Today, the main political groups advocating on behalf of the community all include programs, even substantial programs, on the issues facing transgender people. These include helping companies with diversity training, tracking legal developments, agitating for inclusive legislation, giving grades to companies with transgender inclusive workplace policies, keeping a history of the community, and many things besides, including 104 page documents to help orient people to a small part of the population that they do not understand.
However, it hasn't always been that way.
Here is a short history of some of the most regrettable things that have been said and written publicly:
- Jim Fouratt’s anti-transgender comments culminated in 2000, when, at a remembrance ceremony of the pivotal 1969 Stonewall riots in which many transpeople had participated at the time, he called transpeople 'misguided gay men who'd undergone surgical mutilations' [Update: see comments, this quote is disputed and repudiated, to some extent].
- Janice Raymond issued her virulently anti-transgender book The Transsexual Empire in 1979. Raymond also penned a quasi-scientific looking report in 1981 that was responsible for not only ending federal and state aid for indigent transpeople, but also led to the insurance company prohibitions on gender reassignment related claims. [see below]
- Germaine Greer’s anti-transgender writing combined with Raymond’s led to involuntary outing and harassment of transwomen in lesbian community settings. It also sowed the seeds for the anti-transgender attitudes in the lesbian community that persisted through the late 90’s. [Monica Roberts]
- John Aravosis, writing in Salon, in 2007: It is simply not p.c. in the gay community to question how and why the T got added on to the LGB [or even how "L" and "B" got 'added'?], let alone ask what I as a gay man have in common with a man who wants to cut off his penis, surgically construct a vagina, and become a woman. I'm not passing judgment, I respect transgendered people [!] and sympathize with their cause.
Writing on his blog, in the comments, John Aravosis reportedly suggested "that transgendered people were keeping millions of gay people back [from workplace nondiscrimination], using gays and lesbians as 'human shields.'" - [more forthcoming]
These ignorant, hurtful, and bigoted comments and views form the collective memory, the prism, by which much else is judged.
Many thanks to Monica Roberts for keeping the watch.
