IS THERE SUCH A THING AS GAY TRANSPHOBIA?

My personal view of whether there is a bias towards transgendered people among the gay/lesbian community is a definite 'yes!' - but from individuals.

However, as to whether the bias is widespread, rooted deep within the community is questionable. 

Personally, I became aware of possible bias from the gay / lesbian community when I hosted a 'trans' event within a gay pub in Reading. It was during this event, the interactions I witnessed started me wondering whether, what I experienced was a one off prejudice, by one or two people, or a general bias towards transgendered people by the gay community.


I do not believe it is wide spread. But below are some articles outlining a different view. 

A discussion on this topic would be most welcome.

Transgender community face hate speech from Lesbian and Gay people.

Transphobia is not something that just happens because of heteronormativity. As we gradually make our way through the end of the first decade of the 21st century this much becomes clear; homonormativity is just as virulent as its sibling. A scenario between two South African activists -one a transsexual man and the other, a lesbian- during which the lesbian activist said, “once born a woman you will die a woman” and admits to saying so is typical of transphobic slur. The difference here is she admitted to casting the aspersion. Usually you are met with a barrage of denials which is symptomatic of bully cultures. The problem we face now is whether we like it or not, this is happing in our communities.

In the UK the situation is no better. Early this morning, I was mis-gendered by a gay man on a bus journey. I ignored his slight but he continued sucking up to his female friend. When I was about to get off he followed me and deliberately swung his bag striking my bottom and apologised. I let it go again, but I was furiously upset by these actions. At the height of his hypocrisy, even after apologising, he turned back to his female friend laughing out loud and said, ‘didn’t I tell you he‘s a man?’ and his transphobia was shamefully without doubt. I discovered from this experience is that its time we exposed the LGB’s rank double standards and advocate for proactive empowerment of the TI position in societies worldwide. A gay man or any other man groping a transsexual woman to gain the friendship of a straight woman suffers first from transphobia but also internalised homophobia and vice versa for a lesbian, heterosexual or bisexual woman who acts conversely. Sexuality, gender identity or any other identity and the inevitable phobia that occur are all pugnacious and must be fought against with equal commitment.

COURTESY OF MIA NIKASIMO

...mocking of women by transvestites and drag queens in attendance.

"This was illustrated during the 1973 Stonewall rally when, moments after Barbara Gittings exuberantly praised the diversity of the crowd, feminist activist Jean O'Leary protested what she perceived as the mocking of women by transvestites and drag queens in attendance. During a speech by O'Leary, in which she claimed that drag queens made fun of women for entertainment value and profit, Sylvia Rivera and Lee Brewster jumped on the stage and shouted "You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you, and these bitches tell us to quit being ourselves!"[126] Both the drag queens and lesbian feminists in attendance left in disgust.[127]
 O'Leary also worked in the early 1970s to exclude transvestites from gay rights issues because she felt that rights for transvestites would be too difficult to attain. Sylvia Rivera left gay activism in the 1970s to work on issues for transgender people and transvestites. The initial disagreements between participants in the movements, however, often evolved after further reflection. O'Leary later regretted her stance against the drag queens attending in 1973: "Looking back, I find this so embarrassing because my views have changed so much since then. I would never pick on a transvestite now."[127] "It was horrible. How could I work to exclude transvestites and at the same time criticize the feminists who were doing their best back in those days to exclude lesbians?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots#Legacy

Gays & lesbians hardly immune to ’transphobia’

That education clearly needs to happen within the LGBT community itself.

It’s a case of "physician, heal thyself." Several reported instances have publicized aggression by gay and lesbian people toward the transgender community.

For example, in February, there was an attack by two cisgender women toward transmen at a lesbian bar event at Washington, D.C.’s Fab Lounge. (The term "cisgender" is a newish phrase that refers to women or men who act according to conventional gender-specific mores and can refer to gay men and lesbians as well as heterosexuals.)

The women reportedly asked, "What the fuck are you? Are you a girl or a boy?" The men were then assaulted by a crowd at the bar.

Last October, a transgender woman was attacked by a gay man while attending a race at the Tucson Greyhound Park. Janey Kay was reportedly using an ATM at the track when a man asked her if she was a "drag queen." When she responded, she endured a cut lip and had clumps of her hair pulled out by the assailant, Richard Ray Young.

Young labeled the incident a "misunderstanding," referencing his own sexuality as a reason why it was not a hate crime. "I let her know that I was one of the family, that I was homosexual," he told an Arizona newspaper. Young was convicted of assault and disorderly conduct by a South Tucson municipal court in August.

Loree Cook-Daniels, a program manager for FORGE, a Milwaukee-based transgender advocacy group, commented on the attacks. She said that, though violence is rare, day-to-day discrimination and exclusion were common among the transgender community’s gay and lesbian peers.

"Of course LGB people aren’t innocent of transphobia," Cook-Daniels said. "It even makes sense that they may be more transphobic, due to gender allegiance - to be a "gay man" you have to assert both your own male gender and the male gender of those you love - and to the popular conflation of sexual orientation with gender identity."

"If you’ve spent a lot of time asserting how your gender identity is normative, you may well develop a prejudice against those whose identity is not normative," Cook-Daniels continued.

"I think so often people don’t connect the dots and realize the many, many ways that the discrimination that transgender, lesbian, gay and bisexual people experience is interconnected and rooted in things like gender nonconformity and expression," added Silverman. "We still have a lot of work to do."

Frequently, in online blog sites, gay men will refer to those who act effeminate or cross dress derogatorily. Similarly, some commenters on lesbian blog sites refer derisively to women or men who transgress conventional gender-identity roles.

COURTESY OF EDGEBOSTON

 A classic example of transphobia in older-generation gay men

Jim Fouratt is an older-generation gay journalist, activist and thought-leader who was one of the founders of the Gay and Liberation Front in New York [1].

However, Fouratt has since become infamous among transgender people for his conflation of transgenderism and homosexuality, for equating gender transition to "anti-gay reparative therapy", and for writing that postop transsexual women are really just misguided gay men who've undergone "surgical mutilations".  Somehow Fouratt and many other misogynist gay men of his era just couldn't handle the idea of male-to-female transsexual transitions and sexual reassignment surgery. The whole idea of it made them crazy somehow.

The transphobic views of such "Fourattists" held sway in the elite gay community during the 80's and 90's. It was a time when prevailing gay male wisdom derided postop women as "crazy queens who'd gone too far".  That provincial viewpoint became so entrenched that many gay psychiatrists, psychologists and social pundits pitched in and pushed it too, as it if were simply a matter of fact. Many such men, men such as Simon LeVay , Dean Hamer , Ray Blanchard , James Cantor , James S. Fitzgerald , Chandler Burr, Steven Pinker, etc., published and/or promoted such transphobic viewpoints, often referring to trans women as "transsexual men".  After all "they knew queens" - or so they thought.

The extent of such confused thinking among gay men was exposed on May 28, 2000, when the New York Times Sunday Magazine published an article by David France entitled "An Inconvenient Woman" [2].   In the article France retold the story of Calpernia Addams, whose lover Barry Winchell had been brutally beaten to death by Army buddies when they discovered he was dating a trans woman.  France then revealed how gay media of the time deliberately avoided reporting the fact that Calpernia was a trans woman, but instead consistently referred to her as a gay man .

It apparently hadn't occurred to gay journalists that they were misreporting Calpernia's gender, because most gay men back then thought of such women simply as gay  men "in drag" - and this misreporting conveniently enabled gay media to spin Barry's murder as a "gay hate crime". At the same time, a series of actions to keep Calpernia's identity as a trans woman hidden from national media (presumably to avoid "confusing them") revealed an undercurrent of consciousness of this duplicity.

The Times article caused quite a stir in the gay community. On hearing about it, and of the growing awareness of its possible significance and correctness by respected members of the gay community, Jim Fouratt went on a rampage:  He widely circulated an e-mail letter in which he claimed that the "New York Times promotes sexual reasigment (sic) as a solution to gender varinace (sic)" [3].

Fouratt's letter reveals why "sex changes" so confused and enraged gay men of that era:  Many simply thought of transsexual transitions as some kind of socially-forced "cures of homosexuality" that were submitted to by "confused, crazy queens". This shocking but incorrect imagery was incredibly disturbing to gay men, and many felt compelled to rail out against such "mutilations".

Meanwhile, times were changing in the trans community. For almost two decades the community had suffered in silence while being vilified by prominent lesbian feminists, in books such as Janice Raymond's  The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (1979, 1994) [4, 5] on up to Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman (1999, 2000) [6, 7].  By 2000 trans women had really had their fill of such defamations.  They were organizing on an increasing scale, were becoming more openly visible and were finding their own voice. Upon learning of Fouratt's letter, the newly organized National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC) posted an alert on May 30, 2000 in which they reprinted the letter [8] (see below).

A further-enraged Fouratt struck back on June 18, 2000, during a widely publicized appearance as a principal speaker at the Heritage of Pride Rally in New York City.  Perceiving himself in open warfare against people who wanted to cure homosexuality by sex changes, he made vicious anti-trans remarks during that speech.  But this time he'd gone too far.  His shocking remarks were rebuked by protests during the rally and in publications immediately afterwards, not only by the trans community [9, 10] but also by the larger gay and lesbian community [11, 12].

Times had clearly changed. Things that seemed perfectly OK to say the year before now seemed almost crazed.  A younger generation of savvy gays and lesbians were now in contact with trans reality on the streets. Many had read David France's Times article and had been discussing it among themselves. Many personally knew trans women and had seen for themselves that they were NOT gay men in denial. Thus a major paradigm shift was underway as more and more gays and lesbians "got it" regarding trans women and trans men.

Fouratt stumbled out into that paradigm shift and got chewed up by it, in the process becoming widely perceived by gay and lesbian leaders as an anachronism and hatemonger. As a result, we now use the term "Fourattist" to refer to such older-generation gay transphobes.

By 2002 the paradigm shift that had earlier swept through the streets of New York was moving through elite gay and lesbian organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign  (HRC), as a new generation of leaders challenged traditional thinking. HRC went on to become a major force for trans rights, and by 2003-2004 was having great impact through its "Corporate Equality Index" (CEI) - which by then required companies to provide GI&E protections if they were to retain "100%" status [13]. Fouratt must have cringed to see this dramatic shift in gay thinking.

Unfortunately, many old-guard Fourattist's are still around and some are entrenched in elite positions in fields such as psychology and psychiatry.  From those vantage points and totally out of contact with reality on the streets, such elites still caricature trans women as being "crazy gay queens gone wrong", in a long hangover of old-time gays ways of thinking.

A classic example of ongoing Fourattist stigmatization occurred in 2003, when J. Michael Bailey  published a book entitled "The Man Who Would Be Queen" [14].  As a "straight-man" spokesman for the old-guard 1980's-1990's gay science clique of Simon LeVay , Dean Hamer , Ray Blanchard , James Cantor , James S. Fitzgerald , Chandler Burr, Steven Pinker, et al, Bailey proclaimed as a scientific fact that most transsexual women are simply extremely effeminate gay men who get sex changes in order to have sex with lots of straight men [15]. Fouratt must have been ecstatic to see "science" so emphatically support his traditional views.

Unfortunately for Mr. Bailey and his Fourattist promoters, Bailey's bizarre book led to investigations that revealed ethical and research misconduct on his part at Northwestern University, leading to his fall into disgrace after forced resignation as Chair of Psychology there [16, 17, 18]. This scientific fiasco subsequently exposed and widely discredited many in the old-guard gay science clique who, out of arrogant self-interest, had been promoting Bailey and his book.

Meanwhile, the paradigm shift in thinking about transsexualism is finally diffusing through the younger ranks of psychologists and psychiatrists. Although the old clique of transphobic gay psychologists and psychiatrists still occupy positions of influence, they now face the same eventual fate as Fouratt:  Their legacy will be that of unrepentant transphobes, as men who viciously attacked the identities of trans women - in response to their own inner demons and their conflation of gender identity with sexual orientation.

COURTESY OF UMICH

Transphobia In the Gay Community

This is Part I of a two-part series

Recently, an icon of gay activist history, Ronald Gold, posted a transphobic diatribe on The Bilerico Project. I had looked forward to learning something from Mr. Gold about our history, and I certainly did, though it is not what I hoped for. The post hurt many of our readers across the spectrum of sexual orientation and gender identity. It received literally hundreds of comments describing the pain they felt. Like many readers, I was very disturbed by the post. I woke up in the middle of the night struggling for a response.

Gold is by no means alone in his opinions within the gay community, though he is more outspoken than most. While much has changed in the last few years, this is a question as relevant today as it was seventeen years ago when I began my journey and received much negative feedback from gay "friends". It is as relevant today as it was twelve years ago when a gay friend evicted me from our shared apartment. It is a question as relevant today as it was two years ago when gender identity was stripped out of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. In fact, it is particularly relevant when we are within striking distance of ENDA, and crunch time looms large. There is a risk that legislators will fold like a cheap suit, again, aided and abetted by transphobic gay "advocates" and their enablers.

In fact, I'm glad that it was brought up now by Gold. It's well past time to address this in the larger LGBT community. Gay people against transphobia need to speak up, and now's the time.

Q: What are the sources of transphobia? Is it best combatted by telling it to go away?

A: Its source is not mere prejudice, but old and complex power relations that must be changed, a task that is neither quick nor easy, and is not accomplished by adding a letter to an organization's name. It is based in heterosexism and heteronormativity masked as "radical" critique. Gold, and the many others of his ilk, are sheep in wolf's clothing. This needs to be called out and addressed by the gay community. It should not be up to the transgender community to battle alone, thus furthering the divide.

I see many such opinions like Gold's, often in the averted eyes and cold demeanors of gays and lesbians I meet. Just a week ago, I was invited to join a meeting of gender and sexuality scholars. When I told them of my research on a possible constitutional right to have a legal transgender identity, some of them derided the idea. What if I said I was 6'2", one asked. Another suggested that it would be better to avoid the idea of rights, and just hope for policy makers to do the right thing. No one seemed to think these opinions problematic in any way, although I was left squirming in my chair. No one said a word to me at the end of the session. I thought about it all the rest of that day, and into the next, when I wrote one of my detractors, hoping to politely clue him into an understanding that this was not on. He said we'd have to agree to disagree. It was as welcoming as an iceberg.

I know there has been much progress and the LGBT community has come a long way. But we are not yet at the promised land where we judge each other by the content of our characters, rather than the color of our skin or, I might add, the stripe of our sexuality or gender.

Heterosexist Power Relations At Work

In 2004, I published my research on this subject for the Journal of Bisexuality , a social science journal published by Routledge. I concluded that transphobia within the US gay and lesbian community is not a psychological state of hatred. It is, rather, a response to power relations specifically defined by US historical conditions. This type of GL vs. T transphobic response is not seen in many other nations, and it is variable within regions of the US itself.

To the extent that identity politics has created prejudice and discrimination within the LGBT community, it might be more accurate to locate its sources in "heterosexism" or "internalized heterosexism." Despite its pose as "radical" critique of gender rigidity, its history shows that it is, in fact, an accommodationist attempt to disavow more "radical" forms of sexuality.

Gold's opinion, shared by many, is best understood as a power struggle based in heteronormativity , and its gay twin, homonormativity . In Susan Stryker's excellent 2008 article in The Radical History Review on transgender history, she notes that this term was first used to denote "the double sense of marginalization and displacement experienced within transgender political and cultural activism." The belief that transgender identity is separate and apart from the gay community derives from beliefs drummed into children of the early 20th century, with roots in the 1870s and farther back.

I will summarize the first part of my article here, with more included in a Part II. Here is a link  for those of you who would like to read it in its entirety, with footnotes and quotes.

The History of LGBT Relations

While a basic sexual drive seems to exist instinctually in most human beings as a matter of nature, the forms of sexuality seem to be socially constructed. French historian Michel Foucault is famous for championing the idea that, as of the 19th century, "the sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species."

Early texts, including Greek and Roman sources, speak of same-sex desire, but do not categorize persons solely by the sex of their partners. There was no single identity, which linked all men who engaged in same-sex acts. Significantly, mirroring the distaste for effeminacy of much of modern gay male and patriarchal culture, and the separation of what we now call "transgender" culture, Greek texts satirized effeminate males, and both literary and legal texts suggested it was unmanly behavior to accept a passive role in sexual intercourse after passing a certain age.

By the 4th century, the male same-sex acts that had been so public were forced to go underground by Christianity. In keeping with earlier ideas, it was believed that any man who was led astray, rather than a distinct subgroup of men who had inclinations towards men only could indulge in same-sex behavior.

Beginning in the 12th century, this belief began to change, and the contrasting belief that there was a certain type of man who engaged exclusively in same-sex behaviors slowly began to arise. Nonetheless, it was "passive" homosexuals who received the brunt of the condemnation, leaving in place an ethic in favor of the masculine.

Passing as the opposite sex occurred fairly frequently, however, and while it was also forbidden, it was rarely punished, as it was not considered, in and of itself, a sexual crime. It does not appear that there was any necessary linkage in the public mind between cross-dressing and sodomy until the eighteenth century.

By the eighteenth century, the public understanding was that same-sex acts were connected with effeminacy and cross-dressing, that those who engaged in same-sex acts did so exclusively, that same-sex acts were confined to a specific group of people, and that the propensity towards such acts was inborn. Despite this public linkage, most men who engaged in same-sex behavior rejected effeminate practices and role-playing.

The public conception of homosexuality coincided with a growing concern with effeminacy that appeared in England in the eighteenth century. Boys typically wore girl's clothing until they were sent away to boarding school. Men's clothing was frilly in the Elizabethan Age. However, clothing became more sharply differentiated from the 1770s on. There were diatribes against fops and dandies. By the nineteenth century, men no longer dared embrace in public or shed tears.

The nineteenth century scientific crusaders, Ulrichs and Hirschfeld, furthered the linkage between homosexuality and gender by theorizing homosexual men as "hermaphrodites of the mind," with male bodies and female souls, though not without opposition. In 1910, Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term "transvestite" to refer to one who prefers to wear the clothing of the opposite sex, to distinguish it and separate it from the phenomenon of homosexuality.

Thus, from the nineteenth century unitary conception of homosexuality there developed two concepts: "sexual orientation" (sexual object choice) and "gender identity" (sexual self-identification as male or female). This scientific rationalism and medicalization of homosexuality confirmed it as a unitary, monolithic phenomenon.

The "Modern" Era

The sex/gender dichotomy was deepened when, in the mid-twentieth century, homosexuality was separated into distinct male and female forms, each of which had different stylized behavioral styles, and distinguished from cross-dressing and effeminacy. This formed a gender divide, and corresponding tensions with bi-gender intermingling and gender ambiguity.

After World War II, there were furtive movements towards political action, but these were largely separated along gender lines. The Mattachine Society, an organization for gay men, was established in 1950. The first openly lesbian organization in the US, the Daughters of Bilitis, was established in 1955. These accommodationist groups encouraged gay people to "act normal" and fit in (lesbians belong in dresses, gay men don't), and recruited prominent "experts" like psychiatrists and psychologists to comment on homosexuality.

In the context of the counterculture of the 1960s United States, the "sexual revolution" permitted these separate populations to exist openly and to enter into the arena of state politics. The struggle to obtain social acceptance and civil rights pitted these groups against one another. Gays and lesbians campaigned for acceptance by suggesting that they were "just like you," but with the single (but extremely significant) exception of partners of the same sex. This fueled the tensions between accomodationist tendencies in the gay/lesbian community and gender ambiguity. It was perceived that gender ambiguity (echoing the Greek disdain for passivity) that channeled the stigma of illegitimacy. It was not surprising, therefore, that some homosexuals sought to lessen the stigma of homosexuality by rejecting the stigma of "inappropriate" gendered behavior.

These historical circumstances led to four areas of tension: monosexism versus bisexism, gender accommodationism versus gender ambiguity, open homosexual identity versus passing as heterosexual, and a gender divide versus bigender intermingling.

Too Queer, And Not Queer Enough

Transsexuals violated the tacit social understandings of the homosexual community in the U.S. both by failing to pass and passing too much. Transsexuals, and later transgenders, were disparaged because some were "passing" as straight through embrasure of stereotypes of gendered behavior, i.e., effeminacy for MTFs and hyper-masculinity for FTMs, and embrasure of heterosexual practices and privilege by identifying their same-sex practices as heterosexuality, thus rejecting homosexual identity. They were also looked down upon because they violated cultural norms of sexual behavior through gender ambiguity, visible androgyny and genderqueerness, thus violating the accommodationist idea that they are "just like you." The resulting split has incorrectly been attributed to fear -- "transphobia," rather than social and political forces.

Gold might argue that he is not one of the accommodationists, because he is fighting for the right to act in ways that violate gender norms. He ignores the context of the times, however. In the 1960s, such an argument was radical and liberating. The argument is no longer a radical one. It is now a regressive argument. By arguing that those born male must retain identification with maleness, even if not with masculinity, his critique lags well behind the radical curve, and begins to merge with the opinions of conservative traditionalists. At one time the use of bronze tools was the latest in technology. To advocate their use today would be silly.

Gold's opinion isn't silly, however, because it is still held by many. It is a hateful ideology. It is alive and well today and often deployed against the trans community. We may yet see it rear its ugly head in the ENDA wars of 2010. I pray that we do not.

In Part II, I will discuss the more recent history of transphobia in the gay community, how it relates to heterosexism, and how it should be addressed by the gay community.

Transphobia In the Gay Community 

This is Part 2 of a two-part series

When Christine Jorgensen made headlines in 1951, she was viewed as a homosexual by all, including her doctors. She understood her identity very differently. Today, in our LGBT world, the difference may seem abstract, particularly to younger people born in a different social climate. I will try to recreate here from the dry historical facts the climate of the times in which transphobia took root in the gay community. Please read this not as a history of facts, but as a history of emotions, and powerlessness, and how those led us directly to the situation today.

Many in the homophile movement of the time recoiled in horror at Jorgensen, and the ways in which her story was being used. If the transsexual idea -- Jorgensen's "treatment" and "cure" -- gained power among the public, it could lead to worsening rounds of recriminations against gay men and lesbians. It could lead to a strengthening of the push for psychiatric treatment, mandatory injections of hormones with strong and dangerous effects, a resurgence of "scientific" experiments so beloved in the mid-twentieth century, such as lobotomies, electroshock treatment and cutting up the sexual organs of gay men and lesbians, as well as more criminal and legal limitations upon homosexuals not accepting the "cure", and courts mandating treatment based on criminal convictions or the loose civil commitment statutes of the time. One of the roots of transphobia in the gay community is the quite understandable panic among gay men and lesbians that attended this power struggle. This is not merely a historical artifact, as it is still occurring in places such as Iran, where forced sex reassignment surgery is one of the ways to escape hanging.

The following is a description of what it meant to be a homosexual when Jorgensen had her surgery. It is not for the squeamish. As you read this history, you may find yourself, as I did, gripped by strong emotion, even tears. Ask yourself who and what are responsible for transphobia in the gay community. Is it gay people? Is it transsexual people? What social forces created it, nurtured it, used it? Have you been manipulated by them?

  

It is my hope that this historical view will provide a glimpse into the power relations that have led to transphobia in the gay community -- and homophobia in the trans community. I also hope that it provides some compassion for the Other.

Curing Homosexuality

Jorgensen herself specifically disavowed any connection with homosexuals, calling homosexuality "a horrible illness of the mind." To be a homosexual at that time meant complete and utter rejection by society as a monster -- rejection from family, from religion, from education, from employment, from housing. Jorgensen can perhaps be forgiven for her efforts to distance herself from homosexuality, given the severe consequences, but it also cannot be denied that one of the roots of transphobia in the gay community is the historical repudiation by transsexuals of gay identity.

From The Atlantic:

Having defined homosexuality as a pathology, psychiatrists and other doctors made bold to "treat" it. James Harrison, a psychologist who produced the 1992 documentary film Changing Our Minds, notes that the medical profession viewed homosexuality with such abhorrence that virtually any proposed treatment seemed defensible. Lesbians were forced to submit to hysterectomies and estrogen injections, although it became clear that neither of these had any effect on their sexual orientation. Gay men were subjected to similar abuses. Changing Our Minds incorporates a film clip from the late 1940s, now slightly muddy, of a young gay man undergoing a transorbital lobotomy. We see a small device like an ice pick inserted through the eye socket, above the eyeball and into the brain. The pick is moved back and forth, reducing the prefrontal lobe to a hemorrhaging pulp. Harrison's documentary also includes a grainy black-and-white clip from a 1950s educational film produced by the U.S. Navy. A gay man lies in a hospital bed. Doctors strap him down and attach electrodes to his head. "We're going to help you get better," says a male voice in the background. When the power is turned on, the body of the gay man jerks violently, and he begins to scream. Doctors also tried castration and various kinds of aversion therapy. None of these could be shown to change the sexual orientation of the people involved.

When the story of Christine Jorgensen was published in 1951, debates began amongst these groups as to the proper response. In the first case study of Jorgensen, published in 1951 by her endocrinologist, he referred to her "homosexual tendencies". Jorgensen herself, however, specifically distinguished her condition from homosexuality, referring to the prevalent theory of transsexuality as "nature's mistake," in which a woman is trapped in a man's body. This was entirely appropriate, as she, and many others, understood their identity quite different from homosexual identity. She also took pains, however, to distinguish her situation from "a much more horrible illness of the mind. One that, although very common, is not as yet accepted as a true illness, with the necessity for great understanding." This "horrible illness of the mind" is a reference to homosexuality. She went much further than simply distinguishing her identity from that of homosexuals, casting homosexuality in the worst light. Her doing so, of course, must be seen in context of the many attempts to portray her as a dangerous freak.

Rejecting The Cure

There was a vigorous debate in the U.S. homophile movement of the 1950s as to whether homosexuals should embrace Jorgensen. Some gay men and lesbians denounced those who felt themselves to be of the opposite sex, criticizing them for acting like "freaks," bringing disrepute to those gays and lesbians trying to live quietly within heterosexual society. Such attitudes were prevalent within the gay and lesbian community at the time. Here is one such debate from 1953:

In 1953, for example, ONE magazine published a debate among its readers as to whether gay men should denounce Jorgensen. In the opening salvo, the author Jeff Winters accused Jorgensen of a "sweeping disservice" to gay men. "As far as the public knows," Winters wrote, "you were merely another unhappy homosexual who decided to get drastic about it." For Winters, Jorgensen's story simply confirmed the false belief that all men attracted to other men must be basically feminine," which, he said, "they are not." Jorgensen's precedent, he thought, encouraged the "reasoning" that led "to legal limitations upon the homosexual, mandatory injections, psychiatric treatment - and worse." In the not-so-distant past, scientists had experimented with castrating gay men.

This tension between homosexuals and transsexuals appears to have been based upon the tension between passing and openness, or the idea of "gender transgression." It may have derived from class differences and differing class tolerances for "swish" and "butch." Some gays and lesbians associated gender transgression with undignified and low-class behavior, while "fairies" and "butches" were more readily accepted in working class communities. A survey from the 1960s that found that more than two-thirds of a sample of almost 300 gays and lesbians in the homophile movement considered those who asked for sex reassignment surgery to be "severely neurotic."

The Political Effects

Transgender people played pivotal roles in gay organizations of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance ("GAA"). While the original goals included complete acceptance of sexual diversity and expression, by the early 70s the gay men's community returned to the assimilationist strategy as the lesbians turned to separatism and radical feminism. There seemed to be no room for transgendered people in either camp. For example, in 1971 the GAA wrote and introduced a bill to the New York City Council to protect homosexuals from discrimination. The bill did not include any explicit protection for transsexuals.

Transsexuals were publicly thrown out of gay and lesbian organizations, and the legitimacy of their identity debated. Transsexual identity became increasingly separate when, in the 1970s, it was made repeatedly clear that butch lesbians were no longer welcome within the lesbian feminist movement, and transmen were made unwelcome as well.

In 1979, Janice Raymond, a lesbian academic, published The Transsexual Empire, a book based on her doctoral dissertation. Raymond argued that the phenomenon of transsexuality was created by fetishistic males who sought to escape into a faux stereotypical femininity, with the connivance of male doctors who thought that femaleness could be medically created and homosexuality medically vitiated. Although "male to constructed female" transsexuals claimed to be against the stereotyped gender system by virtue of their escape from stereotypical masculinity, they in fact added force to the binary system by merely escaping from one stereotype to another, or at most mixing together different stereotypes, rather than advocating true gender freedom. They were not political radicals, as they claimed, but reactionaries seeking to preserve a stereotypical gender system that was already dramatically changing due to the political action of 60s and 70s feminists and gays. Transsexuals were, according to Raymond, sheep in wolf's clothing.

Transsexuals, predictably, were angry at the rejection of their identity by gay men and lesbians.

Kumbaya

It is against this backdrop that, in the early 1990's, the term "transgender," a neologism with an unclear meaning, began to be included in the GLB coalition by those seeking to build political power sufficient to change the landscape of legal and social discrimination.

The term "transgender" was used as an umbrella term referring to transvestites, crossdressers, transsexuals, and other gender-variant people, who seemed to have similar and interlocking interests with gay men and lesbian women, and that had caught the imagination of the public through sympathetic portrayals of transsexuals such as Christine Jorgensen, Renee Richards and Wendy Williams. However, the term "transgender" was originally intended by its coiner, Virginia Prince, to be distinct from the term "transsexual," and to mark a separate identity. It was now being used to refer to anyone whose gender performance varied from the norm. Many transsexuals were unhappy with this usage, as it suggested that their identity was merely a performance.

While the inclusion of the term "transgender" in the LGB umbrella expanded the umbrella, providing some additional political power, it became increasingly clear that this was a problem. It conflicted with the goals of many of the coalition builders, increasingly professional political operatives, which was to capture public sympathy by appealing to an image of homosexuals as people "just like" the majority of U.S. voters, middle class people (or people with middle class yearnings), who held steady jobs, had long, loving relationships with partners of the same sex, and who wanted the same lives that the majority of U.S. voters wanted. As a result, some gays found themselves agreeing with straights, who see in transgenders an assault on normative reality, as in the following diatribe thinly veiled as humor, written in 2003:

There's something a little annoying about transgendered people insisting that they be called whatever sex they want to be called. . . Like so many transgendered people, Califia is like a bush resenting the grass for not calling it a tree. Well, if you've got bush and no trunk, are you really a tree? Before all the MTF (male-to-female) transgendered people flick their compact mirrors shut and take up their pitchforks (with matching handbags, of course), I'd like to point out that there's a reality that exists outside of ourselves. If you wear brown and insist that I call it red because you say so, then you're asking me to skew an objective reality to your liking. Enrolling people into in an illusion unsupported by facts seems manipulative to me. . . .So for all the Pattys, Pats and Patricks out there, you go boys/girls/TBA. Just don't back over us with your whoop-ass mobile because we didn't get your pronoun right.

Gays were also upset about transgender identity because some transgenders pass as heterosexuals and reject homosexual identity, calling their sexual relations heterosexual. The reaction of some in the gay and lesbian community, predictably, has been an attempt to limit the inclusion of transgenders.

This reaction, which is often called "transphobia," is not a result of a psychological "phobia," but a result of the previously identified tensions between accomodationism and gender ambiguity, and between homosexual identity and "passing."

Is "Transphobia" A "Phobia"?

Is transphobia an example of "phobia" - irrational fears?

No, because such heterosexist attitudes are all too rational. They mirror the social tensions inherent in the historical formation of the U.S. homosexual identity. The gay and lesbian communities have worked long and hard to have same-sex desire be seen as an orientation, rather than a preference, a viable, open and healthy identity alternative to heterosexuality, rather than a stigma to be hidden or cured.

The path to this end has largely been gender appropriateness and accommodationism, with the significant but single exception of same-sex preference. Political progress has been won by the argument that gays and lesbians are "just like you," albeit with the minor exception of sexual orientation.

As "homosexuality" became increasingly more accepted, freeing itself from shame with the 1968 Stonewall Riots, and the 1974 declaration of the American Psychiatric Association ("APA") that homosexuality was not a mental disorder, the more accepted homosexual elements began to agitate for more social tolerance and civil rights in law.

In order to do so, like any political creation, it had to drop the "lead weights" represented by the less accepted and frankly unacceptable elements of the group, particularly feminine transsexuals and promiscuous bisexuals. Transsexuality and transgenderism are still considered mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association.

Homosexual rights groups, while committed in principle to inclusion of all homosexuals, including bisexuals and transgenders, began to be led by the more politically savvy gays and lesbians to espouse a platform that, consciously or unconsciously, served the interests of the normative homosexual elements, but not necessarily bisexuals or transgenders.

Over time, the "GL" portion of the platform became increasingly acceptable to the population at large, both through increased education and desensitization of the public and by disavowing the more unacceptable elements of the movement. At the same time, this political success fueled a separatist culture, which bisexuals and transgenders threatened to dilute and homogenize.

The fictional movie "Flawless*" (1999) contains a scene in which transgender community members confront gay Republicans regarding the gay pride parade. While fictional, the scene accurately portrays the tensions described here.

Gay Republican #1: Thanks for meeting with us gentlemen. We've been discussing this year's gay pride parade, and we felt that it would be important, well, a good idea, to show a united front...

Gay Republican #2: Synthesis I believe.

Gay Republican #1: Right, we felt as gay republicans, we thought it would be a really good idea if we could all come together and show the world our likenesses, not our differences. To celebrate the, um...

Gay Republican #2: ...synthesis...

Gay Republican #1: ...right, synthesis...

Transsexual #1: (sarcastically) You're very good. Sorry, go ahead.

Gay Republican #1: We could march together as a united brotherhood....

Transsexual #2: What about the sisterhood, honey?

Gay Republican #2: ...march on foot, no floats.

Transsexual #3: Yeah, you think if you have no floats we won't do drag because we can't march in heels. Well, let me tell you something, honey. We can march to Lake Titicaca and back in stilettos.

Gay Republican #1: Hey let's just calm down then.

Transsexual #1: Aren't you guys the same group that raised a shitload of money and gave it to Bob Dole's campaign and he sent it back, didn't he?

Gay Republican #2: No, no, that's because he would have lost support of the Christian right.

Transsexual #1: Exactly, because you're gay. You're gay, that why he sent it back. Aren't you ashamed? All right, listen, you are right. We are different, but not in the way that you mean. We're different because you are all ashamed of us, and we are not ashamed of you, alright, because as long as you get down on those banana republican knees and suck dick, honey, you're all my sisters and I love you, I do. God bless you and fuck off.

Transgender identity occupies a strange place within the contemporary LGBT terrain. It is simultaneously understood to embody both the worst aspects of heterosexuality and the best of queerness. Transgenders are seen, on the one hand, as heterosexual "apologists" because many subscribe to a gender binary, and, on the other hand, are also often seen as transcending stereotypical oppositions because many subscribe to a gender continuum. They are "traitors," insufficiently gay or feminist or queer, yet also positioned at the cutting edge of debates about gender, sexuality and political meaning.

From these historical circumstances, one can begin to see the outlines of the emerging split between "GL" and "T." It involves a classic case of political conflict of interest, which nonetheless appears to us to be an abstract psychological phenomenon of fear called "transphobia."

This is not to deny that florid phobias never have as their subjects bisexuals and transsexuals, but it is my instinct to restrict such terms to the far end of the spectrum where, along with fear of germs or public places, one starts wearing gloves and a mask and stays home to avoid contact with the open sky.

Power Politics

As we have seen, the historical circumstances of the construction of homosexuality in the U.S. created power relations, which called both for a more inclusive grouping and, at the same time, for a more exclusive grouping. These power relations created the four different groups of which the homosexual community are composed, assigning them different identities, different resources, different spaces in the political sphere. It is these social constructions that created the environment for identity politics within the LGBT community.

To the extent that this identity politics has created prejudice and discrimination within the community, it might be more accurate to call it "heterosexism" or "internalized heterosexism." I prefer to go with sociologist Paula Rust's understanding: "Heterosexism refers to the whole constellation of psychological, social and political factors that favor one form of sexuality over another."

Prejudice in gay and lesbian communities against transgender people is heterosexism because it is an accommodationist attempt to disavow these more "radical" forms of sexuality. As I have demonstrated, the accommodationist impulse came from the severe stigma, prejudice, discrimination and state-imposed violence visited on gay men and lesbians. Transgender people were also subjected to similar forces, and there is, as a result, significant homophobia in the trans community.

It is identity politics gone mad, for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders are all subjected to the same oppressive forces, which attempts to flatten them and drive them apart at the same time.

As Riki Anne Wilchins has noted of this phenomenon of identity politics:

Alas, identity politics is like a computer virus, spreading from the host system to any other with which it comes in contact. Increasingly, the term has hardened to become an identity rather than a descriptor. . . . The result of all this is that I find myself increasingly invited to erect a hierarchy of legitimacy, complete with walls and boundaries to defend. Not in this lifetime . . . . But at some point such efforts simply extend the linguistic fiction that real identities (however inclusive) actually exist prior to the political systems that create and require them. This is a seduction of language, constantly urging you to name the constituency you represent rather than the oppressions you contest. It is through this Faustian bargain that political legitimacy is purchased.

Are we going to let Faust win? I say no. No to the devil and the devil's forces that seek to make us hate one another. No to transphobia, and no to homophobia and no to biphobia.

No to hate. We can, and must, learn to love one another, or die. Has Star Trek taught you nothing?

I was going to suggest here some things to consider in approaching the problem of transphobia in the gay community, and also homophobia in the trans community. However, the length of this post requires that I do so in a third installment.

COURTESY OF BILERICO