A discussion broke out in the comments over at Aunt B’s regarding the T in GLBT, and whether it ought to be there. I consider myself supportive of the transgendered and their struggles, but I come down on the side that says GLB and T are two distinct issues. As such, and as the only gay person speaking up over there, I discovered there’s a fair bit of animosity amongst the transgendered directed towards gay people (and I never knew). Ironically, as the conversation continued I became more convinced that the animosity brought out by the suggestion that the T not be included with the GLB, may well be lessened if only the T weren’t included.
I was really put off by the notion that anyone who questioned whether the T belonged with the GLB was somehow in passive opposition to trans rights. I find that laughably ridiculous. I support all kinds of groups/issues that I’m not a direct part of myself. We don’t call it the GLBBlack movement, but I (and most other gay white people) certainly support rights for black people. But a movement isn’t defined by any and all things a majority of it’s members support, but rather by the one thing which its members have specifically united in support of. And the reality is, the one thing that unites people around GLB rights is different than the one thing that unites people around T rights.
GLB rights focus around sexual orientation, the gender one seeks to bond physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually with (in relation with one’s own gender); while T rights focus around gender identity, the gender one is themselves. This difference is evidenced by the fact that GLB people can either be transgendered or not (and indeed more are not than are), and T people can either be GLB or not (and indeed more are not than are). However gay people feel about trans rights or trans people feel about gay rights (and in my experience both are generally supportive of the other), the rights in question are still not the same rights, and it’s worthwhile to acknowledge that.
Let’s look at marriage equality since that’s the issue most in the news at the moment. How is the ability to freely marry a member of your own gender a GLBT issue? If a straight transgendered person has medically changed their gender, they can already marry a member of the opposite sex so they would get no more benefit from marriage equality than would any non-transgendered straight person (and if there are states where this is not the case, I’d note that the problem from the transgendered person’s point of view is not an absence of marriage equality but rather the refusal of the state to recognize the non-birth gender of the transgendered person).
When misinformation is as much of an obstacle to the goals of a movement as anything else, how can it be beneficial to confuse things even more? Yet, I think grouping GLB and T together causes confusion to those unfamiliar with the groups. In fact, it was only through conversations with straight people about these topics that I ever initially began to question the wisdom of a self-proclaimed GLBT movement. When we, intentionally or unintentionally, blur the line between sexual orientation and gender identity, we end up creating a perception that refutes the reality of either term. In other words, we’re telling straight people that same-sex orientation is really opposite-sex orientation and gay people just wish they were the opposite sex (ie. gay men are just men who wish they were straight women), while simultaneously assuring them that transgendered people are really just gays and lesbians who’ve taken a “fetish” to the extreme. It’s a notion that’s completely false and terribly detrimental to both the GLB and the T movements, yet when we spend so much time talking about “GLBT,” I can’t help but think it’s one we are inadvertently promoting.
It’s admirable to fight discrimination wherever it rears it’s ugly head, but movements that try to focus on everything all too often solve nothing. Take the title of this post. Those are all letters that I have seen appended to GLB at one point or another though admittedly, never all of them at once). How much can the GLBTQ?2TSASAPOIF+SGL really get done for the entire breadth of the community that kind of acronym represents? I’m guessing not much, at least not much at the same time. It’s the hidden curse of the gay community’s great diversity; if we take on every issue that effects some gay people, we’d be taking on every issue. Of course it’s arguable that there is no issue that effects all gay people, so I think we’re left with finding issues that effect gay people because they are gay, and then prioritizing them by the number of gay people they effect. Don’t misread me. I’m not saying that gay people shouldn’t support trans rights. Anyone who seeks equality for themselves but not for others is a hypocrite. I’m saying that I’m not sure that trans rights is a battle owned by the gay rights movement.
Very interesting post. I have friends who are both T and GLB, and I get the distinction between the two where orientation is concerned, but I don’t think most of the country is there yet. From a policy standpoint and a cultural standpoint, this country is still basically at square one. A large amount of people in this country are still coming to terms with the notion that gays and lesbians aren’t somehow “less” than heteros, aren’t “missing something” or “sinful,” or “chose to be that way because of x, y, z” (Michael Savage said it’s because guys are “afraid of women” which does a nice job of dissing both gay men and their mothers.) I mean face it, homophobia is still the last acceptable prejudice in this country. So to try to educate people on the difference between being a gay or lesbian or being transgendered at a time when a whole lot of folks don’t really even want to know what it means to be gay or lesbian would be counterproductive and leave the transgendered open to further abuse.
Here in Tennessee we’ve had two transgendered people murdered in Memphis in the past few months. People’s lives are at stake. So for now I’m OK with GLBT.
That’s my completely uneducated and uninformed hetero take on things.