As ever, I don't pretend to expertise, but there are certainly straight and gay (and bi, etc.) trans people, just as there are cis people.
It would be interesting (if only out of intellectual curiosity) to know whether there is a higher proportion of non-heterosexual trans people. I suspect that's the case, for a couple of reasons, but this is purely speculative.
First, we live in a heteronormative culture. Anyone brought up here as a boy is going to be encouraged to see girls as objects of sexual desire (and similarly in reverse for people raised as girls). This means, in effect, that our culture pushes trans girls to be lesbians and trans boys to be gay men. If there is even a small degree of nurture as well as nature involved in determining sexual orientation, then the net effect will be to increase the proportion of homosexual trans people.
Second, if you have come out as trans and you also happen to be gay you are arguably more likely than a cis person to come out as gay too, since (at least in the UK in 2014) being gay has greater mainstream acceptance than being trans - so why would you be open about the former but not the latter? (Of course, this will vary dramatically from individual to individual - I speak only of averages.)
Obviously I don't know what went on inside Radclyffe Hall's head, and wouldn't presume to speak for her. But living as a butch lesbian might seem to be one option for a trans man of that era (and later ones). Not ideal, perhaps, but a kind of modus vivendi. Whether that was Hall's situation, I don't know.
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Date: 2014-03-22 09:20 pm (UTC)It would be interesting (if only out of intellectual curiosity) to know whether there is a higher proportion of non-heterosexual trans people. I suspect that's the case, for a couple of reasons, but this is purely speculative.
First, we live in a heteronormative culture. Anyone brought up here as a boy is going to be encouraged to see girls as objects of sexual desire (and similarly in reverse for people raised as girls). This means, in effect, that our culture pushes trans girls to be lesbians and trans boys to be gay men. If there is even a small degree of nurture as well as nature involved in determining sexual orientation, then the net effect will be to increase the proportion of homosexual trans people.
Second, if you have come out as trans and you also happen to be gay you are arguably more likely than a cis person to come out as gay too, since (at least in the UK in 2014) being gay has greater mainstream acceptance than being trans - so why would you be open about the former but not the latter? (Of course, this will vary dramatically from individual to individual - I speak only of averages.)
Obviously I don't know what went on inside Radclyffe Hall's head, and wouldn't presume to speak for her. But living as a butch lesbian might seem to be one option for a trans man of that era (and later ones). Not ideal, perhaps, but a kind of modus vivendi. Whether that was Hall's situation, I don't know.