History Theft: How Gay and Lesbian Historians Appropriate Trans History

[Shana A]

History Theft: How Gay and Lesbian Historians Appropriate Trans History

Posted by Marti Abernathey on Oct 9th, 2010

http://www.transadvocate.com/history-theft-how-gay-and-lesbian-historians-appropriate-trans-history.htm

As far back as we have history of transgender people, we have appropriation (a nice word for theft) of our history by gays and lesbians. I wrote a post about Albert Cashier, who was a veteran of the Civil War and lived as Albert most of his life. His identity stayed intact for most of his life. Only until he was admitted to Watertown State Hospital was it widely known that Cashier was born female. When he was forced to wear dresses, he would take pins and fashion pants out of them. This is not someone that identified or lived as a woman. Yet the "Out and Proud in Chicago" documentary page states:

    "These include the story of Jenny Hodgers, a cross-dressing Civil War hero who lived the majority of her adult life as a Albert Cashier"

Cashier even hid his identity at the cost of his Civil War pension. When required a physical exam for the pension, Cashier declined. If he went to such great lengths to hide is birth sex, why would anyone use female pronouns and call him a crossdresser in a supposed LGBT documentary?

[Vanessa_yhvh]

I suspect well-intentioned ignorance over malice in cases like this.

[spacial]

I suspect well-intentioned ignorance over malice in cases like this.

Possibly.

Together with the nominations of  Julie Bindel and  Bill Leckie by Stonewall UK, there would appear to be an awful lot of very stupid gay people.

[Vanessa_yhvh]

Most people do some stupid things regardless of sexual orientation. I try to avoid the hop from "questionable judgment call on that one" to "stupid person" to "stupid people in that group" as much as I can.

It's bad precedent for how I might be regarded when I do something stupid, or even worse when someone in a group to which I belong does something stupid.

[gennee]

Much of the appropriation has to do with image. Masculine women and effeminate men are shunned in the gay and lesbian communities so this appropriation of trans people is not surprising. I applaud the Stonwall Inn Riots when they happened but it to me it became a white, middle class gay mens' movement. Transgender people were shunted to the margins. There are precious few people of color in leadership positions.

Organizations like HRC have repeated thrown transgender people under the bus. The vast majority of transgender people murdered around the world are women of color. We are part of the push for equality and we ALWAYS have been a part of it. I defy anyone to tell me that we weren't.

Gennee

[Vanessa_yhvh]

Good point. Regardless of ignorance or intention, T (and visibly minority T especially) does seem to bear a disproportionate amount of the suffering while most of the benefit traditionally seems to go to the LGB.

[justmeinoz]

Maybe they were just lazy and repeated someone else's information in their own words without really thinking about it.  Which is probably worse, as it just looks sloppy.

[spacial]

You may be right.

The nominations of Julie Bindel and  Bill Leckie may just have been that they never bothered to read any of their stuff. Which kinda raises the question, why they would nominate them for media awards?