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Prejudice And Rights- Why All In Our Community Need Gender Protections

There is a danger lurking in the movement to strip gender expression and gender identity from many bills before various legislatures. It is also the same danger lurking in the prejudices that a small minority of gays and lesbians have regarding transpeople. That danger is in just how many of us are outside the gender norms of this society. How many gay men are very feminine; how many lesbians are fairly masculine. Yes, these people are not transgender…or are they?

I know that sounds like a weird question to ask. However, if you think about transgenderism as being unfettered by gender standards of a society obsessed with masculine and feminine stereotypes, then it could easily be argued that many femme men and butch women are engaging in a form of transgenderism. This is not to be confused with transsexuality. This could be applied to any woman who dresses in a suit and tie or a man who dresses in frills and pastels. We are up against people who believe that women should wear dresses and men suits and ties. It may surprise none of the reading public that these are people who will stop at very little short of complete annihilation in order to stop gays, lesbians, and transpeople from having equal rights. Why is it that people think that these people who would not resort to attacking people’s clothing choices and gender expressions in order to repress us.

Many of these issues became very stark for me after two transmen were assaulted by three individuals in Washington D.C. The assault began in a gay-friendly club and continued out on the street. The attackers were identified by those interviewed as being lesbian. It is not just the fact that these two men were assaulted for being transsexual by two people who have been identified by witnesses and the two men as being lesbian, but the reaction to this worried me afterward. While the vile comments concerning these two men were bad enough, what worried me the most was not the blatant transphobia out of our own community, but the attempts to dismiss this incident with claims of how we should not “assume” that these two women were lesbian, and how we should not make that assumption because the assault happened outside the club. Never mind that this ignores a couple of facts like the witness accounts, or that the assault began inside the club. Apparently we must assume that six foot tall pixies assaulted these two men.

I know that many people may not like what I just said, but the reality is that we do have a certain amount of prejudice against transpeople within our own rather cobbled together community. I have met with transpeople who have been assaulted by gays and lesbians. For many years, transpeople were spit upon and epithets hurled at them while marching in the yearly Pride parade in Jacksonville, Florida. Often times, transpeople are seen as a threat by many gays and lesbians. The reason has logical roots. It goes back to some of the oddest things that can happen. It goes back to a situation which existed in the early part of the twentieth century. There was a time when being transsexual was actually more acceptable than being homosexual. This situation exists in Iran today. Iranian gays and lesbians can either choose to be declared transsexual and transition or they can be incarcerated or executed. For many of us, this situation was highlighted in the movie Ed Wood. The real life John Cabell “Bunny” Breckinridge, played by Bill Murray, discussed many times going to either Denmark or Mexico in order to have a sex change operation which would have brought him much more in line with the modern, for the times, sensibilities. He planned, at the time, to marry his secretary, also male. Breckinridge was openly gay in a time when being gay was almost a guarantee of being socially ostracized.

While it has not been documented very well, there are undoubtably a number of gays and lesbians who found it much easier at that time, in that era, to undergo surgery in order to fit into society. While this may not be the full root of the prejudices, many of those issues do linger on. Today, many straight transpeople are seen as “traitors.” They have dared to leave behind being homosexual in order to, as some would see it, sell out and live a normal life. For many homosexual transpeople, we are interlopers. I will have to admit that I am not sure how many gay men see gay transmen. I know that many lesbians see translesbians as being men who have this fetish to bed lesbians. The reality is, of course, far from that for, I would have to say, the overwhelming majority. While I cannot say that there are not some men who would go to this length to be with a lesbian, the reality is that most men would react with horror at the idea of having their penis and testicles reshaped and altered to the extent required for this to happen. Most transpeople have such a hatred of their own bodies that they will actively attempt to mutilate themselves. Some transwomen have actually gone to the lengths of actual emasculation in order to end the psychological pain caused by the physical wrongness. Even I, myself, have engaged in a great deal of physical damage to my own genitalia because of the intense hatred I feel about being born male.

And yet, we must come back to where this began. The reality is that almost all transpeople are not gays or lesbians who have sold out or straight people who want to get in on the “glamor” of being homosexual. We, as a community, must be unified. The reality is that those who oppose us, and seek to repress us, want us to fight and to hurt each other. They want us to not put aside our differences, and they want us to not protect each other. They want us to see gender protections as something that only transpeople need, and seek to ensure that many gays and lesbians are given the strict protections of sexuality, but could easily be squeezed into the category of being transgender simply by claiming that their mode of dress puts them in that category. It does not matter if the victim of that prejudice sees themselves as being a transperson, all that matters is the perception of those who hold the power.

Back in November, I began blogging. One of the first stories I covered was of Rachel Maddow and her new show. I remember people being all up in arms over the fact that she softened her clothing from her usual tailored suits. I remember people being upset that her hair was a lot less butch than it had been prior to her show. Now, her new style is far from being femme, and certainly not girly, imagine if you will if even this new style, this softer masculine image we now see, were to not even be enough to please the most ardent of bigots who would then demand that Dr. Maddow wear a dress or a skirt and blouse, and have her hair worn long or her ‘gender expression’ would be all wrong and enough to get her fired. While I doubt that her bosses at MSNBC would do so, the idea that any one of us could be targeted in just that manner is frightening. I remember hearing of a transwoman, a police officer, who’s endocrinologist demanded she wear a dress when ever she came in and could not come in wearing her uniform, or he would not treat her.

I apologize that this article is much longer than my normal one page limit, but there is much to be said. I am well aware that many of my gay and lesbian siblings out there are devoid of the prejudices inherent in a small portion of our community, and that even the most femme gay man or butch lesbian does not identify as transgender. We need to look starkly at what we do and to not hurt each other. In hurting each other, we give more power to those who wish to oppress us. And that is something we must all fight against.

Bridget “Sei” McBride is a trans-lesbian who lives in Vermont and has a strong passion for LGBTI rights. She has a BA in History and her hobbies include sci-fi, anime, fantasy, action movies, video games, and more. Currently, she is working on her MA in Individualized Studies at Goddard College. Her specialization is in cultural history and cultural comparison.