Quote from: Jeannette on August 17, 2007, 04:47:30 AM
The LGBs insist that transgendered persons are part of their community, yet I feel that transgenders are left to take the leftovers and friend for themselves. It'd seem that whenever there is political action, the GLBs often fight for their rights at the exclusion of TGs. They often see TGs as a threat, and are afraid TGs will cost LGBs their victories. If gays are too afraid to help TGs, and only consider them an afterthought, then why do they include them at all or consider them to be allies?
Its an unfortunate phenomenon that no matter what a group of people have gone through or what experiences they've had, they still are, in the end, people.
People hate. People don't understand. People fear what's different.
Homosexuals and bisexuals are no exception. Hell even we are not exception. The trans community is JUST as guilty of violating pacts with allies and sweeping the undesirables under the rug in many instances.
And then there's just the lack of cohesive connection for a lot of homosexuals. They look at their situation and go, "this is about who we're attracted to" and they look at us and go, "this is about who they are"
What is the connection? There's really no conceptual connection between our movements. Its entirely being allied on the basis of us having all the same enemies.
Those are the reasonings of the unreasonable, jerkish types. The ironic hypocritical dislike of us for being different or the idea that we don't have a connection and the unrealistic idea that we can all succeed on our own.
But the thing that really hurts us in the eyes of the reasonable and intelligent homosexuals? The fact that so many of us transition, stealth and disappear.
We're the only group that loses such a huge degree of advocates and fighters to actually leaving the fight to immerse into primary society. Homosexuals can't do that without going back in the closet and it can generate a certain degree of both resentment and anger (resentment because many homosexuals wish to be considered "normal" and anger because its arguably abandoning the fight and making it harder for everyone else)
Of course its very dependent on area too. There are plenty of locations where the trans community is an integral and valued part of LGBT and treated as such by the LGB allies.
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Why not replace the term LGBT with TG? A transgender is someone who somehow "violates society's rules in regards to gender", right? Society says that men are not to dress as women nor have sex with men. So whether you are a man who dresses as a woman, a man who lives as a woman to some degree, or a man who chooses to have sex with men, then you are "violating society's rules" for how men should behave. So instead of TGs being a part of the LGBT, aren't LGBs really part of the transgendered term?
That's a pretty big stretch of the term transgendered. It really doesn't include sexual attraction. So calling LGBT, "TG" would hopelessly muddy the waters and confuse the common folk more then normal.
One thing we don't need is more confusion.