to think that T shouldn't be linked with LGB?

[lulucappuccino]

Why is transsexual, which I thought was all about gender, always mentioned along with lesbian, gay and bisexual, obviously types of sexuality?

You wouldn't say blonde, brunette, grey and men; or short, tall, medium and women.

AIBU to think these are separate things, or am I a dimwit?

[summerdreams]

I've also wondered about this? yanbu.

[7Days]

But the tumblr crowd are very influential when it comes to policy making. Which affects (effects?) everyone.
Look at this Stephonknee person, advisor to the Canadian govt on trans issues. Hardly representative of the Transman on the Clapham Omnibus.

[VashtaNerada]

Which is why trans people need more of a voice - otherwise the argument gets dominated by the wrong people.

[cleaty]

Trans people have a very large voice. I read something or watch something on the TV about Trans people at least once a week. When was the last time you read anything about the issues lesbians face?

[7Days]

I agree with you there Vashta.

[VashtaNerada]

cleaty - an unrepresentative minority of trans people have got a little bit of profile in the last year which is the point I was making - the trans community is diverse and largely ignored. I agree that we need to hear more lesbian voices too though. The real question is why so much platform is taken up by rich white straight cis men. It makes no sense for people who are LGB & T to be fighting over a tiny little space in the corner; power and platform needs to be shared much more widely than that.

[jayho]

Trans people and their 'voice' are part of the LGBT community, from my experience, they value being part of that community and the support they garner from being part of a community rather than lone voices.

The argument being played out on this tread could be likened to an argument in a BME group that a sub group was somehow less entitled to inclusion and support than another. Try framing this as 'When I think about BME communities, I don't think Gypsies are a natural part of that grouping, they shouldn't enjoy the same inclusion and support other BME community members enjoy because they're less easy to define'. Doesn't mean they don't fall into that community, just means we may have differing perceptions.

Why would anyone want to remove the support to a minority group offered by being part of a community? The trans community is a work in progress as we/they/society adjust our parameters to hopefully arrive at a caring, accepting status quo.

[cleaty]

Trans people have the biggest voice in the LGBT "movement" as well. Despite being numerically very small.
There are still many physical attacks on gay and lesbian people, but I can't remember the last time anyone except lesbian and gay people talked about this. Even LGBT organisations rarely talk about it.

[RuthyToothy]

I'm interested to know whether you're minding your own business or other people's.

Why is it that on MN you're apparently only allowed to have an opinion on or wonder about issues that directly affect you?

Do people really feel that it's invalid to ask about something that you may not have direct experience of? So a person who may not be L, G, B or T is automatically debarred from wondering about the criteria for the terminology? Why?

[cleaty]

But Trans people are not oppressed because of sexuality. They have hitched their wagon to LGB to get more support, but unless those individuals are LGB, they do not fit.

[jayho]

I need someone with more knowledge to come in on this but my understanding is that they have not 'hitched their wagon' more that their issues have been accepted as a natural extension of those facing the LGB community so have been included. They haven't hijacked the movement.

[Italiangreyhound]

Pangurban1 re "Of course people can live their own lives the way they want. "As long as their actions are self-regarding and and don't infringe adversely on others" Totally agree.

FreshwaterSelkie Yikes, re "when there's the cotton ceiling. A number of prominent transactivists have set up a series of events to help "educate" other trans women to "Break through the cotton ceiling" - ie, get otherwise reluctant lesbians to sleep with them." That's terrible!

SallyDonovan I am sorry to hear about your book group.

I do wonder if there was a group for women of colour, or whatever the equivelant name was in the UK and I asked to join it, (as a white female) whether I would destroy the group. Knowing that would I still want to join? (Of course not.)

Robins re Lesbian erasure, isn't it? It would be like referring to women as 'Men etc.' or 'Non-men'.

Oh, wait, the Green Party did that, didn't they ..

[Italiangreyhound]

QueenofallIsee Re "There was actually a petition started by a group of G & L folks to called 'drop the T'. I think in response to the domination of Trans issues when LGBT issues are being discussed as well as on the basis that the Trans issues are markedly different."

"The petition was pulled for Trans phobia."

I don't know what petition you mean but there is a petition on Change for this

www.change.org/p/human-rights-campaign-glaad-lambda-legal-the-advocate-out-magazine-huffpost-gay-voices-drop-the-t

Plus a lesbian one too...

www.change.org/p/hrc-glaad-nclr-lambda-legal-the-advocate-huffpo-gay-voices-we-are-getting-the-l-out-of-the-lgbt/c

I think LGBT can work together and fight for their rights. But there are some issues specific to T, which the others do not share.

[TheNewStatesman]

I guess people can group things how they like. If a society wants to call itself the the LBGTFXXEITRYFE society (I may have gratuitiously added a few of those letters), more power to them. They can use whatever name/inclusion terms they want.

I do find it objectionable when gay people get accused of being transphobic simply because they want to also sometimes have something that is just LGB or "gay" or "lesbian" or "gay men only" or whatever. They have every right to carve off certain issues and discuss them separately if they so wish.

The shouts of "transphobia" are merely adding to my general feeling that a rather loud and shouty contingent of transwomen (basically, the type of transwomen who used to be heterosexual men, not the other kind) are trying to dominate the discussion of everything that is linked with minority sexualities, and are throwing tantrums if they are not made center stage every single time. Which could well explain why some gay guys and lesbians are trying to back away and carve out some separate space for themselves.

[WhatTheFrikkinFrack]

I thought transsexual was sexuality and transgender is gender. When I was at college there was a tt support group which was transsexual and transgender ( I may be completely ignorant btw as its not something I know a lot about) they were separate entities in their own right and separate from the l g b support group

[VashtaNerada]

Transsexual is simply the old-fashioned term for transgender, Frack, it means someone who has transitioned or intends to transition from one gender to another. Trans is the umbrella term for anyone who doesn't solely identify with the gender they were given at birth so can include (if they choose to identify as trans): cross-dressers, non-binary, intersex etc.
And I don't know why some on this thread are so insistent on pitching this as LGB vs T when many LGB people want to include trans people in the movement, and many T people want to be separated. There are thousands of trans people out there who consider themselves to be straight and don't feel they have much in common with LGB. It's not as simple as trans people trying to muscle in on a movement.
And it's also not true that trans people have it better than LGB - in terms of workplace discrimination, hate crime, and visible role models they are miles behind. That doesn't mean that LGB doesn't matter though, and it certainly doesn't mean the fight against homophobia and biphobia has been won. We can fight all those injustices, we don't have to choose.

[VashtaNerada]

Interestingly, I just googled 'trans role models' and it came up with almost entirely glamorous transgender transwomen. Which I think says a lot about how society sexualises transwomen and expects them to 'pass', and how transmen are virtually invisible. This presumably is because people assigned female at birth are considered less worthy. I know so many transmen in RL, it must be shit not seeing yourself anywhere (except Eastenders now - whoop!)

[RuthyToothy]

The shouts of "transphobia" are merely adding to my general feeling that a rather loud and shouty contingent of transwomen (basically, the type of transwomen who used to be heterosexual men, not the other kind) are trying to dominate the discussion of everything that is linked with minority sexualities, and are throwing tantrums if they are not made center stage every single time. Which could well explain why some gay guys and lesbians are trying to back away and carve out some separate space for themselves.

It's like you looked in my head

I guess a lifetime of conditioning makes a sense of patriarchal privilege difficult to relinquish.

[cleaty]

No it doesn't. Transgender includes transvestites. Transsexual is a much more exclusive term. These are a small number within Trnasgender, and they are the people who have surgery and try to totally pass. Many transexal people are unhappy about the wider transgender community as they feel (and I think they are right), that they often have nothing in common with them.

The LGB community often have nothing in common with Transgender people. Many Transgender activists actively work against LGB people. Look at the Transgender activists who are pushing the NUS not to have a gay man's representative, as they say gay men are not oppressed.

Or the Transgender activists who actively work to destroy any lesbian events in which they do not feel 100% included in.

[cleaty]

I meant that Transexual are those who have surgery.

[NellWilsonsWhiteHair]

I've not met ONE actual trans person who espouses these tumblr-queer-special-snowflake views, not one. The trans people I know are mostly wanting to get on with their lives just like the rest of us and couldn't give a shit who I sleep with or don't.

Yes - this is my experience too (also a lesbian). I have to confess I'm wary about how much to assume the trans people of my acquaintance (mainly though not exclusively trans men and other identified-female-at-birth people) are the truly representative ones. I mean, they are my friends and other people who I mostly come into contact with because of some shared outlook/experience/friends.

So I definitely don't recognise the 'tumblr transfolk' in my own experience, but I'm slightly reluctant to conclude that my own experience is definitely 'truer' than that.

It is the earnest policing of it by people who are mostly not LGB or T that most frequently annoys me, though. I attended some training a few years ago which involved suggesting groups of people who might experience isolation and I said gay or lesbian people. Trainer immediately corrected me and explained that 'you must say LGBT now'. Well, no. I mean, in this case it's true that all face isolation, but that still doesn't mean that just because I was talking about LG(B) people, I had to mean trans people in the same sentence.



I also have some real-life experience of (lesbian) friends being asked upon meeting new people 'what pronoun do you use?'
Well, 'she'. These are women. They have enough nonsense with straight people accidentally calling them 'sir' in daily life. It would be very nice for them if, in an (LGBT?) setting where people generally do quickly recognise them as female-bodied, there might be an assumption that they are therefore female and 'she'. It's lesbian erasure again, I think.

[VashtaNerada]

cleaty your definitions are definitely wrong! Hang on, I'm going to look it up...

[Sniv]

I'm a lesbian who is very active in gay community groups, particularly those that are just for women.

All of the groups I'm part of and places I go are trans friendly. It has never caused an issue or a problem. I'm not close friends with any transwomen, but I have a few friends who are really queer when it comes to gender and I think having the 'T' be specifically included really helps these places be comfortable for them - like they're not going to one day stumble over some invisible gender line and suddenly be too masculine for our lesbian bookclub.

[VashtaNerada]

Okay, I've looked and there are different schools of thought on trans definitions! (I had training on trans at work so was using the terminology I was taught there).