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Queer theory and queer identity politics made it important to include these people as the same sex partners of men. This became confounded when folks began to see the entire LGB community as vulnerable to a charge of ?gender transgression? or ?nonconformity? and here was the opportunity to include mass numbers of gender outlaws and genderqueers who defy the ?gender binary? and rebel against sociocultural gender roles.

And nothing was more visibly and apparently queer than a ?male-bodied woman?? ?transgender? women who wanted to keep their penises and be the queer sexual partners of the gay men who wanted them for male sexuality? for gay sex. The problem was that if you designate them as ?women? is the sexual partnership now a heterosexual one? Is a person who once identified as a gay man and as a drag queen, going to buy a label of a full time, male bodied but heterosexual woman?

Ru Paul is the epitome of what some regard as drag ?divas? ?She? has no problem with people who use female pronouns in regards to ?her?. But the original definition of ?drag? and the original code in the art of female impersonation put forth the philosophy that the performer who expresses as female is doing so for the show only and traditionally at the end of the show the wig comes off to show that this was truly a man performing his art. But drag queen performers by definition are defined as male and since Ru Paul has not been seeking sex reassignment surgery, it is apparent that ?she? brings a penis and testicles to a sexual relationship. If you bring male anatomy and sexuality to a sexual relationship with Ru, it will look like ?gay? sex. If you are sexually, anatomically female, it would look like heterosexuality.

Drag queens may be pleased with their status and L G B T inclusion, but a large percentage of them, if not the majority do not identify as female by sex, and many are only ?expressing? gender as female on an occasional or part-time basis.. To include them as ?transgender? is to have to invent a special legal category of ?rights of gender expression? that some will try to equivocate as being the same as ?gender identity?. But much of the existence of drag queens is in a homosocial world of gay men. They are in fact the only ?women? among gay men. Are they supposed to accept and permanently live as women when other women are mostly strangers to their world?

Then there were another larger group of male-bodied women that were not interested in gay sex. They had once been called heterosexual transvestites, crossdressers who like sexual relations with women while dressed. But why would they want to be in the gay community? So someone thought the way was to ?queer identify? them and call them ?transgender lesbians? who as women could have sex with other women! But is a person who once identified as male-bodied, heterosexual man who expressed a femme side when dressed want to be known forever as a male-bodied lesbian?

Most of them do not identify as women and they would require the legal sanctioning of gender expression. But what are they doing in L G B T? They are not interested in sex with gay men and the lesbians don?t want anything to do with male-bodied women. They may come to identify themselves as women and even as male-bodied lesbians, but the lesbian community is not going to offer them validation of their womanhood or the sex partners they seek. But are they really willing to give up a male identity and the associated power and privilege for what is at best a peripheral membership as a nominally ?queer? male-bodied lesbian?

Virginia (Charles) Prince was the primary promoter of transvestism as an identity and lifestyle choice preferable and superior to being transsexual. ?He? had coined the term ?femmiphilia? as ?lovers of the feminine? to explain how men could be men and yet express a feminine side. As transvestites and men they expressed a heterosexual interest in sex with women while dressed as women. As early as the mid 1970s, Prince had pondered the notion of the ?transgenderist? as the person who dresses and lives full time as a woman but does not have or want sex reassignment surgery. As ?she? grew older, Prince became an enigma. While denying that transvestites want to be women and that they want to maintain a male identity, Virginia is said to have had some kind of surgery, which in effect could have had ?her? expelled from the femmiphile organizations she founded.

And what of those former drag queens and crossdressers who want to be women, but only part-time, occasionally, or infrequently? How do you identify by gender expression rather than sexual identity? It is not surprising that in spite of community inclusion, a large percentage of crossdressers and drag queens refused to identify as being female or even being transgender.

Of course the lesbian community never bought into this new ?lesbian? identity.

Lesbians, mostly since Janice Raymond?s ?Transsexual Empire? were having enough difficulty with post-operative transsexual women. Some lesbians were sympathetic to the idea of post-operative transsexual inclusion, even at the Apartheid Michigan Womyn?s Music Festival.

But the new Gay World Order was bringing a massive influx of these former labeled transvestites as ?new women? and ?instant Lesbians? and Lesbians fearing being overrun by the invasion of ?rapists in sheep?s clothing?? and they then took efforts to exclude all who were not ?womyn-born womyn, not being able to tell transsexual from transgender women without an inspection.

And the former crossdressers were going have to find their female sex partners somewhere else.

Transmen are also face a dilemma in that many lesbians are more willing to include them as ?womyn-born-womyn? than they are willing to accept transsexual lesbians. This is because so many transmen and their female partners had once both defined as lesbians and as a lesbian couple who are now seen as heterosexual- and both had once felt ostracized, he as a traitor to lesbians as a butch who has gone too far, and she as a dyke who has suddenly gone ?straight?. But does acceptance among ?womyn? invalidate their identities as men and are they going to find a female partner who is heterosexual, does not have a history of identification as a lesbian and will she see her partner as a man in full and not some fancy kind of butch dyke?

With the state of the art of surgery not being sufficient for most transmen to create a fully functioning penis, most transmen have chosen to not have this kind of surgery until the results are improved? and have chose to have other surgeries including hysterectomy and chest surgery foremost instead. But this makes sexuality and relationships problematic for those heterosexual women who have come to expect that sex with a man would involve his penis.And if this lack of available surgery and the excessive cost plus other social difficulties weigh down on the mind of a transman and would he be willing to surrender his efforts at becoming a man in full to settle for a less burdensome and less demanding identity as a genderqueer person?

Transmen are thereby left with finding women who accept them as they are and that may mean that they may have to convert a lesbian-identified woman to accept them as male and their relationship as heterosexual. But there is always the thought that if technology or genetic engineering ever creates a fully functioning penis? that this is more than what some female partners of transmen are prepared to deal with.

And strangely some transmen and their female partners, who as couples had once both identified as lesbians began to be included by lesbians at MWMF and other ?safe? women spaces as womyn-born-womyn, with the transmen perhaps as womyn-born-myn. The transmen who accepted the invitation, had to swallow their dignity and look the other way while they were being misgendered, perhaps as a butch who had gone too far who was now a ?traitor? to lesbians.

Some Lesbians came to accept the inclusion of all transsexual and transgender women, but only as ?transgender? and not as a real woman or lesbian?and only allowing the ?woman? to associate only with her ?own? kind, the mostly male-bodied denizens of the gender variant zoo, including genderqueers, transgenders, drag queens, etc. and to stay far away from the real lesbians!

Ultimately bisexual inclusion was a proposition that could increase the numbers of people identified as gay and lesbian. But transgender inclusion was never really meant for transsexuals.

It was mostly a gay-directed attempt to retain a larger number of male-bodied women by men who like male bodies? or a crude attempt to increase the ?queer-identified? to queerify by granting the lesbian sex fantasies of crossdressers.

This was against the will of the lesbian community and it ultimately resulted in the discrimination excluding all labeled as transgender women, even against those transsexuals who became women congruent in body and mind, those who had the greatest stake in identifying as women, and the ones most entitled to lesbian acceptance and inclusion of them as real women and even as real lesbians.



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