There are some studies I am more open to participating in. Those studies are from organizations that provide legal support and social services.
If an organization such as GLAAD or Lambda Legal is putting up a lot of time and money to pursue anti-discrimination cases and anti-violence measures that help protect LGBT/T people and I want to make sure they are meeting the needs of TS/TG people then I answer their questionnaires and studies.
At forty years post-transsexual and over 65 most studies regarding TS/TG health issues might as well be written in ancient Greek because I’m so far past those issues as to not have a clue as to what they are talking about.
As for transgender and aging? No thanks I’d rather be around aging hippies and lefties because that too was a part of my life experience and in many ways had more impact on my life.
People tend to forget how diverse TS/TG people are. Last night I ran a teaser for article from the New York Times about an organization in Israel that helped sex workers including TS/TG sex workers find employment in the fashion industry. While I like clothes working in the fashion industry, other than perhaps doing photography holds about as much interest for me as having dental work with out anesthesia.
Too many studies treat us as though we have a common shared culture when what we often have are other TS/TG friends and a shared interest in ending the anti-TS/TG discrimination, bigotry and violence.
This is a short coming of identity politics, an assumed sameness vs. a real diversity among those who are thought to share a common identity. It breaks down even further when the people of trans prefixed words are asked to describe themselves. Various people of trans-prefixed words us dozens if not hundreds of different terms to describe themselves.
Mostly the studies which I am most likely to find anathema are those presented to us by academics, especially in fields like gender studies or queer studies. Even worse are those studies presented to us by grad students hoping to become part of either academe or the Psychiatric Industrial Complex.
Over the years I have developed a rather low opinion of the Psychiatric Industrial Complex, I tend to view it as an instrument of control, something that peddles conformity and non-rebellion against loathsome conditions over all else. Too often the Psychiatric Industrial Complex has chosen to align itself with bigotry and and misogyny in a manner which makes it an adjunct to religion rather than fighting faith based bigotry and ignorance.
Too many people trained in the field have shown themselves open to prostituting themselves to the opinion building fields of advertising and propaganda. Psychiatrists have also prostituted themselves to the Military Industrial Complex creating Psy-ops and developing means of torture (see Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine).
Outside of our helping political organization discover shared needs why should we participate?
Particularly when our participating tends to demean and other us as some sort of gender transgressive deviant subculture.
Women Born Transsexual 