In the 1980s a one Sam Hashimi, a powerful investment fund type, had a sex-change procedure to become “glamorous interior designer Samantha Kane,” a woman so convincing he says he had no problem attracting men. I use the pronoun “he,” because Samantha is now Charles Kane. Yes, he’s had two gender reassignment procedures, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to switch genders twice. And he now believes the entire practice should be outlawed.
Life as a lady was all fun and games, until he realized he “hated the way female hormones made him moody and emotional,” the Daily Mail‘s Helen Weathers reports. “Shopping bored him and sex was a disappointment.”
So in 2004 Samantha (pictured) became Charles, spending another bucket of cash where, three procedures later (goodbye breast implants, hello penis), he became a heterosexual man whose “attempts at dating women … had met with outright rejection and humiliation and he feared he would never find anyone brave enough to love him.”
But now the divorced father of two is engaged to a biological woman, a single mother named Victoria, and yes the two have sex. She says Charles is a better partner for having once lived as a woman. Though that’s an experience Charlies wishes on no other human.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
“I feel very philosophical, rather than bitter about what happened to me,” says Charles. “Based on my own experiences, I believe sex-change operations should not be allowed, and certainly not on the NHS. People who think they are a woman trapped in a male body are, in my opinion, completely deluded. I certainly was. I needed counselling, not a sex-change operation. In many ways I see myself a victim of the medical profession. Even with the glamour of Samantha Kane and the £100,000 I spent on myself, I had people shouting abuse at me and builders throwing stones at me from rooftops. I became a woman. It didn’t work for me. I changed my mind. It’s only a fool that doesn’t change their mind when they know they are wrong. It took tremendous courage to say: ‘No, sorry, I will change back.’ I feel very lucky to have found Victoria, but always in the back of the mind there is the thought: ‘Why should she want me when she could have a real man?'”
He’s currently searching for funding to produce the documentary The Sex Change Delusion. An autobiography, I assume. [Daily Mail]
Wonka
This person need to be locked up.
Alex
He is a victim of the gender binary, and will not be happy or satisfied if he thinks he has two clear-cut options to express his gender. He said it himself, “Why should she want me if she could have a real man?”, which clearly shows that he does not fit his perception of maleness even though he insists on returning to it. It’s sad because he will probably never be happy with himself as long as he insists that people must fall neatly into either the man category or the woman category.
Wonka
So if he we an alcoholic and destroyed his life along with several others over alccohol related actions,,should we ban alcohol?
dvlaries
This reminds me of any number of Maury Povich shows, and his endless supply of ‘out of control teenage girls.’
In the last quarter hour of the show -when he doesn’t use a drill-sergeant hawking a book- he’ll have some ex-hooker brought on to lecture the young, wannabe tramps. Someone who, when she was young, did exactly as she pleased no matter what anyone said, and now that she’s over the hill with a list of personal regrets thinks a younger generation should forfeit that same freedom.
Sam/Samantha/Charles? Shut up.
tallskin2
Fucking nutjob
BillCooney
Well, they say it’s a “woman’s prerogative to change her mind.”
Ruddigore
I find it telling that he did not go back to using the name “Sam” when he became a man again, and instead became “Charles”. He seems to have more issues than just gender indentification.
Sug Night
I’m schitzo….me too.
Kev C
Rosebud
Deena Chais
What does this Jerry Springer-ish crap have to do with gay
men and lesbians? Nothing. Gay people do not want to
surgically alter themselves, are not at war with the “gender binary” or whatever faddish term is used to describe male and female. And gay people have spent most of the 20th century trying to educate the public that we are not a third sex and to prevent the medical profession from attempting to “fix” us.
It is appalling that Queerty continues to post nonsense like this in devotion to the insulting, reactionary and classist concept of LGBT.
Kieran
How did transgenderism, where one feels born into the wrong gender, get linked with homosexuality, which deals with ones sexual orientation? One has nothing to do with the other.
Bob
Of course he thinks “Why should she want me if she could have a real man?” He had his dick cut off and no artifical dick is ever going to work like the real thing. He/She is totally nuts and is an insult to the transgender population!
opinion1
The problem comes when we equate gender with genitalia. Gender can be expressed in many ways that don’t include altering one’s body. No offense to individuals who are truly trans, but I think it’s possible and even healthy to express gender variance without resorting to surgery.
Ben
@Deena Chais:
COOL STORY BRO
SteveC
Ha – notice that he gave this interview to the Daily Mail – THE most hate-filled homophobic, transphobic, newspaper in Britain. The Mail is disgustingly bigotted.
Joann Prinzivalli
#10 – it *is* nonsense, but not for the reasons you set out. This clearly seems to be the case of a crossdressing man who got carried away. “Life as a lady was all fun and games” does not sound like someone with HBS, but rather someone who slipped through the cracks – what DSM IV might refer to as GIDANT. I am curious as to what is so classist, insulting or reactionary about LGBT, except possibly not having enough letters.
#11 – Being trans means some of us *are* lesbian or gay, and those of us who are straight are *perceived* as being gay or lesbian. Where is the connection? sexual orientation and gender identity *are* different, but LGBs and Ts all fall outside the cissexual heterosexist “norm.”
rjp
@Wonka:
there are lots of idiots that would say yes — humans are so messed up they changed the constitution – then changed it back.
Sounds familiar.
DR
@Joann Prinzivalli:
I’m tired of this idea that because I’m “not heterosexual” that I therefore have anything beyond superficial identity politics in common with others who share the same trait. I do not, much the same way you cannot lump me in with all men, all professionals, all Italians, or all Christians.
Joann Prinzivalli
#13 – except among some TS separatists, there is nothing incompatible between “truly trans” and “express gender variance without resorting to surgery.” It may well be an artifact of the West’s artificial binary that recognizes only two primary sexes and not the actual diversity in that 1%ish portion of the population. While GRS would be right for me if I did not have meical complications, I know some trans folk, mostly younger folks who are less connected with the binary, who identify as “genderqueer” – which may be a healthier view.
I have a lawsuit pending against the NYC Board of Health with regard to birth certificate regulations, challenging the accuracy of initial sex assignments for trans people. Imagine that I can establish that the initial assignment was incorrect (I have a reasonable expectation of success), I may not be able to establish that the other binary assignment is correct – one would have to assume that society would be ready and willing to recognize gender identity as the primary determinant, rather than requiring surgical intervention. It may be possible, but if not, perhaps the result might be for those who cannot have surgery (and perhaps those who don’t desire it, and those who are pre-surgery) to get a blank instead of the original erroneous assignment. Such a “blank” might appeal to those who identify as gendrqueer, while I would see it as a less-than-satisfying but conceivably acceptable compromise, if it is accompanied by other reasonable accommodations.
spindoc
So he wanted to have fun being a girl, then didn’t like being “moody” so switched back and based on that he wants the procedure outlawed??? If this guy was REALLY transgendered and not just somebody suffering from the Michael Jackson Plastic surgery syndrom, he NEVER would have switched back just because he was “moody”. It sounds like this guy is trying to excuse his own idiocy by claiming everybody is like him….well then why aren’t all the others switching back?
This guy sounds spoiled and wanted what he wanted when he wanted it.
Joann Prinzivalli
#18 – this seems like a “half full v. half empty” approach. I don’t assume that having a commonality somehow makes us the same, even with a common ground that right wing Christianists tend to get us all confused as part of this scary “homosexual agenda.” I don’t know exactly how superficial it is when the people who swing lead pipes at us all seem to utter homophobic epithets, whether we’re gay or trans.
When it comes to advocating for marriage rights, we have a common ground, except in the trans commuity, it’s the *straight* trans folks who are likely to be barred from marriage (see Littleton, Gardiner and Kantaras cases in Texas, Kansas and Florida, respectively).
When it comes to advocating for civil rights, we, and women, and racial and ethnic minotities, all have commo ground.
When it comes to fair immigration laws, LGB and T folks have common ground (and it’s mostly related to marital and relationship issues).
DADT repeal *should* be a common ground, but even with DADT repeal, that won’t necessarily stop discharges of trans folks (that’s a relatively non-obvious issue).
Gay men and lesbians don’t necessarily have the greatest cultural commonalities (and then there are subcultures – Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence don’t necessarily have much in common with members of GOProud, though maybe there are some who are both), either, and the same goes for bi folks of various and sundry variations.
I don’t see our thinking as being terriblyfar apart – I don’t see us as the same, just having some common causes.
redball
@Joann Prinzivalli: Joann, you make a whole lot of sense and I just wanted to say THANK YOU for sharing your perspectives! Too bad Queerty has apparently disrupted its thumbs-up, thumbs-down functionality–I would’ve thumbed way up.
missanthrope
This guy pops up from time to time to raise dust. He made the wrong decision and is now on a mission to punish the whole trans community for his poor decision making. Just another asshole.
Saki
LOL …. his gf/wife or whatever she is looks just like he did as a female
DR
@Joann Prinzivalli:
And those supposed commonalities is where you would be wrong, because your basis is “we’ve all been discriminated against, therefore we share a common cause”. Your thinking is far too reductionist.
Sticking with the GLBT issues, the T community has dramatically different legal, social, cultural and psychological issues beyond “we’re not heterosexual” to consider us in the same boat.
Your marriage issues and my marriage issues are not the same thing. Your health needs and my health needs are not the same thing. Your coming out process and my coming out process are not the same things. Our definitions of gender are not the same thing. The only common thing you can point to is that some Ts are not heterosexual. That doesn’t make us a community.
I’m not even going to touch the racial issues except to remind you that until you’ve been a slave, faced Jim Crowe laws, and needed a Constitutional Amendment to vote, your sole basis for assuming any type of commonality is “victimhood”, and as we saw when the Advocate announced that “Gay is the New Black”, that doesn’t sit too well with the descendants of slaves or grandkids of Japanese who were interned in concentration camps during WWII.
Your “common causes” (victimhood) aren’t enough for me to identify with you as part of a community.
skzip888
There’s a big difference between offering a procedure through the NHS and allowing it to be legal at all. Even so, if you’d gotten it through some sort of service, they might have put you through some form of counseling first. Even people who truly need these operations need extensive consultation beforehand. I’m going to take a wild guess and say this guy took his own stock market roulette winnings and got the old snip-and-tuck without seeking guidance on the matter from anyone qualified. All the Transgenderd people I knew (not that many, I admit) tried out changing their clothes and the hormones way before they attempted bottom surgery (If they bothered with bottom surgery at all). Also, does the Daily Mail ever consider that, maybe, this dude might be lesbian or genderqueer, or simply that bloke construction workers ought not to throw rocks at strange women? If the sex is unsatisfying, that’s one thing, but, being a cisgendered fellow myself, even I know that my gender doesn’t rely on other people’s expectations, or even my own.
Rick Gold
Obvs (s)he is a nutjob.
Look at that AWFUL hair!
That is what needs to be banned.
DillonS
DR is apparently our version of an ‘angry white straight man.’ 🙁
David
The picture in the green jacket – Is this Sam, Samantha or Charles? I would have guessed this was a photo from the “Samantha” phase… but I’m thinking he was going for dude here?
Qjersey
S/he never should have had surgery in the first place.
The major problem with getting “approved” to have sex reassignment surgery is that most of those interested have “learned the script” of what to say to doctors to get the surgery.
Seriously, walk into any counselor’s office and tell them “you have felt this way forever” and that “you hate your genitals” and voila you will get a diagnosis and a prescription for hormones.
Also I wonder if this person ever really did the “life test” since s/he seemed to begin to hate the women are treated in public.
John Raymond Barker
How dare this man decide that because he made massive mistakes, every transgendered person must be as screwed up as he is and be denied the right to make their own choices?
Shopping was boring? Who the hell said a woman has to like shopping?? Good effing grief.
Matt
He may be feeling philosophical, but isn’t quite thinking philosophically (or at least scientifically), otherwise he should be able to deduce that if gender dysphoria is a delusion, then SRS should not be helpful to anyone. Then he would look around, and see that yes, after the surgery many people are happier and content with their bodies. He would then say “my hypothesis is wrong and my individual experiences, however unfortunate, cannot be generalized to the entire transseuxal population.” Then he would probably go eat a sandwich, maybe on rye?
redball
@DillonS: I second that.
Joann’s case was actually one of the most cogent I’ve heard for arguing why the T belongs in LGBT. Not that I personally have ever doubted that or had a problem with the inclusiveness of the “LGBT” moniker.
@DR: Why are you so consumed with trying to find ways to balkanize the community of people who are discriminated against due to their nonnormative sexual expression? Our community (broadly defined) is about sexuality, sexual expression, gender. Period. That’s always been my understanding.
the crustybastard
[img]http://view.picapp.com/pictures.photo/unknown/images/image?term=People%3a0.772%3a%22Heidi+Montag%22&scomp=pis&isrc=http%3a%2f%2fmedia.monstersandcritics.com%2farticles2%2f1533781%2farticle_images%2fjocelyn.jpg&idesc=courtesy+of+Jocelyn+Wildenstein&width=224&height=283&_PhotoGallery.Settings.Skin=LightBox[/img]
Wants plastic surgery outlawed.
Luis
Hello, Mr Garrison
DR
@redball:
Because I do not believe that my expression of my sexuality as a GLB has anything to do with T. Not legally, not socially, not psychologically, not physically, not culturally. In a shallow way, perhaps, but on a deeper level, the idea that we all share some experience based on being “not heterosexual” is nothing more than defining ourselves with a negative which doesn’t work, IMO.
Personally, I can say without a doubt that my sexual expression, gender identity and sexual expression is no different from my heterosexual friends. We have more in common as heteros, homos, and bis than we ever will with Ts.
Ted C.
@Alex: When he says “she could have a real man”, he’s probably referring to his non-fully-functional penis. I imagine he had his original penis removed and now has a surgically created neo-penis, which, in his mind, makes him not a real man.
This guy is too hung up on his genitals.
SteveC
Again I would like to point out that this article was written by the Daily Mail (or the Daily Heil as it’s known as in Britain).
This paper hates gay and trans people, and it supported Hitler until Germany invaded Poland (look it up – the Mail makes FoxNews look liberal.)
This story needs to be ignored. The Daily Heil is simply more clever in disguising its fascist sympathies these days.
gina
Charles Kane is old, old, old news. He’s been around for years saying this. The only reason this is being reported now is his impending marriage *yawn* (like that’s going to last) and that the Daily Mail loves stories which rip on trans people. Shame on Queerty and other news outlets for publicizing his agenda yet again as if it’s something new.
kyals84
I commented on this in a trans site the other day…
He mostly went through doctors only forgoing therapy most trans people go through (whether by choice or not). Further once he was on HRT he found that he 1) didn’t like the changes it was making to his body in feminizing it and 2) didn’t like the effect on his emotions.. also 3) didn’t like the reduced sex drive. Then confusingly he *still* moved forward and did SRS for some reason. With how much he hated HRT he should have backed down. His thoughts on how HRT effected and made him feel is the opposite if how trans people feel when they receive it.
Unfortunately sometimes someone gets it in their head that they are depressed and need something to blame, latch onto trans, and go all the way assuming it will fix everything in their life. And now since he found it wasn’t for him he assumes his experience is how EVERYONE experiences it and he is now on a crusade to save us form ourselves and blame everyone but himself for the choices he made. Sad…
missanthrope
@Rick Gold:
Pretty much him and Andrew Sullivan.
But seriously, don’t really get his perspective, I’m trans, most of my cis friends are some stripe of LGB, I identify as queer and most of my lovers some stripe of LGB too. There isn’t this huge divide in my life between the LGB and the T as there is in his. There are some straight trans people who don’t like the LGB association either and I can understand that (except when it’s motivated by homophobia).
But I guess protecting your little patch of space against people who have no institutional power to harm a cis gay person is more important than the thousands of other issues that we all face. A lot of the issues that we face aren’t exactly the same, I don’t think anyone said that they were but they’re that different either.
I want freedom and rights for all of us. Anyone interested?
missanthrope
“Personally, I can say without a doubt that my sexual expression, gender identity and sexual expression is no different from my heterosexual friends. We have more in common as heteros, homos, and bis than we ever will with Ts.”
Oh I understand now, you don’t want to be associated “with those freaks over there”. So you’re kinda like a homophobic het who gets uncomfortable around tweaks or drag queens, only in a slightly different way.
Well, I hope that works out well for you.
David Ehrenstein
@Kieran: You’re quite right, but it’s Politically Uncorrect to say so.
I know several female-to-male transgenders they’re perfectly nice people. ut their situation relates to absolutely nothing in my experience as a gay man.
Needless to say this Sam/Smantha/Charles person is a very extreme case. But his is a nightmare scenario that I’ve often thought about. Really responsible therapists won’t allow an operation to go forward until the subject is thoroughly examined and informed as to all the slings and arrows of transitioning.
It is not to be taken lightly.
Brianna J.
@DR
I am so glad to hear from you. You said it better than I could. LGBT was imposed on us all without any kind of debate. But finally, more and more people are speaking out against this, as the consequences of re-defining ourselves and our movement beccome ever more apparent. I think there will be more of a focus on this because this year we nearly achieved passage of a federal anti-discrimination law, and then saw the opportunity dissolve because our once-gay but now-“LGBT” organizations insisted that the law cover everything from transvestitism to drag performers to transsexual bathroom selection.
@Joanne:
You say “I don’t see us as the same, just having some common causes.” You have it exactly right. No one is saying that we don’t have issues on which we can work together. That makes us allies. It does not give us an identity with each other, any more than our alliances with many other social and poltical groups puts us in one “community” with all of them.
You refer to the fact that some haters confuse gays and trans people. Some surely do, some surely don’t. Who cares? We should never define ourselves based on the erroneous thinking of people who hate us. If we were to follow that logic, gays (and for that matter, trans people) would also have to add letters for most sexual disorders, fetishes, and licentious acts, since our enemies also conflate homosexuality with those phenomena as well.
The gay movement I know opposes and corrects stereotypical thinking through education. The reactionary “LGBT” movement enshrines those stereotypes. It probably makes no difference whatsoever to the queer academics who made the whole thing up, but it can make a huge difference to a gay kid who googles “gay” for the first time (or a trans kid who googles trans for the first time), gay and lesbians of color and gays and lesbians in vulnerable positions. This complete disregard of vulnerable gay people by the nearly all-white, middle-class authors of LGBT is one reason that LGBT is a product of classism and racial hegemonic attitudes.
i_dunno_but...
@Kieran: I agree completely, and it’s something I’ve been trying to figure out for years. Gay is gay period. Being gay has nothing to do with feeling like a woman trapped in a man’s body. It’s having a penis and liking to have another one.. not having a penis and wishing it could be cut off. WTF?
Sam/Samanta/Charles needs some serious help.
Roses are red; Violets are blue; I’m schizophrenic and so am I
FoolMe1
@Deena Chais:
gay people not at war with the gender binary? Really?? did you miss out on Feminism and Gay Liberation?
Gay people don’t surgically alter themselves? watch the “Adonis Complex” – tons of gay men getting altered to fit the gay male beauty myth
And what gay people did was rob cultures of their own “third sexes” to validate this idea of a “gay history”.
Henry
he looked hotter as a woman – maybe he can change back again.
THANKS
Sam’s experience does not track with the trans people I have watched go through the process. When you have a lot of money, its easier to push others into helping you get what you want.
Just ask Michael Jackson.
Jake the libertarian
@David Ehrenstein: I agree. I really don’t like that trans people get lumped in with me… a gay guy… and I certainly don’t like being lumped in with them. It’s a very different thing. I can’t relate to it in any way… and I fear that a lot of people really would benefit from some strong “maybe your not a woman trapped in a man’s body” counseling rather than “yes! you are absolutely meant to be a woman!” counseling.
Sexy Rexy
Why can’t we vote on posts anymore? Did I miss something?
dvd
It’s egomanical to take your own personal experience and apply it to everyone. What a tool.
Hypocrites.
@Jake the libertarian: I think NARTH feels the same way about your orientation. If you don’t understand nor care about us, then do not speak on something you know absolutely nothing about.
anyway.
The fool in this story does not represent all transsexuals.
Michael Jackson. He’d gotten a million and one treatments and surgeries. Does this mean we ban all of them because nobody checked to verify? No. It just means make screening harder.
redball
Another way to think about why T belongs in “LGBT”:
The LGBT community breaks *important* rules–“laws”–that are imposed by gender orthodoxy. In this sense, we are made into “gender outlaws.”
If you’re curious, please google the term!:) I’ve always found it to be a compelling concept for understanding how society imposes all sorts of expectations and strictures on us (Examples: boys date and have sex with girls, boys don’t wear dresses, girls like frills and dresses, etc, the list is interminable–and is learned from a very young age. That is, we are inculcated with these laws as young children. Unless we unlearn them, we are bound to perpetuate & impose them on others. Which is a travesty for human dignity because they are false and denigrate the natural diversity among all of us.).
These strictures–these laws–are based on our genitalia (or assigned sex, which is BASED on said genitalia).
redball
I also meant to say:
“Gender outlaw” is a term coined by (I believe) Kate Bornstein :).
DR
@missanthrope:
Since you asked, it works out quite well for me.
As others have pointed out, this discussion needs to happen, like it or not. As the rainbow umbrella continues to surge with more and more letters (we’re now at LGBTQIAA, I think?), we have to sit down and talk about our identities and how we wish to be perceived, both as individuals and members of a community.
Brianna J got it in one. We’ve expanded the definition of the community to cover gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendereds, transsexuals, transvestites, asexuals, intersexed, queers, questioning, and allies and who knows who else…. the meaning of “community” in this case has been utterly and completely watered down to the point it’s become meaningless (yes, I’ve said it before and I stand by it).
We don’t share the same core dynamics or issues. I don’t have anything in common with a guy who feels like a woman trapped in a man’s body or a woman who feels like a man trapped in a woman’s body. And as the T community likes to remind us, the two are not the same.
But I guess that can only be pointed out by a T person, right? It’s ok for Chaz Bono to go on national television and talk about the differences between sexual orientation and gender identity to the straight folk, but it’s apparently a bad thing when the male homos and male bis raise the very same point among ourselves. Well, the discussion is going to continue to happen, like it or not.
Personally? My sexual orientation is only part of who I am as a person. It is not the defining factor. Maybe that makes me “post gay”, who knows? But I will not be forced into a false sense of camaraderie with every letter of the alphabet that’s been added on year after year on the false belief that we’re “not heteronormative” according to some queer theorist or angry commenter who has adapted a nome de guerre which signifies distrust, disgust and contempt for the majority of humanity.
Dallas David
That dress in the second photo — I’ll be danged, but I have a set of bedsheets made out of that same material.
Hypocrites.
@DR: It’s not a bad thing.
it becomes one when you speak as if transsexuals are freaks and you begin to disrespect them, which is the case most of the time they speak about it.
it becomes a bad thing when a gay man could pontificate about how evil the f word is, but then go ahead to disrespect transsexuals with the purpose of disrespecting them.
Pip
Nicole Kidman has no right telling me how I can express my gender identity.
Michael
He really should have just bought a male puppy and a female puppy and alternate days adoring one or the other.
ewe
It’s only a fool that doesn’t change their mind when they know they are wrong.
Read more: http://www.queerty.com/man-who-had-2-sex-changes-wants-them-banned-as-theyre-only-for-the-completely-deluded-20101109/#ixzz14rBZsx3t
Well well well, it is also a fool that speaks for everyone else based on ones own experience thinking that what works for you will work for everyone. That is called ignorance.
Deena Chais
@FoolMeOnce:
“Gay people don’t surgically alter themselves? watch the “Adonis Complex” – tons of gay men getting altered to fit the gay male beauty myth”
Comparing transitioning to gay men’s cosmetic surgery? My friend, you have just illustrated exactly what is so profoundly insulting about LGBT. In order to force two distinct communities into one, we have to warp and distort their concerns, priorities, histories and values to make the fit. It is unfair to trans people just as much as it is unfair to gays and lesbians. The surgical component of transitioning is not cosmetic and is not done so that the trans person can conform to some cultural norm of beauty. It is a matter of identity. That is why trans activists are seeking to have the surgery included in health care reform and why they demand that prisons provide it for those in state custody. This is a need and an experience that has no equivalent among gays and lesbians because it has nothing to do with sexual orientation.
BTW, if we accepted your argument that cosmetic surgery creates a unifying bond, then logically we would have to admit into “LGBT” tens of millions of straight, cis veterans of face lifts/implants/nose jobs/tattoo work, etc. – once again demonstrating that a community that has no logical definition is itself meaningless.
@RedballL
“The LGBT community breaks *important* rules–”laws”–that are imposed by gender orthodoxy. In this sense, we are made into “gender outlaws.”
No we don’t and no we aren’t. The “laws” of which you speak are only beliefs held by some. Many others understand that gay men are men and lesbian women are women, no less and no more. We shouldn’t accept the premises of homophobes and then define ourselves based on those very premises. We should challenge them and defeat them.
It may be exciting for you and for the “queer” academic creators of LGBT to declare themselves outlaws. They can play Bonnie and Clyde from their safe campus bubbles, ensconced in some liberal urban center and protected by 3 or 4 layers of anti-discrimination statutes and regs.
But the Asher Browns and the Billy Lucases and the Constance McMillens of the world who live in isolation and under constant threat, shouldn’t have to think of themselves as outlaws. They have enough to deal with, coming under attack from all sides. They don’t need to be told by the very people who should be supporting and sustaining them that they are really at war with their community and their gender, and are destined to live in a state of constant siege and on the margins of social life.
Sean
For those who are unhappy about “LGBT” because they are tired of gays/lesbians and transsexuals being confused in the public mind:
Tough shit.
You are freaked out about one stupid, steadily dying stereotype? Maybe you shouldn’t be involved in any kind of gender-related or LGBT politics at all if that’s all it takes to insult you; you couldn’t last a day in a transexual’s shoes. Hell, can you even take being a bisexual? Could you cope with those extra misconceptions about bisexuals needing to “make up their minds” or being unfaithful? Or being simply ignored all the time for the sake of simplicity? (Even the otherwise inspiring Prop 8 legal documents do this because making too much out of the very existence of bisexuals could help them lose.)
Hey, let’s just jettison the lesbians too, because we may share some issues, but there are important issues that aren’t shared, and gay men outnumber them anyway. Then we can just have our own little gay dating scene and manly activist groups and not have to worry about caring about people who aren’t just like us. And black men can worry about sexuality issues in the black community, and white men in white communities, and the same for Hispanics and Asians and mixed-race individuals, and we can dissolve most of the national organizations into local components. There’s nothing selfish or narrow-minded about everyone focusing on their own issues as long as we are all theoretically somehow allies, right? I’m sure that won’t weaken us; we’ll only grow stronger by becoming more disassociated and less organized! Nor will this increase tensions or meaningless infighting fighting between completely different groups over primitive misconceptions.
Face it, balkanization “just because I shouldn’t be associated with their issues” is not about any kind of meaningful point. It’s about a combination of short-sighted political expediency and a sheer simple lack of empathy (or, dare I say, presence of prejudice?) for those who are too different.
As for why LGBT should be together in the first place? Because T’s have to deal with all the issues that LGB’s have, even if they consider themselves straight. The fact that basically all LGB issues are T issues should be enough on its own. But there are also shared enemies, shared stereotypes, shared experiences, shared cultural difficulties… There’s even several candidates for a single definition that contains the whole community (people who engage in behavior violating traditional gender roles, people with strong mental traits associated with the opposite sex). The idea that we somehow don’t have enough of an excuse to stick together is bizarre. Everyone should have at least a basic lip-service-y interest in equality-in-general. Is it that onerous for one group to just get reminded about that more, about just one other group?
Deena,
“Comparing transitioning to gay men’s cosmetic surgery? My friend, you have just illustrated exactly what is so profoundly insulting about LGBT. In order to force two distinct communities into one, we have to warp and distort their concerns, priorities, histories and values to make the fit. It is unfair to trans people just as much as it is unfair to gays and lesbians.”
Oh, that was insulting to transsexuals, but the “you’ve got to be insane to want to chop your dick off” comments weren’t worthy of comment? I can see what’s behind your sense of outrage.
As I see it, “LGBT” is intended, among other things, to encourage LGBs to actually give a damn about T’s, to learn about transsexual issues, and to be willing to stick up for them. If you’re really interested in being fair to trans people, shouldn’t that be something you’re interested in (whether under the banner of “LGBT” or not)? Rather than pointing to anti-trans bias in the gay community and calling it an insoluble rift? This idea that the gay community should just cut transsexuals loose to fend for themselves (oh, but hey, we’re rootin’ for ya’! and it’s for your own good anyway), this idea is patronizing horseshit.
Besides which, gay and lesbian organizations still exist, and LGBT organizations spend most of their time on the LGB part, and transsexual organizations still exist. No one is saying you can’t have both, or that there was some meeting where everyone was forcefully conscripted into LGBT. If LGBT is popular, it’s because the idea is fucking popular and people don’t have a problem with it. It’s not going to stop people from forming their own more-specific-issue-focused groups if there’s a demand for them. Certainly if nothing else transitioning transsexuals need support regarding that (hopefully leading to fewer issues like the guy in this article who gets way too much press in anti-trans circles).
DR,
“But I will not be forced into a false sense of camaraderie with every letter of the alphabet that’s been added on year after year on the false belief that we’re “not heteronormative” according to some queer theorist or angry commenter”
Hey asshole, I know you’re going to ignore me because I’m some “angry commenter” and being angry probably makes me wrong (everyone knows that if the wrong people are against you, you must be right). But, you know, if you find yourself in a group of people who support transsexuals, shouldn’t you ask yourself whether or not you want support transsexuals? And if the answer is yes, what’s the problem? And if the answer is no, why don’t you have the courage to actually own up to that attitude rather than hiding behind this “let’s everybody split up because I don’t feel like I’m in my own special group any more” shit?
What’s got you so pissed about “a false sense of camaraderie” anyway? I guess things like “camaraderie” and “understanding” and “having a basic willingness not to intentionally be an asshole to other people” must be really torturous and awful for you.
Brianna,
“The gay movement I know opposes and corrects stereotypical thinking through education. The reactionary “LGBT” movement enshrines those stereotypes.”
Huh, and the people who consider the two not to be all that separate would be, what, people who do both? Or maybe we could be grown ups that don’t put everything in black and white terms?
DR, same post,
“As others have pointed out, this discussion needs to happen, like it or not.”
Oh, I like it. For one, there may be some people with your position who are less thick-headed. For another, I find ranting like this pretty fun (I guess that’s obvious).
Ima Kominatcha
None of the labels work for me. The idea of a named designation from academic,
group, agreed upon consensus, all of them I refute. The indigenous peoples in Central Africans in the Ituri forest are called Pygmies, this is not what they call themselves. If I was pressed at gunpoint I would say that I am a non-op transexual, although I never dress as a woman. Every person on the planet who is male has a woman trapped inside of him, and every woman has a male. Most
of us are liars and conformists. Before the withering touch of the western mindset most cultures understood, provided for, and exalted what was known as the third sex. I contend that any way you define yourself, by your race, gender,
age, occupation, ALL are false and limited.
Laconic Coil
@DR: I can’t get married to my girlfriend in my home state. My sister can’t get married to her girlfriend in the same state. I’m a cisgendered female, my sister so happens to be trans. You really wanna say that her marriage struggle is different? They say the same thing to her at the courthouse that they say to me. We can talk about that we both got called “dyke” in high school, that we both played volleyball and were often taunted with insults about our sexual orientation when we traveled with our teams, and that, oh yeah, we both had to come out to our parents. She just got to do it twice. Your condescending tone ridden with distaste for trans people is really kinda like fingernails across a chalkboard; somehow i don’t think you’d have the guts to say much of what you say to my sister’s face, but people who foster discrimination do after all tend to be cowards.
I know you have some specific issue with trans people, DR, which you never manage to elucidate to any extent in any of these threads other than not liking them for some reason we’re supposed to magically understand as cis queers. I know it scores you points with the transphobic Dan Savage set and the belief that somehow our rights will come faster if we push those people off the bus; this in fact seems to be the root synthesis of transphobia in the queer community.
I think if you look through history you will see how well that has worked. Why should we repeat history and pitch “those people” when this strategy has not as yet worked for any community seeking rights in North America? I’m all ears here.
dvd-junkie
So, for the sake of people who’d abuse and thow stones at those who are different, people should stop being different. And become pod people themselves.
Dollie
@Laconic Coil: Thank you for saying it better than I ever could!
Though trans individuals have a couple different battles to fight, the reason we are all fighting seems one in the same. As a queer woman, I am more than proud to fight along side my trans brothers and sisters.
JoeyO'H
I would be best to assume that this man/woman/man did not go through proper psychological evaluations. He/she can’t seem to make up his/her mind, suffering from some mental disabilty.
Just because this person, now Charles, felt he didn’t like the way femal hormones made him moody, it was time to go back to the sex he was born with? Charles is obviously an unstable person to begin with.
Just because Charles flipped flopped back and forth, he feels gender reassignement should be outlawed, says something about him and his lack of compassion for those who feel trapped in the wrong sex. Just because he made many mistakes does not mean all should pay the price for his own insanity.
DR
@Laconic Coil: Are you done being a victim yet? I do not believe that we are a community and the reasons a T cannot marry are different than a same-sex couple. End of discussion. You can project whatever feelings you like on me and anyone else who doesn’t agree eith the pc nonsense that we’re one big happy family, but we’re not and should not be forced to be.
Hypocrites.
@DR: so…you just hate them because you like to?
Alex
Someone doesn’t understand sexism at all…
Lucas
@Deena Chais:
Well said, specially the part about being “outlaws” and all that crappy terms used to define everything in the LGBT comunity nowadays. Imagine the impact on a 13 year old, trying to know more about himself and how the world sees him, reading this kind of drivel on the internet? It can only worsen any kind of depression.
And what is a cisgendered person? Some of the posts here are barely readable filled with so much academic made terms I can’t understand half of what is written. Or maybe it’s because english is not my first language…
FoolMe1
@Deena Chais: Now that isn’t what you said – you said “gay people don’t mutilate themselves…”. This is a common way of telling trans people we shouldn’t have surgeries. I merely drew a parallel to surgeries that are fairly common among some gay men. Surgeries that get no attention, no criticism, and no feigned “outrage” or “concern” from within the GLB.
FoolMe1
@DR: “As others have pointed out, this discussion needs to happen, like it or not.”
Yeah it does, and I guarantee you the cis GLB won’t like it one bit.
redball
@Deena Chais:
“The “laws” of which you speak are only beliefs held by some.”
Fail. LGBT still do not receive equal protections & rights under the law. We are outside of the law because in many ways we are discriminated against by law.
OUTside of the law. Outlaw. ‘Sall I’m sayin’. It’s partly a play on words; I don’t feel the need to explain any further as this is info readily available elsewhere.
BubbasBack
that’s one ugly, wacko crazy tranny!
Burp.
DillonS
I as a gay man have more in common with the ‘T’ in ‘LGBT’ than I have in common with the ‘dope’ in ‘DR’.
ait10101
Confused, isn’t he? Or she as the case may be. Accept her as she is, is the best solution. No blame, no criticism.
Laconic Coil
@DR: I’m curious if you read any of my bleating or if you just went and affixed your buzzword terms to it because I may have accidentally made a point or two that you can’t refute with anything other than another broadside of your misanthropic loathing for trans people. You say that the reasons that a “T cannot marry are different than a same-sex couple” (don’t bother calling them trans PEOPLE or anything) when in fact i’m telling you in as many words that i can cite that my fat cisgender ass can’t get married are the exact same bloody reason my sister can’t marry her girlfriend in the eyes of the law in the State of Oregon.
To be precise, the Oregon Constitution says that: ” Section 5a. Policy regarding marriage. It is the policy of Oregon, and its political subdivisions, that only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or legally recognized as a marriage.” I don’t see anything about trans people in there and it certainly hasn’t become a magic loophole allowing her around the same law that chains us.
I’m no victim; in fact, DR, you seem to be the one running around with quite the martyr complex, but clearly your regard for facts is somehow clouded by your need to impugn a group of people that you bear animus towards and yet you can’t offer even the most remedial explanation as to why.
DillonS
@Laconic Coil: agreed!
DR
@Laconic Coil:
Yes, I read your post, and I 100% disagree with it. You make some nice appeals to emotion, but I’m not sure you know the law you cite in your second post. Either way, I will once again remind you that even the transgendered community agrees that the issues aren’t the same; however, this post will stick solely with legal issues because that’s surprisingly the easiest to address.
From a legal perspective, for example, why do you think there is all that working towards a “trans-inclusive ENDA” if gender identity was just an offshoot of sexual orientation? Or trans-inclusive hate crimes laws, civil rights legislation, inclusion in DOMA, etc? Could it be because legally the two aren’t the same? The answer is “yes”. The transgendered community clearly recognizes that the process involved with gender identity and the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation merits specific protections under the law. It’s very clear that the transgendered community does not simply see gender identity as an offshoot of sexual orientation.
But here are some more legal examples to back up my assertions…
The US Supreme Court has held that laws impacting GLB citizens are to be subjected to rational basis. However, as the ACLU notes, there has not been a ruling by the USSCt regarding transgendered persons and what level of scrutiny they are subject to; are they examined like GLBs or like gender issues? In the only major ruling, which came from the 6th Circuit (I believe), gender identity actually gets a higher level of scrutiny that the GLB community (Smith v City of Salem).
In cases dealing with gender expression and gender stereotyping, my jurisdiction has explicitly stated (as have others), that you cannot piggyback sexual orientation onto a claim of discrimination based on gender expression. You can be as gay as a three dollar bill, but if you get fired from your job for being gay, you don’t get to claim that your sexual orientation is part of your gender expression and claim relief. The only way you get relief is if, while employed, you were discriminated against due to gender stereotypes.
And lest we forget, to address the marriage issue, in many states (all? I’m not 100% sure since it’s not my issue), a post-operative transgendered person is considered to be of the gender to which he or she has been reassigned; only then do you have any claim to the same-sex marriage equality issue. In PA, if you get surgery, change your birth certificate, etc, it doesn’t matter what you were born, it only matters what the court documents say you are. So if you’re born a man, transition to a woman, you can marry a man if that is your attraction. And before you wax philosophical about gender reassignment surgery, that’s your choice to have it or not, and any disputes you have with whether or not your insurance company will pay for it is relating to your gender identity, not your sexual orientation.
Do you see some pretty damned big examples of the major differences between gender identity and sexual orientation or will you still insist, in the face of the law, that these are the same issues?
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t demand tans-inclusive laws since sexual orientation and gender identity are not the same thing, but then say they are when it suits you. That’s called “intellectual dishonesty”.
I cannot relate to any of this. Get over it. You can claim it’s animus if that makes you sleep better at night, I don’t particularly care. But I know that legally, socially, psychologically, and culturally, we are not the same.
Michael
They have sex? How?
DillonS
@DR: Boo-freakin-hoo. You do realize how pathetic you sound right now, don’t you? These are the same kind of arguments used by straight narow-minded morons who ‘just don’t get’ this gay thing; and because they don’t get it, then it just isn’t important.
I said it before: as a gay man have more in common with the ‘T’ in ‘LGBT’ than I have in common with the ‘dope’ in ‘DR’. I know that socially, psychologically, and culturally you and I are not the same. Thank the gods for small miracles.
kyals84
wow lot of LGB/T separatist talk >.>
How many trans people lived as a LGB identity before realizing they were T (tons). Or how many, once coming out as T, essentially became LGB (tons). Seemingly due to having lived on both sides of the gender spectrum there are automatically overlaps and trans people are LGB at some point. Tho I am not trying to label people I speak more on a broad society view and how our orientations compared to gender at the time situate us and the labels that normally follow. Frankly most trans people end up being LGB at some point in their life, (whether they chose to embrace the community or not).
I understand some trans people who are straight are striving for a heteronormative life and don’t want that association but… most are strongly active in the LGBT community. I actually like having the community being there… I have gained a ton of support from it and I try to / continue to aim to put back in more of my own when I can.
I can’t help but feel a lot of the separatist talk is because some people think trans people are weird and don’t wanna be associated with that >.>.
I also wanna quesiton something I keep seeing said.
*** TRANSITION IS NOT ALL ABOUT SURGERY, MOST TRANS PEOPLE ONLY EVER USE HORMONES, **SOME** GET GENITAL SURGERY BUT IT IS NOT WHAT MAKES YOU TRANS *** sheesh >.>
I have *NEVER* done a cosmetic or trans related surgery in my life. Stop decrying our identity down to people who go out and get themselves cut up >.>…
kyals84
@DR: regardless if you feel you had anything in common or not I do not see what you think needs to be changed.
You are gay still even if the lgbt label is there, it doesn’t remove the other label.
Would you like gay trans men banned from your gay spaces? Is that the split you are aiming at? I am truly confused what your goals are in all this.
Maybe you feel trans people deserve no legal protections, or while you deserve the right to gay marry gay trans people do not? I cannot figure out your goals. I am truly confused. You keep arguing we are not the same but do not say why this matters and what you want changed.
You want me to say you are not trans? Your definitely not trans. There you got the clear statement, I separated us, go on to the sunset and be free! 😀
Laconic Coil
@DR: A ruling from the Sixth Circuit means about as much to SCOTUS as someone offering to pay me for coffee in Euros: I can take it, and it’s persuasive, but I can be all HELL NO and tell them to go back where they came from. SCOTUS has not shown a great love for following USCoA opinions on any facet of queer law unless Scalia is trying to justify us all being perverts.
Now, as for my wanting gender reassignment, no thank you. Not my cup of tea, yanno. The fact that you are missing this point makes it even more obvious that you’re skimming a post without reading for actual content, which is wonderful for summing up an argument, but you still can’t explain your animus, which is what it is. The fact that you can flank your personal biases with weasel word statements with no actual citation to what trans people are saying (seriously, not even a token Julia Serano quote pulled out of context? …weak) means that you’re trying the wink-wink-nudge-nudge dogwhistle statements that I’m supposed to hear as a privileged cis white girl who’s a dyke. I suppose I just can’t hear it because I don’t do what the HRC tells me to or follow behind Barney Frank because he can’t stand trans people. I make up my own damn mind, thank you.
I think the Oregon Constitution is incredibly clear here. Then again, I am a third-year law student at the best-ranked law school in Oregon, so perhaps that mandatory class on the Oregon Constitution led to my knowing very little about the Constitution which I quoted above. You can say it’s emotional, but I can go to the Lane County Clerk with my beloved girlfriend this afternoon and get the same damn answer my sister and her equally beloved girlfriend will get: the Oregon Constitution prohibits same-sex marriages. There’s no loophole for trans people; she can’t yank out an amended birth certificate and say she can get married now, because of this dumbass law which hurts us all.
You can say our oppressions are unlinked, but you can’t justify your issues with trans people, why you can’t seem to even refer to them as people, or, oh yeah, what the upside is with tossing my own flesh and blood off the bus to get my own rights. Is that last part an emotional argument? Hell yes. Guess what, DR? An unjustifiable animus, like what you have toward trans people, is the same thing that Olson and Boies say the State of California engaged toward us all as marriage-seeking queers. You still fail to explain your animus, probably because you know it is indeed unjustifiable.
DR
@kyals84:
Our community cannot support these constant additions to being gay, lesbian or bisexual. That’s my whole point. This whole “sexual outlaw” concept of commonalities is pointless. Let the trans community deal with its issues, let the GLB community deal with its own issues, and maybe one day everyone has equal rights.
@Laconic Coil:
“A ruling from the Sixth Circuit means about as much to SCOTUS as someone offering to pay me for coffee in Euros: I can take it, and it’s persuasive, but I can be all HELL NO and tell them to go back where they came from. SCOTUS has not shown a great love for following USCoA opinions on any facet of queer law unless Scalia is trying to justify us all being perverts.”
I suggest you reread a few cases like Lawrence and Romer. Claiming the USSCt is not helpful to the GLB community is absolutely disingenuous. The Justices may not be wearing rainbow robes just yet, but they’ve given us some pretty good rulings in the last few years.
The reason I brought up the 6th Circuit is to draw attention to the fact that there has NEVER been a major legal decision addressing transgender issues before the USSCt, no one has any idea what level of scrutiny the transgender community would be subjected to, and gee, that’s a difference between GLB and T. Pretty simple.
“the Oregon Constitution prohibits same-sex marriages. There’s no loophole for trans people; she can’t yank out an amended birth certificate and say she can get married now, because of this dumbass law which hurts us all.”
Apparently PA is more progressive than Oregon (seriously? wow. Considering most of PA is called “Kentucky”, this surprises me.), because in PA, she CAN yank out her amended birth certificate and get a marriage license.
Yet another trans issue different from gay issues. Varies from state to state. If Oregon actually recognized the amended birth certificate, she could get married to someone of the opposite sex. Yet again, this shows how T issues are different from GLB issues.
We as a community don’t have the resources, political power, cash, etc to go around addressing the issues of every group which is “non-heteronormative”. We’re killing ourselves trying to do so because the basic issues are not the same.
Let the transgender community work on its issues, let the GLB community work on its issues, and maybe at some point something will actually happen at the state and federal levels which will benefit all of us, because right now, we’re spending so much time, energy and cash as a community to help everyone that we’re not accomplishing a damned thing because of how many issues we need to address.
Deena Chais
@DR:
You should wear all of the name-calling and personal abuse as a badge of honor. Other than the argument that we should define ourselves based on the beliefs held by our adversaries, name-calling is pretty much all the proponents of the myth of LGBT have to offer. They can’t justify it logically or morally, so they attack.
@Redball:
“Fail. LGBT still do not receive equal protections & rights under the law. We are outside of the law because in many ways we are discriminated against by law.
OUTside of the law. Outlaw. ‘Sall I’m sayin’. It’s partly a play on words.”
The fail is yours. An outlaw is a criminal. Play on words all you like, but try to remember that words have an impact in the real world. Gays and lesbians have not been outlaws in all 50 states for 50 years, and today are outlaws in none. Which only shows that it is better to challenge and defeat anti-gay ideas rather than embrace them and define ourselves around them.
The LGBT cult’s desire to return us a marginalized status of 50 years ago only shows how reactionary it is. Your point on anti-discrimination is also a fail. The absence of anti-discrimination laws don’t make us “outlaws”, and it doesn’t require anyone to discriminate against us. However,even if we accept your premise for the sake of argument, the fact is that we have anti-discrimination protections in 21 states and 150 major cities in which most of the US population lives. And if it hadn’t been for HRC’s insistence on covering drag performers, the entire US would have been covered this year. So LGBT doesn’t just presume that gays are marginalized, it actually works to bring about that result.
redball
That’s why it’s a queer theory point and not something you tell a 5 year old child :). Please don’t tell your kindergartner he or she is a “gender outlaw.”
And I’m not sure if you are actually claiming that we are not discriminated against by law. I sure hope not. The lack of marriage equality, for example, means that gay couples get taxed more than straight couples (unless there is a large disparity in the two partners’ incomes). No marriage equality means we also miss out on a bunch of other rights related to estate planning, etc, etc, as this 2009 nytimes article shows (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/your-money/03money.html). And that’s just marriage equality.
At the end of the day, it’s also a question of solidarity. I think you’ve made the point you personally feel no solidarity with the T part of LGBT. Hopefully your view will continue to be just a minority view within the LGBT community.
Deena Chais
@Kyals84:
“regardless if you feel you had anything in common or not I do not see what you think needs to be changed.
You are gay still even if the lgbt label is there, it doesn’t remove the other label.”
But the point is why are the two being linked by definition and identity in the first place? You could take any group – smokers, farmers, Houstonians, Tea Partiers, whatever – and add them to LGB. The result wouldn’t remove the word “gay” from usage, but it would falsely proclaim an identity that has no basis in reality. And the rest of the world would be entirely justified in thinking that there was some fundamental linkage where none existed.
It isn’t that LGB people and trans people have nothing in common. The point is that there is no legitimate basis for concocting a solitary “community” that captures and misrepresents both. The fact that some gay basher or trans basher may link the two together in his troubled mind is not the basis on which we should be defining ourselves.
julie
@Brianna J.: I’m a transgender lesbian. You should give us trans-folk back Stonewall and Pride Parades because we started the riot.
It is sickening how you can so easily throw us under the bus like larger groups have done to the LGBT community.
David Ehrenstein
@Deena Chais: Honey we’re ALL outlaws.
Get used to it.
Deena Chais
I don’t know about 5 year olds, but I am pretty sure that kids 10-17 have access to something called the internet and another thing called TV. If we promote the idea that gay=gender outlaw, then they will get it and internalize it, just as they internalize the other form of homophobia coming from straights. We should be helping them to love themselves and to feel optimistic for the future, not adding to their burdens in order to feed the self-image of queer activists.
I would ask you to consider that LGBT shows great disrespect not only for LGBs but for Ts, and that there are many Ts who are just as appalled that it has been imposed on them. A trans woman is a woman and a trans man is a man, and they deserve to have their identity fully respected and recognized.
A 13 year old trans kid should learn that when he or she googles “trans”. LGBT suggests that a trans person’s status as male or female is somehow linked to sexual orientation, i.e., that a trans woman is not genuinely a woman and a trans man not genuinely a man, but rather are really a kind of a conflicted homosexual who resolve inner conflicts over sexuality by identifying with the opposite sex.
Redball says:
“At the end of the day, it’s also a question of solidarity. I think you’ve made the point you personally feel no solidarity with the T part of LGBT. Hopefully your view will continue to be just a minority view within the LGBT community.”
I have made no such point. On the contrary, I do think that gay and trans people can and should be allies and show solidarity. But solidarity is not identity. We show solidarity with the African American civil rights movement, the disability rights movement, and the women’s movement, and often work closely with them. But that does not mean that we create some new hybrid identity that purports to meld all gays with all African Americans, all disabled people, and all women.
redball
@Deena Chais: I think confusion amongst the youth is a theme in your response. Yes, we shouldn’t have trans kids thinking trans identity is not valid and is some sort of tool for “getting out” of same-sex attraction. And we don’t want gay kids thinking they are somehow demented or perverted just because they are stigmatized or b/c Kate Bornstein or I like to use the word “outlaw” to understand state-sanctioned discrimination. I guess the question is how to avoid the confusion amongst youth: by separating T from LGB as a movement or by educating the masses harder and relentlessly even as we fight for our rights harder and relentlessly. I personally think we have a lot more to lose than to gain by dropping T from LGB as a movement. But here, it really does seem that we are at the level of personal judgment calls.
j
DR, get laid. I’ll pay for your rent boy, but please get laid. Then, stop being a prick. Also @Laconic Coil: you’re a hero. You need a blog or something. If you have one I’ll read it. Alot.
Deena Chais
@David B:
You’re very brave. A 63-year old man, with a long career as a film critic and researcher under his belt, writing in from some nice liberal city to declare us all outlaws. I am sure that in the film world, it is a real plus to be considered a rebel. Re-imagining yourself as a “queer” or an “LGBT” gender outlaw feeds your ego, just as it fed the egos and careers of the white, urban queer academics who pushed these ideas in the 1990s.
But, hard as it may be, put aside the James Dean act for a moment and try to think about someone else who isn’t as privileged as yourself. As I said above, the vulnerable among us, like the bullied gay kids that we have heard about recently, need emotional and psychological sustenance from the gay community, not confirmation of their fears of a life of conflict and hostility. These brave kids are suffering b/c their peers and their community see them as outsiders, the other. However boring and conventional it may seem to you, we need to stand by them, support them, and let them know that there is a place for them.
Deena Chais
@Redball:
It is about youth, but not only youth. All vulnerable gay and trans people, including working class and people of color, are hurt by this bourgeois construct. The folks who invented it and pushed it on us decreed it to be good, without the benefit of debate or input from the lowly subjects who have to live with the identity being handed to them. We should have the debate now that we should have had 15 years ago. If you win that debate, so be it. Either way, the result will be the product of critical thought, not fiat.
Bill Homans
@Michael:
Undoubtedly with a penile prosthesis. SHE cums, anyway.
missanthrope
“But I guess that can only be pointed out by a T person, right? It’s ok for Chaz Bono to go on national television and talk about the differences between sexual orientation and gender identity to the straight folk, but it’s apparently a bad thing when the male homos and male bis raise the very same point among ourselves.”
That doesn’ make sense, trans people are usually thought as “gay” in a general sense by most of the truly clueless. Being is pretty well understood. If you want to talk about gender stereotypes that are applied to gay men, well then go back full circle where we’re talking about how both of our communities are stigmatized by gender stereotypes, etc.
“Well, the discussion is going to continue to happen, like it or not”
For another ten years maybe. I see a real generational divide among the in the community. I don’t know how old you are, but I’ve found that this is a issue for people over 30 or so. This just isn’t an issue for most people under thirty from my experience (disclosure: I’m 29). The younger generation of LGB people are just not really interested in definitions or how thier associations might define them. I can get way people who grew up in the before the 1990s feel they need to do that, back then a gay person had to literally fight to establish thier identity and then defend it, the gay community was much more insular and stigmatized. So people can be threatened by being associated as transsexuals, but I think as both the trans and LGB communities gain more acceptance and become more confident, the whole uneasiness behind “LGBT” will become a thing of the past.
Laconic Coil
@DR: “If Oregon actually recognized the amended birth certificate, she could get married to someone of the opposite sex. Yet again, this shows how T issues are different from GLB issues.”
GIRL. I’m not sure where what i’ve said has confused the issue, but my ***SISTER*** is a ***GIRL***. You know, sugar and spice and everything nice…oddly, I’m none of that, but nobody tries to legislate my gender. Mmm, cis privilege. She’s not trying to get married to someone of the opposite sex, she’s trying to get married to her partner of 8 years, another female. I think i said this, like, twice. If you’re missing the point that she is my sister, she is a lesbian, and like me was an out lesbian in freaking high school (with the wonderful consequences that come to you even in Portland F**king Oregon), consider yourself apprised. If you’re trying to subtly degender her, you’ve clearly stooped to the level of intellectual discourse that is found on 4chan. You also can’t seem to explain rationally the reason you want to distance us from trans people, so i’m just gonna assume that being a raging transphobe makes you feel somehow satisfied. We all have our perversions, it’s just that mine don’t harm people non-consensually…yours does. If for some reason you’d like to address the call of the question that I’ve asked twice as to justifying your broad animus toward trans people, go for it. I’m all ears. But when one avoids the call of the question, it usually means something…
And Romer was a narrow, cabined case much like Lawrence. It voided an anti-queer law that was specifically targerted; it did not expand the scope of the law’s protection in any way, shape, or form, instead cleaving out a narrow removal of a law that particularly targeted gay people in its design and enforcment. With any luck the CA Amendment 8 case, should it ever get to SCOTUS, will be treated the same.
In the modern era, especially after the Warren Court, SCOTUS does basically legislate, for better (Roe v. Wade) or for worse (Bush v. Gore). It does meddle in things it once said it wouldn’t meddle in.
Your fear that a rights decision will go against trans people would, to a mind not obsessed with a targeted dislike of trans people. probably imply that maybe, just maybe, we should work our asses off to present a united front and work for all of our rights. But if you throw my sister and her ilk under the bus…you might believe it will buy you some security, and it might for a while, but you only strengthen those who just hate us all because you threw them a sacrifice. We have, for too long, been silent in the face of negative, hateful media portrayals of trans people, especially trans women. We have co-opted hateful words to refer to them. Congratulations, we’ve become an oppressor group!
Our privilege as cis people should not lead to it being used against our queer friends who aren’t. Think of it as a grenade. You can throw it at the system or you can throw it at the oppressed class. You haven’t given me a lick of evidence that trans people are somehow deserving of your disdain.
@j: Thanks for the plaudits, but I’m anything but a hero. I just look at how well the HRC’s divide-and-conquer strategy is hurting us all and it angers me. I listen to Barney Frank saying awful things about trans women and i shudder. (Sometimes, I just go hug my sis for good measure.) We are lucky; out of 7 children, 5 of whom are openly queer, none of us have ever suffered anything worse than name-calling. Our wonderful, loving parents have never rejected or disdained us; our extended family has never been anything but supportive. I want the world to be this good for us all. I look at Angie Zapata’s and Andrea Waddell’s senseless murders and don’t have to look too far back through queer history to see that people killed those of us who are cis queers. I can see the patterns, the threads, the reality that we are the same in the struggle even if our exact details are sometimes a little different. The mechanisms of oppression, social, emotional, and legal, all center around the same actions and reactions within society.
As for a blog, I’m laying low for the balance of my time at Big Green Duck University, as I’m working in a couple of legal clinics and Lane County is a small, insular place…but I promise someday soon. Thanks for being at least one vote that someone would read it!
missanthrope
“The reason I brought up the 6th Circuit is to draw attention to the fact that there has NEVER been a major legal decision addressing transgender issues before the USSCt, no one has any idea what level of scrutiny the transgender community would be subjected to, and gee, that’s a difference between GLB and T. Pretty simple.”
What do you mean, ruling as a protected class or ruling on a trans issue at all? If it’s the former your wrong, see Shroer v. Library of Congress or Smith v. City of Salem (Ohio)
And you also have claimed that courts have not ruled in favor of gay people when it comes to sex stereotyping under Price Waterhouse, but then why did the Third Cir. Ct. rule that a gay man could sue under sex stereotyping in Prowel v. Wise Business Forms?
DR
Missanthrope,
I already acknowledged Smith’s holding that transgendered people are treated under the same level of scrutiny as gender in the 6th Circuit. I did not address the Title 7 claim in my initial post as I was focusing on the Equal Protection and Due Process arguments. We still have no idea what the USSCt will say when and if the time comes regarding a Constitutional Equal Protection or Due Process claim made by a transgendered person regarding analysis; will it be rational basis like that used when addressing claims made by GLBs or intermediate scrutiny, like that used in gender claims?
I am familiar with Prowel (it’s actually the case to which I alluded in post 78). He didn’t have a cause of action for being gay, he had a cause of action based on his effeminate mannerisms, which is a claim under gender stereotyping, as I noted. The Third Circuit relied heavily on Bibby v Philadelphia Coca Cola Bottling Company (see cite and quotes below) to differentiate between claims based on the mere fact of being gay versus how one expresses one’s gender.
Simply being gay, the court concluded in Bibby (and this was rehashed in Prowel) is insufficient to state a claim under Title 7 for gender discrimination, while discrimination based on not following gender norms in self-expression is an actionable claim. The fact is that a straight but effeminate man could have the same cause of action as an effeminate gay man.
Prowel’s gayness is a tangential issue on the gender stereotyping claim; Title 7 will not protect you from losing your job for being a masculine gay man fired for being a masculine gay man on the grounds of gender stereotyping. See Bibby v. Phila. Coca Cola Bottling Co., 260 F. 3d 257 – Court of Appeals, 3rd Circuit 2001:
-“Moreover, he did not claim that he was harassed because he failed to comply with societal stereotypes of how men ought to appear or behave or that as a man he was treated differently than female co-workers. His claim was, pure and simple, that he was discriminated against because of his sexual orientation. No reasonable finder of fact could reach the conclusion that he was discriminated against because he was a man” p. 264
-“Whatever the sexual orientation of a plaintiff bringing a same-sex sexual harassment claim, that plaintiff is required to demonstrate that the harassment was directed at him or her because of his or her sex. Once such a showing has been made, the sexual orientation of the plaintiff is irrelevant. In addition, once it has been shown that the harassment was motivated by the victim’s sex, it is no defense that the harassment may have also been partially motivated by anti-gay or anti-lesbian animus.” (p. 265)
Title 7 doesn’t protect GLBs who act in accordance with “traditional gender expression”.
@Laconic Coil:
The fact you call Romer limited, while somewhat correct, is disingenuous. It was the first case where the USSCt held that you cannot strip a group of protections from a specific class of people, which Amendment 2 did. I find it ironic that you’re so quick to dismiss Romer and then hope that the USSCt treats Perry in the same fashion!
As for the rest of your rants, I’m not even dignifying them with a response.
kyals84
@DR: You are pathetic. “As for the rest of your rants, I’m not even dignifying them with a response.”: Because you have no justified response.
Laconic Coil
@DR: Thank you for admitting you can’t even come up with a retort, even if your own hatred prevents you from being able to put it in so many words. It does help remind us that the vocal, small minority of transphobic cis queers don’t have a leg to stand on against the larger majority of us who are over it.
And if you disdain “correct but disingenuous,” you clearly should know better than to say three words to a law student.
koko
If you have the money to do it, then go ahead. Your mistake is your mistake. If you buy a car and decide you really don’t like it, is it someone else’s fault? No. You were the one who chose to buy the damn car in the first place. I don’t think there should be a lot of restrictions. Of course, you should know what you’re getting in to.
But if you can afford it, do whatever you want to your body. It isn’t anyone else’s business.
Sarah
He says he changed back because he didn’t like how hormones made him moody, I’m sorry, but what a dick! He should have been on hormones for at least 12 months before any surgery, so he either liked them enough at the time, or lied to the doctors, now he wants people that are happy changing physical sex to not be able to either, what an idiot!
SG
The PC nazis if they are trans love to flip out and play the cisgender privileges card even though many of them do like to pretend that they have always been the opposite gender of what they were born and always will be despite having surgery and taking loads of hormones like candy. These people do not pass as cisgender people even if they want to pretend that they do.
To be honest I think the trans need to find their own movement. Trans has nothing to do with orientation and frankly, they hold our movement back. Its time for our movement to go GLB and to let them take their attention elsewhere. I am disturbed that they are part of our movement. We talk until we are blue in the face about dropping conventional gender roles, just for them to turn around and switch genders because they were “born in the wrong body.” No, I am sorry, the community talks out of both sides of its mouth on this one!
Further more, take a good hard look at what they teach. St Louis’s own “TransMafia” as it is known or “transhaven” as the trannies call it teaches that it is GOOD that they are classified as having a Psych illness. Many trans people want INSURANCE to cover this “disability”… it is also wrong to say that a child is Trans and that he/she should be placed on hormone therapy before puberty or the earlier the better.
Now tell me, when the GLB community consists of many people who really DO have family values and who DO want FULL equality, why do we include a community that wants to ride on the backs of insurance companies and SSI as “disabled” and that wants to put children on hormone therapy? Why are we inclusive of a group that wants OUR equality but demands different treatment??
Then there is the fact that Trans people love to play the victim card and say that everyone that is Cisgendered has it so much easier than they do and that we have some privileges that they do not have and will never have.
Sarah
SG you’re absolutely right, but why stop at just removing the T from LGBT? Let’s get rid of the B too, if those people can’t make up their mind what side of the fence they want to sit on, or are just being plain greedy, then they don’t do the cause any good either, and while you’re at it, get rid of the L too, I mean two women together? They’re only titilating straight men and “experimenting” in college, and don’t have anything to do with “gay” issues really.
When you’re at it though, can you remind the brainless morons that’ll beat the shit out of this transsexual lesbian that I’m nothing to do with the gay movement please, that’ll be a real comfort to me while I’m eating my dinner out of a straw.
SG
Sarah-Please save your ultra PC rhetoric for people who actually care.
I never said that Bisexuals or Lesbians should be excluded from being paired with gay men. These are all sexual orientations and have nothing to do with someone’s GENDER dysphoria or if they are Intersex or a hermaphrodite or if they are trans.
These things all have to do with gender and not with someone’s sexual orientation.
As a gay man I have more in common with other bisexuals, straight people, lesbians, and other gay men than I do with Intersex/hermaphrodites or trans people.
Bisexuals, gay men, and lesbians have always been linked socially and politically and they always will be. Trans people never have been linked with us in the GLB community.
I never said that Trans people deserve to be bashed or hurt, so do not claim that I did. I’m sure that you being supposedly “lesbian” enrages cisgender Dykes but you’d like that.
What this article is about is more common than Trans people want to admit. There are Trans people who get surgery and then decide that it is not for them. There is a documentary about TS women who got all of the surgery and hormones and then decided that it was not for them.
Sarah
SG – I don’t care who’s pissed of about my sexuality, because my sexuality is my business. I’m the least PC person there is.
You obviously missed my point. The idiots of this world make no distinction between a gay man, a bix man, lesbian, bi woman or trans person, we’re all just queers to them, so we have a common enemy.
Also, the LGBT community has been together for years, and just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean everyone else suddenly has to agree with you.
FWIW, “your” gay movement at Stonewall, wouldn’t have happened without the trans community, after all they we’re the ones kicking up a fuss at the time that started the riot at the time.
For all your claims of there being more trans people who regret having surgery, it’s always the same few examples that get trotted out each time. If you knew the hoops we had to jump through just to be us, just to be treated as near-human, it’s not as simple as just “coming out”, and then when you get attacked within your own community???
You don’t want to be associated with trans people? Fair enough, don’t then, but don’t spread your BS about me and people like me when you’ve no idea of the facts.
Joann Prinzivalli
@DR:
Perhaps you overlooked the gender stereotyping ruling in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins 490 US 228 (1989). I grant that Ann Hopkins was not trans, but that ruling has been used precedentially in some later cases that do involve trans people.
Dave
Sarah, Stonewall was not started by Trans people.
It has been shown that the TG woman Sylvia Rivera who claimed to have started the Stonewall riots was really never there at Stonewall even though he/she claimed that he/she was.
I have noticed that Trans people seem to LOVE to rewrite the history of gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals of both genders to include themselves.
They did this with Stonewall. People who actually were at Stonewall during the riots have said how Sylvia Rivera was never there and how contrary to the rewriting of history by trans people there were no drag queens or TG people there the first night the riots happened.
In fact, there is no evidence that Sylvia Rivera was at the Stonewall either the first night of the riots or any of the subsequent nights that week. No contemporary account of the Stonewall rebellion or riots makes any mention of either Sylvia Rivera or Rey/Ray Rivera.
Sarah
Well Dave, I wasn’t there, I doubt many of us here where there, so we know about as much about that as we do about the moon landings, but this thread isn’t about being gay, it’s about someone who used their power, money and influence to get something that they then later regretted, and now wants to prevent others from making the same “mistake”.
He is in effect claiming to be “ex-trans”, that sound familiar?
I’m guessing that most the people here too, are in the USA where attitudes WILL be very different from those that I personally experience in the UK.
I didn’t ask to be trans, I didn’t ask to be a lesbian, it would be easier for me if I weren’t as then I could be “normal”, but who’s normal? We are all persecuted simply for being ourselves, and that’s plain wrong.
Laconic Coil
@SG: I see you changed what you post under, DR. Still waiting on your explanation of your specific dislike towards trans people, which you seem to manifest solely upon trans women.
“I’m sure that you being supposedly “lesbian” enrages cisgender Dykes but you’d like that.” Hi. I’m a cisgendered lesbian. I’m sitting across from another one, and i texted a couple of others. So, um, four of us, at least, aren’t enraged in the slightest. Frankly, your obsession with this discourse is nigh to that of Lisa Vogel or Janice Raymond. It displays an unhealthy level of scrutiny towards trans women.
Most of us are over it. Those of us who are cis queers who aren’t over it are as much a hazard to trans people, especially trans women, as some douchebag street harasser. Those of us who are over it can no longer be silent and by extension complicit. In other words, you’ve got blood on your hands, too, SG/DR.
(And this is for my dear, departed friend Andrea Waddell. We miss you, sister. Frankly, you’d be snarking this thread harder than me.)
JDC
Ship of Fools:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKh1mOeXfqE
Ezmyrelda
Sounds pretty typical. Because this idiot didn’t think out his choices clearly and find out what hormones are like before he got a sex change he wants to change it for everybody else. He and his wife are utterly deluded. I hope they do not breed.
You are perfectly free to do whatever you want with your own body. Keep your laws and opinions off of mine.
whizzo944
This is how I understand Charles Kane/Samantha Kane/Sam Hashimi’s story. Sam Hashimi was a business man who had a successful businesss for a while, when his business got into difficulties he became depressed and because he is a typical gung-ho Alpha Male business man
used his money and powers of persuasion to get a psychiatrist to sanction a sex-change operation. He spends loads of money on cosmetic surgery to make him look like a woman.
Surprise, he finds himself regretting these decisions, and being the gung-ho Alpha Male business man (?) , can’t be man enough (no pun intended) to admit he has made a HUGE mistake but instead has to find someone, anyone, to blame for “doing this to him”, when the truth of the matter is he asked to have all of this surgery, after all, he was paying for it. So now, the gung-ho Alpha Male business man spends a load more money on surgery to try and reverse his sex-change. No problem for anyone else so far, after all, this is his business. Where it becomes a problem for other people is when this person, who in my opinion must have some serious psychological problems, tries to dictate to anyone else what they can and cannot do with their own lives and bodies. Charles Kane, or whatever your name is this week, do us all a favour and crawl back under your stone. Who the hell do you think you are trying to outlaw sex-change operations?
usatransexual
The escapism thru genderchange helps alot…and yes,theres tons of issues,BUT,IF IT TAKES AWAY the horrible pain n memories,,THEN DO THE SRS ..it does help alot..i call it JECKYLL N HYDE..but,it really does work..INSTEAD of joining a convent,as a,suffering,YOUR JOINING your ESCAPE FANTASY