[PREV - ROLES]    [TOP]

TRANS

                                      late 80s

A posting to the old Stanford
"bboard" of TOPS-20 fame:

So, who really cares about transexuality?  I guess
it's interesting that some people go through the
hassle of the hormone treatment and surgery that it
takes, but just modifying your physical equipment
doesn't seem that fascinating to me.

I like transvestites better.  Cross-dressing is
easy to do and yet it gives you a chance to adopt
the social roles usually assigned to people of the
opposite gender.

This is what I think is neat about it: we're
presumably stuck with some kind of gender
differentiation: I remember the assertion from my
undergrad Anthro class that all cultures have
something like our "masculine" and "feminine"
social roles, though there are a few where they're
associated with the opposite gender.  But if you
take it as a given that a unisex society is
impossible, this is bound to be oppressive to lots
of people, since you're sticking them with
behavioral rules arbitrarily tied to their physical
characteristics.

Enter the transvestite.  Even if we are stuck with
"bisexual" roles, it doesn't matter as long as the
"masculine" and the "feminine" are unstuck from
physical genders.  If you don't like the deals
available to men, you can check out the ones
available to women, and vice-versa.

All we've got to do is get cross-gender behavior
out of the perversion category and we'd be all set.

                                           (All well and good, but
                                            what if you don't like
                                            either of the two deals?)



And remember:
"As goes doom, so goes the country."
                                             FUTURE

--------
[NEXT - PAGLITE]