Apparently, it is not okay here:
But it is okay here:
How did the T get in LGBT?
The 30-year fight for a federal gay civil rights law may fail because activists insist on including rights for transgendered people too. Has gay inclusiveness gone too far too fast?
By John Aravosis
…
[W]e are asked — well, told — to put our civil rights on hold, possibly for the next two decades, until America catches up on its support for trans rights, a lot of gay people don’t feel sufficiently vested in trans rights, sufficiently vested in the T being affixed to the LGB, to agree to such a huge sacrifice for people they barely know.
I’m just observin’…
No, that’s not true.
I’m more than just observin’.
I”m askin’…
How exactly could it be that in 2007 could someone of approximately the same age as myself and who has been involved in lGbt (the capitalization emphasis and non-emphasis that he clearly preferred via that 2007 Salon item) longer than I have (his Wikipedia page only has items going back to 1997 – which is roughly my vintage – but I’ve seen him brag about having some connection to the pushback against Cracker Barrell from earlier in the 1990s) accept – perhaps honestly, perhaps not – the legitimacy of the concept of “barely know[ing]” trans people?
And I’m never going to stop asking until there is an honest answer.
Neither Norah Vincent nor the sick editorial staff of the Advocate ca. 2000 who allowed her exterminationist manifesto to run in the issue of that magazine that was on the newstands during Pride Week that year could claim to “barely know” trans people. Vincent damn well knew what she was advocating the elimination of – and, as for the sick editors of the magazine? Elsewhere in that same issue was an item on rural LGBTs – yes, T-inclusive – which included this:
By privileging Norah Vincent with the prime real estate of the ‘last word’ op-ed, the Advocate not only showed that they knew us but on whose side it would have been on in the The Hayes Family v. Karen commitment action.
And it damn sure wasn’t Karen’s.
No, not all non-T LGBs would be that callous.
But how many could then accurately claim – much less seven years later – to “barely know” people such as Karen or our issues, literally or just in the abstract?
Perhaps a more important question is somewhat contingent. Even assuming that more than I’m presuming could accurately claim that, why would that be? Who all have been wrapping themselves in the coccoon of permanent employment – in an employment setting completely free of all but the barest tokens of practical, on-the-ground trans-equal-ness – for the last two decades, while ever-so-reflexively proclaiming whenever Ts are excluded or otherwise shit upon that ‘more education is necessary’…
all whilst being as averse to hiring trans people to do the educating as Superman is to kryptonite?
The Human Right Scampaign? Well, that goes without saying – though it nevertheless should continue to be said loudly and often lest it be allowed to successfully rewrite its history of anti-trans bigotry.
But what about…
Hyde works for an organization that not only sees no problem with – in a continuing era of qualified trans attorneys being forced out of the profession due to discrimination – employing a non-trans attorney as its in-house trans expert but also has never really seen a problem with employing a person who got her start in activism not via slick HRC-style ‘incremental progress’ transphobia but by openly and notoriously advocating for employment discrimination against a transsexual woman.
That NGLTF employee?
Sue Hyde.
But what’s a few decades (of privilege, not to mention employment) between friends (or reasonable facsimiles thereof)?
I understand and appreciate the anger that is generated by the outrageous letter to the women of Olivia Records. It’s a personal humiliation to me that I signed such a letter, driven by ignorance and the identity politics of the time. I am deeply regretful and sorry for my participation in the 1977 defaming of Sandy Stone and all trans people. Nothing can make up for that kind of discrimination
Nothing can make up for the discrimination I’ve put up with – from Gay, Inc, from my attempts to get in the door of legal academia, etc. – but a quarter-century of employment from here on out would be a tolerable start.
I know a few dozen trans women who would evince similar toleration.
But we never get that chance.
We (at least those of us who aren’t either pure quislings or tokenized sellouts who snort Gay, Inc. money with Tony Montana-esque abandon in order to shove yet another issue in front of employment anti-discrimination protections for all LGBTs and not just the militarists) get to attempt to create change in our spare time – if we have any after working shit jobs that are 180 degress removed from our educational backgrounds and abilities from which an ‘LGBT’ organization that actually is interested in ‘LGBT’ progress could benefit – while you get to do it for a paycheck.
All of which brings me back to The John.
Make no mistake, The John is clearly on the right side of the prom story (and I have no problem linking to posts of his with which I do agree – and there are some.) To bastardize Lewis Black, he’d have to be fuckin’ brain dead not to be.
Yet he was on the wrong side of the ENDA debacle in 2007 – and time has dissipated the toxic chemicals in the cyber water to the point where one might be tempted to believe that the water is actualy okay to drink….
and okay not to worry about.
After all, no one can clearly see the old trans-exclusion back-stabbery; its 5 1/2 years under the surface now…
down in the depths of memory, swimming in lightless solitude with the gaint squids, the coelacanths, HRC’s gleeful acceptance of the anti-trans exclusions in the ADA and Sue Hyde’s open and notorious advocacy for employment discrimination against a trans woman.
Actuarial tables, entropy and aggravated revisionism has allowed Hyde, her Sister cohorts and those of their 1970s trans-exterminationist ilk to enjoy a Wall Streeter-esque escape from ever having to pay any price for the damage – damage which, politically, has not abated – that they helped to bring about.
The John has been able to seemingly escape the gravitational pull of 2007 simply by virtue of there not having been a serious attempt to push any form of ENDA since.
The lead Democrat on the committee responsible for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act pledged Tuesday morning that the legislation would move before the end of the year.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said during a Center for American Progress event on pensions that he intends to move ENDA before the year’s end.
“I’ve been on ENDA for years — the Employment Non-Discrimination Act — and as chairman of the HELP Committee, I intend to move it this year,” Harkin said. “We’re going to move ENDA this year, so I just want you to know that, OK?”
There is no reason to believe that, as soon as any such serious effort emerges (and the above doesn’t actually seem to be a very serious attempt given that it was almost immediately walked back by an aide who emphasized that the retiring Harkin – who didn’t even blink when the anti-trans provisions were inserted into the ADA two decades ago – has no control over whether the thing would ever come up for a floor vote) and as soon as any weasel with any remote connection Congress decides that a St. Barney-fied ENDA is necessary because expending the energy necessary to line up the votes for a legitimate ENDA might result in missing a few circuit parties or an Olivia cruise, The John won’t just dust off his Greatest Hits of 2007 and, thereafter, expend more energy on keeping ENDA T-free than would ever be necessary to actually educate all who actually need to be educated in order to pass a legitimate ENDA.
And to pre-emptively respond to the champagne-n-caviar crowd: No, trans people are not blameless in all of this.
The blame that trans people share in 2007 and all such debacles is not that we haven’t done the legwork (that meme would be the quintessential example of Gay, Inc. dipping into its own rhetorical stash.)
Rather, it involves history.
It is not that we have no history of being involved (however much that the champagne-n-caviar crowd would like to believe that.)
It is not that that the champagne-n-caviar crowd forgets history or even that we forget our own history (though, sadly, there is a bit of that on occasion.)
Its that we allow the others – including but not limited to the champagne-n-caviar crowd – to forget it…
or, equally insidiously, to pretend that they’ve either forgotten it or never knew it to begin with.
We know that no one in the permanently-employed realm of Gay, Inc. is ever going to offer any form of restitution to trans people – and we have no legal means to compel it, nor are we going to attempt to do so by extra-legal means.
But we have history.
And you’re never going to be allowed to forget it, to erase it or to ever again get away with lying about it.
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