Transphobia - Transphobia in The Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Communities

Transphobia in The Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Communities

Some members of the LGBT communities are uncomfortable with transgender individuals and issues. Authors and observers have written that "there are social and political forces that have created a split between gay/lesbian communities and bisexual/transgender communities, and these forces have consequences for civil rights and community inclusion. 'Biphobia' and 'transphobia' are a result of these social and political forces, not psychological forces causing irrational fears in aberrant individuals."

Trans author Jillian Todd Weiss traces this back to social constructions created by early sexologists which split homosexuality into sexual orientation (sexual object choice) and gender identity (sexual self-identification as male or female): "This scientific rationalism and medicalization of homosexuality confirmed it as a unitary, monolithic phenomenon. This created a monosexist (exclusively same-sex) 'homosexual identity,' and a corresponding tension between identification as homosexual, on the one hand, and passing as heterosexual and/or engaging in heterosexual relationships."

Historian Joanne Meyerowitz documented transphobia within the gay rights movement in the mid 20th century in response to publicity surrounding the transition of Christine Jorgensen. Jorgensen, who made frequent homophobic remarks and insisted she was not connected to or identified with gay men, was a polarizing figure among activists:

In 1953, for example, ONE magazine published a debate among its readers as to whether gay men should denounce Jorgensen. In the opening salvo, the author Jeff Winters accused Jorgensen of a "sweeping disservice" to gay men. "As far as the public knows," Winters wrote, "you were merely another unhappy homosexual who decided to get drastic about it." For Winters, Jorgensen's story simply confirmed the false belief that all men attracted to other men must be basically feminine," which, he said, "they are not." Jorgensen's precedent, he thought, encouraged the "reasoning" that led "to legal limitations upon the homosexual, mandatory injections, psychiatric treatment – and worse." In the not-so-distant past, scientists had experimented with castrating gay men.

Several prominent figures in second wave feminism have also been accused of transphobic attitudes, culminating in 1979 with the publication of The Transsexual Empire by lesbian ethicist Janice Raymond, who popularized the term she-male as a slur of trans women.

Trans women (male-to-female transgender and transsexual people) are sometimes denied entry to women's spaces, an attitude which many transgender people consider to be transphobic. The feminist Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, for instance, has received much criticism for limiting its attendance to "womyn-born womyn". Kay Brown of transhistory.net (“Transsexual, Transgender and Intersex History” - no longer online) has set forth a long chronology of the ejection of those who we now know as transgender from gay organizations starting in the 1970s.

Some trans men face ostracism and rejection from lesbian communities they had been part of prior to transition. Journalist Louise Rafkin writes, "There are those who are feeling curiously uncomfortable standing by as friends morph into men. Sometimes there is a generational flavor to this discomfort; many in the over-40 crowd feel particular unease." Trans men were part of the protest at the 2000 Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, "the first time the 'womyn-born womyn only' policy has been used against trannie boys, boydykes, FTM's, Lesbian Avengers and young gender-variant women."

While many gays and lesbians feel that transgender is simply a name for a part of their own community (i.e. the LGBT community), others actively reject the idea that transgender people are part of their community, seeing them as entirely separate and distinct.

In the early 1970s, conflicts began to emerge due to different syntheses of lesbian, feminist and transgender political movements, particularly in the United States. San Francisco trans activist and entertainer Beth Elliott became the focus of debate over whether to include transsexual lesbians in the movement, and she was eventually blacklisted by her own movement.

The nature of the terms man and woman also become unclear in a similar way under this philosophy, and many feel that the only real recourse is to accept that the mind and feeling of a person is the only thing that gives that person identity, and so a person that has a female identity and mind is indeed a woman. According to this thinking, it becomes clear that in at least a categorical sense, transgendered people should only be accepted in the LGB community if they themselves self-identify as gay. lesbian or bisexual, and the blanket assumption on the part of some gay, lesbian and bisexual people on the nature of those transgendered people who are in their LGB community with a view to dis-inclusion constitutes an issue of transphobia. The implacability of this question has been overcome by the rise in the 1990s of queer theory and the queer community, which defines queer as embracing all variants of sexual identity, sexual desire, and sexual acts that fall outside normative definitions of heterosexuality; thus a heterosexual man or woman as well as a transgender person of any sex can be included in the category of queer through their own choice.