For that matter, what do the genuine lesbians in our audience make of real life trannies, transgendered and drag queens? Does the crass hyper sexualisation of feminine aspects on view offend sensibilities to a similar extent?
'Trannies?' Seriously?
Transwomen are women. They are not a 'crass hyper sexualization.' Some of them might be highly sexual but what a woman chooses to do with her body and who she does it with isn't comparable to men role-playing as lesbians online.
That leaves drag queens, and drag typically involves camp, not getting off.
You're kind of grasping at straws here.
There may be some linguistic confusion here. In the UK, the term trannie can be shorthand for transvestite as well as transsexual (both pre and post op) - perhaps what you would see as a drag queen would be the tamer children's panto version of transvestism that is quite innocent, but full transvestism amongst consenting adults certainly moves into the realms of erotic encounters and as you so delicately term it "getting off".
Here is a great article on why the term tranny is offensive. As to the question of crass hypersexualisation, both you and the poster above misread the question I actually asked by changing the quotes around to simulate an offensive allusion ... please don't do it. I specifically addressed the correlation between real lesbians being offended by fake online lesbians portraying sexuality in a crass manner, and real lesbians (of whom I have many amongst my friends in Brighton) perhaps being offended at the crass hypersexualisation of feminine aspects on view amongst transvestites attending bars and clubs around my home town (some of which also happen to be amongst my friends).
I wondered aloud if you would be as offended by a pair of men dressed as women flirting at a dance club irl as you might be by a pair of men playing sexualised female characters in an online game?
I really don't know what you mean by "men dressed as women" and there's a pretty large spectrum of ways that statement could be read, going from only mildly offensive to rather offensive. The fact of that matter is, that gender is never clear cut and I think its huge mistake to try to police gender expression in this manner. Would I be a bit bugged by a male cisgendered crossdresser flirting with me? Only if they were being duplicitous about it for some reason, but I have quite literally
never experienced this, and most CDs I know are rather upfront about it. Are crossdressers not allowed to flirt or something?
The idea that a cisgendered male crossdresser is by default a 'crass hypersexualisation of feminine aspects' or that portraying femininity in a sexual manner by men is inherently negative seems rather bogus to me. Feminine gay men exist. Saying that only women can be feminine, or portray feminine sexuality puts certain ownership of a way of being, which I see as faintly sexist and gender essentialist at best and transmisogynist at worst.
The idea is... how does one even define gender? When is something considered "Acceptable" as a way of acting for one gender but not for the other? How is this
not sexist? This happens all the time in the trans community, and its really annoying. The stereotypical "requirements" that trans people are held to are silly. Consider the expectations people seem to have of your average MtF trans person; most people hold these trans peoples to such a ridiculously strict stereotype that their own mother couldn't even remotely come close to meeting the expectations of. No "true" female, by their reckoning, would ever match their impossible definition of what it is to be a "woman", yet they hold a trans woman to do this impossible task of fitting in beyond realistic expectations.
I think that anyone attempting to define gender appropriate conduct for anyone else other themselves is sliding down a slippery slope to nowhere full of frustration, judgment and stress.
Author
Topic: "Space Lesbians" (Read 28896 times)