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ClueBot III (talk | contribs) m Archiving 1 discussion to Talk:Marsha P. Johnson/Archive 2. (BOT) |
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:This line in particular seems to be outright false, or at best incredibly misleading: "Johnson distinguishes this [identifying as a transvestite] from transsexual, defining transsexuals as those who are on hormones and getting surgery." The source cited actually says: "A drag queen is one that usually goes to a ball, and that's the only time she gets dressed up. '''Transvestites live in drag. A transsexual spends most of her life in drag. I never come out of drag to go anywhere. Everywhere I go I get all dressed up.''' A transvestite is still like a boy, very manly looking, a feminine boy. You wear drag here and there. When you're a transsexual, you have hormone treatments and you're on your way to a sex change, and you never come out of female clothes." ...which appears to be the exact opposite, saying that (to Johnson) a transvestite/transsexual is someone who lives as a woman, as distinct from a "drag queen" who only dresses up occasionally. -[[User:Mugasofer|MugaSofer]] ([[User talk:Mugasofer|talk]]) 16:19, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
::@[[User:Mugasofer|Mugasofer]]: So, [https://archive.org/details/outofclosetsvoic0000unse/page/114/mode/2up?view=theater here]'s that source. At the bottom of p. 114, Johnson is referring to transvestites as "we", then refers to themself as a "transvestite[ ]... with tits". On the next page, they refer to transvestites in general with she/her pronouns, and then refer to "women" in a way that could be read as including themself. They are then asked whether men "think you're a woman," and quote themself as saying "I don't know what I am if I'm not a woman." A few sentences later, in the same answer, they call themself "a smart transvestite"; two sentences after that "no woman gets paid after their job is done." On the next page, they speak of "transvestites that are working as women" and dreams of a day where transvestite can work in female-presenting roles while still identifying as men. They contrast transvestites with transsexuals, referring to the latter again with she/her pronouns, but do not explicitly identify with either group. On 117, Johnson again calls themself a transvestite and a boy. A paragraph later, they speak of "transvestites" rather than "other transvestites." On 118, they're a "transvestite[ ] in female attire," in contrast with a she/her masc-presenting transvestite.
::It's with all of that context that we get to the exchange on p. 119. I honestly don't know how to read "Transvestites live in drag. A transsexual spends most of her life in drag." The definitions appear synonymous. Is she saying she's one of these, or the other, or both? Is it an editing error, and if so, is it that she said ''transvestite'' both times or ''transsexual'' both times? Either way, though, the interviewer then describes Johnson as a pre-operative transsexual, a label they neither accept nor reject as they talk about their plans for bottom surgery. The interview ends without further discussion of the ''transsexual'' label. The final identifier Johnson aligns with in the interview is ''drag queen''.
::Let's get a few things out of the way: First, going onto HRT and having bottom surgery make someone, in the medical sense of the term, ''[[transsexual]]'', but not necessarily in the colloquial sense of that term (the one that's largely been supplanted by ''[[transgender]]''). We know that today many nonbinary people are "transsexual" medically speaking while not (necessarily, exclusively, binarily) identifying with the gender associated with the sex they've transitioned to(ward). Second, not everyone identifies with a consistent gender label or set thereof. That's true today, and it was true in Johnson's time.
::Overall, if we can say nothing else about Johnson's attitude toward gender based on this interview, it's that they were not using these terms the way most people in common parlance in 2024 would. They refer to themself as a transvestite and a woman in the same breath. They describe something that meets the medical definition of being transsexual, maybe using that term to refer to themself or maybe not, and neither accept nor reject that label when it's applied to them. Perhaps some of that's intentional. Take a gender-fluid contemporary figure like [[F1NN5TER]], who'll refer to himself as a man, woman, cross-dresser, and femboy in a short period of time.
::'''[TL;DR? Read this graf.]''' So I don't think there's anything hiding in that interview that means we should change how we refer to Johnson: They did not reliably identify as any one gender label, and to the extent they gravitated toward one it was ''transvestite'', and the article reflects that. I do think, though, that we should cut the "Johnson distinguishes this..." sentence due to the ambiguity in what they actually meant by that, and should mention something like "Johnson alluded to taking [[feminizing hormone therapy]] and expressed an intention to get [[gender-affirming surgery]] in Sweden." That's an important detail of their life, and should be included.
::A closing thought for this already-too-long post: When there's an interview where someone mostly says ''transvestite'' and at one juncture maybe says ''transsexual'', and the reaction of some people on Twitter and Tumblr is that we're insulting that person for calling them the former instead of the latter, I can't help but feel that there's an underlying notion that there's something lesser about being a transvestite. Too often, on talkpages like this and other historical figures whose genders don't map neatly onto today, I feel there's a notion that goes unchallenged that a binary trans identity is somehow more valid than any other non-cisgender identity, and so we are disrespecting people if we do not call them binary trans. Being a man who wears dresses is valid. Being a full-time cross-dresser/transvestite is valid. Being nonbinary is valid. Being genderfluid is valid. Not knowing how you identify, not caring how you identify, just living your life the way you want to live, is valid. Being binary trans is not somehow more valid than other options just because it's the most "complete". I'm not saying that you're saying that, Mugasofer. But the idea is out there, and it's a shame, because it leads to a lot of trans people and allies saying things that go directly against the identities of [https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/nonbinary-lgbtq-adults-us/ about a third of trans Americans today]. <span style="font-family:courier"> -- [[User:Tamzin|<span style="color:#E6007A">Tamzin</span>]]</span><sup class="nowrap">[[[User talk:Tamzin|<i style="color:#E6007A">cetacean needed</i>]]]</sup> <small>([[User:Tamzin/🤷|they|xe]])</small> 04:15, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
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