In the 2010s, the Western world saw a significant uptick in the acceptance of gay rights, particularly in the United States. There was the Supreme Court ruling making same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states; the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell; applying employee discrimination protections to LGBT individuals; and going from most U.S. citizens not approving of gay people to accepting them. As acceptance of gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals increased, the culture war in the U.S. diverted its attention to another group of people: transgender individuals.
During Pride Month, I thought about the abbreviation LGBT. There has at least some historical basis for grouping the LGB (Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual) with the T (Transgender) in the abbreviation LGBT. Let us forget for a moment that the abbreviation has gotten longer and longer with more confusing variants, whether it is LGBTQ, LGBTQIA, or LGBTQIA2S+. I have to ask myself why the LGB remains with the T, never mind the rest of those in the alphabet soup acronym. Some will argue that gay rights and trans rights go hand in hand because both gay individuals and trans individuals do not fit into normative sociological assumptions about sex or romance.
As we will see shortly, I do not think that is sufficient to keep the LGBT grouped as one entity. Much like with any rocky marriage, I also question the relationship between the gay rights movement and the trans rights movement to the point where I think they should go their separate ways.
Simply because both gay people and trans people do not fit normative sociological assumptions does not mean we should group them together. We never grouped the civil rights struggles of various racial minorities to that extent. Sure, there were alliances, but civil rights for Hispanics were not grouped together with civil rights for African-Americans because each group has separate concerns and needs. Nor did we group the cause of the Civil Rights Movement with the gay rights movement, even though the fight for same-sex marriage had significant parallels to the fight for interracial marriage.
From Stonewall until about the mid-1980s, it was not called LGBT; it was called the gay community. During the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, gay rights activists were using LGB. It was not until the late 1990s when the T was commonly added with LGB to make the acronym LGBT. The fact that the T was not added shortly after Stonewall in 1969, which was the beginning of the gay rights movement in the U.S., suggests that it was not immediately apparent that the T belonged with the LGB.
Sexual orientation and the gender identity are supposed to be two different concepts. This differentiation is not merely theoretical or abstract. To quote an article from U.S. News, "Unlike members of the trans community, who are working against their biology and trying to change who they are physically, gay or lesbian people are trying to be nobody but themselves. They are not seeking surgery or hormone treatments. They love [those of] the same [sex]; they don't want to be a different [biological sex]."
Being gay is about sexual orientation, whereas being trans "is anchored in an alternative gender identity." Homosexuals are naturally attracted to people of the same sex. That is spelled out both in the prefix "homo-" and the suffix "-sexual." Gay people do not have issues with their biological sex. Being gay has meant rejecting a strict definition of gender norms while still claiming biological distinction vis-à-vis same-sex attraction. Gay men and lesbians tend to expand and re-define gender concepts. For gay men, there is anything from the leather daddy all the way to the fem boy. Lesbians ranged on the femininity spectrum anywhere from lipstick lesbian to being butch.
In contrast, the trans movement adheres to more strict, classical definitions of what is masculine and what is feminine. Additionally, trans people are dealing with gender dysphoria, which means they are not fine with their biological sex. They can use such procedures as hormone replacement therapy, gender-reassignment surgery, and presenting themselves as the opposite sex in the hopes of dealing with that dysphoria.
As I brought up in my nuanced take on transitioning and biological sex, it is true that the procedures mentioned in the previous paragraph can alter some aspects as it relates to biological sex (e.g., conditional alteration with hormones, certain secondary sex characteristics). It is also true that in spite of the transition, the biological sex with which they are born essentially remains intact. The politically incorrect truth is that the transition remains an incomplete one. This is not a statement of malice or bigotry, but one of biological reality and of the technological and medical limits of transitioning. In Part II of this blog series, I will discuss further how that biological reality plays into what it means to be homosexual and how putting gender identity on a pedestal to the point of inaccurately thinking of biological sex as a social construct adversely impacts the gay community.
Because gay people are different from trans people, gay rights are different from trans rights. Yes, both groups have dealt with prejudice and discrimination for being different from the heterosexual majority. There has been some overlap with discrimination in such areas as employment and housing. But other minority groups have also dealt with similar prejudice and discrimination, and yet we are not calling for some umbrella term or grouping to cover all minorities. Furthermore, gay people are not directly affected by such trans-related topics as medical interventions (whether for adults or children), bathroom access, participation in sports, or having legal documents state their gender identity as opposed to their biological sex.
I have more to say and I will cover that in Part II. In the meantime, I will conclude Part I by highlighting another key difference. The gay rights movement had a "live and let live" approach. They wanted a seat at the table and equal access. With marriage, the majority of gay rights activists were not looking to upend the institution. They were looking for participation rights. The trans rights movement is much more authoritarian in its tone. Trans rights as fought for in our time are not about liberation. The trans rights movement has been about coercion and demanding validation and unwavering devotion to gender ideology and their perceived reality that comes with a "believe this or else" posturing. This notion is brought up by British think tank Civitas:
"Whereas the gay rights movement was demanding more freedom from the state for people to determine their sex [and romantic] lives unconstrained by the law, the transgender movement calls for the opposite: it calls for recognition and protection from the state in the form of intervention to regulate the behavior of those outside of the identity group. Whereas in the past, to be radical was to demand greater freedom from the state and institutional authority, today to be radical is to demand restrictions on free expression in the name of preventing offense."
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