Past, Present, Future

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

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It is always heartening to know that when one stands up for rights, they are not standing alone.

It is often hard, as a transgender person, to feel that you are making progress. I have been an activist within the transgender community for well over a decade. To some, I am well beyond my "sell by" date, remaining in the fray while so many others have long since moved onto other interests.

You may wonder what keeps me going. I simply have a passion to see this nascent community continue to grow in strength. To be honest, I think we can look back and see change within our history and easily compare it to where we may be going.

I'm not going too far back, into discussing Lord Combury, Pope Joan, Contessa d'Eon, Jean d'Arc, or other potential transgender folks through history. This column is only so long, and Leslie Feinberg already wrote a perfectly suitable book covering centuries of history. No, I'm only going back to the last century, and considering where things were in the post-World War II world.

This was a time when the transgender community - if I could even refer to it as such - was indistinguishable from the rest of the queer community. If we go back far enough, there really wasn't a distinction between the various portions of the community, if only because we were all small and hidden: Everyone needed as many allies as we could. In the years immediately following Stonewall - an event that included the transgendered alongside with the rest of the larger community - transpeople made great strides, turning away a number of anti-cross-dressing laws while also winning the right to change gender markers on identity paperwork and even the right to marry. At least in a sizable number of states.

This was not to remain: By the mid-1970s, transgender people were being removed from pride parades, transwomen were being routinely shut out of lesbian spaces, and by the latter parts of the decade society overall was increasing in intolerance towards all parts of the G.L.B.T. community. It would be another decade before transgender people would again - rather grudgingly, at times - be welcomed back into the greater community.

Today, there remain some places where transgender is still viewed with suspicion within the larger community, with the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival still clinging to outdated policies, and transgender people still facing an uphill battle towards acceptance in some community spaces. Even with this, transgender people are largely included within each of the major queer organizations (barring some remaining issues with H.R.C.), and most local groups include "transgender" in their mission statements and the like.

The same is true in the world at large. With the current strength of the conservative right, and sometimes lukewarm acceptance from our allies, some have been loath to push for transgender rights. Likewise, D.O.M.A. laws have undermined transgender marriage rights, and the current administration has paved the way for the loss of identity paperwork alterations.

Nevertheless, the community continues to win victories, largely with local and state gains with anti-­discrimination and hate crime laws. For the first time, a pending Federal hate crime bill, in the House of Representatives, includes transgender people.

Perhaps more important, the transgender community is gaining increased visibility, and is getting more chances to educate others. Transgender-themed news stories are carried in the major media on a regular basis, and much of this media is positive.

One of the other benefits of today is a sizable - and growing - number of highly competent individuals and organizations focusing on the rights of transgender people. It is always heartening to know that when one stands up for rights, they are not standing alone.

All of this makes me rather confident about our future. In spite of the obstacles we still face, I can now foresee things that would have been mere pipe dreams a decade ago.

It is likely that by the next decade, issues of transgender inclusion within the larger community will at last be an issue of the past. If anything, much of the heavy lifting is complete, with the majority of people understanding why transgender people are in the community and most showing a willingness to work together.

I also feel it will be only a matter of time that we will see transgender-inclusive hate crime and anti-discrimination laws in a majority of states. It may still be some time before we see such on a federal level, but we may see such eventually achieved, or made largely moot given wins at the state level. While we still face a seemingly uphill battle over rights that had previously been secured, I strongly suspect that we can secure these, particularly once we see a change in the administration. One cannot move the unmovable, yet the fight for civil rights will not, cannot cease.

Meanwhile, I see transgender organizations growing, becoming vibrant, strong forces for continued community growth. Meanwhile, we already have a number of new transgender activists coming up through the ranks, many of whom will grow into some of our strongest leaders to date.

I do not know if we shall see society fully embrace transgender people in my lifetime, but I could see a time when the transgender are viewed as simply another part of human diversity, rather than some rag-tag group out on the fringes, deserving of both scorn and pity versus true acceptance.

I've seen this community go from nearly nothing, when I first started to look for others like me at the start of the 1990s, to the strong community that has a rich future ahead. It is this future that gives me the strength to continue to be involved. Indeed, it is our past, present, and future that makes me nothing but proud to be transgender.

Gwendolyn Ann Smith is an American activist and spokesperson for our community whose thoughts are always worth reading and thinking about. Her overview on progress in our community's struggle for recognition in its own right, rather than as an appendage to the larger "queer" community [a term which still makes me uncomfortable] is so relevant in Australia that I have reprinted it here as a "guest editorial".

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