ransvestia

Still society sees no de facto problem because very few transvestite confrontations with FPs occur. If there were to be a sudden transvest- ite explosion, the issue would become important. It is now important only to us. My crystal ball says that as these other situations become re- solved, transvestite situations will become more tolerable. In ten or fifteen years, a man may go to his job dressed as a woman. People may or may not know, but they will not make a big thing of it. The FP will be accepted as an individual; depending upon his adjustment to the group he will be liked or not. I still think that society will distinguish between men and women; there will be less distinction between econ- omic and perhaps even sexual roles, but other lines will be drawn.

One thing is certain about the behavior of people; they arrange them- selves into groups. The problem with the FP is that he is identifying himself with another group and upsetting everyone because they thought they had a sure fire test for distinguishing members of that group. So I think that at a more basic level, FPs will continue to be seen as disrup- tive. While we do not endanger other people nor do we harm ourselves, we do attack the basic beliefs that most people hold. I believe that we owe it to ourselves to uncover the true reasons for the attitudes of society toward FPs and expose the psychological and emotional biases. In the meantime, FPs will continue to be a covert group.

Editors Comment: The basic reasons Sonya refers to are very simple and obvious. Animals are concerned about the sex of others of their species - watch dogs sniff each other. Humans are basicly animals but we have a computer in our heads and we have used it to build the whole gender structure with its sets of expectations, rewards, penalties etc. But basicly we are still sexists in that we haven't yet grown human enough to see people as people rather than as a sex. Thus society sees us as violating its basic presumptions about the sex of others as in- dicated by the visual cues of dress, hair, make up, etc. Thus until people learn that anatomy is really not the most important distinction be- tween people we will be seen as being “disrupting".

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