Still working to recover. Please don't edit quite yet.
admirer
An admirer (syn. fan) is a person who respects, follows and otherwise admires another person, place, or thing. In the dating, an admirer is a person who has a strong interest in meeting with and developing a relationship with another person, either for the person as whole or some attribute of the person.
In a TG context, an admirer is a person, who although not in transition or cross-dressing at the present, has a strongly supportive interest in transgendered persons. The term "admirer" in the transgendered community most frequently refers to a male interested in dating a male to female transsexual woman or cross-dresser. As with any dating scene, some admirers may be sexual predators.
Admirers may also be women who are strongly supportive of transitioners. Many either have a close friend or relative who transitioned. Some have even married mtf transsexuals. Others are attracted by the idea of TG seeing both sides of the gender divide. One finds "men in makeup" to be strong and attractive men; she maintains a fairly active forum on iam.bmezine.com (a well known body modification community) entitled "Real men wear makeup."
Some transgendered women prefer male admirers to ordinary men for the acceptance of being transgendered. In light of recent murders of transgendered persons, coming out to an ordinary man can be frustrating and life-threatening since some men react very violently to finding out that a woman is pre-op. For example, one of the more famous murder victims, Gwen Araujo, was violently beaten and left for dead after being outed at a party.
A common and unconfirmed rumor about admirers is that there are some famous or rich persons (often on a yacht) willing to pay for transition in exchange for staying with them for a certain amount of time and possibly performing other favors. If it were true, it would likely be illegal as a form of prostitution.
The term ally has similar meanings to the term admirer sans dating connotations.
| This article is based on a GNU FDL Susan's Place Transgender Wiki article: Admirer | SPTW |
