Non-trans autogynephilia- a vital clue.

Autogynephilia is the primary stimulus for all non-homosexual male-to-female transsexualism. The original Blanchard definition  was ‘a man’s propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman.’ Others have defined it as,  ‘love of oneself as a woman’. But not all men with autogynephilia present as women. They exhibit non-trans … Continue reading Non-trans autogynephilia- a vital clue. →

The post Non-trans autogynephilia- a vital clue. appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

Related posts:

1. Which type of transsexual?
2. Autogynephilia: Sex as a woman
3. Not Men: bekis in the Philippines

Not Men: bekis in the Philippines

Social division into ‘men’ and ‘not men’ groups, together with a domestic matriarchy, explain why transsexual expressions in Asia differ from the West. Male to Female transsexuals are normally categorised as homosexual or nonhomosexual with regard to their birth sex. I use the term HSTS for the former. Blanchard explained the latter in terms of … Continue reading Not Men: bekis in the Philippines →

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Related posts:

1. Autogynephilia: Sex as a woman
2. Ladyboys in Pattaya
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Autogynephilia: Sex as a woman

Autogynephilia is a self-reinforcing, narcissistic sexualised self-reward system. It is stimulated by a man’s desire to be, or appear to be, a woman. It is satisfied by achieving this. Although there are other rewards, the main one is by having sex as a woman. Because it is self-reinforcing, the more often the satisfaction is achieved, … Continue reading Autogynephilia: Sex as a woman →

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Which type of transsexual?

Male to Female transsexualism was classified by Ray Blanchard into 2 different types: HomoSexual Transsexual and Autogynephilic.* In the West generally, these two types have presented with different characteristics, most notable being their primary sexual orientation: HSTS are uniquely attracted to men, whereas AGPs have a complex array of sexualities. These are all based on … Continue reading Which type of transsexual? →

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1. Explaining transsexualism
2. Girly-boy beauty
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Girly-boy beauty

Sexual transformation from boy to girl has always been hot.  Enter the girly-boy: the transsexual or TS. The oldest records we have prove the early existence of TS individuals, often priestesses or shamans. Their direct descendants are in the hijra of India, the kathoey of Thailand, the bakla of the Philippines, the travestis of the … Continue reading Girly-boy beauty →

The post Girly-boy beauty appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

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2. Hunter Avallone: Just a publicity whore.
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Explaining transsexualism

Transsexualism is high profile these days. But what actually causes it? Who are transsexuals? Since there is clearly a deal of ignorance over this, I’m going to go  over the explanations again, in a short series of articles. Women trapped in men’s bodies? Many people are familiar with the idea that male -to-female (MtF) transsexuals, … Continue reading Explaining transsexualism →

The post Explaining transsexualism appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

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Stand up and be counted

My partner, a TS woman

I am in a relationship with a transsexual (TS) woman. This places me in a position of responsibility, because my girlfriend, like all her sisters, is in danger. TS women are abused, insulted, and disrespected; but worse, they are beaten, falsely arrested, harassed by authorities that should protect them and frequently murdered.

This means that men like me must stand up and be counted.

Although on the surface, things are getting better, the improvements are largely cosmetic and there are misconceptions still. Many of these confuse the public understanding of what TS women are, for they are all too often conflated with fetishistic transvestites like Bruce ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner, who claim to be ‘transgender’, or, on the other hand, with ‘gay men’. The former — a tiny minority — have so dominated the media that it has become commonplace to think of a TS as being a middle-aged man in a dress with a wife and children. Nothing could be further from the truth: true transsexuals (Blanchard HSTS) are never attracted to women, because their feminine sexuality is what makes them TS; and they are clearly not men.

Most of the trans-attracted men I know are not gay. Essentialist issues like the nature of genitalia do have validity; for example in the lesbian rejection of fetishistic transgenderists, neatly symbolised by the ‘Cotton Ceiling’ fiasco. But trans-attracted men are less concerned about this essentialism than about gender. This probably has to do with differences in male and female sexuality. Whatever, men like me do not see the presence of a penis on our lover as making her any less of a woman. Gender, not genitalia, makes the girl.

‘Gay’ may be acceptable as a term of inclusion, but not when social conservatives use it as a term of abuse or the regressive Left to enforce conformity to their notions, and both of these are commonplace.

LGB people cannot simply ‘claim’ trans-attracted men as part of LGB. We’re not. We do not accept a role or position within that umbrella because we are not part of it.

Trans-attracted men, whether it is liked or not by either right-wing social conservatives or ‘left-wing’ homonormative orientation police masquerading as ‘Queer Theorists’, are straight. That’s it, and we will not be lectured to by academic refugees from reality who tout their philosophising as if it were fact from the ivory towers of tenure that they occupy.

I don’t give two hoots what religionard or other ignorant conservatives think of me or call me; but the attempts from within the LGB community to call me something I am not are alienating, and while this does not damage me, it damages my partner, and others like her, by also alienating potentially supportive men and by driving love between men and women into the shadows.

Jelly’s first boat ride

Furthermore, we see through it; this claim is asserting that TS women are a category of gay man. That is pure essentialism. What we find attractive are gender markers, not sex ones. We find pretty faces, sexy smiles and nice legs hot and they turn us on. Lesbian feminists may bitch that TS women, in their pursuit of conventional feminine beauty and complete adoption of feminine gender, betray feminists who would like to see gender removed altogether; but since most ordinary women pursue exactly the same gendered path as TS women, it is unfair — and probably pointless — to single the latter out.

The essentialist claim that trans attracted men are not ‘straight’ is a deliberate attempt to bring such individuals under the control of gender-conforming mainstream gay culture and ultimately to erase their distinct identity altogether, in order that they may be put in their places amongst the rank and file of cloned homonormativity. Most such men would laugh this off, the notions of the LGB ‘community’ not being of any importance to us, but denying the legitimacy of their partners is a direct attack on the very existence of TS women. We, the straight partners and lovers of TS women, do not accept this attack, nor will we have any part of it.

This attempt to erase a group of individuals because they do not conform to essentialist notions neatly illustrates the iron-fisted totalitarianism of ‘identity politics’ which says that one may adopt any identity one likes, as long as the authority group approves of it; and, of course, the most despised ‘identity’ of all is that of straight white man.

It is not to be wondered at that this diseased mindset comes from the United States of America, the most rigidly conformist culture in the developed world. It demonstrates that ‘identity politics’ is nothing more than group coercion and the suppression of the individual. The relentless attempt to shoehorn people into ‘identities’ that someone else thinks they fit — regardless of their own desires — tells us all we need to know about ‘social liberty’ in that benighted place.

For far too long we have heard how TS women must change to accommodate society’s prejudices. Reparative therapies have been inflicted on them with the support of religiously-motivated quacks like Paul McHugh, and Ken Zucker tried to condition TS teenagers into gay boys, to set them up for a lifetime of miserable self-denial. Meanwhile the mainstream gay culture looked the other way or even abandoned TS women.

They are routinely beaten, harassed and killed, and, when heteronormative religion and culture is taking a break from abuse, they are erased and their lived experience colonised by fetishistic transvestites, those ghastly simulacra of women. And when Jim Fourrat denounced TS women as ‘crazy queens who would destroy the way gays lived their lives’, he articulated the underlying truth about ‘gay men’: that they are no more than women in denial, desperate to hang on to their tattered comfort-blanket of pretence.

As one true TS going under the name of ‘Androphile’ put it, ‘If gender transition was easier, we would see way less gay men and more androphilic {true} transsexuals. The frustrated desire of a gay man permeates his life. All gay men are effeminate but ALL gay men despise femininity. Now, you will turn around and say that you know effeminate gay men in relationships. Those are not relationships. Those are compromises to be less lonely. There is a difference between what people want and what people get. Effeminate gays (ALL GAYS are effeminate) would love to have a straight, alpha male penetrate them, but, because they can’t get him, they fool themselves into thinking that they’ll be content with another effeminate butch queen.’

The truth of this is born out in any visit to south-east Asia, where huge numbers of TS women are highly visible. Where transition is easy and TS women have a social space they can colonise, they are obvious.

The confection of lies and fantasy that is Western ‘gay culture’ is exactly what Fourrat was trying to protect, and he was right: the very existence of true TS women and straight men who love them undermines the whole concept of the ‘gay’ movement, which is, as another TS put it, all about ‘women pretending to be men in order to have sex with other women pretending to be men’. Why would someone do such a thing except for relentless social pressure to conform? And how bitter must it make a ‘gay man’, as he watches his married partner grow bald and fat and his ill-fitting suits wear out just as his own do, to see a beautiful TS woman living exactly as he would have wished to, if only, if only…?

At the same time as the ‘gay’ male movement was throwing TS women to any wolves it could find, the Western face of ‘transgender’ has been hijacked by fetishistic cross-dressing men like Bruce Jenner. These are not true transsexuals, but because they are loudmouthed male bullies who know how to manipulate the media, they have all but erased those who are, at least in the broader public consciousness. This has only served to drive true transsexuals in the West further underground and, consequentially, thousands of men who are attracted to them to seek their partners outside the West, where the vile duopoly of ‘gay men’ and fetishistic transvestites has not succeeded in erasing true transsexuals.

Within the rigidly homonormative Western ‘LGB’ culture of today, feminine men and masculine women are ostracised in favour of a bizarre narcissism where everyone loves a clone of themselves. Because this culture sees TS women and their lovers as something they are not, it expects them to sign up and be erased. At the same time, male autogynephilic transvestites, who remain heteronormative, heterosexual men under their dresses, deliberately shame trans attracted men for their desires, as if these horrors were attractive to us in any way at all.

We don’t want to be a part of that and we shall not; we will not be subsumed into the clone mentality of mainstream homonormative LGB culture, nor will we be shamed for loving the women we do by a group of 100kg linebackers in frocks swinging Vuitton handbags and sporting size 15 heels.

People will just have to accept true TS women and those of us who are attracted to them, as we are. That means it is up to us, the men who love and support them, to fight alongside our partners for recognition and fairness.

Transsexual women have a long history, going back to before the invention of writing, and persist in all cultures, everywhere. They are not going anywhere, nor are their lovers. Learn to live with us and stop trying to fit us into boxes of your invention, and we’ll get along just fine.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Stand up and be counted appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

Related posts:

1. An exploration of transgender lives
2. Ladyboys in Pattaya
3. Challenging Autogynephilia

Ladyboys in Pattaya

So you’re planning to meet some ladyboys in Pattaya? Read this.

The whole of south-east Asia is remarkable for its highly visible populations of transsexual women. These are not at all the same as what you may have been used to thinking of, if you are a Westerner. They’re not like Bruce ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner. In fact, most of the publicly visible ‘transgenders’ in the West are not transsexual at all, except in a very limited sense. Scientifically they are ‘autogynephiles’ or to put that in lay terms, fetishistic transvestite men. Other than wearing women’s clothes and make-up, and maybe having cosmetic surgery, they remain what they always were — heterosexual men. Not too many straight men would find them attractive, although, to be fair, that is not their aim. (See my discussions on Ray Blanchard for more details.)

Ladyboys in Thailand and across Asia are not like that at all. They belong to a group known scientifically as ‘Blanchard HomoSexual TransSexual (HSTS)’or ‘Early Onset Androphilic Transsexual (EOT) but which I refer to as ‘true transsexual’ for simplicity — and accuracy. They are strongly attracted to men and always have been. Usually, they began having crushes on men when they were around 5-7 years old. They almost certainly were gay boys at some point in the past.

They are beautiful and very sexy. They are extremely feminine in appearance and manners. From their early teens they use female hormones, often birth control pills which are freely available without prescription, to turn themselves into staggeringly beautiful women, with the specific aim of attracting heterosexual male lovers. And the fact is that many men are powerfully attracted to them.

However, many of those men are coy about meeting transsexual women. In the West they may be put off firstly by peer pressure and the fear that they may be called ‘gay’, but also by hostility from Western transvestites. These absolutely do not want sexual interest from men, because they are heterosexual men themselves, even if they happen to be dressed up as women. So they routinely ‘shame’ men who are interested in them, which may confuse those who do not understand that there are two different types, which bear no relationship to each other at all. At the same time, true transsexuals are hard to meet in the West, since they usually find things easier if they live in ‘deep stealth’ so that nobody knows their true gender status. One way to get round this is to go abroad.

I was recently asked how things were in Pattaya, so if you’re thinking of going there to meet some TS women, the following may be useful — or at least more useful than most of the garbage you’ll find on transphobic ‘backpacker’, ‘ex-pat’, or autogynephile sites. We’re definitely trans friendly here, as long as you are the right type. I’ll do something on the other major hotspots some other time, but the general rules apply there too.

The phenomenon of highly feminine, sexually attractive transsexual women has become increasingly well known over the last two decades, mainly through the internet. Transsexual porn, for example, is extremely popular, but only amongst men who identify as ‘straight’. Unfortunately a great deal of the information available is either badly researched or flat wrong, or, worse, comes from sites maintained by autogynephile activists, who have no knowledge whatsoever about the lives of true transsexuals, although they pretend to.

While there are huge numbers of transsexuals throughout Latin America, where they are usually called ‘travestis’, this is not an easy destination for Western men. Brazil in particular has a very violent culture and communication is hard unless you speak Portuguese. Colombia is notoriously dangerous and while Argentina is arguably less so and is certainly ‘gay-friendly’ it is a very expensive destination for Europeans, and without decent Spanish, life will be tough. As well as this, the areas where you might meet the girls you’re looking for are often downright dangerous. Outside of a few well-known holiday spots (where the police deliberately exclude transsexuals anyway,) these are destinations for the experienced traveller, rather than tourist, only. Nothing will be laid on and everything will be difficult and frustrating. Trust me.

As a result, and increasingly, the destination of choice for men, who desire to investigate further their attraction to transwomen, has become Thailand, and particularly Pattaya, along with Phuket and Bangkok, the capital. Thailand has a very well developed tourism sector, with many hotels and short-term apartments at very reasonable prices. It is easily and cheaply accessible from the West by air and does not require prior visa approval for most Westerners — you get a month automatically on entry. As well as this it is relatively inexpensive, fairly relaxed, warm, sunny, many people can speak English and there is excellent infrastructure and communications. Together, these make it popular with all types of tourists as well as more hard-core travellers.

Thailand is therefore an ideal destination for the ladyboy-attracted man who wants to find out more. ‘What happens in Thailand stays in Thailand,’ is the saying and as long as you don’t make the actual news, nobody will ever know what you get up to — although they may presume you are seeking out sex.

Action in Pattaya is constant all year round, although in the low season, Western summer, things can be a little quiet and it will be rather hotter and wetter than from November to March. Only around 10% or so of the sex workers in Pattaya are ladyboys, as transsexuals there are usually known (they all call themselves that) but they are obvious. Ordinary Thai girls, even sex workers, are nowhere near that forward, or, frankly, that gorgeous. Pattaya attracts a lot of Russian family tourists — I can only imagine what might be going on inside their heads — but they don’t get in the way.

(By the way, don’t call ladyboys ‘kathoey’. Depending on pronunciation and context, this may be offensive.)

You will see ladyboys serving in restaurants, in shops, working in hairdressing salons — I think every salon in Asia is majority LB — as well as in banks, travel agencies and such-like. Besides this, there are well-known, glamorous ladyboy cabarets. Tiffany and Alcazar are the two biggest, both with large theatres, but there are many other, smaller and more intimate venues. They’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but I recommend visiting at least once. (Please note: the girls who work in these, certainly the more upmarket ones, are usually NOT available for paid sex, or at least, not on the premises. Don’t cause embarrassment.)

However, for the intending trans-attracted Lothario, that leaves plenty of choice. There are estimated, at the last figures I saw, to be as many as 1000 transsexual sex workers in Pattaya, of a total of 10,000 or so including natural girls and gay boys. These girls either work in bars or freelance on the street, while some do ‘escort services’ through websites.

Generally, contracting with bar girls is safest because they work under a person called a mamasan. This is usually an older woman or ladyboy whose job it is to manage the younger girls. The mamasan will make sure the girls behave when they are with clients (you have to behave too). So if there’s an issue, you can go see mamasan and get her to sort it.

However, you will have to pay a ‘bar fine’ to take a girl out of the bar. The logic behind this is convoluted and it’s really just the bar’s cut from her sex work. How much depends on the bar. 300 — 500 short time is reasonable, but I have heard reports that this is going up. If so, that will just put business in the hands of freelancers.

The girl will ask for 1000 — 1500 short time, although, if you appear green, she might chance for more. Don’t pay it; it’s a buyer’s market.

You will find yourself targeted by girls (of both types) so be polite but firm. In some bars, ladyboys will be extremely direct and may shock you. Expect to have your genitals in someone’s hands early on, and someone’s genitals in yours. However, don’t be rushed and if you don’t fancy a particular girl, just say so. Protocol, with bar girls, is to buy a ‘lady drink’ while discussing your plans for the evening. These are more expensive than regular drinks and she gets the excess as a tip. If you are interested in having sex with her, tell her so and move to the conclusion, otherwise she’ll think you’re not serious and may just disappear. (You have no idea how quickly a six-foot LB can either vanish or suddenly materialise right beside you until you have seen it done.)

Also, try to define what will be on the menu before you make the deal. I won’t get into too many details but, for example, if you want a post-op, ask. Same if you are only interested in a pre-op. (Most are pre-op.) The usual sign is to make a snipping gesture with index and middle fingers. There are other gestures for specific sorts of entertainment. You’ll figure it out.

Many bars have rooms, usually around 300 — 500 baht, where the fun happens, otherwise your girl will know a place where the price will be similar. It’s not really usual to go to your hotel for short-time unless it’s very close by — cuts into the sex — but it is for long-time. Short-time, by the way, should be a leisurely hour, more if she’s having fun. And these girls are not miserable sex slaves. Most of them really enjoy what they do and if a girl likes you, she’ll let you know. You will enjoy what she does too.

If you’re thinking of taking a girl back, check your hotel is girl friendly beforehand. Most are, but better to be sure. Many girls are reluctant to do long-time in the early evening (they can make more money with quickies) but at the end of the night might be quite up for it — nice hotel bed, proper shower and breakfast on you. (Well, lunch; good luck getting one of them up before 2 pm.) Expect to pay 2000 — 2500 baht depending on the time and how much of a slob you are.

Your girl might be quite pissed by the end of her working night, since part of a bar girl’s job is to get as many lady drinks purchased as possible and she has to drink them. The later you wait, partly because of this, the more likely it is that you’ll get a rate — but also the more likely that another cruiser will snaffle her. Other men will just cut in and if you haven’t made a deal, that might be it, she’s gone and all the money you spent on lady drinks goes out the window. Just make sure she’s not a total zombie when you finally get her out; but if you can contain yourself, great morning sex will be on the agenda. Remember that while these look, feel and act like beautiful women, they are motivated by a male sex drive that is just as powerful as yours is.

(Once again, do not believe the horse-manure you’ll find on autogynephilic websites. Those writers are NOT transsexual, they are transvestite men. Most have zero interest in other men. Their delusion — that they are actually women — leads them to play down their sexuality. Trust me, a true transsexual is a highly sexually motivated person; and furthermore, she has no delusions about what she actually is.)

She’ll be asked to leave her ID card at the concierge desk, most probably, and this is definitely in your interest. A good hotel will require that you accompany her to retrieve it, so she can’t make off with your new Nikon while you’re asleep. Always use the room safe for your valuables, however.

If you take a bar girl home for long time remember the bar fine meter is running till you take her back. Get confirmation on how much from mamasan BEFORE you take the girl out. Do I need to mention, you must use a condom? Well you must. This applies even if you (think you are) in a long-term relationship with a bar girl. You don’t know who else is in there. Be sensible and be safe. (Now if you have a real relationship with a girl, which you are not going to establish in a 2-week trip anyway, it’s different. But by then you’ll have more experience.)

After 10 pm or so (LBs are just unusually gorgeous vampires) there will be loads of ladyboys on the street, not just in the bars. Their prices are similar to bar girls but no bar fine — and no mamasan to run to if there’s a problem. You will certainly, at least in Walking Street, see many well-known faces, as the producers of porn seek their models here. However, you might pay much more for the services of a girl who is no hotter or more talented than any other, but just has done a lot of porn. Your choice.

Finally, you can meet girls online. The principal site is www.ThaiFriendly.com, which has literally thousands of girls subscribed. (Facebook is also popular but the profiles are mostly in Thai, so you may have difficulty.) Not all the girls are seeking casual paid sex, most are in fact looking for longer relationships. But there are plenty who would still be interested and it will say so on their profiles.

Do be aware though, that you are effectively asking someone you have never even seen in real life to come and stay in your hotel room for however long. Take sensible precautions and it might be smart to meet at a short-time hotel; she may also feel more comfortable with that. (Note also that the same concern applies to the girls; if she’s dating rather than just coming for paid sex, expect to be asked to meet somewhere public and don’t be surprised if she arrives with ‘a friend’ who may be a large gay man. She’s just being sensible too.)

My advice to a first-timer would be to stick to bar girls until you find your feet. But having said that, nearly all the freelancers are fine; one thing that you will find, if you do this, is that Asian TS, call them what you will, are amongst the nicest and most fun people you will ever meet. The crack is DO NOT GET DRUNK and treat them with great respect. It’s Thailand, respect is a big deal. It will also be paid back.

Then there is the question of love. It is easy to get sex in Asia without paying for it. In fact, I used to wonder why anyone would, till I discovered the old adage ‘You don’t pay the girl for sex, you pay her to leave afterwards.’ Now I will be honest, being genuinely in love with an Asian TS who really loves you too is the most wonderful, rewarding experience. There is nothing she will not do for you. The sex will be mind-bendingly good. Most ladyboys have a great sense of humour and are strong characters — they have to be. She can probably cook like an ace, and will delight in looking after you. But the payback is commitment. You have to be ready to give that.

Asia is full of stories of Westerners who have had all their savings taken by a gold-digger who is actually running a string of men. So be careful. These are lovely women but they have real needs, supporting the rest of an enormous (by Western standards) family being one of them. They see milking Western men as a legitimate career; they don’t see it as fraudulent, as any cursory check of the relevant sites will prove.

Now it’s up to you. You can just buy sex in the marketplace; or you can have casual fun, and it will cost dinner and beachwear and salon visits and so on, and maybe the buffalo got a bit sick this week. There’s probably not that much in it. Or you can get serious. But serious is really serious, and these girls will give you their hearts on a plate. If that’s not what you want, you have to tell them. You need to know what you want up front and not let passion — or for that matter alcohol — cloud your judgement. I can highly commend the experience of being in a committed relationship with an Asian TS, but it’s not for everyone. Try to be cool and if you’re only going to test the waters and find out about yourself, follow the old adage — ‘no getting lubbed up’.

Back in Pattaya, watch it on Beach Road after 1 am. Just be careful and if you feel you’re a bit tipsy, get a tuktuk or a taxi home. Don’t walk alone there if you can avoid it.

Also, you’re meant to carry your passport at all times in Thailand but this is risky; better make a colour photocopy and carry that along with your hotel reservation receipt, so if you are asked (very rare) you can politely explain it’s at the hotel. (This is one area where the Philippines is better; here, if you extend your visa, you’ll get an Alien Registration card and that is all you need to carry, leaving your passport in the room safe at all times.)

Be aware that there is a difference between Thai Royal Police and the Tourist Police. If you have trouble go to the Tourist Police FIRST. They have a cabin in Walking Street. They are generally more sympathetic and speak good English — indeed, most are ex-pats themselves. If you go to the Thai Royal Police and they reject your claims, that’s it and the Tourist Police can do nothing to help you, even if you have a legitimate grievance. It’s a ‘face’ issue.

Also, anything you agree to will be held to be a binding contract in any dispute. So mind what you say. If you are in a dispute with someone and you believe you are right, keep schtum and insist on calling the Tourist Police. (The old ‘jet-ski’ scam is still ongoing, for example. Here, an innocent is hired out a jet-ski with significant damage which may have been covered up to make it look less obvious. He takes it back and bingo, $500 USD bill for repairs, while the owner is brandishing a gun. Keep calm and get the Tourist Police. The scammers are all known to them. But if you agree to pay the damage in the heat of the moment or because you are intimidated, you’ll be held to it. Stay polite, say nothing and get the cops.)

Be very careful never to get into a violent exchange with any Thai. This applies just as much everywhere in Asia. ‘Face’ is hugely important across the region. I don’t care if you’re a 120kg 6’4″ Yankee Doodle or whatever. Apart from the fact that they might well be armed, all those little Thai guys do Muay Thai or I dunno what. Even if you do manage to get the better of one, you know something? He’s going to come back with 20 of his chums and hospitalise you if not worse. The best thing you can do, if you fuck up like this, is to get on the next plane out. They might not come today, or tomorrow, but they will come, and you will be consuming sustenance through an intravenous drip for the rest of your trip — or maybe your life. And don’t imagine that just because they look cute, ladyboys can’t defend themselves. They’re as strong as men (unsurprisingly) and will whip off a stiletto-heeled shoe and beat you round the face with it if they have to. Play bonny and play safe.

Finally, if you want all this in safety and to meet a nice group of girls in a relaxed, no-pressure environment, try Sensations Bar in Soi 21. Also, if you don’t mind staying a little out of town I can recommend Gino House. It’s quiet, clean and discreet.

Oh, and, I should warn you: once you have discovered ladyboy love you will never go back.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Ladyboys in Pattaya appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

Related posts:

1. Travels With a Ladyboy: 1. NAIA
2. An exploration of transgender lives
3. Do Transattracted Men Cross-dress?

Challenging Autogynephilia

Bruce Jenner as a yoiung man. Was ‘Caitlyn’ already being created in his masturbation fantasies?

Autogynephilia was defined by Dr Ray Blanchard during research that led to our scientific understanding of transexxualism from the 1980s onwards. His studies focussed only on patients born male who desired Genital Reconstruction Surgery (GRS) to change their male genitalia into cosmetic facsimiles of female ones. Blanchard’s work is the definitive basis of the science on the subject of male-to-female transsexualism. It has never been scientifically challenged and indeed, more recent studies have strongly supported it. Blanchard’s work should be called the Theory of Transsexualism, in the scientific sense.

(Please note: Blanchard did not concern himself with any of the myriad, ephemeral ‘identities’ which some individuals claim to adhere to and which the ridiculous ‘Identity Politics’ {IP} pretends to support. Blanchard is a scientist and he deals in observable facts, so he studied people born male who desired GRS, since this was quantifiable.)

Dr Ray Blanchard, who scientifically explained transsexualism

He defined, in the first place, a group he referred to as ‘Homosexual Transsexual’ (HSTS) which he showed shared a common development pathway with homosexual men. I refer to those in this group as ‘transsexual’; it was what they were first known as and avoids the risk of conflation or offence. This group has been shown, by observation and many studies, to exist all over the planet, in all human populations, at about the same rate of prevalence: around 1:200 of male-born individuals. We have archaeological records that indicate they were present at least 35,000 years ago and mythological, literary and historical evidence that they have been a part of human culture since before writing began. Perhaps the most important factor that links the individuals in this group together (there are many, which we shall discuss elsewhere) is that they are uniquely sexually attracted to men, in exactly the same way as women are.

Perhaps more importantly, however, Blanchard identified another group that was presenting in significant numbers. This group he found puzzling. They were older; they were not in any way feminine or effeminate; they had extreme difficulty ‘passing’ as women; they were overwhelmingly white, with middle-class, professional backgrounds who had been successful in their careers; they were nearly always married and usually had children. Frequently these last were at the point of becoming independent. Most importantly, however, these individuals were never attracted to men, at least prior to transition. Blanchard called these ‘autogynephiles’ or AGP, a term I also use.

Two AGP men getting their dicks hard pretending to be women

This dichotomy had been observed before, since the time of Magnus Hirschfeldt, but nobody had been able to explain what was going on. Transsexuals (Blanchard HSTS) were easy to understand: they are socially, sexually, romantically and behaviourally women. It really is that simple. They may not be women in a biological sense (which they universally accept, in my experience, unlike AGPs) but in every other way, that is what they are.

AGPs were not like that and the profile was much more difficult to describe. Blanchard rightly argued that, since these individuals were sexually, socially, romantically and behaviourally men as well as being biological males, the root cause of their condition must reside in their male sexuality, since they clearly could not have a female one.

This observation, backed up by statistical surveys and questionnaires, allowed Blanchard to show that, just as the most important common factor in the transsexuals’ profile was their feminine desire for men, the most important such factor in this second group was their attraction to themselves, as women. This allowed him to formulate a testable hypothesis:

‘Autogynephilia is a man’s propensity to be attracted to himself, as a woman.’

This remains unchallenged science. AGPs, the men who suffer from this condition, are, he was able to show, in every way men, except for the locus of their sexual desire. For most people, including transsexuals, this is outside the self: we are sexually attracted to other people. AGPs are wrongly wired here: their objects of sexual attraction are themselves, but as women. Blanchard called this misdirection of sexual attraction an ‘Erotic Target Location Error’.

These men’s sexual targets must be women, because they have no attraction to other men; they are uniquely attracted to women. So in order for the AGP to be attractive to himself, he must become a woman. And this is the underlying truth of autogynephilia: it is a condition that causes men to become ‘women’ in order to enjoy sex with themselves, mainly through masturbation.

Most men with this condition remain secret fetishistic cross dressers all their lives, and a trawl of internet sites devoted to their interests will show that they are numerous in Western culture. Their visibility is directly related to social factors: the less acceptable it is for a man to wear women’s clothing, the more likely it is that they will keep their fetish a secret. So a great many go to their graves without their wives or children ever knowing the truth.

However, where it becomes acceptable for them to appear in public, the more courageous will do so, and, unsurprisingly, those who will do so first are the most aggressive and masculine. This is confirmed by observation of the ‘transgender’ autogynephilic ‘activists’: male bullies in frocks. They will then seek to ‘transition’ full time into ‘women’. They will claim to be ‘real women’ to the point of preventing actual, biological women from calling themselves so. Because they are men who lay claim to ‘women’s identity’ the first principle AGPs presume is that, in order to be a ‘real’ woman, one must have been born male. (This is a claim that no transsexual would ever make.)

Psychologically, the development of the condition follows a defined path. Either at or some time after puberty, the subject becomes sexually aroused by the thought of himself in women’s clothing or, more rarely, just by conceiving of himself, in sexual fantasy, as a woman. Typically his understanding of sex is that it is demeaning and violent towards the woman he imagines himself to be and this is why these individuals are also often sado-masochists.

Because sexual reward, here normally but not always delivered by masturbation to orgasm, usually in front of a mirror while wearing women’s clothing and make-up, is so powerful a confirming agent for behaviour, this practise leads to an intensification of the condition. Sexual reward, after all, is the basis of human bonding, but the bond being formed here is not between two separate individuals, but within the mind of a single, male individual.

This means that a second personality must be created by the subject, for him to fall in love with. Typically this appears soon after the onset of the condition, and will be given a name: frequently this is outlandish and often a misspelled, foreign name.

This second personality grows like a succubus within the mind of the subject. It will invent for itself a plausible history, in which it first appeared long before puberty. It does this because the subject is aware that transsexuals usually become aware of their difference from other boys at this age, and the AGP is seeking to colonise that identity; at the same time, it is trying to invent a plausible childhood history for itself. This is never true; autogynephilia never appears before puberty. It is a product of post-pubescent masturbatory fantasy.

We can reality-check this by examining the testimony of those around the individuals when they were pre-pubescent children. Here, the family and friends of transsexuals will have remarked the extreme femininity of the child and will have discussed it. Frequently, action will have been taken to ‘cure’ the child — usually with at best harmful results, and often disastrous ones. Suicide is not uncommon amongst this group. At school they will probably have been bullied as ‘sissies’ in an attempt to get them to conform to sexual stereotypes proposed for them by the patriarchy. Most importantly, from the first point in their lives that they began to have crushes on others, these will have been men. Their childhood family and friends will have been aware of this too.

Transsexual model Geena Rocero. This is what an mtf transsexual looks like. A woman.

AGPs show none of these. The decision of such a person to become a ‘woman’ is always a surprise to those closest to them, even their wives, who may be deeply traumatised. However, since the AGP does not really love his wife and instead loves himself, this will be of no consequence. The woman who thought he loved her will be given an ultimatum: ‘become a lesbian’ or be accused of being a ‘transphobic bigot’. Such is the profound misogyny of the AGP, that sees women only as sexual objects — like the one he has created in his own mind and is obsessed by.

The AGP’s ‘female’ personality, which was created as an object of masturbatory lust and has been reinforced by sexual gratification, often for decades, has become so powerful that it has literally overwhelmed the male personality that invented it. The poor wife of such an individual, the mother of his children, is not being forced to ‘become a lesbian’ by the man she married, but by a succubus that he invented and nourished and has now consumed him. The man she married is effectively dead, his place taken by an ersatz, false ‘woman’ who has no idea what it is to actually be a woman, or how to look or behave like one.

Autogynephilia, therefore, is a corrosive and destructive condition that ruins lives and ends marriages; it causes enormous suffering and soul-searching amongst the women married to the sufferers, who are offered no explanation other than that their (actually now dead) husband ‘was always a woman’. And this is true: the succubus now animating him was indeed a woman from the point he created it. That its entire history is imaginary is a consequence of it being an artefact of his fetishistic obsession with himself.
The classic AGP remains a man in every sense except that of appearance, even after GRS, if he elects to undergo this, which not all do. His attraction to women remains exactly the same as a hetero-normative male’s. If he remains possessed of a penis, this individual may become a serious sexual threat to women, who, as a man, he will predate upon. He will also, frequently, predate on transsexuals, whom he will relentlessly abuse.

This ‘classic’ profile accounts for some 60% or more of AGPs. However, Blanchard identified two others.

The first he termed ‘analloerotic’. Sometimes these men are misrepresented as ‘asexual;’ but this is very far from the truth. While they may not masturbate to orgasm, or indeed be able to take pleasure in their genitalia at all, their sexualised fantasy of themselves as women is their reward. The researcher Dr Charles Moser has proposed that one factor or perhaps even cause of autogynephilia is an underlying androphobia, a hatred of men and all that is masculine. This — which is again confirmed by observation and personal accounts — suggests that a possible cause of the condition is extreme repression of normal male sexuality and masturbatory practice in boyhood. After all, autogynephilia is most reported in the United States of America where, to this day, boy children’s genitalia are routinely mutilated to prevent masturbation, and the ‘dangers’ of self-pleasuring are constantly being promulgated by delusional ‘pastors’ from pulpits all over the land. Analloerotics, unable to derive sexual pleasure form their genitalia, get it from such things as using women’s toilets while dressed as women, from ‘dressing parties’, which are frequently advertised in the media targeting AGPs; knitting and other stereotypically ‘women’s’ roles and from appearing in public ‘en femme’ and not being discovered and so on. Individuals in this group are motivated to GRS because of their loathing of their own genitalia, rather than a desire to use their neo-vagina for sex.

The other group of AGPs identified by Blanchard he called ‘bisexual’ and, paradoxically, this may be the only group of true bisexual men in the West. Like the others, prior to transition, these men have no sexual interest in other men; indeed they may be strongly homophobic, as evidenced by Bruce ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner. However, once they begin hormone therapy and begin to feminise, these men desire to explore how successful they can be at being accepted as women. For them, going out in public dressed in women’s clothes is not enough. They need to actually be sexually desired by men. This, therefore is an extension of their masturbatory fantasy, in which the ‘woman’ they have created is sexually taken as a woman. Blanchard called this phenomenon ‘pseudo-homosexuality’. The individuals in this group often elect to have GRS, but not always: there are a significant number of male sex workers in the West who conform to this type and who provide sexual services to other AGPs and closeted homosexual men.

Even if they do have GRS, these men remain AGPs and their desire is quite different from that of transsexuals. Transsexuals were never sexually interested in women and their response to a man’s body is exactly the same as a woman’s. Like other women, they may see sexual and romantic success in finding partners as an affirmation of their attractiveness, but they know they are not men. The pseudo-homosexual, ‘bisexual’ AGP is simply using his male partners’ bodies in furtherance of his own sexual fantasy.

Another autogynephilic man. Are we still in any confusion here?

All of this is important because we know that AGPs are a small minority, even in the West, which is the only culture they appear in. Transsexuals are a much larger one, but AGPs predate on them and harm them. They are suppressed, their identities colonised and erased by autogynephilic men, because these men cannot stand any questioning of their claims. Just by existing, male-to-female transsexuals prove the lie of autogynephilia, so they must be silenced.

Bianca Freire, a Brazilian transsexual model. Still confused? Bianca is not autogynephilic.

Transsexuals are being killed, across the planet, at horrific rates. In Brazil, over a hundred every year are slain. In the USA, at least 18 last year alone. And every single one of them was transsexual, and most emphatically not autogynephilic. AGPs are white, middle-class men who never get into situations where they might be killed. They may be mocked and shunned but they are not at risk. Gwen Araujo, Jennifer Laude, Keisha Jenkins, thousands of others, were not AGPs. If we want to protect these women, then we have to recognise the truth: AGPs are their enemies.

So to all transsexuals I say, stop supporting men like Bruce ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner. Just stop. He is a man in a dress and not a transsexual at all. He will not shed a tear if you are killed. And to men who are attracted to, or are in relationships with transsexuals, I say this: get out of the damn closet and accept your responsibilities. Challenge the AGP orthodoxy, the lies that would erase the women we love. Let these horrific succubae, these travesties of womanhood, the AGPs, know that while we accept their right to exist, we do not accept that they may claim to be, or speak for, transsexuals, nor may they silence us with their standard ruse of ‘transphobia’. How can a man who sleeps with, who wakes with, who loves, supports, shares life with and accepts a transsexual as a woman, be transphobic? The sheer offensiveness of autogynephilics’ lies is like a stench.

It’s time for us to tell the AGPs, and all the other male bullies like them, that if you fuck with our partners, you fuck with us.

.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Challenging Autogynephilia appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

Related posts:

1. An exploration of transgender lives
2. Jenner: not the face of trans women
3. Perspectives

Gay is square and trans is hip

 

Scottish trans woman Jai Dara Latto crowned Miss Transgender UK 2015. Congratulations and may the Zeitgeist go with you!

When I was at art school in Edinburgh in the early 1980s, there was only one place to be: the Hoochie-Koochie Club. Why? Because it was the only gay nightclub. Straight women liked it because there was an unspoken rule: straights are welcome, but no hitting on the women. Straight men liked it because we were much less likely to get battered in the face there than in any of the regular meat-markets in the city. There was no pressure; you could just chill, dance, have a drink.

But more than that, it was culturally cool. The gays always had the best music. They were the best-dressed cats in town and if somebody said ‘you’re looking a bit gay today’ you knew you had your fashion statement bang on. It was the era of the New Romantics and everybody was wearing eye-liner and bleaching their hair. Gender signals were profoundly mixed. Straight women wore sports jackets and top hats over jeans and men wore earrings and chiffon. The gay zeitgeist was as hip as it could be.

Contestants at the 2015 Miss Transgender UK Finals

After I graduated I became Sabbatical President of my Alma Mater’s Student Representative Council. One of my responsibilities was to listen to the pleas of destitute and often homeless students who had spent the grant, that was meant to last twelve weeks, in four of solid, flat out partying. Having also burnt the £50 overdraft facility that Barclays Bank would give anyone who walked in with a matriculation card, they ended up in front of me, begging for a bail out from the hardship fund; which I always gave them. I remember one, Alan we shall call him, sitting on my desk, holding one of my hands in his and supplicating me for help, despite the fact that I’d already said ‘yes’. And when he left he flounced out in style, blowing me kisses and wiggling his bum.

Another of my roles was to oversee the opening of the new Student Bar, which had been years in the development. Pulling a political fast one on the hard left, who apparently wanted old bentwood chairs and sacking, I persuaded the Governors to give me enough money to turn it into the most gay-attractive place in Edinburgh — and so it became, the legendary Wee Red Bar.  (Yup, that was me.) Why did I do this? Because gay was hip. Gay was cool. Gay meant bums on seats and cocktails being drunk, great music, colour, women not being harassed by neds and NO HASSLE.

Everybody interesting was gay. Freddie Mercury was gay, George Michael and Jimmy Somerville were gay, Frankie Goes to Hollywood were gay and Marc Almond was even more dangerously sexy than Debbie Harry. ‘YMCA’, ‘Relax’ and ‘Tainted Love’ were the soundtrack. Gay was the zeitgeist, the iconography to follow. Straights had to infer some sort of a kink just to be taken seriously — just look at Phil Oakey. Gay was cool.

That was before AIDS. I remember the tragedy all too clearly. But I could not have foreseen, then, working as a freelance photographer and documenting this horror, through the tears I cried for friends taken — what was to come.

Gay isn’t cool any more. Gay isn’t dangerous or cutting edge. Gay people are surely as lovely as they ever were, but they lost the zeitgeist. Instead of sparkling young things with multicoloured hair, full make-up and the most provocative clothes anyone approximating masculine gender could possibly wear, we have…two near-identical, balding, inclined to sedentary spread, IT technicians getting married. Did someone say ‘After the Lord Mayor’s Show?’

Now don’t get me wrong. I am really happy that Marriage Equality is now legal in so many countries, even if marriage itself is a questionable institution, both an instrument and an award of the patriarchy. And of course it goes without saying that everyone should be treated equally under the law. I celebrate this, the culmination of decades of activism.

But you know what? It’s dull. It’s grey. It’s what I never would have believed gays could be, boring and conventional. Square.

What happened to the rampant ménages a trois, quatre, cinq or more that the Art School models used to tell us about during their tea-breaks? What happened to the flaming boys with their tongues so far down each other’s throats they could have retuned their vocal cords? What happened to the fashion statements? I think Stephen Fry is very sweet and avuncular but iconic? Are you kidding? Marc Almond was iconic. Stephen is…comfortable. And he is about the most dangerous gay man still left out there. The rest have been swallowed up in a tide of grey, the favourite colour of the patriarchy. What happened to the zeitgeist, dammit?

Gone. All lost. The leaders of the gay movement today belong to a group called the ‘accommodationists’ and no, it’s not a synth band. This group’s philosophy was articulated by Jim Fouratt, a New-York based activist. It may be summed up as: ‘please accept us; we’re just like you but we love other men.’

Which is a lovely sentiment, don’t you think? Except it is one of submission. The accommodationists believed they could never beat the patriarchy and they would have to join it. They thought that if they conformed to the patriarchy’s notions of gender, they might sneak under its radar. And they had a great stroke of political fortune when the AIDS epidemic wiped out most of the opposition.

So they erased and banished the real leaders, like Harry Hay, the ‘Radical Faerie’ a cross-dressing imp who founded the Mattachine Society, the forerunner of the modern gay movement. They erased the trans women and drag queens of colour who really led the Stonewall Riots, like Marsha P. King and Sylvia Rivera; so successful were they that the director of this year’s film ‘Stonewall’, (Roland P. Emmerich, as badly-dressed an accommodationist as one could wish for) actually rewrote history to give these non-white women’s roles to white men, and worse, wrote them out of the story completely. For shame. Who would have thought a proud and out gay man would be both transphobic and racist?

Could I ever have believed, remembering Alan, sitting on my desk in his cowboy boots and hot pants, his hair pink and blue and his nails painted, reeking of patchouli, that such would be the end of something so colourful and provocative — that the face of 21st century gayness would be two middle-aged IT technicians in bad suits taking the patriarchal pledge of monogamy and commitment to perpetuate it?

Gay and lesbian has become boring. It’s dull. It’s unattractive. It’s conventional. It’s Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell. It’s square, man. The patriarchy has bought it, drawn its teeth and clipped its wings. Face it: you can’t be a part of the patriarchy and be interesting.

Oh the Bisexuals are still out there having fun, but you should hear what the L and G have to say about them, darling. Conformity — that sad expression of social conservatism that is nowhere more at home than in the US — has sold out all the individuals in the name of patriarchal acceptance and capitalist economics. Square square square.

And then again.

Suddenly Laverne Cox. Suddenly Janet Mock. Suddenly Paris Lees. Suddenly Sass Rogando Sasot and Geena Rocero. And trans men too: suddenly Fox Fisher, Chas Bono. Suddenly smart, stylish, articulate and beautiful trans people are everywhere.

Gays and lesbians gave up the zeitgeist. They — or at least the mainstream — didn’t really want to be cutting edge, not once they were over twenty-five and got decent jobs anyway. They wanted to be part of the patriarchal club and that meant accepting their position within it, the status the patriarchy allocated to them. So they abandoned all the dangerous people and settled for conformity; a safe marriage, a mortgage and maybe kids. How sweet.

One flaming femboy, her bubble-butt stretching the velour of her lethally short pants, her bag slung on her shoulder, mincing along the street in ludicrously high pumps, does more damage to the patriarchy in ten paces than all the clone, accommodationist gays and lesbians will in their entire lives. They don’t want to damage the patriarchy: they support it and want access to its system of privilege. Our mincing poppet doesn’t give two hoots for the patriarchy. She throws its privilege system back in its face and laughs at it. She just wants to be drop-dead gorgeous and have lots of sex and most of all, she wants it on her terms.

The effect of that is cataclysmic. Thirty-five years ago, before the onset of the AIDs epidemic and the triumph of the accommodationists, the patriarchy was equally challenged. White gay men and lesbians stole the initiative and settled for second best; acceptance on the patriarchy’s terms. Now all that is changing. Trans people are appearing everywhere; they’re on catwalks, on television, on magazine covers, all over the Internet. They have grabbed back the zeitgeist and are running with it. They have the excitement, the danger and the attractiveness and they know it; they always knew it, but now they have articulate voices too, voices that are being listened to, voices that won’t be shouted down by privileged white cis-men and women, the way Johnson and Rivera’s were, or for that matter are being, by older trans people.

In 2004, Fouratt, in a speech that shocked many, claimed that trans women were ‘crazy queens’ who threatened ‘the way we live our lives’. What he meant was that feminine gay men should stop being feminine, that they should instead assert their masculinity and thus fit into his accommodationist model, which was less menacing to the patriarchy. This was not how it was read, at least by many trans activists, who threw the kind of storm in a latte cup they are famous for; but these were all so-called ‘late onset non-androphilic’ or ‘Blanchard autogynephile’ trans women. They definitely are not an extension of gay maleness; many in fact see themselves as lesbian. In the last two decades, however, they have been the ones who made the noise. Fouratt was torpedoed and sank from view.

But there is another type of trans women. These do like men. They are the ‘early onset androphile’, ‘Blanchard HSTS’, or more informally, ‘transkids’ (because they identify as trans while still children). They are the nieces of Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and the daughters of a line of trans women reaching back into history, far beyond the invention of writing.

They are cousins to the hijra and thirunangai of India, the kathoey of Thailand, the transpinays of the Philippines, the waria of Indonesia, the North American ‘Two Spirit’ people and the travestis of Latin America and Southern Europe, as well as myriad other populations all over the world. Once, they were priestesses to the goddesses Inanna, Ishtar and Astarte. The Roman writer Livy tells how devotees of Cybele distilled pregnant mare urine to extract the oestrogen, which they used to feminise themselves — and would secretly give to their enemies to emasculate them. In Rome they were the galli, boys who ritually self-castrated to become priestesses — a procedure we might find shocking but which is carried on to this day by the hijra. The ancient Vedic texts, the foundation of Hinduism, describe these women in detail. They have always been among us.

Thai transgender model Nisamanee Lertvorapong in make-up

Overwhelmingly, they are a world majority of trans women. In Thailand they are estimated to be one percent of born-male population. Thailand is famously trans and gay friendly, but in Malaysia, which is anything but, one study put the prevalence only slightly lower at 1:170. The latest census in India, the first to try to count them, put the numbers of hijra close to half a million, but due to high rates of illiteracy and deep mistrust of patriarchal authority, most did not register. Support workers estimate that there may be as many as four million.

Anyone who has spent time in Asia knows that there is a continuum between feminine gay men and trans women. Traditionally, gay men in these societies identify as women ‘on the inside’ and they will express this if the circumstances are right. This depends on the level of social tolerance they experience, the cultural confirmation of their feminine identity — Asian societies have long-established traditions venerating trans people and indeed, may be more tolerant of trans women than of gay men — and, bluntly, how attractive they are as women.

There is little reason why this should not happen in the West. If you are a naturally feminine boy attracted to men, do you really want to become the image of the accommodationist gay man, an IT technician in a bad suit? It’s the last thing you’d do, if you could be a glamorous woman instead. This is what actually does happen, in most of the world.

In a way, the accommodationist gay movement and its counterpart lesbian one, have come to the end of their shelf-life. We should not be sad about this; they have achieved much. There will always be a place for gay men whose masculinity is too central to their personalities to let go of. But gender is a construct and its expression can be reshaped; the zeitgeist, furthermore, is a freight train coming. Best not be in the way.

Trans people’s star is rising. They have taken up the torch that was dropped by the gays and lesbians — of being stylish, of being shocking, of being iconoclastic, of being dangerously sexy but most of all, of waving the bold red rag of refusal to conform in the face of the patriarchy.

Trans is the new hip. Get ready.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Gay is square and trans is hip appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

Related posts:

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2. People don’t ‘become’ transgender. They just are.
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An exploration of transgender lives

The Warm Pink Jelly Express Train was a very difficult book to write. Compared to my previous one, Poaching the River, it required profound reflection and much research.

Poaching is essentially a romanticised memoir; Warm Pink is nothing like that. It is far deeper and more introspective and writing it, along with the later Why Men Made God, was what shaped my current world view.

My ideas about gender in particular were formed by the research and writing of Warm Pink. Although it is  a breathlessly-paced romantic adventure, it required me to dig deep into the natures of gender and sexuality, something I had never done before.

I spent hours that amounted to weeks on forums where the subject of transgender was discussed and even invented a doppelgänger, MacShreach, to do this. (MacShreach, by the way, just means ‘Son of Shrek,’ which I thought rather fitted the character.)

But I did a great deal of conventional research too. There were precious few books and papers available but I read them all. I think the most useful was Don Kulick’s Travesti, which is a must-read, partly for the insight it gives and partly just because it’s a great book.

I learned Spanish (thanks to the lovely Fabi Pinilla, my longsuffering teacher, who became a real and lasting friend) and enough Portuguese to read interviews in those languages. This was because at the time, there were practically no such resources featuring young transgender women in English. But there were and remain, many published in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and elsewhere in South America, as well as in Spain itself, where there is a long history of transgender cultural integration. The artists Picasso and Dali associated with transgender women, as did the film-makers Luis Bunuel and Pedro Almodovar.

Bruna Geneve

There is a dichotomy between the culture in these Latin countries and that in North America and the UK. In the former, nearly all the trans women appeared to have transitioned young, often at or before puberty. They typically began taking feminising hormones around the age of 12 or 13. This information fed directly into the construction of Rafy, Warm Pink’s female lead; she tells a story typical of Brazilian trans women.

However, in the Anglo-Saxon world, the majority — by far — of trans women then transitioned over the age of forty. This misled a number of American psychologists into thinking that there were actually two types of trans women, and ultimately to Ray Blanchard’s bizarre and now discredited typology.

We now know that Blanchard was wrong, and that the cause of the anomaly in the Anglo-Saxon world was the extreme, violent and pernicious repression against young trans people. This was a time, only ten years ago, when ‘reparative’ therapies, now totally discredited for use against gay men, were being strongly advocated for use against young trans women, in order to turn them into gay men.

This is a level of misogyny that can only be wondered at: it was literally saying that any future, for someone born with a penis and testicles, was preferable to being a woman. At the same time, women who escaped their clutches were beaten, discriminated against and murdered.

I was horrified by this, and by the smug, academic self assurance with which these monsters — I can think of no other word — perpetrated their tortures, akin to water-boarding, on completely defenceless young people. It both made me angry on behalf of their victims and further hostile to the cosy, self-congratulatory club of academia, where such vile ideas are given platform.

The consequence of the repression they suffered was that trans women were bottling up their true natures, often for decades; this is why they presented late. We have just seen, in Caitlyn Jenner, a classic example of this. As repression is reduced we should see many more girls transitioning young and the demographic should align with that which is seen elsewhere.

But in 2005 and 2006, when I was writing Warm Pink, none of the recent developments had yet happened. Blanchard’s typology still had traction, even though a reaction had already begun against it, led by transwomen who were rightly offended to their cores by its gross misrepresentations of them. Perhaps the single most powerful catalyst had been the publication of Michael Bailey’s egregious work of populist pseudo-science, The Man Who Would Be Queen in 2003. Trans women were being erased by society, by health professionals and in the media. In some ways Warm Pink was my reaction against Blanchard and Bailey’s attempt to erase the identity of an oppressed group altogether.

Karol Bonkar

The book  was an attempt to publicise the fact that not only do young trans women exist, they have established, valid, lived histories which are consistent throughout the world. They know they are trans from before puberty. Their gender dysphoria is such that they simply cannot live as boys. They are almost exclusively attracted to men, and generally prefer the submissive role in sex, though there are notable exceptions.

I explored these alternative sexualities through AnnaMaria’s relationship to Rafy — there was never any doubt in my mind that this was a case of unrequited desire — and Rafy’s with her prior mentor, Marina.

Perhaps the mos fascinating thing I discovered in researching the book was the  extensive support network that exists for young trans women. Brazil is a conundrum: the culture is viciously macho and repressive, yet there are huge numbers of trans women. Murder rates against them are the highest reported in the world, yet Brazilian transgender beauty is iconic and has been celebrated for decades; witness Roberta Close.

Roberta Close

I struggled at first to see how this could be, but it seems that the support network is the key. Young trans girls are adopted by older trans women and then educated — in being transgender– and supported though their journey of transition, which they fund — certainly in Brazil — almost exclusively by sex work.

(I just read Janet Mock’s excellent Redefining Realness in which she describes a very similar support network and  how she, too, funded her transition through sex work. I think it shows great courage and integrity that she should be so open about this and I highly recommend her book.)

This support network allows young transwomen to survive in these repressive cultures, which I was able to confirm when I began to visit the Philippines. Here, there is severe prejudice and discrimination against trans people because of the generally malignant influence of Christianity, yet trans women are everywhere. This is explained at night, when you discover an entire subculture that sustains them.

So Warm Pink is about the nature of young transgender, something that was then being largely ignored both by patriarchal academics like Blanchard and his followers Bailey and Zucker, and the hegemony of late-transitioning women who had adopted a privileged position. Young trans women’s narratives and lived histories were being suppressed and I wanted to redress that.

At the same time, of course, the book is an exploration of my own relationship to trans women, as a man.

Through Brian, the book’s male lead, I explored the nature of the relationship between a trans woman and a straight man who loves her. I put him in a position he could never have believed he would be in, and let him find his fate. There was no predetermined narrative and the end was by no means a foregone conclusion. It was just the way it worked out.

I gave Brian a real test, to find out what he was made of; and in the end, I think he came through with flying colours.

However, Brian and Rafy’s relationship reveals something else: trans women feel affirmed by their relationships with men. This is part of the attraction that not only sex work, but also cabaret dancing, modelling, beauty pageants and a range of other activities have for them.

This offends some radical feminists who have reacted in a fashion that shows the profound intolerance of their philosophy. The vicious damage that they do, deliberately, out of spite against the most discriminated-against group in society, is both a scandal and pure hypocrisy. People like Julie Bindell, Catherine Brennan and their fellow travellers have no right to claim they support ‘human rights’ when they seek to deny them to others, to eradicate those others and erase their very identity. Happily these are a minority even amongst feminists.

I had always supported the equality of women, but I had never really felt the bitter sense of oppression that many women experience, until I saw it through trans women’s eyes. Nobody would ever choose to be trans; it leads, for most, to a life of poverty, discrimination, violence and often murder.

Through the extreme hostility of the patriarchy, for which radical feminists are but agents, towards trans women, I realised the oppression of the patriarchy against all women. It made me a feminist, if I am one. (Something I leave to others to judge.)

Writing The Warm Pink Jelly Express Train was  a voyage of discovery for me, and I tried very hard to be true to that. The new edition, which contains many revisions, reflects discoveries I have made since it was first published, but no substantive areas have been changed.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post An exploration of transgender lives appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

Related posts:

1. People don’t ‘become’ transgender. They just are.
2. Transgender – Is there really an increase?
3. The Warm Pink Jelly Express Train for free (Part 3)