Point taken on my excessive narrowness -- I have rephrased the post accordingly. But I do protest the notion that I should be thinking about political strategy when I write my little blog posts.
Another pop culture data point that supports your thesis: we never hear about people—television & movie characters—having feminine or masculine sides anymore. Though I cannot think of an example off the top of my head, it used to be a common trope for a man to need to "get in touch" with his feminine side; he fails, hijinks ensue, he succeeds, all's well again.
Two things we lost when we gave up on this language of masculine/feminine aspects is that all people are fundamentally similar (i.e., gender is nothing like species), and also that even the categories of "man" and "woman" don't preclude coexisting traits of femininity & masculinity.
I think one of the biggest reasons that Trans acceptance hasn't become as widespread as gay acceptance is because, while a cis person can understand and empathize with the experiences of a gay person (something like "you feel the way about men that I feel about women" or vice versa), a cis person usually doesn't really have an understanding of what it's like to be trans, because they haven't really experienced extreme gender dysphoric (at most some mild dysphoria during puberty)
(I'm writing this to you -- please delete if it's overmuch for a comment.)
I saw two major influences on the slow shift from wide-spread gross-me-out kill-'em-all male-homophobia toward wide-spread acceptance of gay marriage.
* The number of wealthy, powerful, or famous men who are gay (or at least very actively bi).
* The AIDS epidemic, which both forced that first factor into public consciousness and blanketed the country with bereaved couples who couldn't make medical decisions for each other, often couldn't even pay hospital visits, couldn't inherit common assets, and so on. (It also increased the DESIRE for legally recognized marriage among gay men, which I don't remember encountering nuch pre-AIDS.)
I do agree that an unintended consequence of that shift was increased rigidity in gender roles, and I deeply desire more of your last-mentioned option.
With respect, though, I disagree that "grooming" or "conversion" homophobic panic is a "subordinate theme." I'd describe it more as a source and model for later transphobia, along with other long-established notions of open-dissent-as-communicable-disease, one exposure to evolutionary biology or economic theory being enough to turn children into atheists or Communists.
(Where I'm, like, coming from, man: a couple of my boyhood friends were sent off to military school to "make men of them"; I came of age in the mid-1970s, when it was still often assumed that most people started off as bisexual and that gender-related behavior was culturally determined; I was sometimes mistaken for a girl, usually first taken as gay, and always sought out gay-and/or-lesbian-friendly milieux; in the 1980s my lover worked in pre-HIV AIDS research.)
Not too much at all! Thank you for sharing all this -- I always love to hear from the old-school blogospherians! You're definitely (implicitly) right that I should have addressed the AIDS epidemic.
Point taken on my excessive narrowness -- I have rephrased the post accordingly. But I do protest the notion that I should be thinking about political strategy when I write my little blog posts.
Haha, yes the ‘natural’ demand!
‘Be a man.’ Either it’s something of a construction or whatever someone with a penis does is manly!
Another pop culture data point that supports your thesis: we never hear about people—television & movie characters—having feminine or masculine sides anymore. Though I cannot think of an example off the top of my head, it used to be a common trope for a man to need to "get in touch" with his feminine side; he fails, hijinks ensue, he succeeds, all's well again.
Two things we lost when we gave up on this language of masculine/feminine aspects is that all people are fundamentally similar (i.e., gender is nothing like species), and also that even the categories of "man" and "woman" don't preclude coexisting traits of femininity & masculinity.
I think one of the biggest reasons that Trans acceptance hasn't become as widespread as gay acceptance is because, while a cis person can understand and empathize with the experiences of a gay person (something like "you feel the way about men that I feel about women" or vice versa), a cis person usually doesn't really have an understanding of what it's like to be trans, because they haven't really experienced extreme gender dysphoric (at most some mild dysphoria during puberty)
Just so everyone's clear, I don't regard my comment threads as an open forum. Transphobic comments, for instance, will be deleted.
(I'm writing this to you -- please delete if it's overmuch for a comment.)
I saw two major influences on the slow shift from wide-spread gross-me-out kill-'em-all male-homophobia toward wide-spread acceptance of gay marriage.
* The number of wealthy, powerful, or famous men who are gay (or at least very actively bi).
* The AIDS epidemic, which both forced that first factor into public consciousness and blanketed the country with bereaved couples who couldn't make medical decisions for each other, often couldn't even pay hospital visits, couldn't inherit common assets, and so on. (It also increased the DESIRE for legally recognized marriage among gay men, which I don't remember encountering nuch pre-AIDS.)
I do agree that an unintended consequence of that shift was increased rigidity in gender roles, and I deeply desire more of your last-mentioned option.
With respect, though, I disagree that "grooming" or "conversion" homophobic panic is a "subordinate theme." I'd describe it more as a source and model for later transphobia, along with other long-established notions of open-dissent-as-communicable-disease, one exposure to evolutionary biology or economic theory being enough to turn children into atheists or Communists.
(Where I'm, like, coming from, man: a couple of my boyhood friends were sent off to military school to "make men of them"; I came of age in the mid-1970s, when it was still often assumed that most people started off as bisexual and that gender-related behavior was culturally determined; I was sometimes mistaken for a girl, usually first taken as gay, and always sought out gay-and/or-lesbian-friendly milieux; in the 1980s my lover worked in pre-HIV AIDS research.)
Not too much at all! Thank you for sharing all this -- I always love to hear from the old-school blogospherians! You're definitely (implicitly) right that I should have addressed the AIDS epidemic.
Wait—plenty of trans people haven't changed their bodies.
I regret the imprecision. I have edited accordingly. Yet I wonder: Does it affect my overall point?
Not really. If they all did, or wanted to, your argument would be stronger, but it stands.
I think you need to watch that Seinfeld episode again. The whole premise is that someone thinks Jerry is gay