Panel Voices: How do you see the lesbian and gay community’s relationship with the transgender community?

Julia Hatch, George K. Gramer, Jr., Brianna J. Matthews, and Pieter Tolsma weigh in on this week’s question.

Julia Hatch

The trans community shares a lot with the LGB community – mainstream society’s lumping us all in the same category of sexual deviancy. This includes the same problems of high rates of drug use, depression and suicide stemming from a history of exclusion and abuse by society as a whole. Both segments face job discrimination, social ostracism and threats of violence.

This doesn’t mean that relations between us have always been friendly and cordial. Early on, many lesbians despised what they called “transvestites” because they thought that transgender men were mocking them, and some lesbian radical feminists even went so far as to call for the “social elimination” of transsexuals. There were some gay rights activists who have called for our exclusion from the lesbian and gay movement in order to gain more legitimacy with the straight community. I’ve even heard similar attitudes from some transgender people who didn’t want to be mistakenly labeled gay, as if there was really anything wrong with that.

These days, relationships between the LGBT communities have greatly improved and they’re getting better. I appreciate past inclusion in LGBT activism and look forward to further political cooperation. These relations could further serve the transgender community if we could get support for our continuing fight for insurance coverage for the medical care we need and the struggle to get our diagnosis in the Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders eliminated. I’m quite optimistic that relationships within the LGBT community will continue to improve.

Julia Hatch is psychotherapist practicing in Denver and in Boulder where she lives.

Brianna J. Matthews

Cissexism and transphobia aren’t inherent to just the LGB community – they’re inherent to all those who allow themselves to harbor those prejudices. To get over negative reactions to trans people we have to be willing to look beyond what we expect in ourselves and others when it comes to gender – not gifted at birth with the genetics or financial resources to alter our appearance so drastically to fit society’s definitions of femininity or masculinity.

I am a lesbian – I always have been and always will be. Being a post–op trans person doesn’t make that more of a reality for me than it was before, but it does leave some lesbian women looking the other way – not because they know or don’t know what I do or don’t have, but because of their assumptions about dating a trans woman even though she has fully–functioning “parts.” It’s a mental script, saying, “it’s still just a man, I can’t date her.” It’s all a perception.

There are times I wish we had ID tags for everyone that didn’t say “trans” or “lesbian” or “gay” but instead, “great heart” or “open and caring,” so the world would see what are on the inside, and how we would make a great friend, lover or partner, given the chance of an open heart.

We need to be less judgmental toward those who don’t fit the stereotype of male or female. That’s where it starts.

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 Brianna J Matthews is a 43-year-old post–op Trans–lesbian woman ready to take on the world.

Pieter Tolsma

I have always felt like the transgender community got lumped into the LGBT acronym because, like the others, they were misunderstood and considered aberrant. Like society’s views toward same-sex attractions, the unchallenged heteronormative mind was just not able to grasp with ease the concept of mind and body gender differentiation.

That time is over. With the increased exposure the gay and lesbian community gets, I think it is high time that the myth and confusion around trans people is dispelled and other members of the LGBT acronym should be ready and willing to play an Oscar-worthy supporting role. Trans rights spring directly from a struggle for recognition that our whole “aberrant” community knows all too well, and I feel it’s time that we say “Rights for us all – together.”

Pieter Tolsma is a graduate student at the University of Colorado Denver. He is also program coordinator of Denver PIQUE, a program for gay/bi young men in Denver.

George K. Gramer, Jr.

Some would categorize the LGBT community as a class – I think perhaps this is for political expediency, and not because of huge commonalities between the four lettered components.

As a gay man, I find on the whole I have very little in common with the transgender community. Admittedly aside from occasionally attending The Rocky Horror Picture Show, my own experience with crossing gender norms is limited. The fact of the matter is that everyone (those darned heterosexuals included) is wired differently. We interact and understand based on our abilities to do so – all in different ways.

Still, one should ask the question “why lump us together?” Are there perhaps some commonalities we can leverage? What differences can we surmount (or not)? However, when we get down to the nitty gritty, aren’t we all Americans? Can’t we all just get along? Aren’t we human beings despite tags and differences in our internal wiring?

Sometimes, it’s just difficult being oneself, let alone contemplating the connections with everyone else. We just need to accept and love everyone, regardless, as brothers and sisters. That should get us through.

Iowa native George K. Gramer, Jr. is the president of the Colorado Log Cabin Republicans.