First, in the interest of mutual understanding, I want to point out how often misunderstandings happen on message boards like this one. I'm referring to Megan's post about GLAAD's supercilious dismissal of anyone who doesn't fit their definition of "transgender" as "a bunch of heterosexual dudes that like to dress up," Was Megan really echoing the same contempt of crossdressers along with that crowd? Or was she drawing attention to the same disgust I feel at such exclusionary hypocrisy from some outfit like GLAAD? I hope she'll return to clarify that. Please be careful how we interpret another's words, and try to give them the benefit of the doubt!--even "doubts" we may not think of at first blush, as I confess I didn't myself. More on that crowd later.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Robertacd
Not a box, an inclusive umbrella that covers everyone from fetish crossdressers to post-op transexuals.
The only reason I can think of why so many here do not want to be included in this umbrella is transphobia.
Thank you for this post, Roberta, which is a good starting point for discussion. I certainly agree with your concept of "T" as an umbrella, in which we all ought in principle to be included. What I have a problem with is that second statement.
Although some people "hate labels," I think labels are generally useful anyway. The real value of labels is that people are simply different from one another and want to be understood for "who they really are" and "what they're really like." "Different" doesn't imply "better" or "worse"; just "different" in ways that others often don't understand. It reminds me of a Web site somewhere about an entirely different topic--Myers-Briggs personality classifications--accompanied by a publication called Please Understand Me. The point of course is that people don't always "understand" others who for various reasons think, feel, or act differently from themselves, unless they're educated about it.
So under this T "umbrella" there's a burgeoning list of subcategories like "LGBTTTQQIAA" and whatnot, which can be found (among other places) on a Web site with the delightful name of "ok2Bme.ca,", a philosophy I thoroughly sympathize with. This ever-growing alphabetical sea serpent is not only compendious, but cumbersome besides, so no wonder people shorten it to "LGBT+," or sometimes "LBGTQ+." Still, I think the reason for its growth is not so much that anyone doesn't want to be seen as "like those other people" we get confused with," more that they want their own individuality to be understood.
Sometimes this leads to needless objections by hypersensitive people, such as some who insist "I am not a 'transsexual.' I am simply a woman now." Or those who want us to know that "in our culture, which is different from yours, when somebody has both a feminine and a masculine soul in the same body, we call it 'Two-Spirit.'" Point acknowledged, but from a gender perspective it's still a "distinction without a difference," and when we bring "different cultures" into the mix as well, we only multiply the existing number of labels.
Despite all this, there is a reason why "B" is the third letter in "LGBT," and I'm sure it's not because "bisexual" people are "looking down" on anyone who's purely gay or lesbian. It's just because they want to be understood for themselves, that they're different from others, that they swing both ways and son't belong as "straight" [b]or[//b] gay.
It all reminds me of that ancient but classic comic song a group called the Southlanders did a lifetime ago, back in 1958 when so much music was just plain lighthearted fun: "I Am A Mole":
I'm not a Bat or a Rat or a Cat
I'm not a Gnu or a Kangaroo
I'm not a Goose or a Moose on the loose
I am a Mole, and I live in a Hole!
It's appropriate for some of us who crossdress. Even if we don't live in a "hole," we can be "deeply buried" in the closet!
So with apologies, that's where I don't believe "transphobia" is the reason why some people may not want to be included under an umbrella titled "transgender," which, if it's taken to mean their gender identity is primarily female, does not properly describe them.
It's also a practical matter of how we're understood by others--especially those we treasure the most: our wives, partners and girlfriends. We wouldn't want them to fear that we're gay and might cheat on them or worse, leave them for another man. Just as important, we wouldn't want them to live in groundless fear that the "man" they loved and married is going to disappear forever and abandon them by morphing into a woman.
If your mileage is different, if crossdressing led you to understand that you are truly transgender, that's fine. But the point I'm making above all is that I believe most of us who crossdress, for whatever reason, do sympathize with and support those who are truly "transgender" (whatever exactly that means) and struggle with it, since we've struggled with related issues ourselves. The bogeyman of "transphobia" is only a "threat" as far as transsexualism leads uneducated members of society to misunderstand the rest of us who crossdress, which frankly doesn't bother me one bit.
What DOES bother me is the lack of reciprocity. How some members--not all--of the "trans" community "look down" on us as "mere" crossdressers, when we don't look down on them! The universe of gender is a horizontal spectrum, not a vertical "hierarchy" where some are "superior" to others. If some people are "further along" that spectrum toward the feminine side, that's fine, but it doesn't make anyone "better" or "worse" than anyone else--any more than men are "better than" women, or vice versa. The sexes are just different, that's all, and we're both necessary to the world. It's about as stupid as asking "Is a bolt 'better than' a nut?" If we're ever going to put anything together and build anything worthwhile, we're going to need both bolts and nuts to join them. Otherwise the whole thing is going to fall apart, and we're left with nothing.
Unfortunately that is not the attitude of some people in the community, and I sometimes wonder how this relates to Heinlein's depiction of humanity in Stranger in a Strange Land. His hero, raised on Mars and previously unacquainted with Earth, "never laughed" before--until he saw monkeys in a human zoo. How one monkey, bullied and deprived of his banana by a bigger monkey, immediately reacted by picking on a smaller monkey and taking his anger out by bullying him too. For the first time, the hero laughed until he couldn't stop, at the comedy, the tragedy, and the absurdity of it all.
How many male-to-female transsexuals have forgotten how they and their sisters were rejected, despised, and looked down on with contempt by a gang of females calling themselves "radical feminists," or "womyn," to distance themselves from any dreaded suggestion of "men" in the proper spelling? It didn't matter that the MtoFs in question were just as much "women" in soul and spirit as the genetic females who were shrieking about their so-called "oppression." It didn't matter that transsexuals were battling far greater difficulties of their own., worse than any "cisgender" person, male or female. It didn't matter if transsexuals were entirely in sympathy with the political goals of these "womyn." It was oh, no, you were 'born male,' so you 'enjoyed privilege'"=the biggest load of garbage I ever heard, about some myth of so-called "male privilege"--"so you can't come to our 'womyn's' music concerts, because they're for 'womyn born womyn' only, and because you were 'born male,' you're not 'one of us."
What a load of snotty, "superior," objectionable females! "Eww, you can't be a member of our club, because you "don't belong"! They're like a gang of immature, cliquey high-school girls playing their wretched "exclusion" games on other girls. Isn't it time they grew up?
Yet we find exactly the same attitude among some other "girls"--mind you, I'm not saying "all," just some---who, being "transgender," are pulling the same snotty, contemptuous attitude on crossdressers at large, who, because they're not truly "transgender," are in some sense "not as worthy as us" and "don't belong in our club." Heaven knows what these garbage attitudes are based on: some sniveling idea that "our struggles are greater than your pitiful little struggles," or some assumption of female privilege: that "you're not as good as us because you're not as fully female as we are!"
At any rate it's disgustingly objectionable, and it's exactly what Micki and JuliaGirl spoke of when Julia quoted that contemptuous line about "a bunch of heterosexual dudes,,," I've heard this crap myself. When I lived in Massachusetts I was a member of the Tiffany Club for crossdressers, though some members were fully transgender. Yet on the Web back then I've heard a snotty bunch, who ought to have known better, dismissing the group as "just a men's club."
The same attitude is present anong "persons" like the "non-binary" one who gave the lecture Michelle described in her original post. As somebody remarked, he, she, or it "has an agenda"--and it is not one of "inclusion." All this nonsense about "inclusion" is nothing but hypocritical crap--as is all this petty nonsense about pronouns as well. It's nothing but an excuse to pick on others and create divisiveness. Just as it's ironic that some transsexuals dismissed by "womyn" should show the same dismissal to "mere" crossdressers, I find it ironic that a person calling itself "non-binary" cannot stretch its understanding far enough to encompass other and finer distinctions among humans. What does "non-binary" mean anyway? Only that we don't have to belong wholly to one of two poles--"male" and "female"--and there's whole spectrum of possibilities in between. Some are feminine in nature despite the sex they were born in, and want to transition entirely. Some just need to express their female side socially, much of the time. And some of us just need to "dip our toes in the water" of femininity, whatever our reason, "sexual" or otherwise. Some swing between the two, while other just can't make up their minds. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in [his, her, or its] philosophy!
The same goes for any attempted definition of "transgender" such as the one Megan quoted here, by GLAAD or any other organizaion. Who gives a damn what they think? They're only about gay and lesbian stuff anyway, with an agenda of their own. As important as that may be, what they hell do they know about gender issues, which are entirely different? But to be charitable, maybe they didn't even think about us! Nobody has to buy their definition of what "transgender" means.
We're surrounded by a bunch of wretched "clubs," and some of them want to exclude us. If they do, well, screw them! Groucho Marx famously said that "I refuse to join any club that would accept me as a member." But that was a joke of course, and why would the rest of us want to join a club that wouldn't accept us as a member? If it won't, it's full of rotten snobs anyway, so who wants to socialize with them, when we've got better things to do with our friends and with those who love us?
Yes, we do belong under the "umbrella," whether it's titled "transgender" or something else. If we're "mere" crossdressers, we have the right to create our own "umbrella" definition of what it all means. I know that alphabetical sea serpent is getting a bit long already when "LGBT" was extended to include "Q," meaning those who are "Queer," or better still, "Questioning" their sexuality or gender identity. If those Qs can get themselves added in spite of its length, there's still room for us to plant a firm stake in the ground at the end of it with a big X for us CROSS-dressers.
How does "LGBTQX" sound? We won't get heard if we don't SHOUT! Though I'm not gay myself, I've never forgotten that delicious quote from a man named Robertson Davies, who famously groused that "The love that 'dare not speak its name"--itself a quote from Lord Alfred Douglas--"has become the love that won't shut up!" No doubt the drumbeat of insistence on gay acceptance ticked Mister Davies off a bit, but "marketing" oneself relentlessly is the only way anyone retains recognition in an always competitive world. If that other lot thinks we're not "part of them," the least we can do is push for "LBTGQX" as a legitimate title that we belong under that "umbrella," no matter what the umbrella itself may be called.
