction; changing the subject; self-soothing. It’s our fault. If we weren’t such bitches they would simply love to marry a trans person but we keep getting in their way.
Welcome to being a woman, dude. Many, many women have experienced the same. Sorry, no pity.
So he’s a man who liked men so he tried to become a woman in order to have relationships with them? There’s a faster, easier, safer way! It’s hard to imagine how could he get that far in life and not find it. The explanation must lie in the social environment he was raised in. So “gay liberation” has a long way to go, and also severing the the LGB from the T must be made one of their priorities.
It doesn’t sound like he’s hanging around gay forums and spaces, where an effeminate man wearing clothes more often worn by women is I think a recognized and acceptable type. It doesn’t even sound like he’s putting out a request to meet a home-and-family oriented gay man. No, he apparently wants a conservative-ish straight man who prefers women. He was lied to.
If the assertion “I’m really a woman” had been met with pushback from progressive friends on the basis of “no, you’re a special kind of man” he likely would not be “post op” (which I suppose could mean anything from breast enhancement and facial surgery to having his dick and balls cut off to fit a constructed simulation of a vagina) and would probably be more appealing to other gay men. I do feel sorry he’s so lonely, but blame the zeitgeist which insists you can change sex.
Exactly.
The bit about video game characters falling in love with him suggest he’s been playing those creepy Japanese dating sims. I suspect his problems with reality go back a long way.
@Sastra,
I think this is why so many men kill themselves after the operation. They’re told that by changing their genitals, they will “truly” change sex, but that’s not how the dating world works. For the vast majority of humans, their partner’s sex is his or her most vital characteristic, for obvious evolutionary reasons. Some gay men might date a feminine-presenting man, but none would date a masculine-presenting woman. For most humans, when it comes to sexdrive, sex trumps gender.
The gay men who tend to date feminine-presenting men are more likely to be fairly feminine-presenting themselves, however. The more stereotypically masculine gay men generally go for other stereotypically masculine gay men. This is the notorious “masc-for-masc” problem, and it generates a lot of resentment among feminine gay men who are primarily attracted to stereotypically masculine men. The tension between their own instinct to present femininely while at the same time finding excessive feminine presentation in others unattractive can lead to self-hatred. They sometimes feel marginalized in the gay dating market (though that feeling is often exaggerated and distorted by their own self-hatred: in reality, feminine gays get fewer dates than the beefcake dreamboats — duh! — but they still do ok). Adopting a transgender identity for them is a way to try their luck in a different dating market — a brand new me in a brand new town, kind of thing.
And to an extent, some of them do find short term luck, so long as they remain young and thin, shave themselves completely, get breast implants or stuff a bra, and most importantly, retain their genitals. Anyone who remembers the old alt-weeklies (NY Village Voice, Seattle Stranger, LA Weekly, NOW Toronto, etc.) knows that they were largely funded by the back page ads, a substantial number of which were for “shemales” — a fetishistic fantasy for ostensibly straight men who want to try… er, other positions… with women, or the closest simulacrum of a woman for sexual purposes they can find.
These connections rarely become solid, long-lasting, physchologically healthy relationships, though. There’s money inolved; there’s shame and secrecy involved. (Money, shame, and secrecy go both ways in these pairings: when the “straight” men aren’t covertly buying sex from “shemales,” the “shemales” are covertly bribing young “straight” deadbeat freeloaders to stay with them as lovers.)
I myself was a feminine-presenting gay man attracted to much more masucline men than myself, and for a time I felt guilt, shame, and confusion about the mismatch, so I can somewhat understand what these men are feeling. But in the late ’90s I worked at a trans bar, and what I saw there was profoundly sad, in a deep, fundamental way not easily remedied with flags and parades and campaigns for better “representation.” I came to suspect that there was a fundamental dysfunction at the heart of the transgender subculture.
Lately I’ve come to see that this whole thing is mostly driven by straight men with fetishes. They’re the johns perusing the back pages for “shemales,” who exploit and give false hope to confused feminine gay men; they’re the pimps who hang around the community centres and the seedy bars to coax vulnerable gay men into transgender identities. They’re the ones who pressure the medical profession to look the other way at the fact that gay men seldom do well with transgender identities in the long term.
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@Francis Boyle #5:
Not saying he’s not doing dating sims, but it’s more likely a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 where the NPCs have been described as “thirsty” (to the extent that I’m kinda scared off trying it).
I haven’t played video games in many years, but the original Baldur’s Gate (from 1998) is one I played, and this terminology was unfamiliar to me, so I searched. Baldur’s Gate 3, out last year, apparently has NPCs who are all too eager to throw themselves at the players or each other, to the extent that even the developers think they might have overdone it. Oo er.
Yeah, I was reluctant to give BG3 a shot in the first place due to being built on the dumpster fire that is 5e. When it came out and looked almost like some kind of creepy otome game, I put it on my Steam ignore list.
Well as someone who loves 5e (3.5 is fine if I don’t have to run it) and Divinity 2 it was pretty damn disappointing (that and all the rubber forehead aliens that they used instead of proper orcs/dwarfs/etc).
I do gather it has really open-ended pathways to complete objectives, though, which is pretty nice. That’s a welcome change of pace hearkening back to the days of the isometric Fallout games. Still not gonna play it.
Divinity 2 is currently installed, but I doubt I’ll get to it before Dragon’s Dogma 2 drops on Thursday, and magick archer shenanigans take priority over everything else.
I tried the first Pathfinder game, but the “real time with pause” and lack of a grid got to me. Like, grease was totally OP, but not knowing where the actual edge of the effect was meant my Barb kept dropping prone for no good reason. It doesn’t help that you’re stuck using premade party members with grating levels of quirkiness and terrible builds. Like, 12 Str / 18 Cha Fighter specializing in tower shield bad. *facepalm*
As a (forever) DM, I much prefer to run 3.5 and BECMI to 2e, 4e, and 5e, for what it’s worth. Maybe because I helped design some official 3.5 stuff.