For reasons of safety and common bond we spend our lives as part of communities that resemble matryoshka dolls, the wooden Russian toys that nest inside one another, each doll hiding a smaller one. And so our communities contain other communities: family, locality, work, race, gender, hobbies, and many more.
Growing up, I was part of at least a dozen such communities, and some of the most personal ones were also the most misunderstood and ignored–concealed and subsumed by broader, more prominent groups. Today, it seems that little has changed. I am still part of many communities, some dating back to childhood (since family is a community), but I find that being Trans, nestled within the larger LGBT matryoshka, is often harmful.
Both in Europe (where I come from) and the United States, the LGBT community (possibly adding other letters or symbols) is usually spoken of as if it is monolithic, a single group with a shared identity and bond–but it is not. The well-loved British (and gay) actor Christopher Biggins recently claimed that bisexuals are just gay people in denial and even the cause of the AIDS epidemic. Until last year, Stonewall, the leading UK LGB charity and advocacy group, excluded Trans people, even though Trans people led the 1969 Stonewall riots which sparked the gay rights movement.
People refer to the successes made by LGBT groups and cite issues that don’t fully concern the Trans movement. In debates about the “sinfulness” of LGBT people, Christian… [Read more…] about The Dangers of Russian Dolls: Finding the T in LGBT