Conflict of Interest

In My Humble Opinion
1

“Do you often feel you have to choose between being an activist and making an issue of this stuff, or finding romantic-sexual partners? I’ve been doing this shit for 35+ years and it has always felt like the search for personal solutions and the attempt to educate the planet about the relevant issues were like ‘choose one; you can’t do both’, if you know what I mean”.

I’ve mentioned occasionally in passing that speaking out and self-identifying as a gender invert has not tended to be a good mating strategy for me or, presumably, for anyone in my specific situation. I delved into it a bit in this blog post from 2014 for example. And yeah, I’ll be honest: I think one of the reasons I’m doing this gender activism stuff now, in my late 50s, is that when I was younger I was lured into spending more time and energy seeking those personal solutions, trying to find a girlfriend. It’s only now, with that basically working for me, that I seem to be giving the activism attempts more of my focused attention.

I assume this is NOT true in an analogous way for all people within the LGBTQIA-etc tent. Most centrally, it seems self-evident to me that gay and lesbian people, if they are open about being such and attend gay / lesbian social-political organizational meetings, will be that much likelier to meet precisely the people to whom they are attracted. And that therefore being out and about and having some degree of public visibility and/or seeking out clusters of similar people IS conducive to finding potential partners.

Gay and lesbian folks may not be all that aware of how it doesn’t quite work that way for some of us who identify as sexual-orientation or gender-identity minorities.

Consider transgender folks, in particular the conventional transitioning variety, those who wish to transition, are in the midst of transitioning, or have transitioned. A transgender woman may find friends and form alliances within a support group or political action group composed of transgender women and men, but for most of them it doesn’t form a very good pool of potential partners. To be precisely fair, it is possible that a transgender woman who was straight could become romantically involved with a transgender man, or that two gay transgender people of the same sex could do so. But most trans folks of either gender want to be seen and accepted as people of their target sexual identity and to have the experiences that are typical for such folks. Transgender men generally wish to live the lives of men, and transgender women to live as women, with as little emphasis as possible on their being transgender. Typically, they want to “pass”. Being out and making a public spectacle of their own trans status could be seen as working against those interests. Most transgender people are not hoping to meet potential partners who have an erotic or romantic interest specifically in transgender people.

It’s a phenomenon that also occurs in groups other than those associated with being part of LGBTQIAetc. Consider the situation of a radical feminist woman whose attractions are towards males. Conventional wisdom says that although her perspectives and political interests rule out a nontrivial percent of what would otherwise be her potential dating pool, she may meet some more-evolved males who are politically conscious and thoughtful people… but that her direct and immediate feminist activities aren’t a set of behaviors that are especially geared to making that more likely to happen. Feminist women tend to accept the conflict of interest as a given: being a radical feminist is not in and of itself thought of as a mating call for meeting such guys. At best, it’s perceived as a useful filter for driving away the attention of folks whose attention one would not want anyway.

There are groups for which I would think it could be a mixed bag for their identity-factors to be openly known. For example, bisexual people (and by extention pansexual people, to whom the rest of this generally applies) have often indicated that when potential partners learn that they aren’t exclusively straight or gay, it makes many of them reluctant to get involved. Both potential same-sex and other-sex partners often tend to feel more at ease dating folks who are attracted in their own direction exclusively. It is, of course, entirely possible for bisexual people to become involved with other bixexual people, where those attitudes would not be an issue. And one would more easily meet other bixexual people via the process of being out and participating in political-social groups openly as a bisexual person. As for the non-bisexual people who would also be part of the pool of potential partners, it might once again function as a useful filter.

I don’t really know for sure whether it’s intrinsic to my own kind of gender and sexual identity that being out and loud and public work against the likelihood of linking up with attractive partners. My observations all come from the current (lifelong, so far, but current and hopefully transient nonetheless) situation, the situation in which gender inversion isn’t on the public radar yet as an available identity. So we have to remove from consideration the notion of being part of a social-political network of gender inverts and all that that could provide. Certainly I think it would make it easier for gender inverts to find partners if I were to succeed in publicizing the concept and people were inclined to recognize themselves in the description and begin to think of themselves in those terms. But would the kind of women who find gender-inverty males attractive be attracted to the ones who are overtly self-labeling? That’s the question to which I don’t know the answer. It’s a bit of a moot point for me (dating and connecting when you’re a middle-aged person is, in general, more flexible and more geared towards the post-labels complexities that folks come to appreciate after a few decades of experience). In the entirety of my 20s and 30s, I can only think of one time when someone’s interest in me may have been sparked, in part, by things she heard me say about my gender identity. But, once again, it wasn’t a world where women would have heard a few things that I said and thought “Aha, he’s one of those gender inverts”.

I presented down in North Carolina, at Mars Hill University. I promise to blog about it next!
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This is a reposted blog post. Cleared with the mods beforehand.

2

I have never really understould the difference but I have a nephew who I knew should have been a girl by the time he was 1 year old. We never appeared to live a promiscous life stle but eventually found a solid relationship, about 25 years now they have together. Both of them are moderately active in the gay rights movements.

3

I don’t think what you’re describing is necessarily intrinsic to gender issues or even activism more generally (although I’m sure those areas lend unique complications). A career of any kind can be pursued to a point where it interferes with the development of personal relationships. It also seems entirely reasonable and healthy that one’s priorities might shift over time.

(I’m not trying to diminish your experience; quite the contrary. I’m just suggesting that what you describe sounds very relatable.)

4

Oh, I don’t disagree. In fact, I think the situation with gay and lesbian people is the more unusual one. But within LGBTQIAetc, lesbian and gay experience is a large thing. They were there firsti]. Their coming out, to say to the rest of the world “You need to understand our experience of ourselves and quit substituting your outsider’s perspective on us. First and foremost, we like being who we are. We’re proud of it”, etc, set the stage for others to follow. But one consequence of that situation is that there’s a bit of unconscious tendency to extrapolate from their experiences as if they were normative for all of LGBTQIAetc. That, in this case, the act of attending meetings and coming out as gay or lesbian directly means meeting more of the very people you’d like to connect with romantically and sexually. And hence this entry, about how that isn’t so for some of the rest of us, for whom being an activist in this aspect of our lives is instead something that kind of gets in the way of seeking and finding those connections. I dunno, some gay / lesbian people may chime in to say that there’s stuff I don’t know about being a gay rights activist and that doing so ALSO gets in the way of seeking personal solutions.

But you kind of see what I mean about how there’s sort of a structural way in which for some groups of people your political connections are more likely to directly overlap your personal flirting pool than for other groups?

5

I think you’re over-simplifying and over-generalizing the experiences of gay men and lesbians. We’re not all interchangeable; there are minorities within minorities within minorities. Some of us have rather specific sexual appetites that may not be shared by the majority of the people we meet. As a long-time activist (since back when LGBTQIAetc. was merely G), I always felt like an outsider, in the sense of “well, I don’t like doing that with other guys”. Even among other gay men, I always felt like I was on the outside, looking in.

There’s also the matter of not fitting in to the mainstream, physically. I can be described as “semi-bearish and attracted to skinny guys”, but there’s no community for that. And when you qualify it as “semi-bearish who likes to do only certain things with skinny guys and not other things” the possibilities are truly limited. So I could be “out and proud” about certain aspects of my sexuality, but when I was, it tended to be very misleading. It was easier to just keep those things to myself and go home alone.

For many years, while living in NYC, I was a member of GMSMA (Gay Male S/M Activists). I learned a great deal at their meetings and met some truly wonderful men (even the occasion ones who wore leather skirts, and the occasional [gasp] woman), and with the concurrent AIDS crisis, was very much the activist. But I never connected romantically with a single man in the group. I had more success in back rooms of gay movie houses, where the sex came first and everything else followed, if ever. That’s where I eventually met my husband, not at a political rally.

6

Yeah, panache, I thought maybe that was an over-simplistic view. I still don’t think my point is entirely wrong, though: if a gay guy were going to specifically social events or groups for the specific purpose of finding someone to date, the problems you mentioned would still be applicable: “hmm, no one here I’m going to click with, because hey weren’t not all interchangeable, it has to be the right fellow, or the right type of guy” etc; and the point is that if he were instead going to events or groups aimed at coming out and being an activist (anything from Identity House gay men’s support group to ACT UP), it’s also a good opportunity to meet some great gay guys.

I really don’t mean to make it sound like gay and lesbian folk have it made in the shade when it comes to finding potential partners, and I know what you mean about having a rather narrow band of people you tend to have chemistry with, it’s not like “anyone with Part X and Polarity A is by definition hotstuff”…

But for some people the participation in consciousness-raising or LGBTQIAetc groups for social networking and activism is, almost by definition (as described in OP) not going to place them in the company of likely partners. Not in the same sense of “no one there who quite floats my boat” but in the more structural and definitive sense that the people one allies with as similarly-identified LGBTQIetc don’t overlap (or only rarely overlap) with the population from whom cutely attractive potential partners would be drawn. And/or where drawing attention to one’s identity on that rainbow is not conducive to attracting them and may actually repel them.

7

Have you found a publisher for your book? And will these blog posts be included in it? What will be its title?

8

Pardon if I am being " thick" about this, but aren’t you really just saying that the more specific and narrow a person’s specifications are, the fewer people will be likely to match them? And that this is compounded in cases where the person looking, also has a number of traits which are not in the normal desirability areas? If so, this is a fundamental situation that EVERYONE has to deal with.

The part I am not clear on, is how “activism” has anything whatsoever to do with it all. Being an activist IS another potential attractive/unattractive feature, relative to whatever the OTHER person may prefer, but it’s just another feature.

The one concern that comes to mind, in reaction to making such an involved post about this, is that you might be (at least subconsciously) trying to turn your situation into a sort of romantic tragedy sort of thing. Along the lines of “oh me oh my, I am sacrificing my own true love, in order to fight for others.”

I sincerely mean no criticism, nor do I intend that to be an accusation or an attempt to belittle anything. I apologize for being unable to think of a better way to ask about it at this time.

9

There is an strong undercurrent to this OP and all the others: “I am extremely special compared to everyone else, and I must write as much as I possibly can so that everyone will understand how extremely special I am.”

You don’t think it has something to do with the fact that it is pretty dang easy to call oneself an activist nowadays, given that we’re surrounded by bullhorns that didn’t exist 15 years ago? I’m not saying you’re like this at all, but the internet is swimming in folks who think activism is about blogging, posting on forums like this one, writing sternly worded emails to online news outlets, following the right hashtags, and having the right awareness ribbons on your Facebook page. It is also not unusual to be vocally expressive about one’s identity nowadays. I swear, almost every day I read a post prefaced with “As someone who identifies as…” Everyone has a label that they’ve glommed on to because they believe it captures the essence of who they are. So in a world where almost everyone wants to be recognized as a member of a group worthy of recognition, it isn’t surprising that someone who feels like a member of a stigmitized, misunderstood minority would be very eager to fight for their chance at the microphone. The culture was different when you were young.

10

I think the dating pool/relationship pool for transgender persons is more limited because of the inherent connection between gender and reproduction, as well as gender and sexual preference. If someone is willing to invest in a serious relationship, they are often thinking long-term, and if they are younger then they are likely to look at the transgender person and know it’s unlikely (or impossible) to have children with them, other than adoption.

The human race in general is very genital essentialist. The vast majority of American males, for example, would be horrified to date a woman with a penis, no matter how closely aligned they were mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or otherwise. Even the rest of her looked beautiful in public, most men have a laser-like focus directly on the genitals. The reverse is true with women, to a lesser extent. And no I’m not a hypocrite - I am attracted to women who are women between their ears. I would never throw someone away because of an ounce of flesh one way or the other.

And then folks are just plain scared of the stigma. Oh sure, most people talk a good game or are real e-tigers online, but when faced with the prospect of introducing their transgender girlfriend to their parents, they fold like a cheap card table. Even those who are independent people who can stand up to their families and friends may also worry about other repercussions, everything from stigma at work and potential loss of income, to routine discrimination, violence, and even murder.

Finally, some of us are just not all that good at relationships. We’ve been living in fear, denial, and shame for years - decades - and have accumulated some emotional damage that has to be repaired. And as we struggle with hormone therapy and its changes on our bodies and emotions, and as we struggle to find acceptance among all of society, struggle with job loss, loss of family, etc…well, being honest here many of us are basket cases due to the incredible weight of the edifice of society crashing down on us to condemn us for being gender transgressors.

For those and other reasons we’re not exactly hot dating prospects, especially those who do not have passing privilege.

11

Nope, and nope again. The book won’t incorporate the blog posts. It is titled The Story of Q: A GenderQueer Tale and it is mostly autobiographical rather than theoretical / discussional like the blog posts. Show, rather than tell. Still seeking a publisher, mostly from among the small niche presses.

12

Nope. Or at least that’s not the point I am trying to make.

Let me try it this way:

Joe is a History student at a college in America, and he really wants to hang out with some other American History majors.

Sue is an American student of Russian culture and she really wants to hang out with some native Russians and observe their culture first-hand.

Joe joins the History club to promote the goals of the History department. He not only gets to address those goals, he also gets to hang out with other American History majors because that’s who also goes to the History club.

Sue joins the Russian culture club to promote the goals of the Russian Culture program. She ends up in a roomful of other students of Russian culture — American students like herself. It in no way scratches her itch to hang out with some native Russians and observe their culture first-hand.

With that in your head, now please go back and read the OP again?

13

I knew someone would understand!! <3 <3 <3 :slight_smile:
(ETA: I promise to make my next blogpost about my recent attempts at activism off the computer screen environment)

14

That’s a very good point, and one I often forget to think about. I’m sterile and have been since 23 and I actually did have someone I was in love with break off a relationship unexpectedly and I later wondered if that was why, that she wanted a connection that might lead to having kids.