The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution

by Carl R. Trueman

Really, transgenderism was the bane of queer existence until it was politically expedient to add this to the movement. The Stonewall Riot included drag queens, of course, but the moment of clear inclusion was the fall of DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act] in 2013. Part of the reason behind this is the warring class and culture differences within the movement. The AIDS crisis (late 1980s until the widespread use of AZT) brought together the L and the G—not because AIDS ever really hit the lesbian community, but because white, middle class, educated men who identified as gay suddenly appeared as victims to us, and that changed everything. While there were a few examples of friendships that crossed lines, most of the distinctive sexual perversions that define the differences within this movement are incommensurable: lesbians eschew penetration, gay men engage in reckless and dangerous penetration, women who want to become transgender men usurp male privilege and turn their backs on women’s empowerment, men who want to become transgender women deny the male privilege that has been their invisible birth right and steal false identifications with victimhood. These were some of the things we said about and to each other before the cameras were rolling. But for the sake of creating a political groundswell, one based on the autonomous, freely choosing individual who finds meaning in no one but himself, all distinctions were put aside. SOGI [Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity] l...