Why is there 'no LGB without the T'?

[Righthandcider]

Something’s been going around my head in circles.

I’ve seen the mantra ‘No LGB without the T’ repeated in several places.

But exactly why have so many LGB organisations aligned themselves with trans hook, line and sinker? I mean one might argue that well-meaning LGB groups have been sucked in by TRAs who are blatantly piggy backing, borrowing the legacy of the gay liberation movement to shut down any debate by making it seem backwards and ‘phobic’ to question them in any way. But LGB groups themselves obviously don’t see the relationship this way. Most of them don’t seem to think they’re being used.

So what is it that they think they have in common with trans activists? Isn’t there a bloody huge elephant in the room? LGB rights are about ensuring nobody is treated differently because of their sexuality. That's literally what unites lesbian, gay and bi people.

I thought the party line for trans rights is that being trans is separate from and independent of a person’s sexuality. It’s simply about whether they feel they are male, female, neither or both.

So where’s the overlap? Why are LGB groups giving their energy to fighting for the ‘T’, to the point of saying there’s ‘no LGB without it’, if it’s not about sexuality?

Is it because they actually feel deep down that it IS about sexuality?

That it’s partly about same sex attraction, in that a lot of gay people still feel the pressure of homophobia and would rather be transed out of it?

That it’s partly about autogynaephilia, in that many cross dressers can now hold their heads high as stunning and brave better versions of 'cis' women, while enjoying the fulfilment of their ultimate sexual fantasy?

If it’s not either of those things, then where exactly is the natural connection between LBG and T? The only explanation I’ve seen anywhere is that ‘they are another marginalised group’. But there are many other marginalised groups, so why join with this one in particular?

I’m interested to hear people’s views.

Agree.

Hang on, what? It’s possible to get waybackmachine edited? 😲

Maybe not edited, but it's very, very easy to get stuff removed, or blocked.

(One amusing/notable example is that "Journalist" Taylor Lorenz tweets are not and cannot be archived there. Try it!)

Here’s a recent incident which worried me. Check out Tinsel’s link on this page:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4690459-detransitioners-put-the-fatted-calf-away-please?page=4

It is a link to Sue Donym’s article about The Elephant in The Room about [redacted acronym].

You’ll see that by following the link, the waybackmachine claims there is no such archived article. Beneath that, my comment, where I told Tinsel that the article had been removed, has since also been removed… Curiouser and curiouser…

The ‘most marginalised’ have wielded the most extraordinary powers to control how the whole modern world thinks, speaks and acts haven’t they?

Is that a response to me? Not sure. I thought we were talking about the 90s...

Sorry to but in, I think the evidence shows that the early adopters weren’t until the mid/late noughties not the 1990s

For fun, I thought I would look to see whether St Andrews early adopters were dickpandering handmaidens, who having centered blokes in the feminist society had moved onto the LGB society (as was the thing at the time).

All I could find of the feminist society was a short lived blog from 2012-13 and half-hearted social media today. The LGBT society is big and strong though of course.

Tis sad.

I'd agree with you on that, but Andrew Ryan has said that the T was added in the 90s. In my memory, AIDS was rife in the 90s and we had Section 28 and no one was looking at the LGB community and thinking we were a group they'd like to get involved with.

Not looking for a fight, looking for clarity. I used to go to early Pride marches. No memory of the T being attached there, either. I would have had something to say about it even then.

I see the issue of "genuine T" has come up.

Has anyone ever been able to clarify what they mean by this? Why are some T not 'genuine'? How do you distinguish?

@Tukmgru in the spirit of trying to understand your point of view, could you set out what you think this means?

If you can't, perhaps consider that you might not be the best person to tell us what kind of violent male person is or isn't worth worrying about.

Yes, I think AR is making stuff up. The St Andrews link of Ereshkigal’s supports what you said. St Andrews were early adopters in 2006. So I think it is very unlikely that they would consider themselves early adopters if it was common to use LGBT an entire decade before. Your memory is correct.

I'd agree with you on that, but Andrew Ryan has said that the T was added in the 90s

The timeline seems to be something like 90s = "first seen", 00s = "early adopters", 10s = "common".

And yes, it's possible for things to go at the rate such that it takes ten years to go from "first seen" to still only "niche".

(Or at least outside Twitter...)

I would put it more as

Mid-late 90s = "first seen", mid-late 00s = "early adopters", mid-late 10s = "common".

Although I didn’t see it in the 1990s

I am just going to link this thread here so I can do a bit of a dive into the timeline

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4281733-The-Trans-Umbrella-Is-Older-Than-You-Think

No social media in the 90s. No FB, no Twitter. Even in the late 90s I was still dial-up at home and it was expensive. Things moved much more slowly.

I lived with a guy (uni flatmate) in the 1990s who identified as trans. He mansplained vagina depth to me once which was gross.

Oh look, the original posted article has a link to the transgender umbrella from 1994. Must be retconned.

Is that thread OK because it was posted by a "name you know"? Or do you think they also are lying and intending to mislead?

The ‘umbrella’ term they refer to is the word ‘trans’.

Here, from the article the linked in the thread:

Somehow or other, however, we arrived at a consensus that if we maybe all used the word ‘trans’ as an umbrella term – and words like ‘transsexual’ only when we needed to be more specific’ then maybe some of that would catch on gradually.

‘And so that is what we did. From there on, without fanfare, my essays and our web content discreetly began to use this language. Claire took the opportunity during the move of the PFC website to revise the existing content in the same way.

‘In the weeks and months ahead people would sometimes ask what the word meant or why we were using it. Then we would explain the rationale and suggest why we thought it was important. The change was gradual. In fact it took years for the word to begin sounding familiar and to hear it in other people’s language. In 2002 when we were consulting over government press releases to announce the forthcoming Gender Recognition Bill, the officials still weren’t convinced that enough people understood the new word to use it. Yet today most people seem to embrace the word naturally – when they are not simply calling themselves men or women.’

So in the 1990s was when the word ‘trans’ as an umbrella/forced teaming term was being concocted by Press for Change, it wasn’t widely adopted until much later.

This came before ‘LGBT’ was used.

The quote is from Christine Burns’ Pressing Matters volume 1

https://womenspeakscotland.com/2021/06/23/the-trans-umbrella-is-older-than-you-think/

Did he actually say 'I identify as trans' in the 90s or is that your interpretation of what he said? I never heard anyone use the phrase 'identify as' in the 90s. I was a lesbian. Ordinary people on the street didn't have the concept of identifying as one thing or another. Identity politics weren't a thing outside academia until the 21st century. Here's a report from 2007 on the 'new identity politics'

www.ippr.org/files/images/media/files/publication/2011/05/New%20identity%20politics_1562.pdf

When he said he was trans what did he mean? I had a friend whose boyfriend came out as a transvestite in the late 80s. He later (mid-late 90s) had full SRS and hit the streets of Soho for a few years. If he ever said 'trans' he meant transvestite or transsexual.

I don't mean to sound as if I'm interrogating you, and I don't want to hijack the thread, I'd just like to be sure we're talking about the same thing.

I mean yeah, I think in the 1990s trans meant transexual. But he definitely said he "felt female inside" and went to student conference to meet other people who felt similar.

TBH knowing him sowed a bit of discomfort about T from the start for me as he was not feminine in any way and his reasons for "being a woman" were all binary and rejecting manhood, despite having very masculine interests. He also hated his penis. Now I'm older, I think it was some kind of MH/NT issue making him "feel different".

To go back to OPs questi9n tho, there's a heap of people who haven't questioned the move to genderist politics so staunchly support the T in LGBT. I have actually fallen out with a gay woman I know and respect hugely about this. She thinks I'm a raving transphobe.

Thanks for clarifying. From what you say, I suspect he meant transsexual, which was a word used for decades to describe people like Jan Morris.

The 1990s was like another world.