Avoiding the LGBT community

[randomroads]

It's been just over 3 years since I started t and my life is pretty good. The emotional changes happened within a week, the physical changes happened within the year so that I could pass as male all the time, and I'm happy with my current life. I was officially divorced in November last year and started dating a gay man in March. My first gay boyfriend. My first gay experience. At 30.
When I figured out I'm trans I didn't seek out the LGBT community because I'm shy and introverted and find being social overwhelming. It's taken me 30 years to be okay in my own skin and to go out and work my butt off for what I want out of life - transition, career, love. 3 years ago the idea of trying to integrate as a gay trans man was terrifying and it still is.
A year ago I went to my first gay club as a gay man and asked a group of men playing darts where the bathroom was. One pointed at the men's door (it was hiding around a corner, the women's door was on the other side of the building). As I started walking toward the door I heard one of the guys make a startled, uncomfortable noise and another say 'hey wait, it's on the other side.' I didn't look back. I acted like I didn't hear them. It's a coping mechanism. Ignore what I don't like so that I don't get backed into an emotional corner. Turns out the bathroom didn't have doors on the stalls and they faced the urinal and sink. Everyone would see me, so I went and peed in a bottle in my truck while burning with embarrassment. I even hung out in the bathroom long enough to make everyone think I did something instead of just immediately walking out like I was admitting I shouldn't have been in there in the first place. We've all been there. That story isn't news to any of you. Trans exclusion in public bathrooms is a thing that has been happening for forever. The bad thing is, seeing the open stalls made me fearful that I'd walk into any other gay bar and there wouldn't be stall doors. I avoided bars altogether after that, gay or not.

Then I went to my first pride festival as a gay man and was shunned by a group of gay men. Then I was hanging out with a lesbian friend and her girlfriend made a comment about how I was just a confused woman and better not hit on her girl (they're split now, the ex is a jerk). Then I tried dating bi, gay, and 'pansexual' men and they were too hung up on my genitals. Then I tried to include myself in a LGBT meetup group and felt so out of place that it was actually painful to sit there waiting for the appropriate time to be up before I could excuse myself without looking like I'd just sat down for 10 minutes, decided they weren't good enough for me, and left. Social anxiety is a monster I live with every day. To top it all off, every time, and I do mean every single time, I out myself as trans to gay/bi/pan man or woman they always slip on pronouns. And they always know I'm 'different' instead of 'like them.' I always get asked eventually.

All of this has culminated in me realizing I'm a gay trans man who is very comfortable with straight people (bigoted or not) but completely out of place with my own people. Straight people generally see me as one of those femme gay men, even though I'm not femme or campy. I'm androgynous, which I'm perfectly fine with.
Now I'm dating a cisgender gay man, and he hasn't slipped on pronouns when I can hear him, but I'm around his friends who are either very supportive straight allies or gay/lesbian themselves. And he wants to introduce me to MORE of his gay/lesbian friends. And every. single. time. they screw up pronouns, directly ask if I'm trans, talk about if I'm trans when I'm not around (and my guy finds out), or they loudly talk about how proud they are that I'm 'so brave' around people I don't know, trust, and probably don't want to be out to. I'm not brave. I'm absolutely terrified that the wrong person will find out and become violent and hurt me.

I avoid the LGBT community. I'm tired of the misgendering, the wrong pronouns, the constant questions. I want to live a normal life, without having to hear people ask perfectly respectful, polite questions simply because I've heard them millions of times and I'm just tired. I'm tired of having to explain myself or being gripped with anxiety that people think I'm rude and ungrateful.
My boyfriend's best friend is a very kind lesbian woman who is very supportive and sweet. I like her a lot. She invited me to try some of her potato soup and when I said that I really liked it, she said 'She likes it!' and then corrected herself. I wanted to just drop the bowl and walk off. I'm so tired of it. I never get this stuff from straight people.

[AnxietyDisord3r]

Cis gay people do not "get" it about the trans thing. But I am somewhat bitter about trans activists because they spend more time and energy bodyslamming the gates of "cis lesbians/gays won't sleep with us" (even when they will, maybe they won't sleep with YOU because you are a boundary-violating creep) than actually educating cis people that trans is a medical condition, and you no more want your medical history gossiped about than they would want their STD status gossiped about. Gay people think trans is just another identity, like being a cross dresser. They don't understand that unlike cross dressers we experience dysphoria and we tend to consider our treatment to be private medical information. They don't understand that many of us feel dysphoria at being considered "trans" first and men and women maybe never. They don't get that we are fundamentally different to gender variant cis men and women who are at peace with their birth gender but just don't like their assigned gender role.*

*-okay I am being too glib, who doesn't hate gender roles, but plenty of cis people express themselves gender wise differently than the mainstream would have it, maybe that's what I meant

Guess what, when I was baby trans I had another TRANS person call me basically a confused woman who was unhappy with my gender role. I knew that wasn't true but it was so hard not to believe someone who had gone through the narrow golden gates and was actually transitioning legally. (This was late 1990s in Boston, it was super hard to get hormones.) TRANS people often spread this nonsense about tearing down gender or that it's all about gender and not sex, either because they've quaffed too much vintage queer theory or because they're NB and apparently lack empathy for binary people.

Often gay people have heard stupid stuff directly from trans people or people they think speak for the trans community (trans means a lot of things, not necessarily transsexuals like us) and think they "get" it when they don't. Gay people, sadly, think we need to follow their program and just come out to everybody and things will be fine.

Well, I came out to everyone and things WEREN'T fine.

I wasn't believed.
I was still being washed in the wrong hormones.
I had severe dysphoria over my breasts every day.

Our culture doesn't really acknowledge that third sexes exist. So the only way to deal with the social stuff is to be a man or a woman or being the brassiest NB you can be but still suffer tons of social garbage from ignoramuses who can't grok that some people aren't men or women. And even social acceptance can't fix the medical issues that we're born with and will have for all of our lives. Our culture also refuses to acknowledge medical conditions that don't leave physical marks on the outside of your body (chronic pain, mental illness ... or trans status). Ever lurked in the CFS community? They are so desperate for some physical proof to show everyone, especially doctors!! that their condition is real. Without that legitimacy, we're all just fakers, malingerers, or crazy.

Gay people need educating. Obviously you aren't the one to do that; maybe people like Janet Mock can. I noticed Queerty has been posting a lot about trans people that is very good, but the comments can be terrible. But there's pushback in the comments too. I take some solace from that. The way the LGBT community talks about gender is changing, as well. That's encouraging. It's better than it used to be.

You seem like you could really benefit from bottom surgery, given what you've shared. It's a pity that it's so inaccessible to Americans. Just the time off work alone is undoable to me, not even getting into the expense. That's before we even talk about results. They need to get on that stem cell thing and figure out how to grow a dick in a lab.  >🙂

[AnxietyDisord3r]

We do have different perspectives because I moved from gay to straight (came out as gay at 17, as trans around 20, but still had a foot in the gay community for years and my wife is bi and still active in the gay community). That's not to say I don't recognize that there are some straight people who are very accepting and understanding. I don't think I could really compare gays and straights and tally up. Everyone's had to have their views evolve.

Trans people need to start talking about dysphoria. For the sake of all those kids out there who don't know they're trans, and to cut through this thicket of nonsense about how trans is just dress-up for extroverted weirdos. I am not talking about getting rid of the trans* umbrella--I know how this activism thing works and as far as getting our rights affirmed, this is working and we need to keep it. No talk of true trans and who we're going to kick out of the trans community. But NOT talking about how some of us have potentially life-ending dysphoria is killing us one by one.

[FTMDiaries]

Turns out the bathroom didn't have doors on the stalls and they faced the urinal and sink.

No doors? Seriously? What a strange concept. Perhaps it might be an idea to write to the club (perhaps anonymously), explain your experiences and ask them to provide doors for the stalls, as privacy is a necessity for a variety of customers including trans customers, customers who use colostomy bags and those who use incontinence products. Not to mention some of the more nefarious activities that can take place in some clubs... but perhaps that's why they removed the doors?

Then I went to my first pride festival as a gay man and was shunned by a group of gay men.

I get this. There's a certain subsection of the gay community that wants to 'drop the T', and it's possible that these guys were of that mindset. There's also a lot of body shaming in the gay male community: you have to have the 'right' build and be the 'right' kind of attractive for some of the shallower members of the community to accept you - and that's equally true for cis gay men. Ignore them; they're not worth your time. It is heartbreaking, though - when you've spent so many years trying to fit into your natural peer group, only to have them turn their backs on you for no good reason.

I avoid the LGBT community. I'm tired of the misgendering, the wrong pronouns, the constant questions.

One of the big problems about LGBT-specific spaces is that people who frequent those spaces are far more familiar with lesbians than with trans men... and they also tend to be far more familiar with lesbians than straight people are. So when you out yourself as a trans man to them, a significant minority of LGB people will automatically think you're some sort of extreme lesbian - merely because that's the closest fit they can come up with to what's most familiar to them. They also tend to know that, no matter how masculine she might present, even a stone butch lesbian is unlikely to appreciate being referred to with male pronouns, so they've probably had to school themselves into using female pronouns with extremely masculine-presenting lesbians in the past, as a mark of respect for their identities. They've not knowingly encountered any trans guys before, so they just default to what they've trained themselves to do. Yes, it sucks terribly - and the only solution is for us to become more visible within the community so we can educate them. But that's the reason why there's often a lot of misgendering and other transphobic nonsense in specifically LGB spaces.

Another problem is that some LG people (in particular) seem to believe that trans people somehow invalidate LG identities. They've probably heard a bunch of nonsense along the way that men should only be attracted to women and women should only be attracted to men, so a very small sub-section of the gay community seems to think that trans people transition because we're 'ashamed of being gay' (i.e. attracted to our birth sex) - and in doing so, we somehow invalidate their identities. I've had a lesbian (at a Pride march) basically scream into my face that I'm a traitor who's ashamed to be a lesbian; you should've seen her face when I explained that I've been married to a man for 19 years and have always had zero attraction to women, so if her theory's correct then obviously I must've transitioned because I'm ashamed of being straight or something.  :🙂

I never get this stuff from straight people.

I mostly get this stuff from straight people. Misgendering, wrong pronouns, and especially inappropriate questions about what's in my underwear. I've found far more acceptance around gay men - particularly in male-only environments, rather than environments that include lesbians - than I have amongst straights. It's possible that you might just be approaching the wrong people or hanging out in the wrong spaces, but let's face it: douches exist in every single community so you'll encounter them wherever you go, sadly.

[RaptorChops]

I avoid the LGB community. I don't get involved with pride anymore and I don't go to "gay" bars either. There are A LOT of Lesbians, Gays, Bi that do not understand Transgender folks. I know there is one lesbian who has a blog where she constantly puts the FTM community on blast. She takes photos from here and other websites and posts them on her blog and says some pretty nasty things.

I get a long with everyone and don't bring up my gender to people I don't know. I really don't care who they are as long as they are a good person and can accept me for who I am.

[AnxietyDisord3r]

You know, it's your life and your choice, Raptor, but it is really and truly unfair to take the actions of one or two TERFs (not all TERFs are lesbians, btw), who are basically wingnuts (not to mention online harassers and abusers as vile as anything Gamergate has vomited up), and paint the entire GLB community with them. They are shunned by other gay people and even other RadFems, which is why they are in such a defensive posture these days.

I could nutpick trans people who say awful, horrible things online and to the press. Heck, some of our most world famous trans community members say dumb stuff every time they open their stupid mouths and you know which two I'm talking about.

When trans people tell LGBT organizations not to promote TERFs, they have responded and do not promote them in any way, shape, or form. The activist community has picked a side and it is our side. So just because there are some ignorant folks out there it is not cool to paint the whole community with them. There is a pastor who runs a church called ATLAH who says horrible stuff about gays and Barack Obama but everybody knows that you can't paint the entire African American community with the words of one guy. Over 90% of Black people voted FOR Obama, and I bet you easily over 90% of GLB people who have even heard of TERFs think they are scum who need to sit down and shuddup. They are not popular folks because they are horrible scumbags who doxx trans people online. I guess I feel strongly about this lol but it is completely unfair to blame a whole group of people for the actions of a select few that the majority have firmly repudiated.

[KarlMars]

I do wish the LGB and the T were separate. Because being trans is not a sexuality it's more medical in my eyes.

[steel86man]

I do wish the LGB and the T were separate. Because being trans is not a sexuality it's more medical in my eyes.

Being both a Trans man and bi/pan/non-labeling I think it's actually more detrimental to separate the community. What we need is understanding. Because what I've also experienced in the lgb community is racism, being biracial I'll get people who think I'm "nice for a..." or they "don't date..." The thing is a lot of people can't even tell what my ethnicity is. So what I'm getting at is we don't need more division, we need more understanding and unity. People are stranger together than apart. A black Trans woman was fundamental during Stonewall.

And to the OP, I can relate on so many levels minus the boyfriend. I would be terrified with my social anxiety to go back to any bar knowing it didn't have doors on the stalls, I have a very calculated bathroom routine so as to not out myself in fear of retaliation. Im fortunate that my sister, who is gay, all her friends in the lesbian community that I know and have seen before and after transitioning are so welcoming and kind.


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[Arch]

No doors? Seriously? What a strange concept.

No, not really; it's quite common in gay bars.

[Kylo]

I do understand why one might wish to avoid it.

I myself don't really "involve" myself with it any more. I never intentionally did so to begin with, it just happened that my best friend through university was a lesbian, and through her I met several gay friends who became long term friends, two of which lived next to me at the halls of residence on my course and who I spent almost all my time with. Because of them I would occasionally attend gay clubs, bars and LGBT events at the university.

I remember at that point being completely disinterested in sex and relationships, yet being considerably more pestered to declare my orientation at gay venues and within groups of friends who were gay, than those who were not who never 'pestered', although I was assumed to be straight by those people more often than not. I refused to be pinned down by a definition and ignored this sort of talk. But it did get bothersome after a while.

The experience of my gay friends did concern me sometimes, although we were in a small city (and by small I mean it was not really deserving of the label "city" - it only got this because the student population swelled its numbers each year to that of a city, but otherwise I'd call it a town in practicality.) Because the gay community in any given place is considerably smaller than that of the straight, the "turnaround" of some of its members can be staggering. I was constantly being reminded that many of the people my gay friends knew boasted of sleeping with just about every other gay person within the community. On meeting some lesbians who seemed to assume I was a lesbian because my friend was, I felt I was being immediately "sized up", and they were very eager to find out whether I was gay or not, and on hearing that I wasn't calling myself a lesbian, and refusing to tell them what I "was", they took an instant dislike to me. This intense kind of interest didn't bother me as I felt that I was not really a part of the community, but if I had been I think I would have found it very irritating very quickly. Hookup culture is not my thing and yet I saw an awful lot of it and of promiscuity going on within the LGBT community of that place. I guess I too 'avoided' the community in a sense, despite being often immersed in it because of my friends. Not avoiding it or its venues as such, but definitely and deliberately avoiding becoming embroiled in some of its aspects.

Back then I hadn't really come around to the idea of being trans in so many words, but if I had and if I had declared to these people that I was, I would not have expected to be treated any better. The LGB community can be just as discriminatory towards trans people as the non-LGBT community. Some people claim even more so.

[Cindy]

 😛olice:

We need to be careful of not bashing other members of the LGBTIQA community (ToS 10).

That said as long as this doesn't drift into exclusivity but is a comment on differences with a sensible discussion it is OK. There are differences (obviously) between LG and T on gender identity and sexuality and it can be discussed in a mature way.

I would like to encourage mature discussion, but if it goes into 'us and them discussions' it will be closed down.

I am asking you to think about your discussions and to do so sensibly.

Thank You.

Cindy
Forum Admin

[FTMDiaries]

No, not really; it's quite common in gay bars.

Perhaps in some places (maybe in the US?), but I've never seen anything like that in any of the many, many gay bars I've visited - mostly in the UK.

[FTMDiaries]

I do wish the LGB and the T were separate. Because being trans is not a sexuality it's more medical in my eyes.

As approximately two-thirds of trans people are also gay/lesbian, bisexual or pan, it makes perfect sense for us to be included. As for the third who identify as straight, many of them identified as gay/lesbian pre-transition. So most of us, at some point in our lives, identify as LGB in some way.

But the most important reason why the T is inseparable from the cis LGB community is this: transphobia is, in the majority of cases, a form of misdirected homophobia. The same people are attacking us, for the same reason, e.g. trans women are disproportionately attacked & killed because the men who kill them believe them to be 'really' men who are trying to trick them into gay acts - and they lash out violently due to homophobia. That's why we need to stick together: we're up against the same foe so we need to protect & elevate each other.

[Arch]

Perhaps in some places (maybe in the US?)

Yep, this country is very raw and redneck in many ways.

I had a trans friend who wanted a bunch of us to hang out in a different gay bar every time we met. My first question: "Yeah, and what are we supposed to do about the bathroom situation?" Needless to say, that little tour never happened.

I have a gay pre-op trans friend who will leave a club, buy something at a local business with bathroom privileges, use that bathroom, and then return to the club--all so he doesn't have to use a bathroom stall with no doors. Even the women's restrooms in gay male bars can have stalls with no doors.

I'm not keen on bars anyway, especially at my age, but I'll never go to another gay bar, at least while I'm pre-op, because of the damned bathrooms. Sounds like a good reason to avoid one cross-section of the community, at any rate!

[alex82]

I do wish the LGB and the T were separate. Because being trans is not a sexuality it's more medical in my eyes.

I do agree about that. I don't like the way it's tagged on as an afterthought to what are sexual identities.

The only members of my family or friendship group to have a problem with this has been my uncle and his boyfriend, who are very much of the opinion that it's to do with a refusal to be ok with being gay, and another drama I want attention for.

Wrong on both counts - I'm simply not gay, and nobody would be more delighted to NOT have any attention about this than I would be. It's probably their generation - they were a community under attack and then met the AIDS epidemic when they were barely into their thirties, so they have every reason to be defensive and club-like. The suspicion that someone is trying to 'leave' their club is ignorance, but to an extent I can understand.

No younger gay friends of mine have had any problem. On the contrary, they've been nothing but fantastic.

When I was growing up, my mother had so many gay friends that I simply wouldn't have been embarrassed or awkward if that's actually what I was. It isn't. I wish it was - it would be easier and cheaper.

[AnxietyDisord3r]

Funny thing about acceptance ... my MIL accepts me much more as a trans man than she ever did as a gay woman. She used to teach a class about human sexuality and was well versed on transsexuality (I guess this is maybe back in the 1990s) and NOT from a queer theory perspective. She's been very supportive of me. I think she really comes from the old school, being an older boomer. She knew a really wonderful and famous gay guy back in the 70s. He was still married to a woman but cultivating these relationships with cute young guys at the same time and I guess the whole thing made her hate gay guys. She acts like being gay is a choice and a bad one, but being trans is a medical condition and it can be treated. Hey, I'll take it. My wife is bi, though, and has to walk on eggshells with Mom sometimes about that.

I think it's actually undeniable, though, that all of that gay liberation helped us be more accepted by the younger gen, among NON subject matter experts (MIL was an anthropologist, not a lay person). If it's okay to be gay it follows that it's okay to be trans too. A lot of the transphobia we face stems from homophobia, for example homophobic partners who don't want to be seen as gay or homophobic creeps in single sex environments who think our trans-ness is catching.

[AnxietyDisord3r]

I have a gay pre-op trans friend who will leave a club, buy something at a local business with bathroom privileges, use that bathroom, and then return to the club--all so he doesn't have to use a bathroom stall with no doors. Even the women's restrooms in gay male bars can have stalls with no doors.

I'm not keen on bars anyway, especially at my age, but I'll never go to another gay bar, at least while I'm pre-op, because of the damned bathrooms. Sounds like a good reason to avoid one cross-section of the community, at any rate!

I'm from Boston. No stall doors in bars is not a "redneck thing". It's a sorry-losers-having-sex-in-the-toilets-instead-of-going-home-to-do-that thing. It's a cruising-in-the-toilets thing. The toilets at the Boston Public Library, which do have stall doors and large ones, used to be a massive cruising zone. Straight people have been known to do the same thing and some straight people's bars also do without stalls. Americans have a thing about getting it on in bar bathrooms. Knocking knees over a toilet is sooooo sexy, haven't you heard?

[Arch]

I'm from Boston. No stall doors in bars is not a "redneck thing". It's a sorry-losers-having-sex-in-the-toilets-instead-of-going-home-to-do-that thing. It's a cruising-in-the-toilets thing.

I know perfectly well why the doors are removed; we are actually on the same page.

I guess this is why math teachers always get cranky when students skip steps. Mea culpa.

I understand that in the UK, many doors were removed to prevent cottaging, so it's not just the U.S. But we do seem to have a high level of raunchiness that necessitates extreme measures. I can't even go to public parks and picnic areas for the same reason.

[KarlMars]

I do understand why one might wish to avoid it.

I myself don't really "involve" myself with it any more. I never intentionally did so to begin with, it just happened that my best friend through university was a lesbian, and through her I met several gay friends who became long term friends, two of which lived next to me at the halls of residence on my course and who I spent almost all my time with. Because of them I would occasionally attend gay clubs, bars and LGBT events at the university.

I remember at that point being completely disinterested in sex and relationships, yet being considerably more pestered to declare my orientation at gay venues and within groups of friends who were gay, than those who were not who never 'pestered', although I was assumed to be straight by those people more often than not. I refused to be pinned down by a definition and ignored this sort of talk. But it did get bothersome after a while.

The experience of my gay friends did concern me sometimes, although we were in a small city (and by small I mean it was not really deserving of the label "city" - it only got this because the student population swelled its numbers each year to that of a city, but otherwise I'd call it a town in practicality.) Because the gay community in any given place is considerably smaller than that of the straight, the "turnaround" of some of its members can be staggering. I was constantly being reminded that many of the people my gay friends knew boasted of sleeping with just about every other gay person within the community. On meeting some lesbians who seemed to assume I was a lesbian because my friend was, I felt I was being immediately "sized up", and they were very eager to find out whether I was gay or not, and on hearing that I wasn't calling myself a lesbian, and refusing to tell them what I "was", they took an instant dislike to me. This intense kind of interest didn't bother me as I felt that I was not really a part of the community, but if I had been I think I would have found it very irritating very quickly. Hookup culture is not my thing and yet I saw an awful lot of it and of promiscuity going on within the LGBT community of that place. I guess I too 'avoided' the community in a sense, despite being often immersed in it because of my friends. Not avoiding it or its venues as such, but definitely and deliberately avoiding becoming embroiled in some of its aspects.

Back then I hadn't really come around to the idea of being trans in so many words, but if I had and if I had declared to these people that I was, I would not have expected to be treated any better. The LGB community can be just as discriminatory towards trans people as the non-LGBT community. Some people claim even more so.

Those are the very reasons I would avoid the gay community is because of the hookup scene and party go-ers, lack of privacy. I'm not open and comfortable with public displays of affection.