The new millennium is now almost two years old (or one, depending on whom you believe). The optimists were predicting world peace, and the pessimists were saying that the world would end; in the event, both were wrong. In fact, the cynics were closest with their predictions that nothing would change.
Obviously, no-one expected anything to happen at the stroke of midnight on 31st December 1999 - it was highly unlikely that all the world’s despots would suffer an instantaneous political conversion, but even in the streets, it was doubtful whether Catholic would shake hands with Protestant, or Jew embrace Arab. But the optimist’s dream rapidly proved to be a triumph of hope over reality, and now, as I write two years on, the so-called "civilised" so-called "free" world is on the brink of a protracted war against what it defines as terrorism, without a thought being given to the concept that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom-fighter. For example, how is it right that the United States can be defending freedom when just 225 years ago, the Union was established at the expense of the native Amerindians? How can the UK stand up for freedom and human rights after destroying indigenous cultures around the world in the pursuit of Empire?
But there were no predictions at all on the subject of social change, which is perhaps appropriate, since once again, the new millennium brought no instant solutions to the issues of minority rights. The same bigots still harass the same minorities with the same tired clichés and insults to try to mask the same insecurities in their own personalities. It’s understandable, I suppose - humans may have advanced technologically in leaps and bounds over the last century or two, but we haven’t even begun the biological re-programming necessary to enable us to overcome the innate mistrust of "difference" which is a survival instinct of almost every species on the planet. Then we wonder why the racial and religious boundaries within our euphemistically-labelled "mixed" communities are hotspots of rioting and abuse.
There was an article in one of the popular support-group magazines a while ago in which the question was raised of where crossdressers would fit in to society (western was assumed, I believe) in a hundred years time. The writer predicted that, in a world where females had adopted an increasingly high profile, the year 2100 would see trannies taking those jobs which women had rejected as menial or degrading. While this is an interesting concept, I don’t personally think it will happen that way - for two reasons.
Firstly, I would hope that, 100 years from now, even trannies - members of the last oppressed minority - would have gained more self-respect than that with which the writer was crediting them. Why should anyone take a menial or degrading job, presumably for a derisory rate of pay? It’s not enough simply that it might fulfil a fetishistic desire to wear a waitress’ uniform, for example; we shouldn’t expect to have to sell ourselves short for any reason. Secondly, the fact that trannies might be applying for jobs at all suggests - somewhat paradoxically - that they’ve gained some of that self-respect which ought to deter them from taking this very course of action. In that case, I can only assume that the jobs which the writer had in mind were in the seedy, exploitative tranny underworld as it exists today. Personally, I think that the sooner this underworld is exposed and destroyed, the better it’ll be for us all - but that requires a motivation for change which is alarmingly absent in the modern tranny community. Without some incentive, trannies will be third-class citizens in a hundred years time, but we won’t be working as waitresses - we’ll still be just as deeply closeted and oppressed as we are today.
So where do I think trannies will be 100 years from now? Before I speculate on this, let me try to describe my view of a typical western society in that year. I certainly think that the 21st century will be the time when women achieve equality with men. In fact, I’d go further, and predict that women will be running the world by 2100. Men have had ample opportunity to show what they can do, and it took us to the brink of nuclear catastrophe thanks to the madman Ronald Reagan; indeed, had Nancy’s astrologer predicted a good moment to press the Red Button, Ronald would happily have brought the civilised world to an abrupt end in the name of freedom, democracy and God. And it’s not only political power - women will also be running the great corporations of the world, and doing so with equal emphasis on profit, environmentalism, and human rights; the workplace and the Great Outdoors will both be nicer places than they are today. But this will take time. The few women currently in positions of power play the "male game" - outdoing the machismo of the male players in their attempts to survive in this harsh environment; Margaret Thatcher, for example, was more "male" than any member of her final political cabinet. While this sort of display can be distasteful, I believe it’s actually a necessary step to achieving full female emancipation in a male-dominated world - and, as I’ll mention later, it has implications for the future of malekind in a female-dominated world.
However, there are already worrying signs that, as women increasingly take over traditional male roles, men are retreating back to their predatory hunter status, and forming into groups intent on creating trouble; one merely has to stroll through the average town centre on a Saturday night to witness the drunken brawling of frustrated male youth. Their violence is indiscriminate, being directed at anyone who’s different in some way - religious belief, skin colour, disability, sexual orientation, social status, even a rival gang from a different part of town. And, of course, hate crimes against women are rising rapidly, fuelled by jealousy that they’re getting the largest slice of the cake in modern western society; furthermore, I believe that this trend will continue as girls pull ever-further ahead of boys at school and university.
Of course, there are areas of life where women are already far ahead of men, perhaps the most obvious being freedom of dress, and the ability to use their clothing to good effect. It’s the height of irony that this "gift" was "bestowed" on women by previous generations of men in their egotistic attempts to demonstrate their personal wealth - he who could decorate his "property" in flamboyant and expensive materials obviously had plenty of money to throw around. In fact, similar archaic practices still persist at glitzy ceremonies such as The Oscars, where one can usually see some pathetic 80-year-old celebrity with a semi-clad 20-year-old beauty hanging on his arm, "proving" that he still has sex appeal. It’s no surprise, therefore, that in the company boardroom, women have started to turn their obvious sexuality to their own advantage to outdo the very people who encouraged them to flaunt it in the first place. Top marks for initiative! Curiously, men don’t seem to know how to compete in this particular game - in fact, male "fashion" (sic) has always concentrated on covering as much of the body as possible, and the modern ultra-baggy designs are merely pushing this trend to new depths by obscuring any suggestion of what lies beneath.
Men face a very bleak future in this scenario. By the beginning of the 22nd century, women will make the political agenda, they’ll make corporate decisions, they’ll control their own fertility and become pregnant by selected sperm - in fact, there’ll be little need for men at all. Most will be alienated in a female-dominated society which views the typical male attributes of deception, violence and intimidation, megalomania, environmental vandalism and a disregard for human rights as outdated concepts with no place in a civilised world; they’ll live on the outskirts of society, taking what they can get by any means available. And trannies? Well, on a superficial level, we might expect our lot to improve, because women have always been regarded as more sympathetic than men to transgendered people. However, our problem is widely seen nowadays to be not our transgenderism per se, but the dishonesty of the lifestyle we’ve woven around it. For example, our demand to be treated as honorary females whenever we don a wig, a dress, and false breasts is something which many women find bewildering, insulting, and even threatening. Unless we start being more honest to people - especially to those we claim to love and respect - we’ll continue to lose what sympathy we have, as personal integrity becomes increasingly important in a female-dominated society. Eventually, we’ll simply be dismissed as frauds, trying to gain respectability and credibility by ingratiating ourselves with femalekind. Of course, men will still hate us for being "different", and in their pseudo-society where the Law of the Jungle operates, our lives won’t be worth living.
This horrendous view of Dystopia is avoidable, however. Women got to where they are today by playing men at their own game and winning. The answer, therefore, is for men to get off their self-satisfied haunches, start playing women at their own game, and win - which we’re quite capable of doing, incidentally, once we realise that we aren’t automatically superior just because we have penises. However, the problem with the current generation of western males is that they seem to be totally incapable of seeing any benefit to a man having feminine attributes - and this, I believe, is precisely where crossdressers have an important part to play. We already have a vested interest in all things female (albeit self-proclaimed), but if we get it right, we have the potential to bring the opposing sides in the War of the Sexes together. Also, in so doing, we can take the opportunity to define a niche for ourselves in the New Order. But to be able to do this credibly, we have to be much more visible than we are today - indeed, we have to be just as public and political as the campaigners for female emancipation were in the past. We certainly can’t influence the status quo from within our own personal closets, and it’s going to be difficult to do so even from within the collective closets provided by the support groups in their current form.
It’s also my belief that we won’t achieve this goal by masquerading as women. As I mentioned earlier, the path to female emancipation was blazed by women being women playing by men’s rules; we must blaze our trail as men being men playing by women’s rules. In other words, adopting feminine values is fine, but we must do so as men, and show that there’s nothing wrong with it. Indeed, arguing our case from behind a false identity will get us nowhere, because unless we have the courage to show our true faces, we won’t ever be taken seriously. We should also remember that, while the support groups encourage us to think of ourselves as female, the general public still sees us as men dressed as women; displaying overt feminine characteristics such as oversize breasts, swinging hips and fluttering eyelashes invites ridicule and hostility, and does nothing either to convince malekind to adopt feminine values, or to convince women that we’re serious about sex equality and women’s rights.
Our role as crossdressers in the next century is clear - we have to convince a sceptical, hostile and disillusioned male population that taking on board feminine values is not only a sound proposition, but is in fact essential if they’re to recover and maintain their social credibility, and take up their rightful position in 22nd-century society alongside women. This is no mean task, but we stand to gain respect from both sides if we can pull it off. Alternatively, we can think only of our own selfish motives, ignoring what might happen tomorrow as long as we’re able to dress up today; we can continue to congregate behind closed doors, wear female disguises and use false names to satisfy our paranoia, spend our time talking about nail varnish and high heels, and praise our courage for venturing fifty metres to a post-box en femme at 3 o’clock in the morning. The choice is ours.
Published in The Beaumont Society Magazine, March 2002.