The T*Meme

Aren't memes fascinating? I've been interested in them ever since I read Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, in which he originally introduced the idea. The concept was expanded on by other people, including Susan Blackmore in her book The Meme Machine.

The word "meme" is often bandied around on the Internet as shorthand for "a good idea that a lot of people pass on or copy", but the actual concept of a meme is a lot more complex than that.

Here Comes the Science Part

Some of this is from memory, and I'm little more than an armchair scientist, so bear with me if I'm not 100% accurate in all things. But I think my understanding is good enough to make the points I want to later on. Yes this IS tranny-related, eventually!

A gene is a set of instructions coded in DNA that causes a living thing to act in a certain way or have certain characteristics. There might be genes that alter the colour of your skin or your ability to run fast.

"Successful" genes are ones that make it more likely for the creature that's carrying them to survive. For example, a gene in a frog that made it's skin the same green as the trees that it lived in from would make it less likely to be seen and be eaten. Frogs that don't get eaten are more likely to have baby frogs, which are likely to carry the gene for green skin. So the gene for "green-ness" spreads.

The important point that Dawkins made about genes is they're not inherently "good" or "bad". They don't care what effect they have on their host or other creatures, they just do their thing and if that happens to make them more likely to survive in the environment they're placed, they become more prevalent. Because of this Dawkins called genes "selfish" because they, unthinkingly, only look out for number one.

Many viruses contain genes that are very bad for the individual virus. For example, the common cold virus makes you sneeze, and when you sneeze it sends countless cold germs to their doom in the open air. But some of them land in fertile breeding grounds in other humans. From the point of view of the individual virus that dies in the open air, the "making people sneeze" gene is "bad". From the point of view of the gene, making people sneeze is "good" because it makes the gene spread.

Genes are made up of collections of molecules in DNA, they're spread by the replication of DNA. They work because DNA is fantastically complex, but able to replicate itself almost precisely. Dawkins wondered if there was anything else that behaved genetically. He hit on the concept of ideas being like genes. Brains are fantastically complex, but we're able to very accurately transfer information from one brain to another via communication such as talking, or running websites, or whatever. Human minds are the environment for these ideas, and they influence the way that we behave in subtle ways. He called these ideas "memes".

Like genes, memes don't have to be "good" for their host or for human-kind in general, they just have to be good at multiplying. Successful memes thrive inside human minds, and are good at copying themselves by "making" their host communicate the idea to other minds.

Organised religion is one kind of meme. Part of the idea of most religions is to make sure as many other people as possible believe in the same thing. From a meme point of view, the Bible in the hotel room cabinet is a egg waiting to hatch in the mind of anyone who happens to read it.

A Tranny Meme?

As far as I'm aware, there's no evidence for a genetic cause of transvestism, which got me to wondering if maybe there was a memetic cause.

I can't remember when the idea of "dressing up like a girl" first came to me, but I remember it was quite appealing. At some fundamental level in my psyche it "worked".

On television and in the media (and later on the Internet) I saw other men who were doing it and showing the world how much fun it was, which served to reinforce it in my own mind.

I'm not saying that everyone exposed to transvestism will take it up. I think that the environment in which the meme arrives (the mind) has to be one where it's able to flourish (perhaps due to the action of other memes or genes). But when the idea does take hold in a new host, it does seem to act very memetically. It strives to spread.

Most trannies feel an urge to get "out of the closet" and be seen. Some are desperate to go under the radar and pass as a girl, but I'd suggest that a lot of transvestites aren't interested in passing, they're interested in being seen as a boy that looks very much like a girl. Perhaps this is the t*meme releasing it's "payload", getting other people to see a tranny and think "that's a good idea, I might try that".

Many trannies, once they're out, feel the urge to spread the word. They tell friends, write to magazines, and run web sites like this one. Just by writing this blog I'm possibly helping to seed the idea of transvestism being "a good idea" in hundreds of minds.

The tranny meme is moderately successful, thriving in the minds of a certain group of men. It will never take over the world, but like most memes it doesn't need to, as long as it doesn't die out. Also like other memes, it's not necessarily "beneficial" to it's host. I often wonder, for all fun that my transvestism has brought me, whether I wouldn't have been better off without it.

But if you're to believe the die-hard memeticists out there, we're a slave to our memes and can no more control them than a frog can stop being green. So I'll just have to make the most of having the t*meme, and enjoy myself along the way!