I am an older woman, attracted to femme presentation, who got this way by being a transgender person. I have had some interesting things said to me recently. Women tell me I am not a “real woman”. Lesbians tell me I am not a lesbian. Transgender persons tell me I am not trans enough, or am a transsexual and not transgender.
What is going on? While there has always been some friction between the factions making up the “Q” community (LGBTQQIA2SM+, some 600 recognized identities) recently we have moved beyond friction to see a significant increase in folks who are outright exclusionary. Perhaps there is a reason this is happening now, when at first glance, we should be standing united against forces hostile to all of us.
In October 2017 the Values Voter Summit, the annual political gathering sponsored by Family Values Council, a strongly anti-Q organization, featured a breakout session on “transgender ideology in public schools.” One panelist encouraged a “divide and conquer” strategy to defeat “totalitarian” school policies on transgender inclusion.
Meg Kilgannon, a panelist and director of Concerned Parents and Educators of Fairfax County, said:
“For all of its recent success, the LGBT alliance is actually fragile, and the trans activists need the gay rights movement to help legitimize them. Gender identity on its own is just a bridge too far. If you separate the T from the alphabet soup, we’ll have more success.”
She laid out a five point plan of attack to the conference:
- Engage: “Focus on gender identity to divide and conquer.”
- Educate: No personal attacks! “If you attack trans people, you become the proof they rely on for demanding protection,” she said. “So don’t play into their victim narrative because in this culture war, they are the bullies, not the victims.”
- Explain: Use secular arguments to reach a more diverse audience rather than less effective religious arguments.
- Empowerment: Kilgannon said that the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition—which describes itself as a group of conservative and progressive women that rise above their differences “to oppose the transgender agenda”—includes feminists who argue that gender identity is the “ultimate misogyny” and “erasure of women.” She said lesbians in the group are concerned that “transing masculine girls is a form of lesbian eugenics.”
- Elect: She urged activists to run for school board or to encourage other people from outside the “education-industrial complex” to run. She complained that school boards are full of ideological liberals.
The session speakers phrased their opposition to nondiscrimination policies in what sounded like progressive rhetoric, using phrases familiar to feminist moment speakers pushing for transgender exclusion. Transgender rights were depicted as anti-feminist, or hostile to minorities. They were framed as being disrespectful to LGB persons, pretenders and predators harmful to ‘the cause’.
This all sounds horribly familiar, and is unfortunately effective.
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