Keeping T in LGBTQQI
by Chelsea Ricker on April 8, 2009
http://blog.iwhc.org/2009/04/keeping-t-in-lgbtqqi/ (http://blog.iwhc.org/2009/04/keeping-t-in-lgbtqqi/)
Last month at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women I listened to Cynthia Rothschild explain how LGBT organizing is standing on the shoulders of feminist organizing. Last weekend at the Hampshire College conference, I heard from Gunner Scott of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition that transpeople have been paying for gay rights organizing since the early 20th century. Did you know a foundation founded by a transman paid for the NYC gay pride parade? I didn't. In 1973, the trans community was ousted from the movement because it was deemed "too extreme." Which begs the question: what hope does a civil rights movement have if it's willing to oust one of it's oldest and strongest constituencies?
Gunner talked about how people often assume that if your gender is unclear, your sexuality is non-normative. He used the example of seeing a boy wearing nail polish, who is assumed to be gay, or being at a domestic violence conference in the rural Midwest and seeing a bunch of hearty farmer's wives who he initially thought were butch lesbians. Why do we assume that if a gender stereotype is subverted a sexual stereotype is as well? It's these assumptions that can lead people to think that protecting sexual orientation is enough. It isn't. We need to include protections for gender expression and identity in policy, because discrimination and violence against people who express their gender in non-normative ways is no less "real."