IGF CultureWatch

The Federalist looks at the increasingly uncomfortable amalgamation of LGB and T, by way of an interview with a gay man who posted a change.org petition to “drop the T.” It won’t happen, of course, but the interview raises some interesting points. The petitioner (he asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation from the trans movement) notes, for instance:

To me, the LGB movement, with its celebration of all types of gay men and women, such as bears, leather daddies, drag queens, diesel dykes, lipstick lesbians, etc., has always been about expanding and re-defining concepts of gender; the trans movement, on the other hand, appears to be about re-asserting and codifying traditional concepts of gender.

The initial discussion is about the Stonewall narrative, and interviewer David Marcus asks:

I was at the Stonewall twenty-fifth anniversary march in 1994, and at that time we all thought we had a pretty good idea of what had happened at Stonewall. The Stonewall veterans— mostly gay, white men—were viewed as heroic. In the new version of events, the gay, white men at the riot are presented as weak followers, not primary actors. Why do you think so many established gay outlets have so easily accepted this narrative that echoes some of the worst stereotypes about gay men?

To which the petitioner replies:

I think there’s a general desire to find heroes in the past that aren’t the usual white guy, and I understand that completely, as a gay kid looking to find gay heroes in a heteronormative history myself. But you can’t alter history to make you feel better, and doing so by twisting a narrative so that heroic men become weak, dithering non-actors in an event is disrespectful to them and ultimately to yourself.

More. David Marcus has more to say at The Federalist website, Gay Versus Trans Bar Fight Breaks Out Over ‘Stonewall’:

Consider the accounts of the white, gay men interviewed for an AARP video celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall. They are quite clear about what led them to riot. It wasn’t the actions of the small number of transvestites that led them to fight back. It was the actions of the police, the frustration of being left behind in a nation that was slowly embracing civil rights. It was the moment when they refused to be cowed by a culture that condemned the very essence of who they were.

Let us be clear that those who accuse “Stonewall,” the movie, of whitewashing and cis-washing the events of that night are calling these men liars.

The Glasgow, Scotland, alternative Free Pride festival is too politically correct for Dan Savage, who notes the organizers rationale:

At Free Pride we hope to create a safe space for all people within the LGBTQIA+ community. We understand that sometimes this will disappoint some people within the community, however our priority is always to put the needs of the most marginalised groups within our community first. This is why, after much discussion,the trans and non binary caucus decided not to have drag acts perform at the event.

The organizers further explain their decision:

When individuals from a less marginalized group make individuals from a more marginalized group feel uncomfortable—or if they might make them feel uncomfortable—the individuals from the less marginalized group can and should be excluded for the comfort of individuals from the more marginalized group.

Savage recounts that:

After getting a little outraged feedback, some of which violated Free Pride’s “safe space” policies (boo hoo hoo), Free Pride announced their new-and-improved policy on drag acts: Drag performers who are “trans and non-binary” will be welcome to perform at Free Pride, but the ban remains on cis drag performers.

In other words, a performer like Albin/Zaza from the musical La Cage of Folles would be excluded from performing “I Am What I Am,” given the offensive nature of gay drag and the veto granted to the more-greatly oppressed trans activists.

More. Here’s coverage by London’s Evening Standard, Drag queens banned from Pride event ‘because they may offend transgender people’.

No, this isn’t just a made up issue. From the progressive site ThinkProgress, a very, very, serious analysis of The Quiet Clash Between Transgender Women and Drag Queens.

Via the New York Times, Historic Day for Gays, but Twinge of Loss for an Outsider Culture:

“There is something wonderful about being part of an oppressed community,” [gay historian Eric Marcus] said. But he warned against too much nostalgia. The most vocal gay rights activists may have celebrated being outsiders, but the vast majority of gay people just wanted “what everyone else had,” he said — the ability to fall in love, have families, pursue their careers and “just live their lives.”

I think the overwhelming majority of gay people are happy to trade outsider culture and community for legal equality and social inclusion. But the conflict between those who would celebrate transgressiveness and those who aspire to assimilation goes back a long way, and one of the milestones in favor of assimilation and inclusion was our friend Bruce Bawer’s seminal A Place at the Table.

The Rachel Dolezal cisracial/transracial meme isn’t doing the fight for transgender acceptance and equality any favors. While some social conservatives are warning of a slippery slope and suggesting that transracialism will allow self-identification with other races in a way that opens an entitlement floodgate, some progressives seem to be, gingerly, starting to question whether the appropriate social justice warrior position might be to defend transracial identity:

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry entertained the notion on her show today with kind of a huge question. “Is it possible that she might actually be black?”

While not wanting to make the transgender comparison, Harris-Perry questioned whether one can be “cisblack and transblack,” and whether there’s a way to describe “the achievement of blackness despite one’s parentage.”

Alyson Hobbs, who literally wrote the book on “racial passing,” said there’s “certainly a chance that she identifies as a black woman and there could be authenticity to that.”

Here’s a wrap-up of others willing to entertain the idea that racial self-identification can be more “authentic” than one’s birth race.
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In the New York Times, feminist Elinor Burkett writes What Makes a Woman?:

For me and many women, feminist and otherwise, one of the difficult parts of witnessing and wanting to rally behind the movement for transgender rights is the language that a growing number of trans individuals insist on, the notions of femininity that they’re articulating….

Many transwomen and transmen embrace psychological distinctions between men and women that some feminist claim are purely cultural and represent patriarchal oppression. I believe there are, speaking generally, innate psychological tendencies between (most) men and (most) women that these feminist reject, although there are also exceptions, which may be more likely (although not exclusively) to be seen among gay men and lesbians (and even here, to be sure, not all gay men are more feminine than straight men, and some are hypermasculine leathermen; likewise, there are “lipstick” and “butch” lesbians), so it gets messy.

More. Like Caitlyn Jenner, women are far more likely than men to prefer frilly underwear. That’s not meant to be flippant; the fact that Jenner appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair in sexy lingerie was one of the transgressions, so to speak, that provoked Burkett’s column. To claim that women don’t generally prefer stereotypically feminine underwear, or if they do to claim it’s because of cultural norms imposed by the patriarchy, is, I think, silly.

That said, despite the general trend, some women don’t prefer frilly underwear and some men do.

According to the Raw Story website, former House speaker Dennis Hastert “would be only the latest conservative Christian political figure to be revealed as engaging in a homosexual lifestyle he demonized as a lawmaker.”

I think “engaging in a homosexual lifestyle” may be overstated based on what we know (unattributed allegations of improper sexual misconduct with a student wrestler). Still, the sad litany of socially conservative, gay-marriage opposing GOP (mostly) politicians who have sex with men (or boys) continues.

We don’t know what percentage of men who tell survey takers they’re straight because they’re married to a woman and have children are secretly men who have sex with men. But in the better world to come—with legal equality, same-sex marriage commonplace, and social acceptance the cultural norm—hopefully so many lives won’t be tragically distorted.

More. Right-wing screeds against gay scoutmasters miss the point that it’s the closet cases (often married to women, with kids) who are the danger. The openly gay scoutmaster—or wrestling coach—with a husband is much less likely to abuse teenage boys.

Furthermore. At the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr blogs:

If I understand the history correctly, in the late 1990s, the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair, who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair, which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy.