In amongst all of the anti-LGBT measures passed in the US this week, the little town of Silverton, OR has done something that is just as remarkable as Barack Obama’s presidency – they have elected America’s first openly transgender mayor. And not just any transgender person either. I’d rather expected that this honor would go to a handsome transsexual man who is clearly “one of the boys”, but Stu Rasmussen is an avowedly heterosexual man who takes his cross-dressing so seriously that he has had breast implants.
Thank you, people of Silverton, for giving us all a bit ef encouragement.
Wild, and cool.
Plus I just learned something new: I didn’t realize crossdressing like this (he identifies as a het male, after all) was considered transgender.
Kendall, still learning terminology 😉
Terminology is confusing, Kendall. In the UK the NHS has just issued a long document aimed at making its staff a little less less rampantly transphobic. They say that they prefer the term “trans” because it is an umbrella term, whereas “transgender”, though an umbrella term in the UK, means “non-transsexual” in the US. I spend a lot of time in the US, and that was news to me, though I might have agreed with it 5 years ago when the trans movement was more in thrall to LGB activists and feminists.
One of the things I love about NZ is that they’ve had a transgendered MP. And that gay civil unions are equal under the law to hetro marriages. And that women as PM is so normal as to not be commented on.
May the world all become peaceful and tolerant.
Interesting. I would definitely have placed transsexual fit under transgender, and while I have lived overseas a lot, I am USian.
Thanks!
Great story. Thanks. And I hadn’t realised about the complexities of trans, trans gender definitions either…