Missing the Bigger Picture

My recent post on the silliness at Bilerico about the attempt to claim quite a history for the term "transgender" caused a bit of a stir.  Both the article of the original article, and Zoe Brain weighed in.  But the bigger picture is being lost in all the rhetoric....


I just doesn't matter...


A lot of this is an attempt to cover up the fact that the term "transgender," or more specifically, "transgenderist" originated with Arnold Lowman, better known as Charles "Virginia" Prince.  Yes, Prince came up with the term to describe those who crossdress full time.  It was specifically meant to be exclusive of transsexuals.


Of course, by the mid-Nineties, extremists began adopting "transgender" as the umbrella term for their artificial political construct uniting transvestites, crossdressers, drag queens and kings, gender queers, and, whether they liked it, or not, transsexuals.


Actually, at first, transsexuals made the mistake and went along.  I first encountered "transgender" used this way on Usenet in the form of "alt.transgender."  For a while, that was about the only place on Usenet where issues concerning transsexualism were discussed.  Granted, a lot of people there were more akin to transgender extremists than true transsexuals, but that was not true of all there.  I argued with more than a few that linking to the LGB movement was a mistake, but I was shouted down.  


Then a newsgroup for transsexuals was split off, along with groups for crossdressers.  But over the next few years, the transgender extremists would grow more and more outlandish in their demands, true transsexuals would begin to realize they were being linked to a crowd they really had nothing substantive in common with, and as I predicted, many gays and lesbians proved more than willing to sell out transsexuals in the name of  furthering their own cause,


Which brings us back to the topic at hand.  Even IF some of what is claimed is true, even if all of it was true, it would make no difference,  The fact that someone, somewhere, sometime, even someone as "iconic" as Christine Jorgensen, actually said she preferred "transgender" to transsexual, which seems unlikely since the concept of gender had not really caught on at that time, it makes no different,  The kook, extremists, and radicals that have taken over the transgender movement are reason enough for transsexuals to demand to be left out of their little club.


Once again, NO ONE should ever be labeled as transgender unless they willing choose to be labeled as such.  Period, end of discussion.