Must the Gay Rights Movement Include the Transgendered?

Great Debates
1

Inspired by one aspect of this Pit debate, I thought it would be useful to start this GD thread on this one specific sub-debate: How big should the gay rights tent actually be? (I use the term “gay” to refer to all homosexuals, myself included).

It’s already pretty much a de facto standard that the “gay rights movement” has been re-christened the “Gay, Lesbian, Bi, and Transgendered (GLBT) Movement”. My questions are: (1) Is that the wisest course, or does it hinder the effort to achieve gay (i.e., homosexual) rights? And, (2), if it does hinder the gay cause, should we just accept that we’ll not achieve our objectives as soon as we would otherwise for the sake of ethical purism?

A note at the outset: PLEASE, do not believe that I am casting aspersions on the transgendered or suggesting in any way that they do not deserve full rights and full respect. I’m just wondering if everyone should be considered part of the gay rights movement or whether we would be best served by focusing our energies.

Here’s my own view: I feel that including transgendered people in the gay rights movement is either over-broad or over-restrictive. I can think of no valid reason to include TGs in our movement other than that their sexuality and sexual issues are misunderstood, feared, and condemned by the larger public. But if that’s the organizing justification, how can we stop there? If that logic holds force, the gay rights movement must include the defense and the support of every other sexual/gender/identity “exgressive” (my own temporary neologism to use in place of elucidator’s “transgressive” in the referenced Pit thread). Shouldn’t we, by the logic proposed, call ourselves the GLBTTTPHHZANIXXYXYYYDPDATB, or “Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transsexual, Transvestite, Transgendered, Pedophilic, Hebephilic, Hermaphroditic, Zoophilic, Asexual, Neutered, Intersexed, XYY, XYYY, Double-Penised, Double-Anused, Triple-Breasted Rights Movement”? *

What’s wrong with just a gay rights movement, at least for now? Why do we have to be everybody’s keeper?

In a debate concerning heavenly pure, PC, and textbook-approved ethics, of course everyone should be included. But in the real world, it’s foolishly impolitic to taunt and rankle the unenlightened voting public more than necessary. Especially all at once! So, yes, I believe that including the transgendered hurts the gay rights movement, at least in that it retards our political and legal progress in this manifestly unfair world. After all, a great many people actually bought Santorum’s dog-marrying “logic”! Dammit, we need the votes! To insist on absolute politically correct ethical purity can only doom our efforts to futility.

No, I believe transgendered people already have at least one organization for their own defense: it’s called the ACLU. We have no rational obligation to support and be partners with every exgressive. We’ve got enough problems just trying to gain full rights and legal status for ourselves without having to do the same for every person who feels they don’t possess full rights or are not sufficiently respected.

Yes, I fear I will soon feel the heat of a thousand suns of contempt from some of my queer peers as well as from the transgendered, but I doubt they can argue from anything but heavenly purity and transcendent moral perfection. But only in heaven, as Bertrand Russell once observed, does anything work like it says in the textbooks.

I’m not at all comfortable with ends-justifying-means arguments, and I hope I’m not – and I don’t think I am – offering one now. But in today’s America, I can’t see any way to have both saintliness and results.

What say you?

  • I don’t have to point out that I exaggerated in order to make a point, do I?
2

(Oh, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to spend much more time here today. Generally, I can’t get here before about midnight or later PST).

3

I’m not sure that it must, but it seems to make sense to me (perhaps that’s just prejudice on my part, as an outsider, but I certainly don’t lump homosexuals and transgendered folks all into one big category of perverts or anything like that, in case anyone was wondering).

There is considerable overlap in terms of the substance of prejudices imposed upon both homosexual and transgendered people, and there is considerable overlap in terms of the people or agencies imposing those prejudices. It makes sense to pool resources.

4

No, there’s no logical reason why it has to be like that. One group is people attracted to other people of the same sex, the other is people who mentally belong to the other sex.

However, at least where I live, transgendered people tend to frequent the same places as gay people, at least in the beginning of the process (before they have a sex change, and often even after that). So we share a common culture. Also, many transgendered people are attracted to the same sex they where born with, making them, I suppose, technically gay before they start living as the other sex full-time.

5

I think that arguments can be made either way.

On the one hand, gay people and transgendered people face different problems and the gay rights and transgendered rights movements tend to have different priorities.

On the other, both groups face prejudice due in large part to stereotypes about sex and gender roles, and anything that leads to more tolerance of alternative gender roles will help both groups, which makes the two groups natural allies.

6

Yes, the GLBT does seem like a natural alliance, but I suspect that it’s the transgendered who are losing out on being in that alliance. There is already quite a bit of (reluctant, maybe) acceptance of the transgendered living as their chosen gender. And there’s more precedent for persons who have undergone sex reassignment to legally marry – even in the US it’s not legal in all states, but wikipedia* indicates most states allow birth certificates to be amended after sex reassignment – which would generally allow legal marriage.

So the better question is, why are the transgendered holding themselves back by helping forward gay marriage, etc.?

  • I know, but it’s all I’m going to google up at work.
7

My opinion is that the transgendered movement piggybacked onto the gay/lesbian rights movement. As gay rights organizations became more organized and powerful in the 1990’s, the few people who had attempted to organize support for transgendered people saw a golden opportunity.

I, personally, don’t like it. I attended pro-choice rallies in the 1980s and remember how lesbian groups would seem to hijack the stage at times.

Gay/Lesbian people face different challenges than transgendered people. I woudn’t want victims of incest or sexual abuse to piggy back onto the gay rights movement either, although the plights of all the above are certainly worth support.

8

*The GLBT movement exists in many countries. The ACLU doesn’t.

*There is a term which includes all those the OP listed, as well as heterosexuals, celibates, children and people with too much Alzheimer’s to know what sex is. “Human”. Why do we not just focus on human rights and just drop the pigeonholing, hmmm?

9

As somebody who is None Of The Above, but who faced ostracism and negative attitudes for quite different reasons back in a different time, I think that Martin Niemoeller said it much more clearly than anything I might essay here. (Just for the record, I’m amazed at how many conservative Christians who consider gays as willful sinners are able to understand the feelings of the transgendered – a contrast I would never have thought likely.)

10

I agree that the groups are not identical, but see coalitions as the best way for small groups to work for mutually-beneficial changes in laws, policies, and societal attitudes. I question it no more than I would question blacks and Muslims banding together because both groups were being discriminated against in housing and other access.

11

Precisely ! These last thing the various civl rights movements need to do is split into yet more, even weaker little groups. In my opinion, one reason for the ascendance of the Right is the split up of the civil rights movement into more and more jealous little groups. The phrase “Divide and Conquer” comes to mind, except in this case the conquered divided themselves without outside help.

GLBT people do have a major thing in common; they are all asserting the ownership of themselves, in regards to sex and the body. They are asserting that they can or should have sex with who they want, marry who they want, or modify themselves as they want.

12

Because the more issues a group focuses on, the less time and fewer resources that group has to spend on each issue. So a group that just focues on gay rights is going to be able to focus its campaigns more effectively on certain issues, like gay marriage and non-discrimination based on sexual orientation, that are of primary importance to gay people, but not of much interest to the society as a whole. If you just had a group dedicated to “human rights”, then gay issues would sometimes have to take a seat to other issues, which, although worthy in their own right, don’t directly benefit gay people as a group.

13

But the fewer issues they support, the fewer supporters they have and the fewer resources they have.

14

I think if gays are able to achieve equal rights and general acceptance in society, the TG folks will slip in along with them. I doubt if your average clod makes much of a disitinction. So it’s not necessary or important that TG be included with gays, or excluded. Either way, their fortunes are tied with those of gays whether they like it or not, or whether gays like it or not, because the mainstream doesn’t see much distinction between them.

15

As I noted in the Pit thrad, it’s unlcear to me that Ts are less accepted by society than Gs are. (T= transgendered, G= Gay.) Most states recognize the newly acquired gender of transsexuals (perhaps the most “extereme” form of T). Thus, a MtF transsexual can marry a male in most states, unlike his gay friend who can only marry another man in one state-- MA. One might argue that it’s the Ts who are being held back by the Gs, at least in some areas, so perhaps the moral of the story is that the best strategy is to join forces and use each others’ strength to advance the larger cause. If people can accept that a person can be phsyically one gender, but mentally the other gender, then perhaps they will find it easier to accept that same gendered people can be attracted to each other.

16

You’re right. It’s always a tradeoff for groups, and I guess every group figures the calculus differently.

17

I think that the gay rights movement needs to hinge on the strong moral and ethical point that distinctions in sexuality are not a sufficient reason to deny people basic human rights, just like past civil rights movements argued that distinctions in skin color and gender are not. And, since GLBT, etc. people are in the minority, the success of the movement requires that they convince others on the merits of that argument.

To me, separating out certain parts of GLBT would suggest a lack of moral clarity, which would ultimately cost the support of people who support equal rights on the principle of the thing, not because they have any reason to support one particular minority group.

18

This is basically what I came in here to say. The reason for “lumping them all together” is to make the point that such distinctions are the source of the problem in the first place. The POINT is to reject sex and gender as criteria for stratifying society into castes with different rights and privileges. So yes, they’re all one movement.

19

A related point, I think, is that transgendered people are often identified as gay by some people who don’t really understand the identity issues. If a bio-male woman comes on to a straight man, for instance, some people interpret this as “a gay man pretending to be a woman to deceive a guy into having gay sex with him” (we had a thread discussing such an incident once on these boards, IIRC).

Attitudes are changing about this, but I think a large segment of society still thinks of transgendered people as being just some sort of sneaky variant of gay people. So gays and transgendered are always going to be fighting some of the same prejudices anyway; they might as well fight them together.

20

I suppose you could split up gay male movements and gay female movements too.

I think it is logical to include transgendered in the gay rights movement. The end result is to stop descrimination against people based on their sexual intrests.