'Deceptive' and 'pathetic' TSes are the ONLY kind. And by our very existences we are all 'deceptive.' Yes, it's a media thing. And even the best (Oprah, Montel) of those who actually do have the time and energy and will to help spread a bit more positive aspect of our lives often start with the make-up room. (Yes, Serano points-out all of that in a number of her writings.)
I think the question is why the media does it. My guess is that they do it for the very good reason that prejudice and ignorance are more highly prized than are education and the time and effort it takes someone to get that.
Heck, most people are not particularly interested in 'understanding' us in the first place. They have their own concerns and as long as they determine to their satisfactions that none of the 'deceptives' have ever gone to bed with them, or, more likely, since no one has ever told them that someone they have been to bed with was TS, they don't worry overly much about it.
The old chestnut "as long as they do what they do and don't flaunt it in front of me" attitude toward gays applies as well to us. That has changed somewhat for many of the GP, but still is an alive and well kind of 'toleration' many USA folk live by when it comes to gays and lesbians.
What's behind that? The fear of difference and the dislike of having cherished 'truths' defied and made to seem not-so-true-after-all. And that is the basic difficulty they have with every stripe in the gender-rainbow except for two.
People can see, and inspect if they must, penises and vaginas. Thus, boy and girl. Any sense that the world and our lives are any more complicated than that becomes very problematic. Shoot, just take a look at the virulence of the very fundamentalist among the HBS-ers, and many who are not very fundamentalist at all.
I AM a man or woman. That my genitalia and chromosomes don't match that statement is a medical problem. We struggle within our groupings with the very same questions that the GP struggles with. At least many of us have some experience of living the difficulties and have a major advantage over those that don't when it comes to understanding. Yet, even at that we still involve ourselves with the hating and dismissing of one another to bolster an individual's sense of who he or she is.
The crux is validity and the sneaking suspicion that if I am valid in my womanhood and I live that and understand that in a way that you decline to live and understand your own, that you somehow invalidate my sense of self.
If we can find ways to accept, not just tolerate, one another, then we can perhaps toss out some virulent criticisms of the ignorant GP and the media who feed that ignorance. But, in our quests to 'prove' our own validity we deny that same validity to others. Then we see Anne Lawrence making common cause with Willow Arune and Blanchard and Bailey as an example. Or Cathryn Platine and Sue Robbins joining with Janice Raymond to deny the validity of TS in general.
Of course, Cathy and Sue will be shocked to discover that no amount of joining will ameliorate the very basic edge being honed by Raymond and other 'radical lesbians.' That argument is truly about 'essential' qualities of sex-differences and 'learned' qualities. The BBL stuff is about misogyny on the part of the messires B&B and their profound lack of understanding about how anyone could want to be the subordinate gender when they have the equipment to be the dominant one. These are all atavistic reactions that go way beyond the rational facades that all of these groups want to place over their real concern: fear.
Why would anyone expect the media and the GP to be any different?
Nichole
