“Emily Hobbie” is the pseudonym of an American transgender activist who created one of the important early transgender forums, GenderPeace. The support forum was active from 2002 until it was eventually ruined by transgender troll Denise Magner. The site went offline in 2008.
Background
“”Emily Hobbie” was born in 1969 and graduated from Brookland-Cayce High School in 1987. “Hobbie” earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Virginia in 1991. “Hobbie” worked at Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation in 1992, designing the space frame fuselage of the Perseus A, NASA’s Small High Altitude Science Aircraft (SHASA). From 1992 to 1993, “Hobbie” worked in the UVa Department of Applied Mechanics as a graduate research assistant. Hobbie then worked at Blue Cross/Blue Shield in several techincal roles from 1994 to 2015.
“Autogynephilia” activism
“Hobbie” began having significant personal life issues in 2009, and by 2015, Hobbie had turned to Alice Dreger for attention and validation, as Denise Magner and many other indigent trans people had done previously. At some point, “Hobbie” became an “autogynephilia” activist.
In 2016, “Hobbie” read Dreger’s book Galileo’s Middle Finger and began getting involved in the trans community response, almost all of which was negative. When the Lambda Literary Foundation rescinded their nomination of the book for a possible award in March, “Hobbie” sprung into action defending Dreger. “Hobbie” and fellow “autogynephilia” activist Jamie Faye Fenton launched blogs supporting Dreger on the same day in March 2016. This was the only entry by “Hobbie”:
I hate “AGP” as it’s misrepresented. Here is my representation.
I think the way I experience what I think of as my gender is most intensely is during sex. I suspect this is true for the vast majority of people and part and parcel of being sexual beings. I don’t believe in a “true” gender any more than a “true” sex — sex and gender are both way complicated — but I do think that the gender I feel most keenly during sexual arousal is the gender that makes the sense for me to live by, and happily tracks with the gender my sexual partners and society in general relate to me as much more naturally than that suggested by my XY chromosome or naughty bits with which I was born.
“Hobbie” (2016)
“Hobbie,” under the username TugWildGeese, created a single-purpose account on Wikipedia and used it between April 6 and 10, 2016 to puff up Dreger’s biography.
As with Magner, there’s a lot more to this sad tale. It’s a shame that someone whose legacy would have been fondly remembered tacked on this unfortunate epilogue during a time of personal crisis.
References
“Hobbie, Emily” (March 27, 2016). I hate “AGP” as it’s misrepresented. Here is my representation. genderpeaceblog https://genderpeaceblog.wordpress.com/2016/03/27/i-hate-agp/
Resources
GenderPeace (genderpeace.com) [archive]
WordPress (wordpress.com)
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)