You Have Seen Them… Those Blue And Yellow Equal Signs

I was warned about them but I was young and naïve, just coming out in the world and I ignored the warnings. By the end of 2007 I learned firsthand of their treachery.

Powerful gay rights groups excluded trans people for decades — leaving them vulnerable to Trump’s attack
The LGBTQ community needs to grapple with its history of ignoring its most vulnerable members
The Washington Post
By Evan Greer
October 29, 2018

[…]
An attack on marginalized people from the administration behind family separation policies and Muslim travel bans is hardly a surprise. But there’s a reason the transgender community is in the government’s crosshairs. There was a target painted on our backs. And it was put there not just by the religious right and gender essentialist crusaders, but by the mainstream gay rights movement, which for the better part of the last century has repeatedly backed away from — and sometimes even fought on the wrong side of — the battles that most affect trans and gender nonconforming people.

The Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, two of the first formally organized gay and lesbian rights organizations in the United States, actively discouraged members from engaging in “deviant” expressions of gender and sexuality. Rather than challenge the rigid and repressive gender roles of postwar America, they embraced them in the interest of political gain. For example, their “Annual Reminder” pickets for gay rights in the late 1960s had a strict dress code: Men had to wear white shirts and slacks, and women had to wear dresses. They fought against discrimination on the grounds that they were “normal homosexuals,” and trans people did not fit under that rubric. These groups thought that conforming to societal standards would advance their singular cause: acceptance.

I have to add that the Dewey Lunch Counter protest was organized in part by the Janus Society; “After the arrests, the Janus Society demonstrated outside of this Dewey’s location, distributing 1,500 leaflets over the course of five days. On May 2, 1965, another small sit-in took place.”

In 2007, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ rights organization, infamously threw trans people under the bus by cutting a deal that left gender identity protections out of the Employment and Non Discrimination Act after promising trans activists that they’d fight for their inclusion in the bill. In recent years, the organization has continued to face criticism for silencing trans people at events: At a 2013 rally, a staffer asked an activist to lower a transgender flag to keep it out of view of TV cameras. HRC still doesn’t have any trans people in top leadership positions, where our lived experiences would help shape strategy and priorities.

I was in Washington that year lobbying for ENDA and the lobby training was held at the HRC headquarters and when I was heading down there a friend warned me about the HRC but I didn’t listen. I have since learned that the HRC is Gay Inc. not only do they have no trans people on their Board they also do not have many lesbians on their Board, it is most made up of rich, gay, white males.