I was thinking about the "genuine trans" trope, and how so many people are convinced this represents the archetypical trans-identifying man. I personally have not come across such a person.
The person who pushed for the changes in UK law that led to the Gender Recognition Act was one Anthony Allington (who became Christine Goodwin). If you merely read the accounts of the court cases you'd be forgiven for imagining that Goodwin was a feminine-looking man, someone who would routinely be read as a woman. He was complaining that he couldn't draw his pension at sixty, as a woman would, but had to wait till the male age of sixty-five. Because he was a man, of course. (This discrepancy has now been abolished, but it was the case at the time.)
Other complaints were that he couldn't marry a man, because same-sex marriage was illegal (that was changed in 2013), and that he was disadvantaged because he couldn't carry out any transaction that involved producing his birth certificate, because that would "out" him as trans and he was so embarrassed that he wouldn't do it. So he couldn't rent a flat. He took the case to the ECHR, who sided with him and forced the UK government to give him what he wanted, and this led eventually to the GRC being passed. It's all in his Wikipedia page. Which has a picture of the ECHR, but not of Goodwin himself.
en.wikipedia.org
Reading all that tale of secrecy, of sentitive files and changed NI number and elaborate precautions to prevent an employer discovering that he was really a man, and anyone would think this was a poor, nervous, retiring soul who really looked like a woman. Well, the prolonged legal challenges and the designation "activist" on the Wikipedia page puts a rather different perspective on that aspect. But was he really in danger of being "outed" by his birth certificate?
Just a short film clip makes it obvious how preposterous this suggestion is. Indeed, the litany of harassment suffered by Goodwin would scarcely have happened if he had read as female to the people he encountered in his daily life. He was harassed for being "trans", it says, but it would be more accurate to say that he was harassed because he was quite obviously a man wearing womanface. (Protection against such harassment is provided by the Equality Act now.) To go to such extreme lengths to conceal what was written all over his face and audible in his voice speaks of a real disconnect from reality.
Reading about Goodwin, especially if he is referred to as "she" throughout (these compelled pronouns are insisted on for a reason) gives one impression, but the minute you actually see Goodwin, you have to revise that.
I don't think Goodwin was much on TV at the time of the court cases he instigated. What was on TV was
Coronation Street and the character of Hayley Cropper. She (and I mean she, this time) was the public face of the "transwoman" in society. Hers was the face being seen at the time the Goodwin legal actions were being pursued. What did she look like?
Well, like a woman, of course. Because she was a woman. Julie Hesmondhalgh was only 5 feet 3 in tall, and obviously with a woman's body shape and a woman's voice. The storyline was sentimental in the extreme, with Hayley getting married to another regular character, white dress and all I think. Viewers were encouraged to believe this was just the same as if the character had married a woman, and no icky details about wounds lined with inverted penile skin were allowed to cloud the romance. (Subconsciously, if anyone thought about it at all, Julie's obviously female appearance would lead one to assume normal female genitalia.)
According to Wikipedia, "Hayley would go on to spend 16 years on Coronation Street, always seeing the good in people and nurturing Fiz Brown (Jennie McAlpine) and Becky McDonald (Katherine Kelly) from troubled young women to kind, caring, individuals. In her later years, Hayley formed an unlikely, yet notably close, friendship with Carla Connor (Alison King) and although it was obvious the pair were from completely different walks of life, they came to respect and care for each other."
It was pure propaganda. This seems still to be the face and the character associated with the "genuine trans" person in many people's minds. The face of a woman and the character of a particularly kind woman who has close women friends. It was brilliant. If you're hearing about a court case where a "transwoman" is trying to keep his trans status secret from everyone he meets, you imagine Hayley, not "Christine".
The way the trans lobby want the law to be, nobody is even allowed to comment on what is plainly obvious to everyone with eyes and/or ears. Elaborate secrecy rituals and criminal penalties for revealing someone's trans status, an autistic teenager punished for asking "are you a man?" and it's all pretty Orwellian. And still, everything is supposed to be arranged to cater for the semi-mythical Hayley, while what is in front of our faces is "Christine".
This article goes into the paradox of the requirement for secrecy rather well.
The whole thing does raise the question of "what's the point?" We see the trans activists prancing around with flags and slogans about "Trans Pride". If you really can't hack the achievement of looking like a woman in the flesh (an achievement Julie Hesmondhalgh had no problem with of course), isn't it better just to be relaxed about it and try for that pride?
But my main point here is about the imagined trans versus the real trans. People imagine Julie, but the reality is Anthony.
Yup. Anyone who doesn't know that the mile and the 1500 metres are not the same has much burned any credibility they might have had in any discussion of swimming or athletics. Also, it should also be kept in mind that a lot of domestic swimming competitions in the US are still run over distances in yards, not metres. 1,500 yards is appreciably shorter than 1,500 metres.
