LG... B...... T......... F............ P................... N?

[stacis-leak.livejournal.com]

Now I have no doubt that by the halfway point in this post I'm going to be angering a few people, but I implore you to read all the way to the end.

This post is about stolen revolutions.

There was a post earlier saying that for LGB and T to combine was a mistake. The reason given was that Lesbian Gay and Bisexual are all about sexual attraction, and Transsexual is about identity, so is a totally separate thing.

It was a good argument.



There's also an argument from the other side, a little more sinister. Back when that equality bill was being reckoned out in the states, there was a movement by some homosexual groups to try and get gender identity removed from the list of protected circumstances.

Their reasoning was that the proposed bill hadn't been passed yet and had more chance of passing if it only protected homosexuals, who were slowly gaining media sympathy, but would be hindered by transsexuals, who were still quite misunderstood.

Now at first I was a little outraged. But it's all a kind of sequence. See many transfolk attach our cause to the LGB, to make LGBT, because there aren't as many transfolks and to make a decent protest argument, we need to be part of something larger.

But at the same time, a lot of the LGB types want to keep away from the T because it makes them look bad. In fairness I can understand their point. With the squabbles between who is and isn't and the lines between transvestism, transsexualism, crossdressing, genderqueer, intersexed, androgyny aren't properly drawn or recognised. We kind of need to get our shit together.

But that's not the point I'm making. I've got some friends on the inside... of furry. I sort of have a fursona myself, infact my female character on furry muck was probably my first break away from biological determinism.

I was talking to a furry fan friend of mine who said "We're next you know."

I had to ask for more information because that alone as a sentence didn't explain things as fully as they might.

Turned out he was of the opinion that as soon as transfolk are legally recognised as being born the wrong sex, furries can get legally recognised as being born the wrong species.

That's right, he (and presumably others) saw transsexualism as a cause to attach their cause to. Probably hoping for a tail graft on the NHS or skull reshaping or research into human body fur.

Now at the time I thought it funny, because I imagined what it'd look like if the anti-discrimination act were changed to prevent workplace discrimination against people who wanted to fursuit to work or mew during meetings or tech support calls.

Maybe that's a little simplistic but I realised how those LGB folk felt, if furries wanted the right to be treat like their fursonas, and receive alteration treatments to bring their bodies in line, and they wanted that to be attached to transsexualism in the law, I'd think it was a horrid idea. No one in their right minds would pass that law.

And it gets worse. You know I've heard whispered mumbling that some paedophiles think gay marriage opens the way for their form of forbidden love to be reconsidered by the law.... actually that's probably ultra-conservative whack-jobs talking (if you let the gays in the paedophiles will be next, etc) but ignoring the context it's a valid argument.

If the legality of immoral action X is reconsidered, why not Y?

So I had to rationalise it. I wouldn't allow myself to just stay hypocritical and say furries had no right to legal protection but that the LGB movement couldn't cut us out because we're considered strange by the mainstream. There had to be a logical reason.

And I figured it out.

I think that LGB and T belong together, because it's all about defining behaviour.

The argument from our opponents is that finding the same sex attractive or dressing as/behaving as/identifying as/becoming the opposite sex is unnatural.

I put it like this.
identifying as a woman, wearing women's clothing, exhibiting stereotypical female behaviours is not unnatural.
identifying as a man, wearing men's clothing, exhibiting stereotypical male behaviours is not unnatural.
Finding men attractive is not unnatural. Neither is finding women attractive.

All of these things are perfectly normal parts of human behaviour.

The real issue at stake is that through our gender, we're told which of these behaviours and attractions we are allowed to exhibit, and which ones are wrong.

LGBT belong together because the enforced gender binary is holding us all back in the same way.

In a truly equal world, you wouldn't have to stick to 'correct' behaviour for a particular gender, you could dress as, behave as, identify as and love either gender.

For some people, gender stereotypes work, but not for everyone. The Genderqueer population are living proof that there's no reason you can't dress male, identify female, have an intersex body and sleep with either gender.

I tend to think of gender assigned behaviour as being like a fruit machine (pardon the pun) in a casino. Where one reel is the body, one reel is the identity and one reel is the sexuality, and when you're born someone pulls the lever and you get a combination of the different little pictures, male and female signs rolling around. If they all match, you win (as far as society is concerned) but there are more like a hundred reels, defining little things which at some point we decided were masculine or feminine traits.

When the reels don't match you could get a transsexual person, or a gay person, or just a woman who unstereotypically enjoys football, or a man who likes to knit.

It's the big three reels (biology, identity, attraction) people pay most attention to, and they think the three should always match. Since they can only see the outcome of the biology reel, they like to think the other two will fit. But of course as we all know, they don't.

And that's why LGBT represents something far more important than just LGB and T put together. We represent the argument against sexual determinism.

That's why I'm growing to like the blanket banner of just 'Queer' which covers those who behave outside of their biological sex's stereotypes, without splitting it into a series of singular definitions.



I should probably end this on some kind of platitude like if we don't stand together, we'll fall apart, but in the end the only thing I'm trying to get across is that we are victim to the same attitude, applied to different aspects of our lives.

We're subject to the same criticisms, so if we can just stop the infighting, we can get ourselves organised to reply in unison.