This is the first of two ‘From Elsewhere’ pieces that I’m putting up today that concern issues of sexuality and gender. The first, is from Clayton Channing who started a petition to drop the ‘T’ from LGBT. The second is from a blog called Matthew Speaks, about how there’s nothing wrong with being relatively private about ones sexuality. Both of these pieces question some of the norms and received wisdom that exist in the worlds of sexuality and gender activism.
We’ll start with Clayton Channing’s piece. In this article Clayton speaks about the harassment, sometimes violent harassment that LGB people get if they question the Transgender agenda. They speak about the unjust and dishonest claims by Trans activists that there would not be any LGB rights without the transgender community. Trans activists have trampled on LGB history and claimed things like the Stonewall revolt, for their own. Clayton also goes into the issue of gender reassignment for children and teenagers. They call it child abuse and I find it hard to disagree. Studies have shown that at least 80% of teenagers going through a gender identity questioning phase grow out of it and become normal happy well adjusted gay, lesbian, bisexual or straight individuals.
It’s difficult to know what to quote from Clayton Channing’s excellent and well referenced article. However, this passage gives a good feel for the type of problems that Trans activists are causing for Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals.
Somebody joked on a forum that straight women and Lesbians were the canary in the coal mine, warning the wider Gay and Bisexual community of the negative impact of the Transgender Ideology. For over a decade, women have been under attack by M2T activists simply because these women express their rightful desire to have their biology respected in ensuring them spaces that are exclusively for women. This is more than just bathrooms – it’s locker rooms, homeless shelters, rape centers, and meeting spaces for women to engage in shared issues or hobbies.
I could list countless examples, but I will share only one, as it was communicated to me directly, and my research on the events demonstrated to me just how vitally important this issue is. After the interview with The Federalist was published, author David Marcus forwarded to me an email he had received from a woman in Australia; she said:
“You have no idea of the effect your writing & interview on me. They made my guts relax & I breathed a sigh of relief. I thought, ‘Maybe we do have some allies in the movement!’ I’m a lesbian-feminist & my community has been under siege by the Trans community for years. Some years ago a group of us, who organized yearly camps for lesbians-born-women (known as Sappho’s Party), were taken to court in the South Australian Equal Opportunity Commission for wanting to meet without the presence of transgendered men who claimed to be lesbians (since that was anathema to our political analysis). We ‘won’ the case, but had to meet in secret – being forbidden to publicly advertise our gatherings. When we stand our ground and state our truth, we are hounded by transgender hatred. Sometimes we consider taking our case to court, here or federally, to get an exemption & be able to meet openly, but none of us has the financial means to do that, besides which our Australian Human Rights Commission…is so obsessed with the rights of Trans people that we fear we’d get no support from them. We don’t get any support from gay guys over here, either….”
After reading this note, I had three reactions: first was the firm realization that what I was doing was the correct thing to do; the second was the historic irony, that 60 years ago a group of Lesbians known as Daughters of Bilitis had to meet in secret so that the wider heterosexual society would not harass or discriminate against them,[20] and now a group of Lesbians was having to meet in secret so that their own alleged community would not harass or discriminate against them; and the third was chagrin at understanding how much misogyny and patriarchal our society still is – that women, straight and lesbian, have been fighting so long against the infringement of their rights and spaces by the Transgenders, but it took a man saying something about it to finally get the notice of the mainstream LGB/T organizations and media. How sad and, yet, how typical.
Where do we go from here?
While I knew that the petition would not result in immediate action, I had hoped that it would, at the very least, lead to the beginning of a genuine discussion between the organizations/media and the concerned members of the community. To see the responses of GLAAD, HRC, Lambda Legal and The Advocate has been particularly disheartening, although I should have suspected as much (particularly from The Advocate, which had the reprehensible gall to publish a commentary that compared the vile racists of the 1940s and 50s to young girls insisting on their right to a safe space free of male genitalia,[21] surely the lowest point in that illustrious magazine’s history). And, yet, I thought the proper journalistic response would’ve been to inquire into the reasons for members of the community expressing such concerns, rather than dismissing them with condescension and insults.
I and the more than 2,000 people who signed the petition (and the many more who, in various forums around the internet, expressed the desire to sign the petition but refrained from doing so out of fear of violent/harassing reprisal) are firm in our desire to see these issues discussed openly and with genuine consideration. We will not be bullied or silenced any more. A schism has opened in our community, and many of us can no longer, in good conscience, support organizations and media that would infringe on the rights of women, trample on the history and culture of Gays and Lesbians, and advocate for the physical, emotional and sexual abuse of children.
If people want to read the rest of this excellent and thought provoking article then please click on the link below. Even if you are straight and completely uninterested in issues about minority sexuality, it’s worth reading to see what LGB people are having to put up with from pushy, sometimes violent trans activists.
http://lgbvoice.org/why-i-created-the-drop-the-t-petition/
Equal rights and protection from harassment for LGB people is in my view a good thing. However LGB people need to be protected not just from the straight gay bashers but also from the aggressive trans activists. These Trans activists threaten people who dissent, dishonestly claim LGB history as their own and take over LGB organisations and use them for their own ends. Worst of all Trans activists and gender therapists suck children into a situation where they may be pushed into getting gender reassignment treatment too early or into treatment that is unnecessary, abusive and ultimately harmful for the individual.
