Recent events have inspired me to write about how very often the T, transgender, gets ignored in the what is supposedly the "LGBT" community. Very often the Ls and the Gs feel that the Ts need to do it for themselves and fight for our own rights and that they don't really need and shouldn't have to help us. While it is true that the T community needs to step up our efforts to fight for our rights, the idea that the Ls and the Gs don't need to and don't feel they should help is greatly disturbing.
I have heard it said that lesbians and gays have accomplished a lot on their own. This is absolute BULLSHIT! Trans people have been fighting for their rights from the beginning. The Stone Wall Riots were STARTED by drag queens, Sylvia Rivera being on the big ones, a little known fact about those riots. We have been fighting for lesbian and gay rights from the get go and a lot of us still do, but the minute we say "Hey, what about our rights and our needs?" all of sudden we are going to far and we need to do it for ourselves?!? WTF! Also, some lesbians and gays seem to forget that they would have gone NOWHERE without allies! Straight allies have the power to really sway society and the Ls and the Gs needed them to get where they are.
Lesbians and Gays have more power in our society than Trans people do simply because they are Cisgender. They have the privilege of being born male or female and having the gender identity of the same. They don't have to worry about the issue of what bathroom to use, they don't have to deal with internal struggle of gender one of the most basic things about life, they don't have to deal with any of the issues because they have that privilege. Like straights and whites have privileges, cisgender people have privilege that trans people don't have. Just like allies having the power to push things through legally for lesbians and gays, cisgender people can do the same for trans. Trans people can't do it on our own. In fact transgender people are often seen as a joke or as deviants and stupid in BOTH communities.
I love the show on LOGO called The Big Gay Sketch Show, but often times trans people are made to look like clowns on that show. They have sketches like "Are You Smarter than a Tranny Hooker" which is really insulting. The world already has that idea about transwomen as hookers. I read an article in the latest issue of MS magazine that talks about how if you are a transwoman you are automatically seen by the cops as a possible hooker, we don't need "our" own community showing that insane stereotype too! To the Big Gay Sketch Shows credit, they do have Fitz William which had me literally on the floor laughing, but the point still stands that "our" own community is seeing us as a joke. In the supposed "LGBT" community the T is like that relative that you are polite to, nice to, and sometimes hang with, but don't really like and feel embarrassed to be around and thus don't fight for. The T is more honorary than anything else in the community, often times.
When a trans person is found murdered, they are very often seen as a gay man or a lesbian. I am a big fan of show Notorious on the Biography channel that is about well known crimes and they have done a few on trans people like the story of Brendon Teena, who they called a lesbian and SOME lesbians try to claim HIM as one of them, and there was one about an American soldier that was killed because he was dating a transwoman and he was called a gay man in that one. This transwoman had gone through all the legal channels and was recognized as a woman by the law, so therefore HE was straight!The made a movie called Soldiers Girl about the crime. This stuff happens all the time!
Trans people aren't taken seriously. We are either seen as hookers and deviants or we are seen as gay men or lesbians. How the fuck are we suppose to fight for our rights when we aren't taken seriously?!? Our needs go ignored because we aren't seen as important. Cisgender LG people need to realize that they have privilege and that with that privilege comes power. Like or not cisgender LG people, YOU are a part of the majority and the privileged part of society just because you are cisgendered.
For a cisgender person to say that we need more gender neutral bathrooms on our college campus is 10times more powerful then a trans person saying. If a trans person says that, cisgender people can say things like "Oh its not my issue and the majority don't think its important so why should I care?" However, if a cisgender person says we need more gender neutral bathrooms on our college campuses, all of a sudden other cisgender people really start to listen. The more the people that say it, the more people start to see that the issue as important.
I tried to get a gender neutral bathroom in my high school and for awhile people seemed to agree with me and I think the did in theory. Up until this point, if I wanted to use a bathroom at the school, that wasn't a men's room, I had to use the one in the nurses office! Pretty much singling me out as different. So, I tried to work with the school to get a gender neutral bathroom and my GSA appeared to be all on board with this and then we hit a roadblock and eventually it lead to people NOT supporting it. For a little while we got a gender neutral bathrooms, but then the parents in the community got all up in arms about the idea of the bathroom, especially since it could be locked. Their fears were that students would have sex in that bathroom. First off, I promise you that already happens in male and female bathrooms across america! People stopped fighting for this with me and eventually I was the only one left. In the end one of my favorite teachers told me to stop fighting for it, and that people have tried to fight for the bathroom issue and it hasn't worked. Basically, that I should give up ever hoping to do it!
The point of that story is that things only started moving when I had cisgender people on board. Once they feel away and it was just me that was fighting for it, everything fell apart. Trans people can't do it alone! No minority can! If it wasn't for white people fighting for African American rights slavery could still be the law of the land. If it wasn't for men fighting for women's rights, WOMEN still might not have the right to vote or have the rights that we have today. If it wasn't for straight allies and TRANS people, lesbians and gays wouldn't have come as far as they have! We all need each other and we all need to work together to fight for the rights of everyone!
This concludes my first political blog!
Bye!
You tell it, Mad Womyn. I totally agree with you all of your points.
ReplyDelete"The T is more honorary than anything else in the community, often times."
Yes, yes, yes!
I fight with this same issue in another way. I do not simply defined myself as lesbian or woman or color or anything other label that's going to limit me.
Personally, some of the work that Gs and Ls are doing isn't too impressive in the grand scheme of social change and resistance. They do it to make themselves seem better than another class of people which is NOT what I want and strive to do at all. We have to be one in a revolution. It's not going to happen with people wanting to be singled out in hopes of seemingly being radical. Radicalism doesn't exclude.
Your bit on the gendering of body waste removal...you hit it dead on with the fact that parents are afraid of sex happening in stalls. This older generation of people truly puts way too many sacred values on what is underneath our clothing-- to the point of excluding one to save the sanctity of their child's sexuality. WTF?
Keep on writing, Mad Womyn. More people need to hear this.