In April of 2011 the Williams Center, released a brief entitled “How many people are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender?” It was a brief that, compiling, weighting and aggregating data from several studies estimated the size of the LGBT population in the United States. Among the key findings was that “an estimated 3.5 percent of adults in the United States identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual and an estimated 0.3 percent of adults are transgender.”
The estimated percentages then of the LGBT population in the U.S. works out to approximately 9 million people who identify as lesbian, gay and bisexual, and approximately 700,000 who identify as trans.
Some math on this: 3.5 million divided by .3 equals 11.67, which works out to approximately 1 in every 12 LGBT community members is transgender. Another way of looking at this is that 3.5 million plus .3 million equals 3.8 million, so 0.3 million divided by 3.8 million works out to “T” equaling .07894, or approximately 8 percent. If one considers that multiple studies indicate that about half or more of transgender people identify as LGB or Q, the percentage of transgender community members would be slightly higher.
But, working from the assumption that approximately 1 in 12 LGBT community members – about 8 percent of the LGBT population – identifies as trans, one has to ask the question about fair representation. Are trans people fairly represented?
The LGBT Movement Advancement Project’s (MAP) describes their mission as working “with LGBT organizations, advocates and funders, providing information, analysis and resources that help coordinate and strengthen efforts for maximum impact.” The project produces an annual report, entitled National LGBT Movement Report, that “provides a comprehensive and standardized look at the LGBT movement’s finances across 40 major LGBT organizations.” The report includes a diverse representation of LGBT organizations that are large to small – from the Human Rights Campaign and Foundation (HRC) to National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC); from the Parents, the Victory Fund to the Transgender Law Center (TLC).
According to LGBT MAP’s 2012 report, 7 percent of all paid staff of the 40 organizations identify as transgender which appears on the face to be fair representation. But according to LGBT MAP’s Naomi Goldberg, when one subtracts the trans specific organizations from the list {TLC, the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SLRP)}, the percentage of trans staffers drops to 5 percent.
And perhaps tellingly, the HRC and HRC Foundation, the largest LGBT organization with approximately 130 permanent staffers and the largest annual revenue – approximately $40 million combined – have well under a handful of trans identified staffers.
And if 1 in 12 of the LGBT community is trans, one would expect that LGBT organizations that take on more than one issue at a time could or should expend just under one of every $12 they receive on trans related issues. There are not those kind of financial resources put to trans issues, nor is the amount of staff time expended by LGBT organizations approximately equal to 8percent of their staff efforts.
The total combined revenue for the three trans-specific LGBT nonprofits in 2011 (the last year available) is $2.89 million and a total of 27 staffers listed on their Web sites – not all of these staffers being trans identified. If the HRC spent 8 percent of their revenue on trans issues, that would equal to about $3.2 million on trans issues; if 8 percent of the HRC’s staffers were trans identified, that would be approximately 10 to 11 staffers.
The HRC hasn’t posted how much of their annual revenue is spent on trans-specific issues.
This isn’t to bash the HRC – one could do comparisons with other LGBT non-profits in the list of 40 organizations and ask the same questions regarding expenditure on trans people and issues. Should we expect though that in aggregate LGBT nonprofits should expend 1 in every $12 on trans specific issues? And should LGBT nonprofits that aren’t trans specific have in aggregate 8 percent of their staffers be trans identified?
Just adding a T to an LGBT nonprofit’s mission statement doesn’t seem enough. Fair representation of trans people and issues should require more.
Why are there “trans specific” organizations at all? Why does the ideology of LGBT require that there be no gay organizations but allows for trans-only organizations? The answer is that LGBT is itself nothing more than an arbitrary decree. It doesn’t have to be consistent because it is nothing more than a concoction imposed by intimidation.
It makes no logical or moral sense to impose the priorities and burdens of mostly heterosexual crossdressers and transsexuals onto gay people and their organizations, any more than it would make sense to require a trans organization to subordinate its priorities in favor of gays.
Groups like HRC were founded by gay people for the purpose of fighting for a society free of discrimination based on sexual orientation. That is a worthy goal that will benefit everyone. HRC gets virtually no money or volunteer labor from trans activists and it owes them nothing. Fair representation in this context would be zero.
“It makes no logical or moral sense to impose the priorities and burdens of mostly heterosexual crossdressers and transsexuals onto gay people and their organizations, any more than it would make sense to require a trans organization to subordinate its priorities in favor of gays.”
It makes no logical sense that gay men and women, some of which have actively worked to have trans folk fired, reject the true basis of their discrimination, thus rejecting the transgender community. That basis? Gender non conformity.
Some of the public don’t care who gays and lesbians have sex with, those limited few care about the uneasy feeling they get when they think about that gender non-conforming behavior.
Some gays and lesbians don’t care about trans folks physiology, they care about the uneasy feeling they get when they imagine it.
This precisely describes why Trans persons such as I often feel ostracized by the LGB community…Thanks, what a great way to start my day. And just for the record…I personally have suffered more Transphobic comments from members of the LGB community than from the Cis gendered.
Debs is absolutely correct, but for a different reason than I have. LGBT organizations represent people based on sexual orientation; trans folk (like me) can be gay straight, lesbian, bisexual, asexual or any other orientation you can imagine.
Trans* organizations represent people based on their IDENTITY, regardless of sexual orientation.
We have long stood with our LGB brothers in solidarity, dating all the way back to Stonewall, in fact. By and large, what we have gotten from organizations like HRC is being thrown under the bus. And yet, we’re still here, and we’re still fighting for your rights, as well as ours.
@Robyn:
“LGBT” organizations are really LGB organizations, because LGBs are the ones who founded them, the ones who fund them and the ones who do the work for them. As you point out, trans people have sexual orientations too. So if LGB groups succeed in defeating sexual orientation discrimination, trans people will benefit too.
But instead of simply allowing LGB orgs to be LGB orgs and to wage their fight against sexual orientation discrimination, trans activists and a few colluding LGBs demanded that all LGB orgs be rebranded to LGBT. But not a single T-only org has been forced to rebrand. This is hypocrisy.
Compounding the hypocrisy are pieces like this one from Sandeen, demanding that trans activists be handed leadership in groups with which they have no history, for which they have never lifted a finger or donated a cent. If any LGB group were dumb enough to actually follow Sandeen’s advice, the newly appointed trans activists would waste no time in further redirecting the focus of the organizations away from sexual orientation issues, the primary concern of 99% of the groups’ members and supporters.
Why can we not be allies but at the same time allow ourselves the right to our own identities? Let LGB be LGB and let T be T. There is no need to force the two groups together into one fake hybrid identity. It does more harm than good.
@Debs
Isn’t it better to have Equality for All than Equality for Some, like the current state of affairs here in the US? Most of the Trans-Only orgs that are out there are fighting for the same equality, the same quality of life that the LGB orgs fight for!
Why do you take a stand like this when we are all fighting to pass anti-discrimination and reverse laws like DOMA for those of us who are Trans*, regardless of sexual orientation?
I was fired for coming out to my boss as T when he and his office managers thought I was gay! Fired! How would you feel getting sacked from a good paying job after coming out to your boss, whom you trusted as your employer, and being an ally for LGB? I refuse to go back and live that lie again! I am not a gay man! I am not a MAN! I am a transgender woman who is also a lesbian, and I identify as Trans* FIRST!
It seems to me, that through your logic, no one cares that there are Trans* people and that no one ever seems to think that LGB people are not being considered in Trans*-only orgs. You, ma’am, are wrong. Hypocrisy is one thing to lambaste at any Trans*-only orgs, but you also forget that any law group that’s advocating Equal Rights is advocating Equal Rights FOR ALL! Tell me where the hypocrisy is in that!
To be honest, here is the current situation:the problem is, almost ALL of the LGB organizations are NOT looking out for those of us in the trans community, they’re only looking out for lesbians, gays, & bisexuals, hence why they’re usually referred to as “LGB”. I’ve read of soo many situations where members of the trans community complained to equality organizations like HRC & such about achieving trans equality and, in response, are given the bullsh*t excuse (and, frankly, it IS bullsh*t) that “it’ll take time for people to get to acceptance of trans people”. Yet, if the situation concerning the drive for LGB/T equality was reversed, those in the LGB community would NOT be reacting the same way they say we in the trans community should, they would be reacting the same way towards trans equality organizations that we in the trans community are towards organizations like HRC. So, if you want to talk about hypocrisy, maybe you should start with equality organizations like HRC that “claim” to be all for equality for LGBT, when in reality, the majority of those equality organizations wouldn’t mind leaving us in the trans community out in the cold. The FACT is, the LGB community can’t say that we in the trans community are on our own when it comes to achieving equality for our section of society, then attack us for not helping to achieve LGB equality. If you exclude those of us in the trans community in your drive for equality, then it’s your own fault when we succeed & you fail. The LGB community can’t have it both ways. Essentially, what it comes down to is:either include the trans community in your drive for equality, or you have no right to complain when we don’t help you out. Oh, and I would LOVE for ANYONE to give examples of LGB groups that were forced to re-brand & T groups that were NOT forced to. I’m not gonna hold my breath, because odds are, it’s gonna be a while before I get ANY response back on that topic.