5. Conclusion – autogynephilia and the stigmatisation of older transsexuals

Conclusion.

As previously explained, it is senseless to create two types of transsexual if they have the same symptoms and treatment. So we already know Blanchard’s taxonomy is invalid. However, we also know there are undoubtable differences between these two types of transsexuals. Isn’t it helpful, even if it’s discreet, to hang on to such a distinction?

Definitely not… other than in an anecdotal, talking around a bar table after work “have you ever noticed that the ones who like guys are…” In a clinical and cultural context, however, it must be absolutely eliminated. This is why…

I’m quite sure that the subconscious reason this theory evolved was that some psychologists started to get a bit sick of balding middle aged men claiming they were women, while at the same time they warmed to their pretty, petite, man loving counterparts. I understand this subconscious motivation because I feel it myself. I think we all do. We look at the young, beautiful Geena Rocero and go all warm inside… you pass a fifty-five year old thickly built transsexual in the street and think something else. What that something else is… I don’t know exactly… but I know it forms the basis of transphobia and I know it forms the basis for Blanchard’s taxonomy of transsexuals.

That is why this theory has no place in the twenty first century. It is a part of a long academic tradition of the intellectualisation of contempt. Whether it’s racial superiority or nymphomania or homosexual hysteria – such theories are easy to spot because they always have an emptiness at their core. The emptiness is a complete lack of clinical, scientific or social value; which is entirely logical because it was never the intention of the authors to create value… it was the intention to create contempt.

The target of contempt here is older, more masculine transsexuals. This group already suffers a curious hybrid of prejudice: part ageism, part transphobia, part homophobia, and they do so for all the differences Blanchard loves to obsess about. The way Blanchard and co. have dedicated three decades to detailing these differences – even down to size of hands and body frame – brings to mind the Victorian fascination with the physiognomy of the ‘African negro.’ The simple fact is, however, that even if differences are discovered for the next thousand years, even if we discover that non homosexual transsexuals are from another dimension, it won’t change the fact that transexualism is a state of mind that has nothing to do with sexuality, age or ethnic background… it is, as defined by IS10… simply

… “a desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by a sense of discomfort with one’s anatomic sex.”

So, I will conclude by saying to my friend, Mister Blanchard, that you’ve definitively proven there are differences between gay transsexuals and heterosexual transsexuals. Congratulations. But unfortunately… those differences are completely irrelevant!!!