A view from history, extract from here: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4281733-The-Trans-Umbrella-Is-Older-Than-You-Think?reply=108674196
Gay Liberation Front journal - Come Together - issue 11: Lesbians Come Together. Contributed by the GLF Transvestite, Transsexual and Drag Queen group, for a special issue about lesbians, and originally published in 1972: [Journal issue supposed to be about lesbians]
A more central question is how to relate to other women. When we talk about our hopes and fantasies, it becomes apparent that what we want above all is to be accepted as women, primarily by other women. But will we achieve this by looking for ways in which we share experience with regular women or by developing a unique transvestite consciousness?
Sometimes the second approach seems real militant and proud, at other times it seems a cop-out, accepting the prejudiced view that we're not women, that we're some freaky third sex (or fourth or fifth?). Possibly we can find some light by considering the situation of black women and gay women, who develop black pride and gay pride, but still explore their feelings as women. Think how much more inspiring and beautiful the women's revolution will be when it joyously includes all women. Think of a Holloway demo with transvestite, transsexual and drag-queen women, gay women and heterosexual women, black, yellow, brown and white women, working women, housewives and career women. Certainly, whatever course we take as transvestites, transsexuals and drag queens, we must first destroy the trap wherein regular women set up standards by which they accept or reject us.
Those far-sighted thinkers anticipated the need to "first destroy the trap wherein regular women set up standards by which they accept or reject us"—it seems we're living through the period in history where we're being erased as a sex class and the people formerly known as women are being redefined and remade in the image of those with power.