From a comment to an SF Bay Guardian item from prior to the anti-HRC protest:
This issue is about solidarity; the trans community is asking the rest of the queer community to forgo a realistic opportunity so that an affiliated group can share the benifit. We need to ask the question; what is the trans communities history of demonstrating solidarity with others? Unfortunately, it is not a good one. Transgender people have gained the right to get married, and even have their marriages recognised as legal at the federal level; something which the rest of us will not have even if we manage to save our right to marry under state law in November. How did the trans get their right to marry? The record of representations to lawmakers shows that they expoited homophobia to do so; arguing that trans were individuals who accepted that they were ‘biological errors’ that needed to be corrected and adopt the identity of the opposite birth sex.
Interesting that ’69guy’ doesn’t actually engage in any analysis here, eh? Let’s see what he leaves out:
- The number of states where we were able to engage successfully in the legislative process to get what he claims we’ve got.
- A comparison between that number and the number of states where gays and lesbians have been able to do so legislatively.
- How, in the mid-1970s, the openly (and proudly) transphobic gay and lesbian elite ejected trans people and trans issues, thereby forcing us to survive in any way we could (is it any surprise that the actions of Jean O’Leary and Janice Raymond might lead to some transsexuals saying ‘hey, we’re not like them!’?)
- How the legislative backlash to the marriage greed of the successors-in-interest to those gays and lesbians who threw the first stones at us has, in some states, resulted in us losing those rights that ‘69guy’ bitches about us having.
- How Barney Frank and the other missing links between the O’Leary-Raymond transphobia of the 1970s and the Solmonese-Aravosis transphobia of the 21st Century have made their careers on exploiting transphobia.
And ‘69guy’ shills on:
At other levels too the trans community expoits homophobia to gain validation for their assumed identity at the expense of other queers.
When I can see it demonstrated that trans people are in solidarity with gay, lesbian and bi folks, I will support similar sacrifice.
You already support sacrifice.
You support sacrificing us.
You’re an apoligist for the sacrificing of our existing rights that has already occurred.
We’re here. And you – and those you’re an apologist for – owe us.
Get used to it.
