I thought about calling this post Twilight of the Whining Dinosaurs. However, after some thought, I decided against it. After all, Richard Wagner never did anything to undermine my ability to find and maintain employment commensurate with my education and experience in the 21st Century.
People such as Ron Gold, however….
And people of the same generation and trans-exterminationist midset….
For instance, John Lauritsen:
The question is posed: why in the past generation have pedophilia, pederasty and ephebophilia gone down in favor, whereas transpeople gone up in favor?
One simple answer, in addition to those given by Wayne Dynes, is that there has been an increase in *erotophobia* (fear or hatred of sexuality). (As one example of erotophobia: there is now a generation of boys and men who are ashamed of their own bodies — who are reluctant to undress in the locker room — who wear shorts or bathing suits in the shower, steam room, or sauna.) The categories which have gone down in favor — S&M, intergenerational sex, incest, and prostitution — are all sexual. But transpeople, at least those who have resorted to surgery, represent the opposite: a total negation of sexuality.
Of course it is impossible to change a man into a woman, or vice versa. A “male-to-female transsexual” is a man who has been castrated, and thereby transformed — not into a woman, but into a eunuch. Such an individual has been *neutered* or *de-sexed*, not changed into the opposite sex. Likewise, a “female-to-male transsexual” has been neutered, not changed into a real man.
That was a comment to a rambling tour through the gay-primacy psyche offered up by Wayne Dynes. Compare it to the following comment to the same piece:
This post has been removed by the author.
So…
Something was so offensive as to be worthy of removal – but not the trans-exterminationism.
And here’s what Dynes himself had to say about trans people:
For those who experienced them, the twelve years between Stonewall and the inception of the HIV/AIDS crisis in 1981 were a golden age of sexual freedom. With sodomy still against the law in many states, much remained to be done. Yet clearly we gay people were on our way.
With the momentum of liberation up and running, many looked around for new frontiers. What would be the next wave in the ongoing tide of sexual freedom?
…
For some, intergenerational sex was the next Big Thing, a belief symbolized by the founding of NAMBLA. For a variety of reasons this expectation did not pan out, and those with a sexual interest in children and adolescents figure among the most stigmatized persons in America today.
By contrast, thirty years ago there was almost universal condemnation of transvestites and transsexuals. The official line, strongly urged by radical feminists, was that such individuals were engaged in mockery of women. This was thought to be undeniably true of males who assumed women’s dress. Even more so the postop M2Fs, who offered deplorable models of the “constructed woman.” Yet blame could also attach to the F2Ms, who were seemingly deserting the women’s cause.
A seemingly similar phenomenon was represented by small groups of men who affected “gender-fuck” fashions, sporting, say, a beard and mustache, while wearing a skirt, makeup, and a lumberjack shirt. Yet unlike the more usual type of cross-dressers, these men did not attempt a convincing simulation of women. Indeed, in their mockery of masculinity they could be regarded as allies of the feminists.
With some reservations, then, pedophilia, pederasty, and ephebophilia were UP a generation ago; transpeople were DOWN. These days that situation is hard to imagine, so much have the two groups changed in the eyes of the public. The relationship has been turned upside down.
How did this historic shift occur?
Note first: In this narrative, no blame for anti-trans attitudes and/or policies attaches to men of any inclination or to any of the proto-corporate, straight-acting, stright-looking professional gay hierarchy.
Note second: Think about the very notion of the discussion – and what it seems to be justifying.
Now, lets go back to the author of that comment that had been removed, a person who goes by the name Zagria. I don’t know what the removed post was, but I suspect that it involved the quote I was looking for when I began this post (last nite; I have a copy of the offending pages somewhere, but I couldn’t find them at that moment) given that she has it at a post on her own blog:
In his Homosexuality: A Research Guide, 1987, he strangely chose to open his ‘Transsexualism’ section with an assertion in opposition to the facts:
Follow-up studies have shown that many postoperative transsexuals exist in a state of almost continual depression, and for this reason the operation is now performed less often.
He also gave an amazingly positive mini-review of Janice Raymond and ignored 90%+ of transgendered biographies.
Zagria has the following to say about that earlier Dynes post:
[It] is much better than what he was writing in the 1980s. This is still however a comment from one who participates in gay discourse but does not consult the discourse among trans persons. Note how he uses ‘trannies’ and ‘transpeople’ (without the now required space) – in blissful ignorance of how some trans people react. He also uses ‘M2F’ and ‘F2M’ as nouns. What was it that Gore Vidal said about being homosexual, but not ‘a homosexual’?The essay is then about the gay perception of trans people, not actually about real trans people. It was actually a pleasure to read the essay, locked as it is behind a firewall where the politics that divide the trans scene do not penetrate.
A bit more 411 on Dynes from Zagria:
Wayne Dynes did a Ph.D. in art history at New York University. He taught for six years at Columbia University, and subsequently at the City University of New York. He was a co-founder of New York’s Gay Academic Union in 1973.
His Homosexuality: A Research Guide is one of the better bibliographies on homosexuality. Out of 854 pages, only 10 are on Cross Dressing, Transsexualism and Hermaphroditism, grouped in a category ‘Boundary Crossing’ with ‘Intergenerational Sex’, and a further 8 pages on ‘Theatre and Dance’ which contains many articles on drag. He opens his Transsexualism section with the unneeded contention in opposition to the facts: “Follow-up studies have shown that many postoperative transsexuals exist in a state of almost continual depression, and for this reason the operation is now performed less often”, and then gives a biased selection of mainly anti-transsexuality books, including a positive review of Janice Raymond’s diatribe, The Transsexual Empire. The only biographies included are those of Lili Elbe and Christine Jorgensen. All the others are ignored, even April Ashley’s.
He was the major editor of the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, 1990, where he also wrote about lesbians under a pseudonym, Evelyn Gittone. This was taken to be a female pseudonym, although ‘Evelyn’ was a unisex name to earlier generations. Coupled with the lack of female and transgendered contributors, this was considered scandalous, and contributed to the fact that a second edition or a paperback edition was never issued.
I have to admit I’ve never seen Wayne Dynes and Alice Dreger in the same room at the same time.
They’re probably not the same person – but they do share the same DNA of (non-)ethics.