Transgender and Transhuman - the alliance, the complaints and the future
Hank Pellissier
Posted: Jun 15, 2012
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pellissier20120615Transhumanism and ->-bleeped-<- enjoy a close relationship due to mutual interest in enhancement technology. Multiple transgenders are valuable spokespeople in H+, such as IEET fellow Martine Rothblatt, IEET contributor and KurzweilAI editor Amara Angelica, and the brilliant tech writer for Acceler8or and hplusmagazine that I interviewed for this article: Valkyrie Ice.
Hank Pellissier: Hi, Val. Let's begin with your introduction.
Valkyrie Ice: I didn't start out as Val... No, my "legal" name is Lance, and I am a transgendered M2F. Like most transgenders, I didn't really know why I felt so different as a child. My parents worried about my difficulties "socializing with my peers" and about how picked on I was in school for being "different". Even I had no clue as to why I was so different until I was reading the "The Marvelous Land of Oz" one day, and reached the end of the book. If you've never read this particular OZ novel, the spoiler ending is that the "hero", Tip, turns out to be the "princess" Ozma, hidden as a boy to protect her from the evil witch Mombi. I was floored when I first read that scene, because it was like a thousand light switches suddenly went off in my brain all at once as I finally knew with perfect clarity exactly what the problem with my reality was.
But, it was the 70's. No-one would listen to an 8 year old boy who thought he was a girl back then.
