In case anyone is wondering, back in the early early days of the forum, transgenders were this sort of oddity that nobody took seriously. It was just a quirky thing.
@introman was the first person I knew to identify correctly that transgenderism was not just a mental illness and sexuality, but some sort of quasi-networking thing. He would talk about how all the trannies knew each other and everyone genuinely thought he was insane for years until it broke through to mainstream. The ratking was basically about trannies, but it was this naive perspective that their reach was limited to their little group.