Does The T Belong On The G.L.B.T.?

Tracie O'Keefe

(The Gender Centre advise that this article may not be current and as such certain content, including but not limited to persons, contact details and dates may not apply. Where legal authority or medical related matters are cited, responsibility lies with the reader to obtain the most current relevant legal authority and/or medical publication.)

When this debate was scheduled for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival no one chose on which side of the debate they would argue but were allocated positions by the organisers. Much to everyone's amusement my gorgeous life partner, Katrina Fox, a journalist, was allocated to the opposition team. So for domestic harmony's sake I shall call it an interesting debate where views were aired but all debaters won. Two alpha females in one household often means diplomacy is preferable over success, especially for two femme lesbians with one bathroom.

... what does the "T" stand for? Is it transsexed, transsexual, transgendered, transvestite, trans community or trannie?

In debating this issue my first question is what does the "T" stand for? Is it transsexed, transsexual, transgendered, transvestite, trans community or trannie? Of course each of these words has different meanings to different people as everyone has their own investment in the use of language. If any of these words might loosely describe you, then you also have a further investment in the way in which that word is used, personally, socially, politically and publicly; the label that best describes you becomes your precious possession. Furthermore language changes, is dynamic and always moving, evolving and the meaning assigned to a description changes with time as well as your opinions of how you fit into the world.

In 1970 at college in the U.K., when I was fifteen, I formed the gay society. There were four of us including an Indian boy who was terrified his parents would find out he was gay, a girl who called herself Dick and was studying mechanical engineering, and a very camp boy from the art department. I was even odd there with my back-combed hair, more colourful make-up than a clown fish and flowing kaftans and cardigans. No one knew what I was because I registered at the college as a boy, then as a girl but continually turned up looking like a teenage Vogue fashion victim, who winked at the boys and the girls. Back then there was no trans space of any kind in society; those of us who were trans never came out if we could help it and it would be many years before we invented transliteration.

Things have changed so much since that time as we now have voices and advocates who are trans people themselves who speak our for us, lobbying and are now very public. It's not the way we wanted but it dawned on us in the 1980s that if we were ever going to be able to sit at the front of the bus we had to come out. When we first came out, many of us had death threats, people painted our cars with graffiti, tried to burn down our houses, killed some of us and excluded us from having equal rights. It's been a long hard fight for civil liberty, respect, equality, medical care, and it isn't over yet.

Tracie O'Keefe

For many transsexed, transsexual and transgender people, their issues are not the same as those of gays and lesbians because they are largely about medical care and about the right to identify, which gay people already have. For drag queens, cross-dressers and some transgender people, much of their lives are spent in the gay community so intrinsically they see their fight for equality as being G.L.B.T. linked. So here there are two answers to the question posed in the title of this article. Those who never do gay culture get upset when people think their trans issues are being seen as being about sexality because their issues are about physical sex identity and/or gender identity.

Two problems have begun to arise publicly around this very pertinent debate. The first one is, does being G.L.B.T. help us politically? The answer is no because the gays will dump us in an instant if having us on their agends holds back their cause. This became clear in America recently when an equality bill giving gays and lesbians protection against discrimination dumped the trans issues, in order for the bill to progress. Also a few years ago in Australia when the then Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (H.R.E.O.C. - now the Australian Human Rights Commission) held its enquiry into equal rights for same-sex couples and few gay organisations supported trans people when they publicly insisted on their issues being considered too. Real solidarity means standing on your soap box for others too.

Secondly, gay-centric organisations ask for money from the government for G.L.B.T. care. When I telephoned a well-known project a few weeks ago I was told there was no member of staff there who dealt specifically with trans issues. So where did the money go? In 2009 a major gay organisation was part of organising a meeting, dressed as the 2020 vision meeting for the G.L.B.T. community, but a trans man was locked out on the pavement, because his vision of the future was not considered nice enough, but organisations such as this still ask for money for G.L.B.T.

If you are wealthy you can generally do what you want in life and rise above the protestations of the petty bourgeoisie, but if you're broke, in the middle of a sex dysphoria or gender dysphoria crisis then you need specialist care that gay people do not understand. Public funding money for sex and gender diverse people needs to go directly to projects such as the Gender Centre. The Gender Centre, however, does not help itself in this argument when its answering machine advises people to ring the Gay and Lesbian Counselling line and many trans people never contact the Centre again.

Of course this is an old debate which previously has been slugged out in every decade since the 70s. Certainly in the 90s when campaigning reached a new level, with the emergence of the Internet, numbers were one of the contributing factors to motivate G.L.B.T. political change. Katrina and I, in protest about the lack of gay marriage or civil partnerships in England, stood in two dresses and got married in Kings Cross registry office in London, because we could, since I still had a male birth certificate, even though I have lived my whole adult life as female. So, sometimes being in bed with the trans community works for the gays, sometimes it does not, and vice versa.

The recent success of the Australian Human Rights Commission launching an enquiry into the legal recognition rights for sex and/or gender diverse people has been a perfect example of sex and gender diverse people helping themselves. We lobbied, presented, and negotiated, making our needs clear and articulate without the holding of hands by any Gay, lesbian or Bisexual contingent and we achieved a lot. Perhaps the time has come for our community to grow and go out into the world under its own steam. Perhaps there will always be those who straddle the divide between the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender. Who am I to tell people how to live their lives? I'm just some transsexed person who managed to stay alive long enough to chew the cud because my gay and straight friends were very kind to me when I needed it, and of course the bisexual ones too. But while we should absolutely welcome the support of the queer community, do you want to have to go to Gay Big Brother for the money for your care or do you think it should come to you direct?

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.