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He doesn’t claim to be a woman, or so I thought. He claims to be one of the 72 other genders that I don’t pretend to understand. This is somehow different from being transgender, where he would be claiming to be a member of one of the two genders that I do understand, just not the one that I would naively assume.
In any case, the normal-ish court attire doesn’t tell us how he feels about it- nearly any attorney is going to tell him to wear a conservative suit and tie, and the court itself probably sent him a pamphlet telling him to do so- it just tells us he’s capable of acting normal for a few hours at a time if he thinks it’s to his benefit. Which means that he would have been able to wear a suit and act like a normal guy at a reception thrown by the French ambassador, he just decided not to. This is, I would think, an even more profound claim, because, well, his whole claim to fame was that he had to adopt the weird looking appearance because that was his true self and it was deeply traumatic not to express it.
Isn't that just adult human behavior? I personally don't like wearing dresses - if wearing one for a few hours would get me out of jail, then I would do it. It doesn't make my personally held identity as a man who likes wearing man clothes any weaker or compromised.
Well sure, but most of us do that for work, too, which he ostentatiously did not.
I wouldn't submit to wearing a dress every day for work, and given the option to choose, I would never do so - so I don't see how it's unusual that Brinton chose to do that, given that it wasn't against any rules (so far as I can tell).
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