Monday, November 05
Blog commentary: Why transgender community hates HRC
Source: TransGriot.blogspot.com
by Monica Roberts
Why does the transgender community hate HRC? It’s a question I get frequently asked in GLBT settings. Considering the recent GLBT family feud erupting over ENDA, it's an appropriate one to ask as well.
Before I get started trying to shed light on it, I need to point out in the name of journalistic integrity that I was the Lobby Chair for the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC) from 1999-2002.
The roots of the animosity start after Stonewall. In an effort to appear more 'mainstream' to the straight community, Jim Fouratt and friends bounced Sylvia Rivera and other transpeople out of New York’s GLF (Gay Liberation Front). Jim Fouratt’s anti-transgender comments culminating in a 2000 one at a Stonewall observance in which he called transpeople 'misguided gay men who'd undergone surgical mutilations' also added insult to the injury.
In a pattern that persists to the present day, The GLF had protections for transpeople removed from a proposed 1971 New York GLBT rights anti-discrimination bill under the pretext that it wouldn’t pass with such 'extreme' language.
Ironically the bill failed anyway and the New York City GLB-only rights bill wouldn't pass until 1986. Transgender inclusion was fought at that tome by Tom Stoddard, who would later head Lambda Legal. Transgender people didn't get added in the New York City bill until after Sylvia Rivera's death in 2002.
So what does this have to do with HRC since it didn’t get founded until 1980?
The problem is that the senior gay leadership is still influenced by the Fouratt-Raymond-Greer negative attitudes towards transpeople. That sentiment is concentrated disproportionately in California and the Northeast Corridor. The early gay and lesbian leadership also sprang up from those areas as well.
The transgender community around the late 80’s renewed its organizing efforts to fight for its rights. The early leadership was also concentrated in the Northeast Corridor and California as well and regarded the gay community as natural allies.
One thing they didn’t take into account was how deeply entrenched the anti-transgender attitudes and doctrines were amongst gay and lesbian leaders. Barney Frank (D-MA) is a prominent example of it.
The sad part is that this animosity is preventing HRC and the transgender community from effectively working together to defeat their common enemy despite the desires of people on both sides to do precisely that.
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Trans people are not the only ones who hate the HRC; many gay and lesbian people, like myself, dispise them.
HRC only cares about HRC, the hell with the rest of us.
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True. And I too have often questioned their methods and tactics. As I've said on the subject over in Qblog, I don't understand the ways of that other Washington on the east coast, but it sure does look to me like HRC was one of the few activist groups being rational about this issue. Passing ENDA -- in just about exactly the form it had had for most of its 3 decade slog through the process -- was a huge accomplishment. It wasn't perfect, but it was possible.
And it had never been possible before to get it passed in either house. Foreman's forlorn hope to defeat the thing because it wasn't the perfect bill he wanted was a disservice to the many LGB people who aren't protected by state or city laws and who could benefit from LGB-No-T ENDA if it became law.
I understood the initial objections of the Task Force and their band, but they went too far. They presented themselves as politically inept, and might even have made it harder in the future to pass similar protections for transgender people.
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Your history is simply wrong. GLF never "booted" Sylvia Rivera from GLF. The Gay Activist Alliance did. GLF was always had a multi-issue, radical political agenda. GAA was a single-issue activist group dominated by straight identified gay men and a very, very small number of women.
Sylvia Rivera and I were friends for over 30 years and did talk one on one many, many times over the years in good times and not. We used to march together in the Gay and Lesbian Pride march each year.
I continued to speak with Sylvia on a personal level up until the year Sylvia died.
Stop distorting the truth. I challenge you to find one person who was ACTUALLY a member of GLF to say other wise.
Please check your sources for truthfulness and stop distorting the truth of my history with Sylvia Rivera.
jim fouratt