Thanks for reading and commenting. You wrote: "MTF folks are not women. Some want to be, some pretend to be (and many, perhaps most, neither want nor pretend to be), but the differences, in personality and way of being, are quite clear. They are truly a third gender, different from men, and different from women. " I think that's the heart of the issue. But our culture had no place for such people -- no category they could fit into (no katoey or berdache -- I have spent time in Thailand katoeys are visible, ubiquitous and unremarkable). "Gay" isn't working. So if what you wrote it true (and I think it is), why all this pressure on society to force everyone to treat third gender MTF folks as women? You suggest it is media hysteria (sell more papers; elicit more clicks) and that probably has a lot to do with it. But as I suggested in my piece, I also see it as part of the larger war on masculinity which is part of the larger war on the human, with the unstated objective of turning us all into "neutered totalitarian subjects." SR |