I was really thinking about the rumbling dark undertones (TERFs, etc, poisoning the well), which makes it harder to establish even baseline equalities and the like.
But there'll be other effects, as mentioned in response. Relative sparsity (even within a 'gay village' social centre) is probably not helpful, there may be more AA meetings than trans-support group events.
Perhaps even arising from a basis of benevolance from others. I'm now worried that while I've always(?) been happy to accept people, my
not staring might be taken as passive-agressive by someone who is used to being stated at by all and sundry. Even if they'd prefer not to be. - I'd consider myself a trans-ally, but I'm not particularly good at social balancing, so what if my 'normal' stand-offishness is interpreted as an 'attitude' towards someone (even when also exhibited towards anyone else, book-ending this particular encounter). Or, through anxiety from over-thinking it[1], go into a meet-and-greet wrongly in other ways.
...I was summarising that other thing, though, and you can definitely consider it debunked, if you will. It was just a late-night jump to a rather narrow thought-experiment about what I thought was being described.
[1] It was bad enough at a 'clan meet', the other day.
Many of those attending were a hedgerow of socially-intertwined family tree branches, whilst I'm in a branch that now really only has me as blood-descendent of the family root. Other partners and spouses were there (others weren't, and I really should have asked after them), but they seem to be far more comfortable amongst the 'clan' (and, passing across that core set, "inlaw-in-law"s... I never did talk with the newest "plus one", while the husband of another attendee seemed to have much to chat to him about) than I am in just juggling which of the number of youngsters is which (cousins twice-removed), trying not to get my father's great-nephews mixed up again. It doesn't help that I'm most of a generation younger than my actual cousins, who have been decidedly more profligate than I. And "long time, no see" as a greeting, as I pass by someone for a second time in the rugby-scrum/mingling phase, tends not to go down well
...so I tend to put on a mask of universal amiableness when it comes to other meet-and-greets and I'm
sure that the more perceptive acquaintances can spot it as 'false', though not necessarily why it is.
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Topic: LGBTQ+ Thread (Read 78963 times)