Transvestites, Transgender, and Social Intolerance
by People have recently been much taken by the video footage of two transvestites being attacked on a Cardiff street. The fact that they proceeded to put their assailants on their backsides caused more than a ripple of mirth. Yet away from the news feeds and joys of You Tube, the reality for transvestites is often very different.
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The fact that the two transvestites in question were cage fighters, or real men in a dress, appears to have acquired them a degree of acceptance, well it’s all a bit of a laugh isn’t it? No, it isn’t, not for most transvestites who choose to express their femininity in public when the constant fear of attack is a real and present danger. After all, the two people in question were assaulted that night for who they were, or what they appeared to be. The fact that they happened to be more than capable of defending themselves is neither here nor there. What if a transvestite, drag queen, or gay man had been beaten up in the streets, would that have been reported or dealt with in quite the same way? Would it have raised a laugh, or even a murmur of interest. They were targeted initially because they were different and appeared to be a soft touch, and their attackers obviously thought this was reason enough to launch a tirade of abuse and flailing fists in their direction.
However, being a transvestite, or transgendered in any way, isn’t as simple as being able to dress up in your best frock and go out on a Saturday night with your mates. It can be the cause of great shame and embarrassment, it can break up marriages, alienate people from their families, end in dismissal from ones job, and as we have seen lead to violence. But why should it cause any of these things. People are not one-dimensional, we all have different needs and desires, some men cry and express their emotions, other men don’t. A man is a man because he is born a man, that doesn’t mean he cannot be anything else. Yet men fear nothing more than the undermining of their perceived masculinity. How many men have laughed along to Lily Savage but none would express an attraction for her legs; how many men have sung along to the young Boy George but none would say how pretty they thought he was. How many times might you be entertained by a drag queen in a pub. You laugh along and you applaud at the end, but what would the reaction be I wonder, if a man simply turned up at a pub in drag, and without the excuse of fancy dress, but merely because they wanted to dress as a woman, to be a woman, if only for that night. The reaction as we know would be very different. Because what is acceptable in the world of entertainment, or in the world of unreality, still isn’t considered acceptable in society.
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