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.

Yep,nothing left to fight for so they decided to hitch their wagon to the trans nonsense.

Noone says S28 was to blame for the homophobia

S28 was a reflection of the homophobia that existed in wider society. Homophobic society made it hard for a lot of people my age to be out and to accept their own sexuality. I saw friends with quite extreme problems due to hiding their sexuality because they didn't know if they would be accepted.

That whole experience set a context for those people to be very sympathetic to the "born in the wrong body" narrative, because they had to suffer from hiding their sexuality.

I'm really pleased we've moved on from that now and teenagers are comfortable discussing their sexuality.

Frankly some of your recent posts read as quite homophobic. Have some empathy for what some LGB people lived through.

your recent posts read as quite homophobic

I bet they do. Because I am aggressively rejecting the link between S28 and homophobia in the 1990s.

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

Jesus Christ. Why can people not see this denial of reality as the dystopian fuck up that it is? Oh wait...I know. It's because people want to find an excuse to oppress women whilst pretending that they're somehow progressive.

In answer to you question OP, it's homophobia. Plus money, as others have already pointed out. Then some very vulnerable people are drawn into the deceitful web which (wrongly) promises them salvation from their distress if they follow this doctrine. And some other vulnerable people are just getting off on it and seeing no issue because they believe all women are mummies/ whores who only exist to serve their needs. These are all very powerful forces.

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.

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.

This social engineering exercise does seem to be about breaking the primacy of the parent-child relationship and about prematurely sexualising kids.

All these quotes from you are nothing to do with the T and all about the LGB. It is homophobia. Gay people are not breaking up the family unit. Not talking about homosexuality is extremely damaging to gay children.

The 1990s was a weird time. It was a backlash against feminism- to retrosexism. It had nothing to do with S28.

There was the mainstreaming of pornography via the launch of Loaded and all the other ‘Lads’ Mags’ that followed. “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” was a bestseller. High-heels came back into fashion for women after the comfy DMs of thr 80s. Hyper-sexuality derived from pornography was on the increase, a lot of performative lesbianism for men’s benefit. At the end of the decade I remember the collective eye-rolls when Sada on Big Brother said she was ‘bi-curious’. It was also a time of backlash against other progress from the 80s which manifested as ‘irony’. So you had ironic racism, etc.

I know the ‘eugh -yuk’ comment is unpleasant, and I brought it up because it is a direct quote from my kids’ school - there was a situation a few weeks ago, when a girl was asked directly if she would go out with girls, and in the current climate, where the sexuality/gender agenda is being so aggressive pushed in schools, she felt safe to openly admit she would. Another girl said “eugh - yuk - that’s disgusting”. My daughter told me about it, because she had witnessed a ‘homophobic’ thing at school. I believe the girl was rallied around and supported. But the fact of the matter is that all this enforced drawing of LGBTQII++ flags and pronouns and everything at school did not stop the kid from being homophobic towards another kid, in the way kids would in decades past.

The way I see it, is that there is a danger when lesbian women get together with gay men and together fight for ‘gay rights’ (the L always gets subsumed into the G, doesn’t it?).

My rationale is this.

Women’s rights are complicated - pregnancy and birth, a push for equality after millennia of second-class status, provision for sex-based health issues, countering the tendency towards male domination and violence, etc.

On the other hand, being the dominant and default group, men’s specific ‘rights’ are much more simple and are really about increasing entitlement. They are generally about loosening or abolishing any constraints on male sexual expression and sexual gratification (which are usually put in place for the protection of women and children). So, for example, if you focus on ‘disabled men’s rights’ it ends up about disabled men’s access to people in prostitution.

So with something like the Gay Liberation Front manifesto, you can see it is full of women’s lib ideas - liberating women from the burden of motherhood and wifework. It all seems well and good. It’s possible to imagine a lesbian commune where all the women are essentially seen as mothers and the kids would be okay. It definitely seems like manifesto written by women’s libbers with not that much input from men. What it doesn’t consider is the importance of the mother as the primary protector of the child from harm (from men).

So if you make this lesbian commune into a mixed sex one, where kids don’t really have a mother or father, because everyone is their mother or father, you have a total safeguarding nightmare. I think there is real naïveté about male sexuality and male violence in that manifesto, imagining that men would behave like women in those circumstances. It was that radical reimagining of the family that I think is pretty terrifying to those arguing for S28. And without the protection of 28 or something similar, I believe this rationale is what underpins teachers being instructed to socially transition children without their parents knowledge in schools. ‘The rainbow family are your real family’.

Peter Tatchell and many other gay men speak fondly of pederasty of the Mycenaeans, PIE were able to tag their arguments for ‘liberating child sexuality’ onto gay lib arguments. Men focusing on men’s rights tend to focus on getting off, without much thought to the impact on others.

All these quotes from you are nothing to do with the T and all about the LGB. It is homophobia. Gay people are not breaking up the family unit.

All these quotes are about Section 28, it’s remit, why it was brought in, the climate at the time, it’s impact upon the 12-15 years it was in place in schools (essentially the 1990s) the impact of repealing and what that means today.

The ‘T’ wasn’t really a thing at the time, didn’t feed into why section 28 was brought in and wasn’t part of its remit, so that’s why I am not discussing the T in those quotes.

I am refuting the lazy parroting of assertions about Section 28 as though the 1990s were a terrible time of homophobia akin to the times of Alan Turing being chemically castrated.

Not talking about homosexuality is extremely damaging to gay children.

I refute the idea that it is ‘extremely damaging to gay children’ or any others to not have sexuality of any kind promoted in schools. I think there should be a firm boundary between adults and kids around discussions of sexuality.

I think schools just need to teach kids the facts of life, how puberty will affect them, how to have healthy boundaries, be reassured that they don’t have to do anything they feel uncomfortable doing and the risks of unsafe sex.

I am refuting the lazy parroting of assertions about Section 28 as though the 1990s were a terrible time of homophobia akin to the times of Alan Turing being chemically castrated

It doesn't have to be Alan Turing bad to be bad. It's much better now.

And the generation that castrated Turing was the generation driving the appetite for S28.

I refute the idea that it is ‘extremely damaging to gay children’ or any others to not have sexuality of any kind promoted in schools. I think there should be a firm boundary between adults and kids around discussions of sexuality.

That's impossible because of the Internet. Teenagers will discuss this stuff, schools have a role in helping that to happen in a balanced safe way.

Discussing topics in school is not "promotion"

You sound like you are advocating for a return to S28.

It actually turns my stomach having seen what friends went through.

And the generation that castrated Turing was the generation driving the appetite for S28.

I used to think that, but after looking at it in more detail (Hansard etc) I think there was ideological over-reach going on by gay rights orgs, for example overtly vowing to abolish the family unit, in order to create some imagined utopia, and publishing books for children with two naked men photographed in bed with a little girl to normalise gay parents (typically, it was the work of a woman, naively thinking that this didn’t have alarming connotations) it did not go down well.

Childline was launched in 1986 after research showed the prevalence of child sexual abuse. There was evidence that pedophiles purporting to be gay men got jobs in children’s homes and were not disciplined or removed because of their ‘sacred caste’ status at the time.

The Children’s Act came out in 1989.

There was a climate of wanting to protect children after having had their eye off the ball and there was entryism by PIE and other pedophile groups into gay rights orgs at the time, which drove the appetite to put the brakes on their promotional materials and activities in schools. It wasn’t just a bunch of homophobic dinosaurs with no cause for concern.

You sound like you are advocating for a return to S28.

I am absolutely advocating for a return to statutory limits on what can be taught in schools around sexuality in general.

There needs to be thought about how to tackle pornography, without reproducing imagery, how to embolden children (especially girls) to stick up for their boundaries and to recognise what is appropriate or not.

I imagine, within lessons about puberty you would discuss the emergence of sexual feelings and sexual orientation, but this is just facts. I can’t see where else it is relevant to discuss sexuality in schools.

I think the ‘promotion’ word was a bit clunky in S28. What did it mean?

Being disgusted at the current shitshow in schools, the social contagion of trans identities and teachers going along with social transitions without involving families etc does not make me revise/retcon S28 as 'not that bad after all' or preferable.

S28 was a horrendous piece of legislation fuelled by homophobia. I was at secondary all that time and agree with @AdamRyan and other posters that it supported a climate of stigma and hostility for myself and other LGB kids. There's a sense of shame that becomes internalised. Granted it wasn't a 'you are not allowed to be gay' edict and in time I would find comfort and joy in my sexuality and a supportive peer group. But fuck me school was not it and that time was damaging.

I also think it is reductive to look at metrosexual males etc as evidence that culture/ society was accepting of homosexuality. Mainstream culture had been ripping off underground gay culture for years- house music, Vogue etc. Erasing the gay as it became sanitised for mainstream.

There is a murky, complex history of PIE latching on to Gay Liberation Movement which needs to be discussed too. I'm v interested in some of the points @EndlessTea raises.

I have to say @EndlessTea that your posts are very thought-provoking and clearly well researched and articulated.

I went to a very conservative (and Conservative) private school in the late eighties/nineties where the very idea of being publicly gay or lesbian would have been social suicide. There were a lot of rumours about various people, always expressed with disgust, but then - of course - you discover later that some of the supposedly-straight rugby lads were shagging each other senseless at night. Not to mention the paedophile teachers (who got away with their crimes for the most part). At one point the school took on an openly gay male teacher (in a long term relationship, but unable to marry at that time) who was subsequently forced out after a female student with a crush (and a governor parent) made allegations against him as she was upset she couldn't have him 

I'm not sure where I'm going with this except to say that I suspect in that type of environment the abolition of S28 wouldn't have made much difference. I assume things are much different now due to LGB being much more widely accepted by society in general. I hope to god there are no longer blind eyes being turned to paedophiles 😣

I do agree with you @EndlessTea that kids should be taught what they need to know about sex (biology, safety, contraception, consent, maybe mention porn is not real life) without adults getting involved in the 'lifestyles' of children.

Yes, all the analysis is very interesting. Especially as 'section 28' is being used as a silencing technique. Useful to see it discussed in depth.

I suspect in that type of environment the abolition of S28 wouldn't have made much difference.
I agree with this.

I think what s28 did was confused everyone so (some/many) schools were too scared to discuss homosexuality in case they inadvertently broke the law. They were risk averse. As a result gay children felt even more isolated and ashamed when school could have been a support for them.

Regarding transgender ideology, rather than proscribing discussing certain aspects of it, I'd like to see more stuff introduced into the curriculum. Open debate about when it's fair for biological males and females to compete in sport. How the children feel about gender neutral facilities. The side effects of medical transition. What is a gender identity, who has one, who doesn't. Is JK Rowling transphobic and why/why not?would allbe suitable discussion points at secondary school.

The more openly it's discussed (as opposed to blind affirmation or banning discussion) the more light gets shone on a complex topic

The trouble is @AdamRyan the discussion around gender is highly political, with the likes of Stonewall/Mermaids trying to act as gatekeepers on this subject, along with the #nodebate nonsense. It would be great for students to debate these issues freely. I would add that imo it would be appropriate from age 16 - I remember tackling more adult debates from this age, eg talking about AIDS stigma etc.

Yeah 100% agree. That is the real problem. Actually TRAs are attempting to s28 GC feminists by stipulating that some topics shouldn't be discussed e.g. what is a gender identity and how is it different to a soul?

I also do feel for teachers tho as many teenagers are full on SJWs (looking at you DD) who start hyperventilating if you say something verboten. Such as assuming penis = man

I think it would be tough to discuss the issues at school without prematurely sexualising kids. You would need to be able to discuss kink, paraphelia, etc, if you want to discuss it throughly and I believe parents have the right to prevent their kids being exposed to it. I really regret that my children know what kink, fetish, etc is, before they even know about their own sexuality. It’s wrong.

I agree that history is repeating itself, but more of an exact repeat.

The 60s/70s were a sexual revolution- although there was still judgement and cruelty towards ‘unmarried mothers’, there was a stigma attached to sexual boundaries. “Frigid”, etc. I have even chatted to women who were young at the time who said they took being raped at knifepoint in their stride 😮. Does anyone remember Faye Weldon pissing everyone off by saying that rape wasn’t that big a deal? I think her view was fairly normal for that generation. 70s into 80s Pedophilia was pretty normalised with mainstream books like ‘Love At A Tender Age’ released. Disco, Bowie, New Romantics were normalising GB (not so much L).

There was AIDS which suddenly put a massive dampener on the promiscuity and decadence of before.

This was a separate development to the fact that consciousness-raising women had brought to light the prevalence of child sexual abuse. It was Esther Ranzen investigating for ‘That’s Life’ which totally blew the lid on it.

There was a real appetite to do something about child protection in the late 80s and it wasn’t just about protection of abuse, it was also revealed that the state intervention of removing children from their families was as much, perhaps if not more, damaging than the neglect or abuse they suffered at home. So the Children’s Act 1989 emphasised the paramouncy of the welfare of the child in all decision-making, the importance of parenting - the continuation of the relationship of the child with their own parents if possible, protection of the child from neglect and abuse (and a couple of other Ps I can’t remember right now).

The Children’s Act 1989 was pretty robust and tipped the balance of power to kids in a lot of ways - little oiks could threaten teachers “I’ll tell the police you tried to touch my cock if you don’t let me do what I want!”. Youth workers had to make sure they were never alone with a kid for their own protection from accusation. It was robust to the point that child sex abusers started looking online to remotely abuse kids in Thailand or take part in child sex tourism.

The way I think history is repeating itself, is because of things pisswank rubberman’s story of how he was basically groomed online by men who must have known he was underage and his complete lack of understanding of safeguarding and appropriate boundaries, even though he worked at the NSPCC. He believed himself to be above reproach because of his LGBT status and his critics were accused of homophobia. This to me is reminiscent of the men who said they were gay who abused kids in children’s homes 70s and 80s. Also what is coming to light about LGBT Youth Scotland. It seems very similar to the decadence and lack of boundaries and child safeguarding at the time.

I think we have a dawning realisation of having sleepwalked into something horrific, like they did in the mid-late 80s and because of the ‘sacred castes’, potential whistle-blowers have been cowed and silenced by accusations of homophobia and also now transphobia.

I reckon that if we successfully protect kids from this current shit show, in 35 years time, whatever measures we put in place will be demonised as the darkest time in LGBT history and we’ll be thought of by our grandchildren as evil homophobes who wanted Alan Turing chemically castrated and are solely responsible for any homophobia they remember in the coming decade.

I think it would be tough to discuss the issues at school without prematurely sexualising kids.
Teachers are the professionals at age appropriate communication of tricky topics, and also safeguarding.
I think the danger comes when what's being taught becomes political. So I'd rather teachers had free rein.

The shit they are currently teaching my kids under the misguided #benice thing makes me not trust them one bit. They are grooming without realising.

I think many are deeply uncomfortable about being handed this loose cannon. And don't have the option to say no, I don't think I can do that, or that they are very unhappy with some of the biased and very questionable messages that they are supposed to use their children's trust in them to embed for the benefit of a political agenda.

Teachers are the professionals at age appropriate communication of tricky topics, and also safeguarding.
I think the danger comes when what's being taught becomes political. So I'd rather teachers had free rein.

It is political already. They're too often people who have bought into the propaganda of an extremist cult that advocates the removing of safeguards.

Firstly, I’d like to apologise for all the garbled typos in my post 20/01/2023 15:40 (my daughter kept needing to interrupt me and I thought I’d better hit send before I’d finished or got a chance to read through, rather than lose the whole post).

I want to illustrate how lies about S28 are being peddled to enable the current shit show and I think they should be interrogated.

On this thread https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/sarah-phillimore-and-robin-moira-white-interviewed-by-andrew-doyle Robin M White does it in the linked video in the OP.

Andrew Doyle was exploring how you can possibly tell if someone is genuine or trying to exploit self-ID for nefarious purposes.

RMW responded (after proposing an analogy which compared having the sex on your birth certificate falsified, to using a telephone) at 15:57

“Andrew, we are right back to, I mean I’ve been in practice thirty years, and when I started in practice, Section Twenty Eight was in place, it was still acceptable to say you shouldn’t have gay men as primary school teachers because they are after your children, and that connection constantly being made between trans people and criminals or sex offenders, or whatever, is the thing that winds up trans people no end. No trans person would say that a sex offender should not be properly dealt with. No trans person would say that.
What we need to focus on is dealing properly with offenders and dealing properly, separately, with trans people”

This argument is totally misleading about the scope of the clause. Since Section 28 covered what you promote in schools, there was no change to what anyone (who was not teaching kids) could say about anything. Before S28, you could say mean things about a lot of groups- free speech and everything. Admittedly the Children’s Act 1989, which came out a year later, put a stop to the safeguarding loophole that allowed predators to use the ‘sacred caste’ immunity of men claiming they were gay, in order to work with and access kids.

Which begs the question, is it the Children’s Act RMW has the beef with, not S28?

As for the claim that “No trans person would say that a sex offender should not be properly dealt with” This is total bollocks. Edinburgh Action For Trans Health (who were taken seriously by the Scottish govt), released this manifesto as a response to the consultation for GRR back in 2017: https://www.tumblr.com/edinburghath/163521055802/trans-health-manifesto?source=share

“We demand that trans people are immediately freed from police, military & government contracts without repercussions. We reject the system of blackmail that corporations and governments engage in, whereby trans people who can work are "rewarded" with slightly less mistreatment in exchange for the exploitation of our labour. We will not allow pinkwashing of the violence of capitalism, imperialism and the state.

We demand amnesty, recourse to public funds and indefinite right to remain for all trans, lesbian, gay and bisexual immigrants & asylum seekers. No one is illegal.

We demand immediate release & pardon for all trans prisoners.”

There, total bollocks, clear as day.