In recent years, a new component within the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community has emerged.

Transsexuals, those who have had -- or are in the process of having -- sexual reassignment surgery, have started to organize and speak out about the social, economic, health, and political issues that affect them.  Some factions have continued to align themselves with the greater gay, lesbian and bisexual community.  Others have turned within themselves to organize, believing the general gay, lesbian, and bisexual community has placed a low priority on the issues that affect them.

The process, as it currently sits, is fraught with mine fields. Some within the community question how a movement premised on sexual orientation came to have communities premised on gender identity involved. Others ostensibly open their minds and activism to include those who are trans-identified but then place priority on their own issues such as gay/lesbian rights, equal marriage, benefits, survivors’ pensions, anti-harassment policies in the workplace, etc.

Trans issues, such as access to appropriate health care (which includes, but is not limited to, sex reassignment surgery), support, financial aid, and issues around transphobia are too often placed on the back burner.

One of the core issues is an increasingly volatile debate around terminology. Such debates are not unusual in the early years of any social movement as participants work out issues of self-identification while attempting to educate the dominant community around those terms.

It certainly happened in our own (i.e. lesbigay) community. When the homosexual emancipation movement began in the 1950s, the terms "homosexual" (to describe people) and "homophile" (to describe organizations) were used. After Stonewall, younger – and more radical -- activists adopted the term "gay", eventually expanding to "lesbians and gay men, then to including bisexuals, and now a new generation self-identifies as "queer".

As various analyses were being discussed and aired, those whose issues intersected with ours came to be included. Community organizations across North American added "transgendered" to their names. The term was an inclusive term for transsexuals (both pre-operative and post-operative), cross-dressers, androgynous individuals, genderqueers, and drag queens/kings.

However, many within the transsexual community believe the term does not include them and that their identity is quite separate.

The argument goes that those who are transsexual do not "cross gender lines", since their gender remains as it always was, it is their sex that changes. In short, a male-to-female (MTF) transsexual was always female, but her physical body was male. Her gender was, and is, female. Her sex appeared male. Sexual reassignment surgery corrects that dichotomy. The same process occurs for those who are female-to-male (FTM).

Organizations that have utilized "transgender" for several years are currently coming under some attack for having done so and not changing to the term "transsexual" quickly enough. There may be some truth to this. Part of the problem is adding to what has come to be known in some quarters as the Alphabet Soup of LGBTTTIQQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirited, transgender, transsexual, intersexed, queer and questioning). Another appears to be a reluctance to embrace the "newest term" too quickly lest it result in further complaints in a few years.

Some communities within our larger community have started using the term "trans" as it does allow for both those who identify as transgender and those who identify as transsexual to "see" themselves in the term. The term "trans-identified" is also sometimes used. On a more colloquial level, terms such as "transfolk" and "transpeople" are also used.

Whatever the ultimate outcome, it is important to realize that transphobia and homophobia are linked. The struggles of the trans community mirror that of the lesbigay/queer community. Where else can transfolk turn? True, they could have created a parallel movement, struck out on their own – and some are doing that – but when one is denied work because one ‘insists on wearing drag to work’, or mired in a never-ending round of doctors’ appointments, evaluations, insurance hassles, expensive medications/hormone treatments, and the daily grind of clearly living outside the norm desperate to become who one is, where does the energy to become activist and organized come from?

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Contributor Stephen Lock |

Topic Politics | Transgender |