Please excuse typos, I’m trying to get this in over lunch. It’s difficult to have a concise answer for why transsexuals such as myself are in the LGBT community, but I’ll try to summarize 70-some years of history.
Also note, there are a lot of different takes on this. I know people who focus on Stonewall as the be-all and end-all of the start of social progress, but I think Stonewall while notable was not nearly as important as folks think it was. Note that much of this is informed opinion on my part, not a scientific fact which can be measured or weighed. I have read more than 100 trans histories and more than 1,000 research articles on trans history alone, let along thousands more on the medical and legal issues. Blatant appeal to authority here, or if anything, appeal to person who read an awful lot and who has firsthand experience.
Starting in December, 1952 when Christine Jorgensen’s story was leaked to the press, and then for the next few years afterwards, transsexuals found themselves in an interesting position - they were new enough and unique enough in occurrence such that many more people were intrigued, rather than scared or doubting their own manhood over the phenomenon. This changed as more and more transgender people discovered that there was this ray of hope, that change was possible. And that’s when early researchers like Benjamin et al. were stunned by the numbers out there - and as the newspaper reports became more and more common, towards the early 1960’s, the attitudes of society began to change.
What drove the change? A few of things - first, as the numbers grew and researchers were stunned, alarmed even over the large number of transgender persons, “normal” people in society started to wonder. Could their son quit football and turn into a “sissy?” Could that largish woman in the ladies’ room the other day have been a guy? People started to see transsexuals as a threat to the American way of life. Second, the early transitioners did so in an era when science was still celebrated - the “atoms for peace” era, the time before the anti-science movement of the mid-late 1960’s. People started to see science as no longer having the cure to all our ails, but also being the agent of unwelcome advances and scary changes. Such as men turning into women.
Finally, to be blunt, Christine and several others of the early “out” transsexuals were starlets. Some photos of Christine put her on par with Marilyn Monroe, and some photos of April Ashley are easily a 10/10. The problem is, just like with ciswomen, transwomen come in all shapes and sizes, and sadly many will never pass, no matter what. The prevalence of transwomen who don’t pass created an “uncanny valley” effect, which was then turned into negative humor in the popular media.
By the time the 1960’s were in full swing, transsexuals were seeing their movement in full reverse, excepting that now we knew there were more of us than we thought. What we were going through had a name, and there was hope, great hope, in defeating our gender dysphoria. Unfortunately, transsexuals now were coming out into a world which really didn’t care too much for them, and thus were relegated to unemployment, underemployment, sex work, etc. We became a very marginalized community, and in the 1960’s-1980’s we were not considered part of the LGB community by most, nor did we consider ourselves such.
In the 1950’s through 1990’s, there was a huge overlap between the transgender and crossdressing community, and back in that day the lines were very much blurred between the two. The issues faced by both groups have a common foundation - wanting to dress and act and be socially accepted as female when you have not the genetic, social, or both upbringings. For the longest time the transgender community lived at peace within the CD community, until the 1990’s. Here we get into an interesting development, known as the Internet and World Wide Web.
The Internet revolutionized the transsexual community in two ways. First, we could create a virtual community which meant we didn’t have to be the 10% in the corner table at the CD meeting, we could be all and only transpeople. Second, the information which was available opened the eyes of still more transpeople, telling them that “you’re not alone. This is who you are. There is hope.” When I was growing up intersex/trans in the 1970’s and 1980’s, I thought I was the only person on earth like myself for some time, because the scant resources I had via the local public library were silent on the whole issue of transpeople. The Internet catalyzed the transgender community, and gave them the strength to start to break away from the CD community, as well as increasing greatly our numbers. I can’t tell you all what it was like online in the 1990’s in trans chat groups and modem-driven BBSs, where every few days a person would come in and say “thank God! There are other people like me! I’m not alone!”
Many in the CD community consider themselves transgender, and use that term frequently. Helen Boyd’s first book “My Husband Betty” will do a much better and lengthier job of explaining what’s behind that belief, and why it’s wrong, and why there is so much low-level friction between the CD and TG communities, than I can here. But ALL transgender people I know or have ever met do NOT consider themselves CDs. So now we have a trans community who don’t think they belong to the CDs, but don’t have enough numbers to stand on their own.
So how did they get so connected to the LGB community? Largely through looking for the best possible group to join which was making political strides and which had effective activists. One common thread was HIV/AIDS, which due to the large proportion of transpeople being forced into sex work, was a scourge of the transgender community, just like the G community. Another was same sex marriage, which greatly impacts the transgendered due to most states (at the time) not fully legally recognizing sex changes as changing sex for the purpose of marriage. Due to the fact that about 50-75% of transwomen are lesbian or bisexual (and about 25-50% of transmen are gay or bisexual), there is also that strong connection as well. I identify as lesbian, so I’m technically in the “LTI” (lesbian/transsexual/intersex) community .
Woo, I’m out of time for lunch, but I hope this opinion piece helps frame why transpeople are in the LGB community today.