54 years ago, the Journal of Sex Research published Virginia Bruce's paper 'The Expression of Femininity in the Male'

 

    This is just the preface. A lot of the gender theory jargon has changed since 1967, but the general framework remains mostly the same. Sex and gender are studied as overlapping but distinct aspects of a person's experience. Identity, presentation, lived experience, and social perception form a person's gender. Biological traits inform a person's sex. There is diversity of both sex and gender. There are more than two of each, historically and scientifically. 

    Gender variance has often been relegated to the circles of society where esteem is either allotted or withheld, in extreme. Academics write discourse about the ins and outs of gender in theory and in practice. At the same time, gender nonconforming people in the sex trade experience extreme violence. 

    I read yesterday that in the internet age, personal exploration has become hobby (and a commodity). Introspection as a popular form of entertainment may not be new. The success of transcendentalist authors --not to mention pop psychology-- throughout the last three centuries might beg to digger. In any case I hope that as the general public's mental mirrors are increasingly allowed to linger on the subject of gender, the people filming transsexual porn can be as safe as the people publishing papers about sex and gender.

- A.X.