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It's GLBT, you hateful motherfucker.
This is a great email exchange. Thanks for sharing it.
And faggy gays never made any sense to me, they act artificially, not even like women, they are like some kind of weird hybrids that just annoy normal gays and str8 people...
And, I hope that was an attempt at humor or you're having a rough day, IgorM @ 3. At its heart this is a human story and it concerns us all. Peace begets peace, when we each find peace in our own skin we all find a little peace.
Dan, that's an awesome story, thanks for sharing it with us.
Even Bill Maher once said on his show that when people see a regular gay Joe getting married, only then perceptions change, not with extremely faggy gays that act like clowns.
As a normal str8 acting teen it confused me greatly that my whole media exposure of the "gay" were some weird people on parades wearing dresses. WTF?
Why the fuck would you feel the need to get into faggy transsexual stuff, it has nothing to do with gays...
It's like rich people getting into hobos begging on the street, it never made any sense.
Being transgender is not the same as being Gay, Queer, Bi-sexual or Lesbian...
GQBL people (tend to be) happy with who they are and happy with the genitals they are born with. Gender questioning and/or transgender peeps have something going on akin to a mental disorder called body dysmorphic disorder- gender identity disorder being a spin off of the former.
Transgender peeps may face the same "types" of discrimination but it is NOT the same thing... Not. Not. Not.
I'm a little confused. I see so many of your posts about obesity and I tend to get the impression that you don't approve of the "health at any size" idea. I'm sure you wouldn't just be saying that this girl should accept herself at any weight and that thin does not equal beautiful without actually believing it. I mean, what do you have to lose if you tell the truth?
I am not a MTF, but I can relate to the feeling she is having. Almost all girls can. I don't always feel beautiful in my own skin, but I'm lucky enough to have a supportive boyfriend who tells me he loves me and that I'm beautiful and he wishes that I could see what he sees.
(I hate that I have to use this as a disclaimer...but) I exercise at the gym 4 times a week, eat very healthy, hike on the weekends, my boyfriend and I live a very active lifestyle and yet...I'm still chubby. Seeing as I yo yo dieted in my youth until I was able to finally understand what good nutrition was with the help of personal trainers and a nutritionist I probably will always carry weight because I basically have to count every single calorie that goes in my mouth. Life is too short for that .
Your column contributes to my self doubts because although I still eat healthy and exercise and live actively, I'm not in the correct BMI standard for you to think I'm not obese. You are constantly judging people by the way they look, instead of realizing there are people of different sizes that are just as healthy, if not more so, than some of those people that fall within what I've seen you mention as normal.
If you really did mean what you said about this girl, then I'm glad to know that there is a bit of you that realizes that women come in all shapes and sizes. We are not all the same, and we shouldn't have to conform to those who think we are.
I shudder to think of all the "fatty" comments I'm going to get after this...but I really just wanted to know if you really meant what you said.
Idiot.
It does not make sense for the fringe to obfuscate the reality of gay population so they have to combat non-pertinent prejudices and avoid the gay word.
And it is getting increasingly annoying for you to get involved with tranny/transsex/faggy nonsense that has nothing to do with normal gays.
Keep up the great work Dan.
"He who saves a single life, saves the world entire..."
(swish)
Nice use of the word "obfuscate."
I hereby grant you a Golden Troll Award!
(Patent pending)
But who the fuck cares what the Normals and Mediocretans think, anyway?
So, Dan Savage, I love you, I love you, I love you, but I too have to say that you get this wrong. Often.
And who cares? If you're happy being "abnormal" go for it!
We all know what the score is, you just keep ignoring it to your detriment.
You know, a lot of us homos go through a stage when we are first coming out where we loath the girly gays. But we usually realize that is our own fear talking. And we get over it, and except them like we should.
I really strongly urge you to shut up now, for your own sake. In a few years you're gonna look back at this stage of your comming out process and realize what a complete douchebag you were, and you're gonna be really embarrassed. And now your embarrassment is going to be preserved for all time on SLOG.
Translation: your own hang-ups as a macho-faux-swaggery homo little twat, against what you register as "men being effeminate" — do confirm whether I'm not getting your context, please — concerns nothing of transsexuals. Respek to my gay pals — macho to swishy and points in between — is where it is always due: good folks to have a beer with, but we have about nothing in common. Well, like other people, we're all mostly made of water.
[oh, and what a shock that you aren't mentioning transgenders in the same breath — I must applaud you there on that one, but don't let it go to your head. I'm not through with you.]
It makes zero sense and zero logic why and how you want to toss cissexual gay men and transsexual women into the same salad bowl. WTFF. You're effectively trying to call tofu "ice cream": these aren't anywhere in the same league, so don't start saying that Tofutti is ice cream and then declare a hate-on for all ice cream. Different creatures, different ingredients, different nutritive values. Ya get it?
All said, there is a word for your twisted hang-up, Igor, even if I'm not necessarily on board with its use: effemimania (take your issue up with that author, not me).
In the meantime, dip yourself in napalm, use a strike-anywhere match, and have as nice a day as a self-torching can provide.
I know he doesn't speak for you. I think that much is clear to most of us. Nevertheless, it seems that no one from his own peer group has ever given Igor a good, hard truth-out on his own hang-ups (which sound very latter-day Stonewall faggish*). So can you keep your dog on a leash so that it doesn't start snapping at the rest of us? Cheers, and the next one's on me.
-Tels
* "Stonewall fag", as in the elder guard gays who resented (rightfully) seeing some of their peers "becoming women" as a way out of escaping gay oppression (until about the mid 1973) and now blanket-detests anyone who has a transsexual life experience.
I think the Doc Martens, butch swagger, and stubborn refusal to look like I'll ever again put on makeup have something to do with that. Notice how Igor doesn't mix in us dykey-dyke dykes into his fucked, false equation (which carried out in a proof is false, QED). But that I'm also transsexual somehow does.
Straightforward as a pretzel, that Igor.
You're alright. There aren't many good men out there who'll stick by their woman like that — that is, in a world where a cissexual woman is market-valued at a higher rate than a transsexual woman (see last week's SL LotD regarding the woman whose boyfriend was being a flake-head and lording over her head her inability to bear children — whereas a theoretical cissexual woman might).
See ya, and keep it up.
-Telsa O. Grills
I watched all 5 seasons of that TV show Queer as Folk and most of the time I was disgusted by behavior, appearances and complete moral bankruptcy portrayed there.
This is what you get when you let the fringe loose and put it into a ghetto.
I've known countless "faggotty fags," "dykey dykes," and just about everybody and everything in between in my life. I've been privileged to call a great many of them friends, even though I've never had sex with any of them.
People are people. Lots of them are good people. Get past the labels. Get past your preconceptions. Fuck, go watch Avatar or something if it helps.
All I know is that you're in for a long, hopeless, heartless, loveless life if you somehow try to go through it with that set of blinders on.
Your swing at education in @58 just makes you look slower, simpler, and dimmer than that which I first gave you credit (which means it would have been easy for you to impress me with the expectations bar being set so low). The "fringe ghetto lingo" to which you speak isn't. It is, however, a reflection of your intellectual laziness (or limitation, flip a coin) to not even try to grasp at an idea that isn't instantly relevant to your self-centred, deep as puddle, igortistic world.
You're not a pussy. Pussy is power. You're not a dick. Dick is virility. No, you're a fucking eunuch crotch: there's just nothing there.
So called transsexualism is a modern day version of the Emperor has No Clothes fable, the GID suffered is demanding everyone's participation in his playing pretend and silence on the GID sufferer's mental illness but all it takes is one individual like me to point out the truth and this wall of deceit about 'passing' comes crashing down.
p.s. — Take 5280's nod: rent Avatar and watch it. Saw it already? Watch it again, if but for the visual work. There are definitely no femmy fags or transgenders in there, so you won't feel threatened by it.
After a shitty, shitty day I can only hope I get a happy ending too.
And I know it can be really, really difficult to resist tearing down new(?) idiots, but please don't feed the troll, guys. I understand - this stuff is published on the internet, and you want a rebuttal of this hateful garbage written down for the record. But you know you're just feeding the troll.
But the hater's position is inherently self-contradicting--if he weren't afraid of mainstream gender-cliche'd bullies, he wouldn't have any reason to be annoyed/threatened by queens.
It doesn't matter who he happens to fuck--in his mind, he's afraid someone will mistake him for a fag, and beat him up for it. If there were no violence, it wouldn't matter how people act in a parade.
I think it's good enough to make your whole week, but maybe that's just me.
Speaking instead of saying nothing feels better than letting some incompetent, faggy Clayton Williams* tell me to lie back and enjoy what he wants to say about my kind (to which he knows fuck-all). A brief cathexis of a tear-down on a wuss like Igor is good times, since his entire pre-feminist case is premised on this core myth that femininity is subservient and weaker than him, especially when manifest in men (that is, cissexual gay men). Lumping chicks (i.e., transsexual, cissexual, or both — doesn't matter, as it's one in the same) into his shtick makes even less sense and it pretty much disqualifies him.
Of course, maybe he detests transsexual men, especially the gay boys, only because they came equipped into the world with unusable junk that they knew had to get a reno — a reno that Igor, who just wants the man-beef on an open-faced macho sandwich, dismisses as unmanly. He wasn't really clear about that. He doesn't have to be.
Igor can rationalize and equivocate all he wants. He will lose his case. Every time.
* Baconcat knows.
I love those rare moments when you let out your sweet side. It helps me laugh it off when you refer to me as nuts (in a group collective sense). Anyway, it made me smile.
Take care,
k
I'm guessing not, but... he is young...
@79, I would start with saying that if they didn't at least stop using that language around me ("I hate ___," "faggots" in a hateful way, etc.), that they would be kicked to the curb. And mean it. Then, once you get them to reign in the outright hate, have some good meaningful conversation about the relationship between different members and sub-groups of the LGBT umbrella - how we've had to be there for one another, the tizzies that have risen up over the years, but in the end how we're nothing without one another. There are few enough of us that we can't afford to throw anyone under the bus. And as an earlier commenter pointed out, in many ways it was the trannies and drag queens that got the gay liberation ball rolling, because they had the courage to fight instead of sinking in to that safe, deadening closet. Then, if possible (and if you think he'll behave himself), introduce him to a transgendered person so he knows who he's talking about.
Also, if I saw Hedwig, I'd hate trannies, too. That whole Angry Inch phenomenon that swooned the gay world about a decade ago just smacked as blackface for someone like me, even if Hedwig's minstrel songs were endearing to many.
If asked (which I haven't), I've yet to run into a single film anywhere which comes close to narrating a transsexual life experience with which I can personally relate. Not by a miracle mile. Nearly all I have seen appeal to the transgenders or to the gay boys who contextualize transsexuals in their own confined little way, as the story lines are always framed from the world view of someone who personally understands manhood on some level (i.e., "Transamerica", "Different for Girls", "Priscilla", "Normal", "Hedwig", or whatever).
For me and the women I know well who share a transsexual history (since before the start of adulthood), we have no concept of that beyond the abstract idea that one gleans from popular culture. That's why it doesn't bother us to say, "Hey dude, check this out," to one another, while saying that to a transgender will make them nearly apoplectic.
But he has such a nice dick.
And as to the LGBT thing, transsexuals aren't part of that equation. We got the "T" boosted from us by the transgenders in the early/mid '90s. So, to @79, she needs to be clear with him on the difference between each (quite fundamental, really). She might not be able to introduce him to a transsexual the way she might to a transgender, but problems begin big time when the "umbrella maxim" is parried by transgenders. Transsexuals have their own "umbrella", thank you, within which only transsexuals of different cultural experiences are found.
It's totally fair to explain that transsexuals have their own umbrella - it really makes no sense to suggest otherwise. But sex, sexual identity, and sexual orientation all seem to be culturally--and politically--wrapped up in one another. Not saying that society views them all as the same thing - well-meaning but ignorant people seem to have a much easier time wrapping their heads around homosexuality than transsexuality, for instance.
In the civil rights context, at least, doesn't it make sense to include transsexuality under the GLBT umbrella? Because it seems to me that hostility toward homosexuality and transgendered individuals stems from an awfully similar place as hostility toward transsexuals.
(Please feel free to tell me I'm off base here, seriously. But I think this is a legitimate question.)
Does it make sense? It would, if transsexuals were recognized as transsexuals, full-stop, and recognized that a great number of us — myself included — are not out publicly as transsexual. In other words, we are socialized and engaged by other people as cissexual like themselves. Even though we aren't cissexual, it's just a lot easier to say nothing and keep the peace.
Extending the point, many of us are also heterosexual men and women who have no connection with a "GLBT" political construct and express tremendous offence if asked whether we're OK with being corralled in with transgenders. For transsexual men and women who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual, "GLBT" is only as politically useful to our lives as gay, lesbian, or bisexual people. The "T" is another matter entirely, though in one sense, you're right: to many dickweed haters, "It's all the same." Still, if only they knew how frequently they've spoken to a transsexual person who to them was cissexual, it might cause them to soil themselves.
Alternately, "T" expresses political inclusiveness for transgenders. That's why it's there. I know it's hard for most to de-link transsexual and transgender from one another — the shared prefix fucks it up a lot, since in English, speakers are used to looking to that prefix as a modifier (e.g., homo-/bi-/hetero- sexual), not the root word. The non-consensual pathologization and lumping together in that realm hardly helps, just as it didn't help homosexuality before '73. But transsexual people have about as much in common with transgenders as heterosexual people have in common with homosexual people.
The problem with, for example, advancing a "GLBTT" agenda is it starts pissing a lot of people off for a lot of valid reasons, including the perception of the "me too" syndrome of appending endless letters to an already unwieldy acronym (see "GLBTTQQIA2SRTFM"). More importantly, that GLBT political group would need to comprehend backwards and forwards why there must be two Ts. Assuming you got them to understand what that means at a practical level, then you would have to see whether straight transsexuals would want any part in that. The Magic 8-Ball says "Don't count on it."
This became a problem when transgenders politically appropriated transsexual people by sticking us into their umbrella. We weren't asked. We offered no consent. We weren't given an opt-out clause. In so doing, we were politically (and socially) associated with a group whose interests are not our own. It has made for some cranky folks, unswerving tensions, and has indisputably hurt a few people badly. (Incidentally, the political appending of "T" to "GLB" happened around the same time as when transsexual people were appropriated by transgenders.)
I'm not sure whether this was helpful to your question. I should have condensed.
I guess part of the issue is that appending the T to LGB links, in a very explicit way, gender identity with sexual orientation. While the two aren't unrelated, they're also not the same thing. Don't get me wrong, it makes sense - sexual minorities are marginalized, so there is some utility in uniting under one acronym. Still, when that is done, a little nuance and a little understanding is probably lost. But I'd argue that the benefits outweigh the costs.
I'll admit that my perceptions are colored by my own experiences. As a woman who's not only cisgender and rather stereotypically feminine (short, thin build, big fan of those medieval torture devices known as high heels), but largely into that subset of slim, long-haired, artsy-fartsy dykes, I've found myself flustered when dealing with the intersection of gender identity politics and sexual orientation. Please don't take this as oh-woe-is-me-I-am-a-poor-little-lipstick-lesbian-and-all-the-butch-girls-are-MEAN rant. That hasn't been my experience at all - and, in my estimation, butch lesbians get WAY more shit from society than "femme" ones. (Seriously - while frat boys hollering at me when I'm out with a girl might be obnoxious, I recognize that it's nothing compared to the kind of harassment a lot of butch girls face.) I just mean that, as someone who generally falls into society's expectations of a "typical" woman, with the exception of my sexual orientation, the gender-identity politics that so often attend the politics of sexual orientation leave me a little lost. Not because these issues aren't legitimate, but because I'm limited in how far I can relate.
The LGTBTQQIA acronym frustrates the hell out of me, but really only because it's so unwieldy. It's almost enough to make me want to go pray the gay away with Dr. Rekers. (Seriously, allies? I mean, don't get me wrong, having straight allies is a fundamental part of obtaining legal and social equality--and it's always encouraging to see people stick up for rights that, at least in the short term, don't directly affect them. But still. Oy.)
I swear I'm not being snarky, though upon typing this out I realize it will probably sound that way - how would the transgender community have gone about obtaining the consent of the transsexual community? And, perhaps more importantly, where to go from here?
Or we could get the fuck over it and accept that the community grouped largely based on the fact of common enemies. The Asian community is made out of many different races and cultural origins, it's not a unique phenomenon.
I'm not a G, L, B, T or even Q for that matter, just a lowly A, but the infighting seems entirely counterproductive.
Telsa, I'm really curious, how would an accurate portrayal of an adult MTF go? Could the status be approached without making the film just a tragedy-drama about discrimination? I would expect that a happy MTF (or FTM) has a life essentially indistinguishable from a non-fertile non transgendered person. Am I way off base?
This isn't about exclusion. It's about conscientious inclusion. To use your example, a person does not cease to be Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. simply because they are a member of the Asian community.
Anne@88: Thank you for the Asian community analogy. I work at a university that has a center that specifically describes itself as serving "the LGBTQI community and its allies". When I hear people ask why the "community" needs to many letters I've tried to explain that "It's about conscientious inclusion", but I've never been able to put it so clearly or so succinctly.
Glad we cleared that up. By the way, you've always been free to flush, in my opinion.
Take care.
Clearly Igor, conflicted about how his own sexuality has effected his delicate teenage ego and sense of belonging, feels the need to lash out at people who can't comfortably hide what they are under the veil of normalcy. What Igor is saying is essentially the same as the racist who says that he's not racist because he has no problem with African Americans that have embraced white cultural norms. He's not racist, but why do some black people have to ruin it by acting so black? It's their own fault for not being accepted!
Clearly that kind of thinking would be seen as racist by most, but when it comes to sexuality and gender identity, suddenly it's cool. Hey Igor, suck on this - scientific research has demonstrated that transexual feelings are largely biologically based, just like homosexuality. So, how is it okay to discriminate if those people are born that way? And just wait until you graduate from high school and start existing in the real world, among people who may have long since given up the need for holding to rigid gender roles in order to deflect the pain of their peers possibly thinking their a fag - one day, you will run into some effeminate "str8 guy" - they call them Metrosexuals now. Trust me, it exists. Should they too be discriminated against, or is it okay to act effeminate as long as you stick your penis in a woman?
Last but not least, you, Igor, are a fag. You're a faggot. Accept it. "Acting str8" does not keep you from being a faggot. As long as people know you're attracted to other males, they will know you're a fag. If anything, there is more honesty in the queens who can't hide it - when people find out about you, they'll feel more betrayed. And rest assured that even if a huge movement of upright, totally normal homosexuals such as yourself publically divorced themselves from the swishy boys and trannies, the straight world wouldn't care. Learn how the media works, and stop letting it send you on the path of hatred. If only a single gay man was effeminate, it would be that one in the parade that recieved all the publicity. And you know what? It's those enthusiastic, visible, different people who do most of the fighting for GLBT rights, because they're the ones that can't hide behind the veil of "str8 acting" and get by in society with nominal comfort. So learn to love those people instead of hating them, or else get yourself to a Christian reprogramming facility and out of our faggy, dykey, tranny, swishy community.
They could have asked us what we consider important to and necessary for us. They could have asked how they could help us on our terms and on our specific needs without feeling urged to either co-opt or render them invisible as it best suits their world view. They could have left the door open to coalition-building with transsexual people rather than presuming that this was ever some kind of given. In short, the difference would have merely been a matter of conferring with us always and never acting on our behalf unless we asked them for help. This did not happen. I don't see this happening, either.
Where to go from here? Awfully good question. Our needs remain just as distinct as they were before. We could start with the most basic: for transsexual people, it's not a matter of "gender identity". It's about access to the means to control and own our bodies. It's also about, for many of us, getting this over with and moving on to an otherwise undistinguished life without being derided as assimilationist; without being pathologized by an institution which many transgenders still turn to for certifying (for want of a better word) their gender expression; or without being chidingly reassured that "sexual orientation and gender identity" in legislative language will cover transsexual people when we know it won't ever cover "change of sex" (which is a loophole defendants have successfully used in court defences to deny transsexuals of basic human rights).
And then some. Step back and look at what it is meant to encompass, and it's very easy for a remote vantage perspective to deduce that the alphabet community conclusively doesn't know what it wants: full civil rights irrespective of sexual orientation (n.b., this has changed over the years as the battles changed); respect from all communities for a sexual orientation that doesn't pick favourites in their partner's sex; the right to articulate one's dialect of gender however they wish without being ridiculed; the right to not be boxed into any category (except queer, since that isn't a box somehow); the "I'm not sure" crowd who aren't sure what they want for themselves yet and whose concerns aren't articulated as the others are; and the allies (they're allies, not necessarily oppressed, but now part of the soup with an unclear desired ends that negatively impacts them).
With all that going on, I think it totally is understandable when a cissexual gay man doesn't see the logic in anything more than "GL", because they know what matters to them. Alas, transgenders can be gay, too, so they have their overlap on that matter.
I left out intersex for a reason. That's another hot, nasty topic that disgusts the handful of congenitally intersex people I've known and met over the years (for virtually the same reasons transsexual people have with transgenders, except that a few transgenders decided on their own that they were intersexed — invariably during their adulthood). In short, bona fide people with an intersex body pretty much have walked hell on earth in varying degrees before they hit the age of high school — in terms of medical complications (some life threatening); in terms of non-consensual mutilation; and in terms of being stuck in all early socializing activities due to indeterminate, outward-appearing reproductive organs. The "adult self-discovered" people calling themselves intersexed as an identity are using another pathologization route instead of the transgender route. But from what my intersex counterparts indicate, those people are transgenders, inside and out.
"Gender identity", to be honest, doesn't register with me. A dialect is not an identity. But whatever. This comes back to the core problem many transsexual people find themselves running into: an external group who is not only presuming we are part of their group, but that we also have this shared need (sorry, this is obviously a sore point for me) to have a "gender identity" affirmed. What in the fork (tine)? Absolutely not!
So this goes back to whether a second, distinct "T" would have a lot of utility for transsexual people. Since "gender identity" is not part of the equation, and for (let say for sake of simplicity) half of the transsexual population, a heterosexual sexual orientation doesn't really have a place in a "GLBT". There really is only place where I think all transsexual people could mobilize in a way that is comprehensible to GLBT political people: by including "change of sex" alongside "sexual orientation and gender identity" in the human rights language being advanced at local and national levels, it would acknowledge a good faith gesture that all parties are not going to be loopholed out of the latest era of fundamental human rights in North America. Thing is, while many straight transsexual people have been able to marry, some have been denied, while a few have had their marriage licence rudely nullified years later. Some transsexual people might not feel an imperative to support this initiative (i.e., wanting no part of any other transsexual person out there), but the implication is this is where they could face backlash at the most unexpected, inopportune moment.
Again, not a short way to put this, Anne, and not sure if it's useful.
I'm not sure what you're asking. I don't know how I'd portray what you call an adult MTF. I was not interested in portrayals of adult MTFs, which is what all those cited films narrate. Those films also inform the cultural discourse, which is why it's troublesome.
As to something I could relate to, I was referring to a filmic narrative upon which I can look and go, "Hey, that resonates with what I know." I'm speaking as someone whose later teenage and entire adult life experiences entirely lack knowledge of what would be expected of the sex I was assigned back at birth. Maybe Pixar could do an animated film. Or better yet, maybe Sofia Coppola or Kenneth Branagh.
I was actually being rather more literal here. Who speaks for the transgendered community? Who speaks for transsexuals? How could they have asked? (Again, I'm not trying to be difficult, this seems like a real issue.)
Ok, I understand that the "T" brings in a whole host of new issues, but does the "B," really? (I anticipate the responses to this question will be oodles of fun.)