Thread by @stephenwhittle

1. Thank you for your admirable research

However, does it matter whether or not those who lived on the real margins as street trans women & cross dressing prostitutes - like Marsha P Johnson - identified themselves as gay or trans

Even in the 1990s doing drag /being trans…

2. … (chicks with dicks) was a way of living, renting & eating

The prospects for poor gender incongruent people are the same today

In Brazil you will make more to survive being a travesti (a TW with a penis) than as an ‘out’ Transsexual woman. In India you will do better

3. … as a Hijra than as a TW

Understanding Trans History is complex, hearing the Trans voice has to be mediated through place, times & cultures

We need to be aware that medical, cultural & social understandings of TP, include self understanding by TP were going through..,

4. .., considerable flux. & change

When I transitioned in 1975 I was called a female transsexual. By 1979 I was referred to as a female to male transsexual

By 1989 I was a transsexual man. In the early 90s I was referred to as a Transgender man & in 1996 I became a Trans man…

5. I still refer to myself as a bi trans man despite becoming a man & male for all purposes in 2005 & having been in a monogamous relationship with a woman for 48yrs

Being a bi trans man is part of how I retain my links with mu part of society, my personal cultural home - the …

6. … space I belong, where I find my tribe

We can use research to debunk theories, even science but debunking the life of
- someone we have never met
- whose time in the world & culture we have not experienced
- whose social struggles we cannot imagine,
is inevitably …

7. … ideologically driven

I would refer you to the many white Christian ideologues who repeatedly debunk the life of Martin Luther King

MLK is long dead but they perceive an ideological threat from the fact that, human faults & all, he once existed

It demeans them not him

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