I recently listened to a trans activist talk around a table about the work of his trans-specific service organization. The organization provided antidiscrimination training that complied with a particular government mandated sexual orientation and gender identity training requirement for a particular service sector. There were no broader LGBT organizations in the immediate area providing that kind of training; the gender identity training was integrated with sexual orientation training – the trans organization didn’t provide gender identity only training.
The public and private enterprises receiving the training expected the trans organization to be subject matter experts with the gender identity portions of the training, but weren’t so sure that trans people could be experts on sexual orientation training. The public and private enterprises would often ask if this trans-specific organization partnered with a broader LGBT organization in the local area, such as the local LGBT Community Center – The Center not having training of public and private enterprises of this sector in their mission or vision.
Even though trans people clearly are part of the LGBT community, the trans activist described this phenomenon as an assumption that trans people are only able to credibly speak for trans people, and are assumed as not being able to credibly speak for lesbian, gay and bisexual people.
But when one thinks about major LGBT organizations, lesbian and gay spokespeople are assumed to be credible spokespeople for trans people and issues.
Let me put it this way. Do you ever see any large LGBT organization put forward a trans spokesperson as their public voice to speak about marriage equality or LGBT antidiscrimination legislation? A recent Task Force survey of trans people indicates that more than half of trans people aren’t heterosexual in their target sex, so it’s not as if there aren’t transgender LGB people who could speak on issues that primarily impact LGB people from the position of being a lesbian, gay or bisexual person themselves.
Could you imagine that a transgender veteran would speak for the HRC or any of the LGBT military service-focused organizations about repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? If it were just veteran status that qualifies an LGBT community member to speak on LGBT veterans issues, let me note here that in 2010 when repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was winding its way through Congress, the HRC’s only military veteran in their approximately 130-person permanent staff was a trans military veteran.
Can you imagine the HRC, the Task Force, Equality California, The San Diego LGBT Community Center or San Diego Pride credibly having a trans executive director sometime within the next five years? Perhaps in the next ten years?
How would those of you who are gay, lesbian and bisexual who aren’t also trans feel about having a trans executive director at an organization such as our San Diego “Gay Center?”
When I recently wrote about the 2012 California Transgender Advocacy Day, trans people were spokespeople for lesbian gay and bisexual community youth when lobbying for the Foster Youth: LGBT Competency bill (AB 1856). Transgender people didn’t have a representative from Equality California in the approximately 50-person large contingent of citizen lobbyists; no broader-based, larger-sized LGBT organization was there shepherding the lobbying work by the trans people at that annual lobbying day. The world didn’t crumble.
There seems to be an unwritten rule at play where trans people can’t credibly speak for the LGBT community. Maybe it’s time we, as a broad LGBT community, put the rule up for review.
Thank you for the article Autumn. My exposure to the Trans community has been limited to San Diego. Where are the outspoken/well spoken activist/leaders here? You ask the gay male population in San Diego about the trans community and they will start talking about drag shows…tranny this and tranny that, and many don’t even try to understand how that term is offensive. There so little Trans visibility here. I wonder if that’s because SD is such a conservative city, or is it something else? Trans events are few and far between, and are not announced or promoted until the last minute, and they usually include performances that would be construed as drag shows, if they were held at Mo’s.. I have been to Day of Remembrance at the Center, where there might have been 100 people present. What image does the Trans community project to the community? There isn’t a Trans “presence” here, that people can see and feel and touch and interact with. I am in the SOFFA category (Significant Other, Friend, Family, Ally). When people ask me how to get involved, I am stumped as to an answer. On the one hand, “come out, come out wherever you are” seems like the thing to do, but yet the transmen and transwomen I know more often than not want to just be at peace with the world and not have their transition be their primary defining characteristic. I may be way off base, but I want to get people talking about it. If I have offended, please forgive me.
The vast majority of women of transsexual history and in San Diego have nothing to do with the so called transgender community. They transition, have their surgery and move on with their lives in the larger world. The few who remain in the transgender community are those who have issues with functioning in the larger world and seek a place where they feel more comfortable. My gay and lesbian friends tell me the same holds true with gays and lesbians. Those who can assimilate do and those who can’t don’t. I can’t speak for transwomen however I feel reasonably safe in speaking for women I share a common history with, those who have transitioned had our surgeries and became biological females. We have no desire to be pigeonholed with a group of (place modifier here) women. We work toward and attain a normal life by having our birth condition corrected.
The numbers of transgender claimed by the activists are greatly inflated since there is no reliable way to determine how many people are ether transgender or legitimate transsexuals. It would be safe to say the numbers you report from your attendance of day of remembrance may be close to the actual number of transgenders in San Diego.
Based on how some of my friends who are also woman born of the same birth condition I don’t think the transgender community is such a friendly place to be.
Ask Autumn about her outing of Just Jennifer to her church.
I have to agree with ‘sd woman’ and with Steve that women who were actually born women with a particularly insidious birth defect just want to be normal and, “be at peace with the world and not have their transition be their primary defining characteristic”. What that means is that those of us who have survived the process of transforming our bodies to match our minds, of crossing over that physical sexual devide, are now whole. We are no longer “trans” anything.
In my view, those who act out their cross-gender/transgender feelings are in fact very different who must seek drastic/radical medical intervention to just have a chance at survival. It is a shame that the so-called, self-appointed “leadership” of this gender bending ‘community’ have been so outlandishly militant in their demands, words and deeds, that they have in effect alienated themselves from an essentially disinterested society.
The problem, as I see it, is one of LANGUAGE, being controlled and contorted by agenda driven, (and usually extremely left-leaning), activists.
The above post serves as an excellent example of an essentially gay male and lesbian construct attempting to absorb and explain a condition which has absolutely NO connection or relevance to sexual orientation. This is further compounded by the use of this totally, (and IMO intentionally), ambiguous and ill-defined term “TRANS” being used and appended to anything and everything.
At best this is utter nonsense. In truth, it is a concerted effort to obfuscate and conflate the huge and documentable differences between those who change their actual physical sexual characteristics, (transsexuals), and those who do not, (transgenders).
An example of “trans-fucation” can be seen here….
http://www.transvestiteireland.com/?p=1365