Alliances With The
Queer Community:
Why They Matter

"Personally, I think hanging onto the g/l/b coattails like this is a mistake. Yes, we have a lot to learn from them, but we have to stand on our own. It does us no good to get drowned in a sea of voices where we have to fight just to be heard."

  -Joanne Roberts
  "Chatsubo" TGForum 3 February, 1997

I read with interest the comments in Chatsubo with respect to alliance with the wider queer community. I found the offhand comment that there was nothing to gain by affiliation between the transgendered and queer communities frankly shocking. I understand that being transgendered does not mean that one is lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB), but I firmly believe that the best way ahead for the transgendered community is as a strong partner within the queer community at large.

For a long time I felt that the transgendered community had little to gain from the queer community at large. In particular, the LGB community during the late 1980s seemed to lose their respect for those members who wished to remain closeted, and the fondness in some quarters of the queer community for outing people gave me no confidence in the potential security of those transgendered people who did not wish to be out. When I lived in Toronto I received no signs of welcome from the queer community there, feeling that the dyke component of the community was quite hostile to wymyn not born wymyn. When I later became part of the Ottawa gender community, I was a bit surprised to see close co-operation between the communities -- transgendered people participating in the Pride March and Pride Fair and that sort of thing. My initial response was surprise -- what did we have to gain from including ourselves in this persecuted minority? Since then I have decided that we have much to gain and very little to lose.

It has been traditional amongst heterosexual transgendered people, especially those who are not primary transsexuals, to reinforce their identification as heterosexuals. This can be observed in institutions, such as the Tri-Ess insistence on limiting its participation to heterosexuals. This can be observed in representations to the outside world, such as the traditional tranny chat-show guest's insistence that while he likes to wear frocks, he's really a regular guy who wears his frock while watching the football game with a tin of lager in his hand. This can be heard from many transgendered people who for one reason or another insist, "I may be transgendered, but I'm not queer!" This tradition underlies the past separation between the transgendered community and the queer community.

This tradition seeks to negate the natural affinity between the transgendered community on the one hand, and on the other hand the lesbian, gay and bisexual communities. One point of affinity, for example is that group of transgendered people who are lesbian, gay or bisexual. The traditional outlook affixes labels to them, and casts them out of the community. I found an example of this in the materials sent to me by a large American organisation cross-dressers when I was first seeking to understand my own transgendered identity. These documents were very clear in saying that homosexual crossdressers can be included under the label "drag queens," very clear in deligitimising their desire to cross-dress as being motivated by a desire to seek homosexual relationships, and explicitly rejecting them as members. It is not hard to understand why such a club, seeking to establish the legitimacy of cross-dressing as middle-class American behaviour, would push itself away from association with homosexuals as a group, especially in the days when gay culture was much more marginal than it is today. Such a tradition, however, draws a distinction along lines of sexual orientation where no distinction should be.

There is a more philosophical affinity between the communities. Kate Bornstein and others have drawn a wide circle around the transgendered community, including all those who transgress traditional gender rules. In this broad definition of transgender are included gays, lesbians, bisexuals, cross-dressers, transsexuals and even those less stigamtised, who reject the constraints imposed on their genders by customary gender policing. Boys should not wear dresses, but transgendered people do. Boys should not sleep with boys, but transgendered people do. Girls should not sleep with girls, but transgendered people do. Girls should not have grow beards, but transgendered people do. In this philosophical view, the only difference between one segment of the transgendered community and another is the particular sort of behaviour that breaks gender rules.

The most obvious natural affinity within the transgendered, gay, lesbian and bisexual community (LGBT) is in the perception of outsiders. Notwithstanding the traditional efforts of heterosexual cross-dressers to distance themselves from the other elements of the queer community, the average violent redneck or bigoted personnel officer draws no such distinctions. This is understood instinctively by cross-dressers, who have in the past taken pains to deny inclusion with those whom they are glad to consider more socially marginalised than they.

In spite of these natural affinities between the communities, they have to some extent pushed each other apart. The heterosexual majority in the transgendered community has long been avoiding association with gay men. Segments of the lesbian community who mistrust anyone who has ever had a Y chromosome have rejected association with transgendered males, or even former males. The irony is that as these divisions have been continued, the LGB community has become more socially accepted, and the transgendered community has lagged behind. In many Western countries, for example, it is illegal to discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation, whereas these laws are silent on matters of gender transition. The ironic result is that in many places a gay man can look an interviewer in the eye and ask about same-sex partner benefits when applying for a job, while a transgendered male has to furtively remove all traces of nail varnish before going to work, and fears to tweeze his eyebrows lest the boss notice.

A concrete example from the same "Chatsubo" article quoted above: "Transactivists visited members of Congress who supported the gay-positive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) bill last year. They were told by each member visited that if transgendered people were added to the ENDA language the bill would never pass because some of the moderate supporters would defect." It's going to be illegal in the USA to discriminate against homosexuals in employment, but still open season on transgendered people!

The LGB community, energised by Stonewall, empowered by their own will, and united by threats like AIDS and by the enmity of those who would have delegitimised them, has come forward and demanded its rights. The transgendered community as a whole, on the other hand, has not stopped its quest for legitimation by clinging to the notion that we are not queer, that we may wear frocks, but at least we only have sex with women.

To some extent it amazes me that the LGB community is willing to become the LGBT community to include us. The transgendered people who started the Stonewall riot would not have been allowed through the front door of a Tri-Ess meeting, but maybe the LGB community doesn't know that, or doesn't care. They know we get bashed the same as they do, so maybe they are willing to be more welcoming than we ever have been. When I came to England from Canada, I found the local queer community ready to welcome me. They pointed out to me that London LGB Pride had just changed its name to LGBT Pride, and suddenly I was being embraced by a welcoming community. I haven't earned this acceptance from the LGB community -- transgendered people have been chanting for years the slogan, "we're not queer," yet at this moment, the LGB community, flushed with success, is prepared to be magnanimous.

I think that the moment must be seized. At the moment that the queer community shouts, "The Queers are here!" and dares the world to discriminate against them, the transgendered community must join in. It has become politically and socially unacceptable to discriminate against lesbians, gays or bisexuals throughout most of the civilised world. In a generation, hardened bigots in redneck regions will be afraid to express their homophobic hatred in public. If transgendered people do not step forward at the same time, we might be the beneficiaries of tolerance from a general public which still thinks of us as queer, and therefore acceptable under the new rules. It is far more likely that we will have missed the moment, and we will find that our own community has fragmented further, and that the chat shows are still filled with trannies proudly claiming, "I'm not queer!" and praying quietly that their bosses aren't watching daytime television.