Drop the T Campaign Started By Some Gays/Lesbians: I Don’t Agree

Update: 04/1/20- Gender activism has become so extreme I now believe LGB people need to distance themselves from it. This has happened in the UK under an LGB breakaway organization called the LGB Alliance. This needs to happen in the United States and elsewhere.

Last week some members of the lesbian and gay community started a petition to drop transgender issues from LGBT activism on Change.org.

Here is a summary of the reasons they created it and of reasons given in the comments for those who signed it:

• Death threats hurled at people trans activists disagree with

• The frequent occurrence of guilt-tripping people, especially lesbians, for not wanting to date trans people

• The fight to allow any trans-identity-claiming XY person into all female spaces, anytime, whether they present as female or not

• Discounting gay men’s activism in Stonewall

• The channeling of very young children into a gender identity disorder diagnosis at young ages and use of hormone blockers on tweens when many gender-nonconforming youth grow up to be lesbian, gay, or bisexual

For gays, lesbians, and bisexuals who support this position, I agree that there is a serious extremism problem in trans activism right now. But keep in mind all activists movements have had serious problems with extremism. You can read writings from lesbian feminists from the 1970s blaming the entirety of the world’s problems on men and stating males are like a parasite and like cancer. And some lesbians held opinions that shamed heterosexual woman for their orientation as being in bed with the enemy, oddly forgetting heterosexuality is necessary for our species survival and creating more little baby homos. Some of the AIDS activism in the 90’s was overboard and obnoxious. At one point, gay men and lesbians had to prevent NAMBLA (pedophile organization) from co-opting the gay rights movement. As far as trans activists issuing death threats; when anyone airs controversial opinions in public, they get death threats over the Internet, no matter if it is a right-wing issue or a left-wing issue. A lesbian was fired from her job because she threatened anti-gay pizza restaurant owners. The trans movement is unique in that it is peaking at the height of use of social media, which is rife with threats and abusive language.

We can’t throw all of the decent trans people who need help and just want to live their lives under the bus because of these problems. There may be arguments that some of our needs are in fact, different. I don’t have a problem with that. Some trans people believe they should separate to better support their own interests. But this should not be done out of malice between the groups. I do think LGBT media and activists need to do a better job of acknowledging and moderating people’s concerns about women’s safety, threats, and the fears around solidifying a trans identity in 5-year-olds and have rational fact-based discussions. These conversations are necessary and are currently staunchly avoided.

Quoted Petition:

We are a group of gay/bisexual men and women who have come to the conclusion that the transgender community needs to be disassociated from the larger LGB community; in essence, we ask that organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, Lambda Legal and media outlets such as The Advocate, Out, Huff Post Gay Voices, etc., stop representing the transgender community as we feel their ideology is not only completely different from that promoted by the LGB community (LGB is about sexual orientation, trans is about gender identity), but is ultimately regressive and actually hostile to the goals of women and gay men.

There are several areas in which the ideology of the trans community is at odds with or actively hostile to that of women and gay men; among the most important are:

• The vilification and harassment of women and gay/lesbian individuals who openly express disagreement with the trans ideology; a simple disagreement over an issue can result in responses that range from insults (“transphobic bigot”) to threats of physical harm (often, in the case of women, rape) and even death; the harassment by the transgender community of prominent individuals ranging from iconic gay rights activist/drag queen RuPaul and legendary feminist Germaine Greer has been particularly loathsome.

• The infringement of the rights of individuals, particularly women, to perform normal everyday activities in traditional safe spaces based on sex; this is most pernicious in the case of men claiming to be transgender demanding access to bathrooms, locker rooms, women’s shelters and other such spaces reserved for women.

• The appropriation and re-writing of gay and lesbian history and culture, most notably attempting to re-cast the majority gay white men who participated in the Stonewall riots as transgender, specifically casting as “transgender” men who adopted feminine attire but still identified as men (they called themselves transvestites, which is not the same as the modern transgender identity); particularly frustrating was the fact that media outlets such as The Advocate, Out and Huff Post Gay Voices, who should have been the first to point out the fallacy of this notion, actually went along with the lie.

• Most troubling, by persuading parents and health professionals to diagnose children as young as four as transgender, despite considerable research that shows that more than 90 percent of children who express “gender dysphoria” at a young age grow out of it by adolescence and, in most cases, grow up to be well-adjusted gay men and women; ideologically, it runs counter to traditional LGB and feminist philosophy – whereas feminists and gay men/women advocate for expanding and re-defining gender concepts, the trans movement is regressive, insisting upon re-asserting and codifying classic gender concepts of what is masculine and what is feminine.

Please note that we are not advocating intolerance or prejudice against the transgender community: we recognize and respect the right of adults to determine their own path in life, including transitioning to the opposite gender if they so wish. However, that cannot occur by infringing upon the rights of women, gay men and children.

At the very least, a discussion must be opened up to these issues, which for too long are being suppressed and censored – they are genuine concerns that need to be aired. In the end, we feel that the transgender ideology is not compatible with the rights of women, gay men and children and ask that the organizations and media outlets mentioned above disassociate themselves from the transgender movement and return to representing their base support of gay men and lesbians.

Update: 03/06/17- After I wrote this, I have also become even more concerned about the transing of children and teenagers, “Do Youth Transgender Diagnoses Put Would Be Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Adults at Risk for Unnecessary Medical Intervention?”