LGBT History

When I was first going out in public as Diana, I saw a flier advertising a talk at the University of Hartford, a woman PhD candidate was going to talk on her thesis “LGBT” in the media. It sounded like it would be interesting so I attended it with some friends. This woman from some college in Pennsylvania talked for about an hour on "LG" and then had a Q&A session afterward. During her whole talk she didn’t mentioned one TV show or movie that had a trans character in it, when we questioned her on it, she said that she didn’t find any shows or movies that had a trans-character or plot. We started to name shows which had a trans-character, like the “The Education of Max Bickford” and she stood there dumbfounded, she had not a clue. If I was her PhD adviser, I would have flunked her.

While I was in grad school, I got an email advertising a library exhibit on “LGBT” history at UConn's main campus and once again I rounded up some friends and we went up to see the show… well surprise, the show was all “LG” and no "T"!

I went down to a Pride Festival in Norwalk in 2009, the 40^th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising and they had all these posters up around the festival about the Stonewall Uprising and they were all about “Gays” and not one word any of the trans-people who were there. When I talked to the person who made the posters, he was so proud of them and when I asked him about trans-people like Sylvia Rivera, Miss Majors and Marsha P. Johnson, he had a blank expression on his face and he said that he never heard of any of them.

Later that month I received an invitation from the director of the Rainbow Center at UConn asking if I want to do a lecture for her class and I knew right away what I was going to talk about… “T” history. I developed a presentation called “The History of Trans Activism: From World War II to the Present” and I will be given it again at the True Colors conference at 10:45 on March 17

There was also an article about the news media lumping trans-people with “gays”.

Transgender Issues: Some Media Still Confused About the ‘LGBT’ Term
Montreal Gazette
By Jillian Page
March 2, 2012

Another media story today, this one on the CBS site, seems to think that being gay and being a trans person are synonymous. It’s a myth perpetuated by some religious organizations, ie. that if you are a trans woman in a relationship with a man, you are gay. And it seems that some media organizations are still stuck in that mindset.

The CBS article is about a “full service senior centre” in NYC that caters to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans people. Except the article says the centre was designed specifically for gay folks. The headline reads: New NYC center caters to gay and lesbian seniors

I don’t know if it is a “myth perpetuated by some religious organizations” or it is just plan ignorance or laziness on the reporters part. However, whatever the reason is some people want to lump lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people all under the umbrella of “gay” and as a result we lose our unique history of the trans-community.