Ostracism and Ridicule from the Transsexual Community
Many post-genderists opposed full sex change operations. They believed that by under going a full sex change operation despite the fact that they do not associate with male or female validates “a society and a culture…[in which] there is no in-between (Sell154).”
Postgenderists face a tremendous amount of resistance from the transgender and transsexual communities. Within the greater community there is a hierarchy in which transsexuals who have undergone sex change operations are valorized above transsexuals who are at various stages of their transition. The closer one is to emulating a the sex they were not born as, the higher that person is in the hierarchy. This hierarchy exists, in part, because transsexuals are trying to pass as the gender they are transitioning into. By associating with people who do not pass, or do not pass as well, the risk that someone will find out that they are a transsexual as well goes up significantly. Another possible cause of this hierarchy is Harry Benjamin's Sex Orientation Scale which considered only those who wanted both top and bottom surgery to be 'true' transsexuals. It is widely acknowledged within the community that “androgyny is not cool (Sell 131).” Therefore, there is a lot of pressure to under go a complete sex change operation.
One post-genderist experienced this first hand when he/she went to a gender clinic to undergo surgery to make his/her body more androgynous. The office manager of the clinic, a Male to Female transsexual believed “the clinic [was] more or less …set up to help men change [in] to women,” and did every thing in her power to stop the surgery and have the post-genderist banned from the clinic. While this post-genderist did ultimately receive the surgery, word got out about the fact he/she is post-gendered. As a result many people in the the local transsexual organizations formed opinions and ostracized this post-genderist before ever meeting him/her
Sell, Ingrid. "Not-Man, Not-Woman: The Third Gender Research Study." (un-published manuscript)
