The Prisoner - I am not a letter

In the LGBTQIA2..DEFXYZ alphabet where am I ? If I B T R U 1 2 [translation If I be T, are You one Too?]

Can I be Sub-group Y – Why Not?

You have to be of a certain vintage to remember Patrick McGoohan in the 17 episodes of The Prisoner around 1967.

Don’t forget the title … is a T simply a prisoner in their body? That’s ONE question. Are all Ts prisoners of the System? That’s a worthwhile question too.

How much are we put in a box by the letter that is attached to us? I’m not sure of the answer – but one comment is that there wouldn’t be so many letters and codings and classifications attached to the not many of us who are T or T-ish if it was EASY to keep us in a box.

It used to be(!) that being a crossdresser meant that you were gay and probably a groomer – now it attaches to being a child-molester. It is still wrong to be different. If the 2+% figure is right, many of the people at Parliament have this preference [650 MPs, 3000 staff, 850 Lords, 1000 staff = 5500; 2% = 110]

No, amongst the less-kind things that Them do is to put people into boxes. It may be for convenience. But the effect can be brutal. The System likes labels and boxes. It allows them to make new rules that restrain the contents – and -oh what a shame - it may hurt worse those outside their diktat boxes.

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I want to be real, I so want to be real! I’m Derek, although I often think of myself as Diana. I wear my panties and bra as often as I can. Panties every day, of course. I wear thin femme jerseys of cashmere rather than rough wool. I like stockings rather than pantyhose - but kneehighs are a pleasing option too. I have found a scent which is, for me, girly-enough but not overt enough to alarm 'Them' - no I won't tell you (not this time). My shirts still button to the right but the material is often silk or matt satin. I like it that way.

I buy my own clothes in the shops, mostly. Although I am increasingly trusting of on-line. Although it's horrid when it goes wrong. And it's vile when you think it went wrong on purpose.

So I’m a T. That’s why – no, not Y. As far as I know the alphabet-soup of sex-and-gender subgroups hasn’t got as far as Y. What might Y stand for? Y am I in this tiny but over-noticed sub-set of T? And, as a matter of import to some – aren’t there a lot of subgroups to T. There’s 2 and I and A and various others – depending on who you speak to and which list you work with. Some lists, and they are never the same, have 50, 68, 72, 81, 100+ categories. Silly. And Divisive.

Personally, I think it’s a bit silly. If we as a group of Ts are going to approach the rest of society (‘Them’) then we should speak with but a single voice. Have you noticed that we are astonishingly unable to do so. But then, I don’t know any other T. I don’t actually KNOW which of my friends, colleagues, relatives, acquaintances are genuinely not-cis or not-hetero. I know not one who has a fetish or a kink – except myself. That’s a statistical population of 1 – and not valid.

As one example of an appalling waste of what could-should be somewhat of a joint venture – there are T-types who disapprove of the way that some others do or don’t deliver their T-ness. Come on folks. Grow up. Or more pointedly, grow up together or die.

There are, for example, those who disapprove (vehemently and aggressively) of those Ts who do not wish to undergo the surgery and chemical requirements to be ‘sufficiently female’. There are Ts who approve only of Drag. There are those who consider Drag to be almost a corruption of the ‘proper’ need to be womanly. There are those – both male and female – who for different reasons deny the change implicit in having surgery. Come on folks, would anyone suffer like that without having a reason good enough at least for them ... no, no never good enough for Them.

It’s not pretty to look at how Ts react to Ls or Bs or Gs and their sexual preferences. And the opposite is true – some Bs and Gs and Ls are vile to Ts. It would be difficult to describe how the other letters interact – or fail to support. Have you never noticed that when a whitie says something ghastly it is BAD RACISM but when a brown or black says it about another black or brown - it's not even called Hate. I promise you the hate between Sunni Arabs and Shia Arabs is very real and only been going on for 1300 years.

We’re ALL a bit away from the middle-of-the-curve. Haven’t you noticed? And it can be bloody difficult. It can be bloody too – depending on the circumstances. Away from the trappings of the fashion world – would the likes of the gorgeous Andreja Pejic cope well in the real world? Working in an office or as a shopgirl? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Being different is … beyond the understanding of ‘Them’.

I have no doubt, no doubt at all, that some of ‘Them’ – the so-called ruling class, the high and mighty – they are as rife with abusers, bullies, kinkers, bastards, wankers and all the epithets they use about others. But they hide better. They aren’t going to be harassed, arrested, spied on, reported on in the papers until and unless they lose power. Which does happen. And don’t the whips in Parliament probably have to use whips for real on some of the less-quality MPs (all right ALL / MANY of them deserve it).

But us … There are people who roar with triumph and pleasure at a T being broken on the wheel of ‘public concern’. Why are some of Them so hateful? It’s not as startling as having some other-Ts being hateful. For me, that’s just astonishing – and very wrong. But anyone with a reasonable amount of, er, reasonableness finds it difficult to understand quite how much hatred can be directed at ‘people not like me’.

I’m not suggesting that apparently-reasonable people can’t hate for stupid reasons – they have, they do and they will. And you only need to look at America to see how two groups can de-evolve so that they identify anything said by the other as offensive, aggressive and wrong.

For an alternative, look at a mildly detailed history of the so-called Christian church – disagreement, schism, heresy, split, rift, faction, sect, deviation, dissent. There’s a mid-Victorian book about heresies with some 500 pages of tiny print detailing thousands of such doctrinal spats and their nigh-on malevolent outcomes. They couldn't agree how to shave their tonsure, nor even which knee to bend to the altar. I have heard in the last few years of a so-called christian referring to another (a bishop) as “astonishingly, incredibly evil” (the opponent believed that priests could be women and vice versa).

The activity of almost any ‘cult’ reveals other varieties of nastiness. The Hook, the Indoctrination of the Leader, the Book, and the Family, the Abuse, the occasional Departure and then the Shunning. Revolting. And there are churches, especially a few of the Charismatic and Evangelical who drift down that root. All with the best motives and intentions.

My own particular set of foibles links to the alphabet choices and the labels that the majority allocate – and sometimes the minority choose for themselves.

I’m trying to be clever here – so I add translations - 4 I B T N YY R U 2 … For I be Trans and Wise – Are You Too. I don’t even have the style, panache, guts to find the local T club. There might be one.

That’s me. I B Trans. Diana likes to wear women’s clothing even though Derek is a man. I have got as far a having a name for my dressed-up persona. But I am Male. Possessing of a dangle. I don’t want to be a woman for I know that is, from my view, technically impossible. I also know that I see no benefit to me in major surgery or long-term chemical treatment. I am not strictly cis any more. I am however hetero aka ‘straight’; if that label is still valid?!

I don’t know why the LGB folk or their self-identified authorities haven’t had the style to allocate C and H to cis- and hetero – maybe they lack flexibility or feel that giving a label might, in some way, give a form of leverage to what is, by any allocation, the great majority.

For me, L & G & B & H are labels of sexual interest, sexual focus, sexual activity. A few others letters veer that way A for Asexual, P for Pansexual and some others. MANY others are not linked in any way to the activity but to Gender. Perhaps the biggest or most obvious is T – for the few percent who decline to be identified by ‘casual assessment at birth of masculine or feminine’.

There seems to be little doubt that a very very few do identify as ‘the opposite gender’ before the age of 10, before the complications of imminent or actual puberty. Most Ts realize their potential mis-gendering during the chaos of puberty. Others realize much later. I think the very young with this physical-mental complication need to be treated very differently from those who develop later as potentially-T. I could digress into a comment about sport and transition-after-testosterone-puberty – but not today.

There seems to be complete or significant ignoring by adults that teens undergoing puberty and the massive physical, chemical, mental and emotional changes are not in complete control of themselves. The drastic changes inflicted by puberty make many many victims unclear as to many aspects of their very selves. A few go down the route of ‘I am hugely uncomfortable in this body’. Some experts then say that this can lead to Anorexia, Addiction, Dysmorphia, variations of mental illness and, for our purposes here, to questioning of Gender. The best label for most teens is surely W for Wondering-Wandering.

It has been ugly if not crass to see that some of these experts have pushed their labelling to the eventual wrong outcome for more than a few clients. I include False-Accusations-of-Abuse and some of those who have been too quickly advised that they are seeking body-reforming surgery … that was and is wrong.

Just veered and checked some websites – the ‘most frequent’ labelling seems to be LGBTQIA+ which is an acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexual/Aromantic/Agender plus additional subsects. A little further reading makes it very clear the GENDER-related codes are T I Agender and sometimes Questioning as well as 2-Spirit and some others of lesser significance [except to those who thus self-identify into that group!]. ALL the other codes are primarily about sexual focus or to be prissy, ‘romantic preference’.

And don’t bother with trying to find ‘the complete list’ or the ‘best flag’ – you’ll be wasting several minutes of your time and destroying several brain cells in a useless endeavour. Personally, I think a major defect of the flag is that the edges of each colour are crisp and clear not blurred and fuzzy. That would matter more if the stripes stood for the various sex and gender letters. In which case, L & G are probably the only segments that should be clearly separate.

But the stripes on Gilbert Baker’s original flag in 1978 don’t separate that way. His eight colours: Pink stood for Sexuality, Red for Life, Orange for Healing, Yellow for the Sun, Green for Nature, Turquoise for Art, Indigo for Harmony, and Violet for Spirit and later Lavender for Diversity. Many quite similar versions of the flag do exist with white, brown, black and other options. The stripes DO NOT link to L or G or B etc.

For me, since it is ‘well-known’ that T-folk have much the same percentage of LGB-etc as non-T-folk – for me, I’m only going to talk about the Ts. By which I mean all the TIQ2-etc codes noted above.

IPSOS data, with whatever partiality you ascribe, states that the worldwide LGBTQI+ population by country reports estimate that approximately eight percent of the world identifies as homosexual, bisexual, or pansexual. Approximately 80 percent of the world identifies as heterosexual, and the remaining 12 percent of the world will not report how they identify. This data is as recent as 2021. The '8' percent ranges from about 6% to as high as 14%. Some countries and cultures do not reply to relevant questions! No surprise. Some people may answer less than truthfully – no surprise.

Similar surveys in Western cultures find, on average, that about 93% of men and 87% of women identify as completely heterosexual, 4% of men and 10% of women as mostly heterosexual, 0.5% of men and 1% of women as evenly bisexual, 0.5% of men and 0.5% of women as mostly homosexual, and 2% of men and 0.5% of women as completely homosexual.

Note that NONE of this mentions T or I. I is essentially a medical situation existing from birth until identification; it is estimated at about 0.5% with one too-often quoted report saying it is about 1.5% and thus about as common as red hair or being an identical twin. To quote from the occasionally less-than-impartial Wikipedia ‘Terms used to describe intersex people are contested, and change over time and place.’
T is more common but the statistics differ enormously as to what one might identify as Dressers (probably the majority) , Out-in-Public and Wanting-medical-intervention (probably the most desperate).

Attempting to coerce reams of data, anecdote and anecdata into something mildly sensible, other research offers vagueness such as :-
‘Experts’ [in what] estimate that approximately two percent of the global population identifies as transgender, gender-fluid, or non-binary. That said, such estimates are extremely rough and the exact number of transgender individuals in the world is currently unclear, and can only be estimated with best-guess projections [that means it’s a GUESS]. The process of counting transgender individuals is currently hampered by significant challenges, which confound any effort to obtain a true and precise count of the global transgender population. In particular, many transgender individuals decline to participate in trans-focused polls or population counts because of the huge discrimination that does occur.

'Mere' cross-dressing is often dealt with as a different group from the more overt and especially from the surgery-demanding T. The CD percentage often quoted is 5% - but the validity of the answers has to be questionable. The figure 50% has been put forward; but the questions was, apparently, ‘have you EVER worn an item of feminine clothing?’ As that is not a question about habit or regular behaviour – it is not actually useful as a criterion for any worthwhile survey about T-ness.

Going to half that, so as low as 2 1/2% of the population being T - in America would still mean nearly 10 MILLION almost all in HIDING and over 1.5 Million in the UK. It would mean that in a school of 1000 kids+staff there were somewhere between 20 and 30 T-folk – 2 in every YEAR.

The comments above make it rather clear how the dislike, distaste, disapproval, dissing of our miss-ing is the main reason we keep quiet about our activities. There’s stories I’ve read [details not immediately to hand] about how only after a friend’s death is it learnt they BOTH were T – and neither knew or could help.

But I keep digressing … although each tangent is pretty interesting (to me). Just maybe not quite relevant right now and here.

If I am a prisoner – what can I do?
………. Break out?
………. Wait for Them to release me?
………. Something else?

And that seems like a place to stop while I do think about what happens next!