more and more i see what is frustrating to transgender folk about being lumped into the lgbt acronym.
lesbians and gay men already enjoy many ‘rights’ and ‘perks’ that aren’t available to the transgender community.
*bathroom priveleges
*laws restricting descrimination in:
– housing
– employment
– military (soon)
now gay folk can marry. and it’s great! they shouldn’t ever have been precluded from the right to have their love acknowledged.
but for people like my daughter, even getting their own real selves acknowledged and deemed lawful is still a struggle on all sides!
* birth certificate and other I.D. to reflect their true gender
* laws that would prohibit discrimination in
– housing
– employment
– military
and altho in the states that now allow ‘gay’ marriage it’s possible for a transgender woman to marry another woman, this is simply a side-effect of a law intended for the more privileged letters of the lgbt acronym.
my daughter is at least or maybe more female than those born into the gender. she will have to take hormones and have surgery, just so that her body will comform to her true self. and yet there are those, even in the gay and lesbian community, who see her as less.
less of a woman,
less of a reality.
as a member of the gay community for many years. (about 30 to be exact) i well know the gains that have been wrenched from the hold of the dominant culture. but what of the gains of the transgender community whose letter (T) is tacked onto the end of that acronym?
the gay community has very often tried to distance itself from people like my daughter in order that they might have more acceptance, more validity. that they might get ‘theirs’.
but what about ‘hers’?
who cares about her rights to safety when she needs to use a restroom that reflects who she is? who cares about her self-definition if her birth certificate says ‘male’, simply because she’s not yet old enough to have undergone “treatment” (read surgical alteration)? in some states even having gone ‘all the way’ doesn’t ensure an easy road to your legal I.D reflecting your true gender. who cares about that?
and if it seems fair that the lgb part of the equation ‘get theirs’ first so that they can open the way for the t part of the equation, (which it doesn’t to me) let me point out that in the civil rights battles, women stood along side men to stand up for the rights of african-americans but women still haven’t even been able to get the ERA passed.
those liberated don’t always turn around to give a hand up to those whose rights were not considered.
my daughter is only eight years old. and as luck would have it she will probably be able to marry the woman of her choosing even if she does so as the woman she wasn’t born to be. but what of some of my straight transsexual friends? what good does the right to marry do you if discrimination and disregard haunt every aspect of your life, except nuptials?
my daughter relates to the l part of the lgbt more than the t part. in her pure mind she is simply a girl. the wrong equipment can be put right, because that’s what a girl requires, in her opinion. she has no idea, how oppressive society is of people like her self. and hopefully by the time she’s old enough to realise this things will change for the better.
but it’s not getting better if other oppressed groups within the society and dominant culture only seek to improve their own lot, whilst asking the others to wait…to trust that their own hard won freedoms will somehow, eventually trickle down.
trickle down….hmmm. that sounds familiar
Pasupatidasi's Blog 