The LGBT Community has almost always had a vanguard, both in terms of sexuality and politics.
Transgender folks have been part of that vanguard, one way or another, despite concerted efforts to exclude them, for a long time.
Riki Wilchins is no stranger to controversy, but perhaps no more or less so than Robin Tyler. Here are some thoughts, recently penned:
I’ve been fighting for gay rights since 1974 in Cleveland, when I was part of GEAR (Gay Education And Rights) as we became the first gay group to purchase our own building. We were proud of that, although its windows were soon broken and swastikas spray-painted on the walls.
Back then, although most people saw me as an exceptionally effeminate gay man, I was largely accepted. Yet when I transitioned, my (female) lover and I were asked to leave lesbian meetings. I was publicly disinvited to women’s events. I was twice thrown out of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. A National Organization for Women chapter told me I was welcome to join as a man. Even by 1995, when 40 of us showed up at a Falls City, Neb., courthouse after the murder of Brandon Teena, many gay newspapers ignored us, not considering Teena's murder “gay news.”
Practically the only places where I remained consistently welcome were the gay bars where I had first come out, where other genderqueer gays, lesbians, and bisexuals were always sheltered. My family had largely stopped speaking with me (even today, I have yet to be allowed to meet my nieces and nephews, now in their 20s). I was forced out of my tutoring job through daily harassment by students and coworkers who refused to even speak to me. I began a new career in clinical psychology, but left after it became clear that few of my peers would refer patients to me. I began another career consulting on Wall Street, but even there gender sometimes cost me clients and accounts.
If you’re a gay, lesbian, or bisexual person of a particular age, you may have had similarly painful experiences at some point. We’ve probably been in the same marches together, come out in the same bars, fought many of the same battles. Yet for the past 20 years there has been ongoing debate over whether people like me belong -- over whether this is really an “LGBT” movement.
How could it be otherwise? We are all still uncomfortable around gender nonconformity. There is a reason our personal ads start with “straight-looking and -acting only” or “no butches or fatties need reply.”
The gay movement -- which should have found it impossible to avoid issues of gender -- has made enormous strides by doing so. Instead, the movement has pointed to sexual preference as a single immutable characteristic -- arguing that we are “just like everyone else,” except that we sleep with same-sex partners.
Unfortunately, this has worked to the disadvantage of gender nonconforming gays and lesbians and transgender people, who could presumably exercise at least some choice over how they express their gender, and who -- since they are “visible queers” –- are not “just like” everyone else.
In fact, as legal scholar Kenji Yoshino points out, the right to be different ought to be something we care deeply about. But this is one of the problems of identity politics.
We like our categories simple -- unmarked by messy intersections with race, class, or gender. It is one reason our movement has often done a poor job of addressing the double discrimination of sexual orientation and race.
For the most part we have also done a terrible job of talking about effeminate gay men and butch lesbians. You will never find them mentioned on the Web sites of national LGBT organizations. Yet they are often among the most vulnerable -- and most visible -- members of our community. They are individuals who need protection not only because of their sexual orientation but because of their gender, because they can be fired for either one.
