Biphobia and hypocrisy of gays and lesbians

[TaraJo]

Transgendered people in particular just... can't seem to get over their differences. There are such incredibly exclusive groups as 'http://blacktransmen.org/', hyper-feministic only tW groups, tM groups made to counter the radfems, gender neutrals and multigendered people shoved into their own damn corner... look, I know most of us are going through puberty (again...), but it doesn't have to be a highschool-cliques representation! Even worse for the T community... many of them take this as a temporary chapter in their life, and then they go stealth. Understandable, but it's still sad.

Yeah, that's actually something I heard talked about a while ago.

See, go backward to 2009 when I first moved to Houston. One of the amazing things about the city is that we have the awesomest transgender community. There's a transgender center that provides all kinds of support for people in need. The transgender community has even gotten themselves involved in local politics, thanks in no small part to the fact that there is a trans lawyer (who has since become a judge) who has been extremely supportive of the center and their goals. A lot of this would be impossible in other transgender communities, though.

Well, the woman who runs the center is named Cristan. A while back, I believe she told me she went to San Fransisco and tried to work with a local transgender community there. One of the things that seemed to happen there that interfered with her is that the seperate groups had already formed into heir exclusive cliques. See, in Houston, we have enough unity between the groups that we can accomplish things. The tg center is welcoming of crossdresses, drag queens, gender queer people, trans men, trans women, allies and even the occassional mentally ill person who tells us some obviously absurd story about how they're trans (trust me, if you had ever met Patch, you would fully understand this one). Sure, when differences are relevent, we'll bring them up. For example, there's a group for trans men where they can talk about issues exclusive to them. There's a botique for crossdressers where they can buy the clothes they're into (most of which tend to be too flamboyant for a lot of transwomen to wear on a day to day basis).

For the most part, we go with the big tent idea and it works. It gives us enough resources and support to have our center provide assistance to people in need. If you start getting into more exclusive groups, like you go into "lesbian trans women of color" or "gay transmen survivors of sexual assault," the group doesn't have enough backing on its own to really do very much good but if you manage to gather all those groups together.... that's when we can do a lot of good.

So, if you ever drop by Houston, you might want to take a look at us.