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.

He's awful. Always a sign that someone is trotting stuff out rather than voicing an informed and considered opinion on this when they a) fail give a real quote to prove their point, b) use the phrase 'calling out', and c) throw in the word 'trope'.

I am pretty sure it had absolutely nothing to do with S28.

I was surprised to find out that a very loud, quick-witted and charismatic girl - alpha-type, came out as a lesbian after school - she has been very vocal about taking the piss out of lesbians and I think people probably just nodded and laughed along because she was a leader of the group. I reckon that if she had been really pro-lesbian instead, people would have followed her lead. I think she didn’t come out because of her own internalised homophobia- nothing to do with S28 whatsoever.

There was definitely a lack of lesbian role-models. I think there was just Martina Navratilova and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit on the telly.

I didn't begin to seriously think about whether I was gay until I was 19. No hostility at school, merely that there were at the time no role models of any kind in the media or on TV of gay women and no real information that it was a possibility. It was something I needed time and space to decide myself.

What would emphatically not have helped was being sat down at school and asked to think about whether I was gay, straight, bi, or any one of another smorgasboard of options to try on, with a lot of social encouragement as to what was interesting/right/carried social capital and what was boring and low status. That just would have caused a hell of a lot of confusion to pile on what's already normal for adolescence.

This. Being homosexual is too damm ordinary nowadays so they needed something else to campaign on.

Ooh look at that deletion. You aren’t allowed to talk about social engineering tactics via language…

Makes me think something was a bit close to the bone there

My post discussed how safeguarding was being made taboo by certain buzzwords and how this was not unlike the deliberate push of certain ‘umbrella’ words.

Safeguarding is increasingly demonised by likening sex-segregated safe spaces to Jim Crow apartheid. No analogy is too offensive or preposterous.

Pink News today described the obvious proposition that men are stronger than women as "a hateful narrative".

likening sex-segregated safe spaces to Jim Crow apartheid. No analogy is too offensive or preposterous.

But somehow gender-segregated things are absolutely fine. (Or even race-segregated, for a lot of the same loons).

Yeah that only works if you either try to argue that sex segregation full stop is apartheid (setting aside how very trivialising and offensive it is to go appropriating actual, real suffering for political pouting and foot stomping) or you're trying to claim that a man who identifies as TQ+ is a woman with a physical disability.

It's a lot of manipulative bullshit.

Women do not want men in their spaces. End of. How the man happens to identify or subjectively feel is irrelevant. Have third spaces, women like Layla Moran who are dying to get their kit off and validate men with her body can enjoy themselves all they like, and then no females are excluded in the name of making males happy.

And if you want to talk about exclusion and apartheid lets talk about excluding the females who need female only spaces. With disabilities and faiths and cultures and trauma. And prepare for a whole lot of yeah but... no but...

When I see respect for non TQ+ people's needs, feelings, beliefs, wishes, I may have a little more interest in those of this political lobby.

Pink News today described the obvious proposition that men are stronger than women as "a hateful narrative

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.

Yes, good point.

There is a concerted effort to make out (to retcon) that it was like the times of getting Alan Turing chemically castrated or something.

There really is.

I think it is part of the whole master plan- Preempt any criticism of what they are pushing in schools, by saying “this is just like Section 28, the darkest, lowest point in human history” (when safeguarding concerns about what is appropriate to teach kids about adult sexuality was last legislated for), so it makes safeguarding concerns seem to belong to the realm of Mary Whitehouse dinosaurs. So now you have all these well-meaning teachers normalising inappropriately sexual conversations with kids so they don’t seem like homophobic ‘Section 28 advocates’. Kids are having their boundaries eroded by teachers in such a way that primes them for abuse.

This.

I was at school during Section 28 and it made little difference. It was specifically about "promoting homosexuality as an alternative or equal lifestyle to heterosexuality", therefore we learnt about it in PSE lessons (as long as it wasn't promoted as being better than heterosexuality) and there were openly gay children at the school.

Nowadays it is retconned with participants on Ru Paul's Drag Race claiming that their early life was destroyed by Section 28 (even though it didn't exist for their ages).

No one was criminalised, and no one was fearful about coming it.

It was a poor piece of legislation, but those most vocal about it were either too old or too young to actually have been at school during its operation.

The threat to women’s rights does not, repeat does not come from genuine Ts. It comes from men.

Jesus wept. ‘Genuine Ts’ are the sex they were observed to be at birth, like everyone else. Transwomen generally commit crimes at the same rate as other males. But transwomen commit proportionately more sex offences than other males, judging from their numbers in prisons.

There was an internal joke at the Tavistock that there would be no gay kids left once the Tavistock had worked their way through all of them.

And you are aware that in Iran the "treatment" for homosexuality is medical transition? The conversion therapy for homosexuality is to trans it away.

Yes, this.

This is absolute rubbish. Section 28 was in force for the entire time I was at secondary school and it definitely contributed to the isolation and alienation that I and other LGB kids of my age experienced. Admittedly it’s hard to clearly distinguish its effects from the general (then still prevalent) societal view that same sex attraction was unhealthy/inferior/perverted/generally to be discouraged, but the fact that the government made legislation plainly stating that homosexuality was a ‘pretended family relationship’ and prohibiting local authorities from promoting its “acceptability” obviously contributed.

But it didn't for the pp you quote, and it didn't mine as I posted above. Different people's life experiences are different. And there's a difference between acceptance and actively sitting kids down encouraging them to question their sexuality and identity and choose from a buffet of labels. And 'how to choke safely' ffs. And none of us in section 28 days were being encouraged towards a path that could end in sterility, chronic illness and worse.

Frankly I'd rather go back to no one talking in schools about homosexuality at all than go on with exposing children to the mess created by TQ+ politics and the 'queering childhood' agenda. That's what has broken the system and needs winding back.

Section 28 was in force for the entire time I was at secondary school and it definitely contributed to the isolation and alienation that I and other LGB kids of my age experienced.

Can you expand on this in a bit more detail please?

I know that we are in a situation now, where my daughter was being sort of bullied in year 5/6 by her friends saying “are you lesbian, bi or trans?” and she said “bi” to get them to stop even though she didn’t have a clue. She is being prematurely sexualised.

I just don’t see why schools need to teach anything other than the facts of life.

I think we need to go back to having some legislation to prevent teaching about sexuality in schools. Facts of life, healthy boundaries, that’s it.

The background to S28 was groups like the GLF manifesto saying stuff like:

“The long-term goal of the Gay Liberation Front, which inevitably brings us into fundamental conflict with the institutionalised sexism of this society, is to rid society of the gender-system which is at the root of our oppression. This can only be achieved by the abolition of the family unit, with its gender-role pattern, by new organic units, such as the commune, where the development of children becomes the shared responsibility of a larger group of people who live together. Children must be liberated from the present condition of having their role in life defined by biological accident.” [my bold]

So the climate at the time of S28 was a very radical, politicised LGB with sights set on abolishing the family unit, gay men had been a ‘sacred caste’, loads of CSA was coming to light, the Children’s act, Childline, etc were established because children were starting to be believed for the first time in history.

It wasn’t the case that a spectre of homophobia came from nowhere intent on persecuting homosexuals at the end of the 80s. There was a need to protect kids from sexualisation and to protect the family unit.

I look at how quickly it’s all been cracked on with, now the protections have largely been removed in horror, with my kids being affected.

Sure. I was lucky enough to come from a very liberal family - my parents had gay friends, and taught me that the prejudice faced by gay people was wrong. So when I reached the age (11/12) that kids at school started talking about sexuality, and how disgusting “dirty lesbians and poofs” were, I innocently asked them “why do you think there’s something wrong with two people of the same sex loving each other?”. And they all laughed and asked what was wrong with me, and backed away like I was going to molest them. And although that attitude diminished over the following years, and was perhaps not the majority view by the time we finished school, it took time, and it never went away. I remember when I was 16, and there were rumours going around the school about me, one girl asked me straight out “do you fancy girls?” and (to my eternal shame) I said I didn’t. She replied “good, because if you did I wouldn’t stay in this room with you”.

Would it have made a difference if my school had been able to teach that same sex attraction was ok and normal, or if there had been a teacher I could talk to in confidence about it? Who knows. But do you really believe that the government effectively condoning homophobia by introducing and maintaining section 28 didn’t reinforce the homophobic views that my peers were seeing in the media or hearing from their parents?

Thanks.

do you really believe that the government effectively condoning homophobia

I don’t think it was effectively condoning homophobia.

I think homophobia is perennial and I know there are some kids who still go ‘eugh yuk’, even though they are currently being pumped full of LGBTQI+ propaganda to the point it is becoming a source of bullying in the other direction.

Teachers are all pretty left wing in the main, many are lesbian and gay and I do not believe that they condoned homophobia, just because they weren’t allowed to promote homosexuality in their teaching.

I think this assertion that S28 is to blame for the homophobia (which I think actually continued to decrease throughout the 1990s) is lazy and being uncritically parroted now as part of a wider social engineering exercise. This social engineering exercise does seem to be about breaking the primacy of the parent-child relationship and about prematurely sexualising kids. Any criticism of this move to break safeguards is called homophobic, backed up by vague assertions of the impact of S28, which don’t stand up to interrogation.