After reading all the answers so far and the reasoning behind them I have to say that I find everyones point of view to have valid points. I'll throw mine out here into the fray and get it over with.
I've seem some "GLBTI" events before and, as mentioned, they probably should have been called "GLB" events. Probably the most noticable example that most people are familiar with are pride parades. Everytime a pride parade forms I just cringe....I want to go hide and wait until it's gone and hopefully forgotten. Float after float after float of gay men wearing make up, in diapers, panties or worse showing the worst possible behavior in order to flaunt thier "pride". This of course is followed by float after float after float of drag queens doing Jerry Springer auditions in front of the crowds. It's terrible...while it may be funny or entertaining to some parade goers it also reinforces all the negative stereotypes we as TG have to deal with everyday to the "non GLB" parade viewers, not to mention the hay day that the media has showing these pictures over and over. Is it any wonder that we are so often pegged as "trannies", "transvestites" or "crossdressers" incorrectly by the media and public? The GLB community has very little to do with TI people. They are often disrespectful of our feelings and exclusionary in thier social events. While I do have gay friends who have no problems with me, as a whole, I would NOT want to spend a week around a large group of these people.
We have a couple local "GLBT" hotel/club/restraunts here and during my job hunting I went there to apply for whatever was open. I talked to the cook in one of the restraunts who was extremely happy to have someone applying as they were short handed and swamped. After turning in my application which had to expose me as TS I couldn't even get one of these people to talk to me on the phone. I tried multiple times to get in touch with the restraunt manager but I would get this "He just stepped out, we don't know when he will be back", "You just missed him..we'll give him the message and have him call you", "He's too busy to come to the phone can we take a message?", "He's on vacation and won't be back for 2 weeks", "He had a family emergency and we don't know when he will be back". Yeah, I get the picture. I decided to look around the next time I was there and I realized something. I had NEVER seen anybody who I could even remotely think was TS working there. Every employee was either obviously a gay male or a lesbian female...there's a shocker.
As Taylor said the GLB community added the TI mostly as a political move. There is seldom any positive interaction between the two groups despite, I believe, the fact that TI individuals are very accepting of GLB individuals. I've seen the GLB crowd in clubs WAY too often laughing or belittling CD/TG/TI guests. I don't like thier "community" and I don't like the way they treat the TG community. While I'm generalizing and there are obviously many GLB people who don't have these issues the "community",as I see it, is far from accepting TI's as anything other than a tag along group who they can include and exclude for thier own benefit.
Once again..NO I would not attend if it included GLB. As for the whole stealth issue and worrying about outing yourself by attending something like this I don't there is any real danger of the paparazzi snapping compromising pictures and showing the world. The worse thing that could possibly happen is a "new" TI individual might learn something from someone who has already been there or find some much needed support and friendship...just like what happens here on Susans. "Outing" yourself to other TI's by attending a function like this seems like a small price to pay considering the potential for good.
And yes....this is another long winded rant induced by a lack of coffee right now. I'll apologize in advance for things such as grammar, sentence structure and an overall discombobulation of subject lines LOL.
