If
Peter Tatchell longs to see women’s rights demolished.
Peter Tatchell wishes women were required to have “a legitimate reason” for not taking our clothes off in the presence of male strangers. It looks as if he thinks simply not wanting to take our clothes off in the presence of male strangers is not a legitimate reason. All the tender concern is for men who want to watch women taking their clothes off; none is for women who don’t want to oblige.
It’s extra infuriating when it’s gay men making these kinds of arguments, because we know more than most how much male transvestism is driven by fetish — we see it in our community, on the dating apps, in the leather bars, etc. Within the gay male community, both online and in the real world in virtually any big city, there are designated secluded, judgment-free zones for men to let their sexual quirks and kinks out in private.
I can see how at least some degree of cameraderie between gay men and straight or bisexual transvestites emerged: both groups lived with sexual desires that were seen as incompatible with proper society. But as homosexuality has found mainstream acceptance, transvestism cannot follow in its footsteps — at least not in the way that it wants — because it’s a fundamentally different thing. Homosexuals can integrate happily into society without forcing anyone to play along with a lie, and without impinging on other people’s rights. (Well, maybe a few Christian wedding cake bakers will take issue with that last point.)
Transvestites can in theory integrate into society, too: they just have to stay out of women’s spaces and stop demanding that everyone call them women. And they don’t want to do that.
And gay men who style themselves as allies to transwomen are failing to see that the conditions required for transwomen to get what they want are not the same as the conditions that gay men required to get what we wanted. We only needed people to tolerate us. The transwomen want women to actively play along with a fantasy. That’s not the same thing at all. It’s a great big fork in the road, where their paths and ours diverge.
And the thing about admitting they’re men is, they already do it when they’re among us gay men. If a trans-identifying man enters a men-only bar or logs into a men-only dating app, he’s tacitly admitting that he’s a man. And it happens all the time. The apps are overflowing with them; the leather bars have special nights for them, etc. They often go further than that: the very same men who insist they’re transwomen when they’re at work or shouting at people on Twitter or whatever, they will categorize themselves as “CD/TV” (crossdresser/transvestite) in their online profiles when they want to socialize in men-only virtual spaces, for example.
They know what they are, they know what they’re doing. And so does Peter Tatchell.