So, what you're bringing is a modern view to a film that was made right before things started to change. But in 1992, that really wasn't the case. There's been a lot of progress made with regard to transgender people having support from others, and we also have laws that explicitly protect them, or at least explicitly put them on par with anyone else, so people today are free to be who they want. So, in 1992, the number of people who would have ever considered the possibility that a woman isn't biologically female was exceptionally low, because exposure to transgender people was also incredibly low. Brandon Teena would be raped and murdered the next year. So, with how bad it was for gay people, who are at least still maintaining a gender identity that matches their biological sex, you can only imagine how difficult it would be for a transsexual. If you were openly gay in high school, you were courting disaster, because the administration was more likely to side with your bully than yourself. Transsexuals were people that you'd see in 'that' part of town and nowhere else, and there were tremendously derogatory names for them that I won't get into here. RuPaul wasn't a thing until the next year.
I'm not sure how old you are, so you might not remember 1992, but it was a very different time.
