Hi all,
Hmmm... many fine and interesting posts, here. Thanks, y'all.
Having the advantage, even at my age, of not being long out of university (i.e., long after the discovery of fire but shortly before the mainstreaming of internet access), I had the advantage of being openly trans (though not visibly so) in a student body where everyone was openly SOMEthing, especially gay. I've had many, many discussions with gay classmates and friends (many of whom are friends, still) and the most common conclusion/answer/reason given for the "Great GLB/T Divide" is not that we (transfolk) remained passively by the sidelines while our homosexual brothers and sisters fought tooth and nail to have their rights acknowledged and respected but, rather, simply enough, that we are heterosexual, not homosexual.
Ergo, we did not participate in their battle.
Ergo, they now wish they did not have to participate in ours. I'm not saying whether I disagree with this conclusion--only that it's what I most often heard said in the Queer ranks.
I just finished reading the feature article (and cover story) of the Dec. 18 2007 issue of
The Advocate (issue #999) entitled, "Gay vs. Trans: The Great Divide? 10 Real People Face Off." Although the article is intended as "mini-townhall roundtable" discussion in the wake of the ENDA fiasco? success?, it's very revealing about gay attitudes toward transness and vice versa.
On the panel (or, actually, at the cafe where the group interview was conducted): a gay couple (one half of which is a very androgynous looking man), a gay man and a trans woman who are also a couple, a lesbian and a bisexual woman who are a couple, two single trans men, and two single trans women. I found that, at one point, one of the transfolk made a very astute remark: gays and lesbians often overlook the fact that, when they (gays and lesbians) are discriminated against, it's not on the basis of their being gay or lesbian, but on the basis of their
appearing to be gay or lesbian. In order to prove her point, she brings in (amongst other things) the fact that, in the GLB personal ads, the seeker is often concerned that the responder be able to act or to appear straight. Thus, her argument is that discrimination towards any member of the GLB
and T community always has to do with self-expression, presentation, and gender (non-)conformity. According to her, in the face of this, there is no valid reason for ENDA (and for the gay and lesbian community) to exclude transgendered individuals from its purview (or from its membership). Methinks she has a damn good point.
But it gets more complicated. We've talked about this before, on the forum, but it surfaces in
The Advocate article, too; much of the fiercest discrimination towards both homosexuals and the transgendered comes from within the homosexual community itself. Personally, this has been my own experience as well. I know many gays who wish nothing more than to go "stealth" (in the same way a post-op TS will often want to) simply in order to fit better into mainstream society; these "straight-appearing" gays and lesbians (by and large, the majority) often loathe flamboyant "gayness" (whether that flamboyance be gay or, in fact, straight) because--through simple association in the mind of John Q. Public--it pushes them further away from their goal of being socially accepted. Please note that, in the case of gays and lesbians, "going stealth" (being invisible) does
not mean the same as "being closeted" (being alone in one's knowledge of one's true sexual orientation). You can be the most decidedly and resolutely homosexual person on earth and still not "look the part." Crossdressers and transsexuals, on the other hand (and barring some stunning exceptions), usually
do "look the part." Hence, many of the GLB's ain't too happy with being associated with the T's. A gay man who doesn't look gay can walk down the street without much fear of being harrassed; a man who looks like "a guy in a dress" (whether he be gay or straight) puts himself at risk. And the risk is twofold: a) he exposes himself to a possible gay- or trans-bashing event and, b) he puts the entire GLBT community in the public eye, reinforcing, in the minds of straight and single-gendered people, the completely inaccurate notions that to be gay is to be a swishy male and that, conversely, to be transgendered is to be gay. These are not automatic connections. And they are exactly the connections that many in the gay and lesbian community wish to distance themselves from. Why? Again, because they seek mainstream approval and acceptance. That approval and acceptance would serve to thwart discrimination, on the one hand, and to simply make the lives of gays and lesbians that much easier, on the other.
Again, please note that I'm not talking about activists, here (whether gay, lesbian, bi, or trans). I'm talking about those of us who, though we may, in fact, be gay, lesbian, bi, or trans, choose (for many different reasons... yes, including simple fear) to avoid public scrutiny. Usually, activists (whether gay, lesbian, bi, or trans) will be the very last people on earth to condemn, or discriminate against, members of their own community. Unless, of course, we're talking about "backward discrimination"... in this case, the oft heard criticism--coming from within the GLBT community itself--that those gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transfolk who remain in stealth mode do the entire GLBT community a disservice by choosing to not put themselves in the public eye. This criticism has always struck me as a strange one. We each try to "educate" in our own way--some do so through extremely local action (say, by being oneself, in as subtle a way as one can, with a spouse or family members and close friends) while others feel the need to deliver some well aimed slaps to society-at-large by being "in-your-face" about their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Frankly, I'm not so sure that we benefit the GLBT community by valuing one type of action over and above the other; doing so restricts our options and, at this stage of the game, we need
all our options available to us... from the deeply, deeply closeted writer who'll have a defiantly non-gender-conformist short story published, to the GenderPAC wildcat who'll aim to crush anything that stands in the way of the full social freedom of self-expression. Anyway, just through conversation with my totally "vanilla" and "white bread" friends and acquaintances, I'm not so sure the "in-your-face" approach to both self-disclosure and freedom of gender self-expression works any better than the slow, methodical, sure-footed, confident, painstaking, yet personal approach.
In the end, like everything else, it remains a personal choice. What we, in the GLBT community, need to do now, is to respect each other's personal choices in this regard. This is what will bring us closer. Both to our common goal as well as to each other.
Great thread. Thanks for starting it, Kim.
Love,
CJ
