Comments on: Trans Pride vs Gay Pride

By: Harper

Harper — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 01:22:38 +0000

Thanks for all these posts. I have been trying to tease this issue out for myself. I had a conversation sometime last year and I was trying to articulate why, despite being FTM, I did not feel like I fit with the GBLTQ community. All I could say is that Iâ€™m straight and have no reason to have pride in the gay community (aside from merely appreciating someone elseâ€™s journey). I just canâ€™t articulate the difference of WHY I donâ€™t feel like the T belongs in the GBLTQ community. On a very basic level of course one has significant â€œimmutableâ€ physical aspects to it, while the other has no such implication. I just donâ€™t see the relation between being Trans and being straight, queer, or anything in-between as having any kind of common ground except under the broad umbrella of some kind of gender non-conformity.
If anyone can articulate it I would be grateful.

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By: Zoe

Zoe — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 04:03:13 +0000

Haberdasher hit the nail right on the head with what he said. The problems that gay people have to face in society is all down to one thing: Prejudice, and homophobia. The fact that these things exist, is also why some gay people try to fight their sexuality and wish they weren’t gay. But if one day inherent homophobia was no longer existent, then no gay person would hate themselves for being gay, and living a normal life would be no problem at all.

Being trans is totally different, as society’s bigoted attitude towards transpeople is merely one negative aspect of living with the trans condition. Even if tomorrow the world suddenly changed, and everyone had no prejudice towards transpeople, there is still a lot of unsavoury, and unwanted aspects of being trans. Having to live a certain number of years being brought up as the wrong gender, knowing that your body is not really your own, always feeling a deep sense of loss of a normal childhood and life that you feel you have been denied, all these things and more, are negative aspects of being trans that will not suddenly disappear if society decided it had no problem with transpeople.

I can have no pride in being trans, because not only do I not see anything at all positive about being trans, I also would change it in a second if I could, and just be a ordinary, cisgendered woman. I did not choose to be trans, therefore I can take no pride in something I didnt choose, and would change in a second if I could.

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By: ShipofFools

ShipofFools — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 19:29:29 +0000

I understand that on a personal level. I’m probably too much of a political animal to focus on the personal. In day to day life my decisions are personal, obviously, but “pride” is a political term to me and on a social level I still think that we need more trans pride.
I have known many older and some younger gay cis guys who felt tremendous shame/pain about being “not normal”. They felt that being gay was a physical defect, an illness, something that they didn’t chose, and nothing to be proud of. I can’t help connecting this to some aspects of being trans. I might be making a logical mistake here, but because of my history that coneection comes to my mind immediately.

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By: Not Aiden

Not Aiden — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:47:20 +0000

I’m stealth for the same reason most people don’t know I have chronic illnesses: it doesn’t come up. I would have to make a concentrated effort to be out to my friends because at this point in my life it’s just not an issue. I don’t have easy segues into being trans, that’s actually part of why disclosure is so difficult. No Girl Scout stories, no hidden tampons, nothing. Someone has to ask me point blank about my genitalia for me to think about it in the course of normal conversation.

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By: Not Aiden

Not Aiden — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:37:12 +0000

I’ve never felt uncomfortable talking about my past either. I’m always a bit confused when people are. Even ignoring the largely socially transitioned by accident issue, I feel like my childhood was pretty gender neutral. Nothing gendered about playing with Lego or obsessing over Star Wars.

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By: Not Aiden

Not Aiden — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:35:51 +0000

I think part of it is that you’re still looking at the societal aspect. Haberdasher and I seem to be looking at the personal aspect.

If society changed tomorrow and being trans was 100% acceptable I still wouldn’t be out. Why? Because being trans isn’t part of my identity. It would make disclosure easier, but I still wouldn’t tell my friends. I still wouldn’t wear trans pride t-shirts or buttons. Why? Because I’d still have to deal with the internal conflict of being a man with a vagina. That’s not something I’m thrilled about.

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By: Not Aiden

Not Aiden — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:30:34 +0000

I love the ADD comparison. It’s similar for me, being trans is bloody irritating just like having ADHD. Being gay can be irritating at times, but also comes with benefits. Trans and ADHD don’t. They’re just annoying conditions that fuck with the life I want to live.

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By: Oliver

Oliver — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 20:29:44 +0000

“It was either transition or kill myself. People say â€œoh, you donâ€™t have to physically transition, you can learn to live with your body,â€ but they donâ€™t know what itâ€™s like to wake up every day and wonder who that person in the mirror is. I didnâ€™t choose to start T because I wanted the changes, I chose to start T because my brain already viewed myself as having those changes and not having the visual image match up with the mental one was driving me slowly insane. I never once got a choice in the matter. Not if I wanted to continue being alive (which, admittedly, is not always as clear as it should be).”

I think I’ll eliminate anything suicidal from the above paragraph (not because I haven’t experienced it but because I have no desire to discuss those feelings with my mother)and articulate this to my mother, who asked me on Friday why I can’t be comfortable the way I am. I was at a loss as to how to describe it.

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By: ShipofFools

ShipofFools — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:58:50 +0000

I have more gay pride than trans pride too, but it somehow irks me. It feels a bit like lack of self respect.
The activism that is needed to the change general attitude will take some decades. And many people will have to sacrifice their own happiness or comfort for it. That’s the way activism works. I totally get that you don’t want to do it. I often don’t want to do it too, and the older I get, the more I’m tired of it. But I’m sure it will be done.
It’s (relatively) easy to have gay pride and do gay activism today. It wasn’t so 20 or 30 years ago. And that’s where we stand with trans activism today.
I’m sorry if I came off cranky. I didn’t mean to attack anyone personally. I know this is a difficult topic.

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By: Haberdasher

Haberdasher — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 05:14:05 +0000

I’ll agree with that… though, I’m not sure how to achieve that “activism” per se. I don’t feel compelled to come out in situations where people don’t know about my past (or even aspects of my present) or really felt a conversation to be awkward because of my unknown past… but maybe that will be the case at some later date and I will change my mind. So far, it’s not been an issue.

The point of most of my posts were from the beginning, though, that having more gay pride than trans pride makes sense to me.

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