Erasing the T out of LGBT
This topic is going to be a sticky one so, cats and kittens
buckle up.
With June sneaking up on us, I am pretty much aware that
Pride coming up fast. Already the Stonewall Union has ads, banners are hung up
in Columbus’ Short North, and people are buying their tickets and marching.
It’s this time of the year I earn my ‘queer’ points, and march with TransOhio
and volunteer at their booth. It’s also when I pal around with my trans*
friends and catch up with them talking about all sorts of shit and it is the
only group of people at Pride I can feel myself around.
I am usually thrown aside by everyone else at Pride.
The thing is, Pride these days isn’t for queers but for
hetros that walk into Goodale Park, like the way we go to the zoo. Many of them
are ‘allies’ in the loosest sense, but most of them just go to Pride to ‘have
fun’. I personally hate it but my opinions are mean nothing in the grand scheme
of things. My biggest problem is the goddamn intersectionality that gets eaten
up like first graders on chocolate cake. First off, being trans* doesn’t make
you queer. You can be straight and trans*, you can have hetro privilege and
trans I am aware of this. On the other hand that only happens when you start
passing as a hetro couple. For me it is the other way around. I have straight
privilege now, but when I turn fuzzy and fat I am well prepared for the volley
of “faggot” I am going to get if I cuddle the SO in public. The SO, probably
isn’t ready as he think he is for it. Which brings me up to another point, you
can be gay, lesbian, asexual, wtfsexual and trans* and yet no one actually
fucking realizes this. If I out
myself as trans they are going assume my girlfriend is around here somewhere
and they will invalidate my gayness if out myself as gay first same quandary
only my gender is removed. Rinse and repeat. This happens a lot because people
forget that trans* is a gender status and one that fits with every flavor of
‘rainbow’. So that is one way I am ‘erased’.
It gets weirder as I feel uncomfortable in gay bars, gay men
will immediately assume that I am a woman ergo this isn’t my ‘place’. In
womyn’s and trans* groups, I find often that my silicon junk is being ripped
off and throw into the trash. I am assumed to be the ‘right’ kind of man
because I don’t benefit from the patriarchy right now and my passing status is
iffy. But what about my brothers that are passing well? Gods know that if my
friend B walked into this group he would be turned away because he would be
assumed to be cis. Which is incredibly problematic and honestly gross, but not
surprising. I would be treated with the same sort of exclusion if I started
passing well. Trans women get a similar treatment, only it’s inverted. More
interesting enough , every time the issue of birth control gets throw up in an
argument, I am the only one that reminds the cis ladies that trans*men need BC
access too. Because hey, much to everyone shock, trans*men can get pregnant. T
doesn’t always shut down the hen-house.
Let me bring something else up, Gay marriage. Is a trans*
issue. Too all the baby queers out there with your rainbow rubber bracelets and
legalize gay shirts. You can thank a trans woman for that. The whole gay rights
thing you know, Stonewall was started by drag queens and trans women. The whole
‘gay marriage’ was trans issue long before it became a queer issue. Yet, we’re
being written out of our own history. Gay rights has been getting paler, and
more cis-flavored every year and it’s a damn shame. I see more people wearing
‘equal sign’ merchandise without realize that HRC does to poor, black or trans*
people.
Yet I still march at Pride. Mostly for the rights I probably
never get because the gay lobbyists are still trying to shove the T out of the
acronym. I will still get more transphobia from gay men and lesbian women than
I do from cis people as I go clubbing or drinking or hanging out with my gay or
trans* friends. I will feel erased from history every step I take at Goodale.
But I march so my trans* friends have support of another brother, so they can
kiss their lover proudly and unbashly, I pass out flyers so trans* people have
another resource. I go to Pride to not wave my rainbow flag, but to wave my
pink, blue and white flag. Let’s just remember here, we don’t have a ‘trans*
pride’ day. We have day in the year called “Trans* day of Remembrance” it’s not
happy day. Its sobering reminder of the countless of lives that died because
they dared to be themselves, that week in November is the day we educate the
public and try to turn back the tide of trans* people that are dying every day.
Going to Pride to me is knowing that despite the storm around me, there is a
rainbow at the end.