NAACP LGBT Town Hall Los Angeles CA: Activist Ashley commandeers the microphone after sending this mobile upload telling us "Wow, CNN's Don Lemon just said transsexual and transgender people are really just "gay" and are the "same thing as gay". Unbelievable!"
Don Lemon (far right) obviously aghast at having his gay assimulist patriarchal misrepresentation of transsexuals blown up by Ashley looks on at NAACP's former director Julian Bond in horror as to say HEY I thought it was an unspoken agreement, no transsexuals or dogs?
Ashley is humble in victory latter telling us "Julian Bond was kind and fair enough to let me speak at the end, though Don Lemon interrupted me and made excuses for his misinformation."
This episode of transsexual educating gays would have been completely unnecessary had the transgenders communities request for a transsexual panel member been heeded. Instead, it was this adacious act of advocacy that saved the day.
Ashley on her facebook page explained her frustration "Its amazing that Don Lemon, a man who"s been out for only a few months, has the audacity to tell me, a woman who has been seeing a doctor about her transsexual & intersex condition for FIFTEEN YEARS, who I am, & that I'm the "same thing as gay". Sorry Don, women like me are not here to drag impersonate singers on a gay club's stage for you to laugh at. I'm a woman, deal with it. And stop the miseducation, its harmful."
4 comments:
(i'm addressing this directly to the speaker)
Look, I understand your need to differentiate yourself from who you feel you are being unfairly compared to. Of course it's true that trans people are not the same set of people as gay people (though some of us do overlap :), and it's certainly true that we need to be explicitly included in events like this. But I think we can voice this in a way that doesn't fall back into "we aren't drag performers!" as if there's something wrong with drag performers. As if drag performers are the ones marginalizing us here. If you have rejected solidarity with other people widely understood to be transgender--that's your business. But you don't speak for me, and you don't speak for other "just women [or men]" trans people.
Also, frankly I'm not sure saying we are the same as gay people necessarily meant he thinks we are the same as drag performers. It may have just meant he categorically rejects trans people and really thinks we are just confused gay cis people.
@jay Very true, but there's an extent to which we have to keep telling cisfolk, those drag queens included, that it's not about sexual access.
@plantransgender It was alright... again, I'd have expressed it differently in that being trans is not so much a medical condition as the denial of treatment for it and the societal opprobrium for accessing treatment is.
It's like denying someone Vitamin C all their life and then calling their scurvy 'being born in the wrong body.' When all they needed was to be able to, like everyone else who craved one, be able to grab a glass of OJ now and again.
Hi,
As a gay man it's interesting to me how and why we use the language that we do. I have read quite a few post that talk about cisfolk and the cisworld don't understand. you are right!
I don't fully get it. I don't understand what it's like to go through creating the physical appearance to match who you truly are. I do know what labels do and how they can marginalize a group.
I think we need to be careful that in our defense of our own right, we don't through others under the bus. In an attempt to be informed and supportive of all communities I come to this page to learn about whats happening, but each time I leave feeling more marginalized than educated.
I hope that one day we can get to a point where in an act of solidarity, we can put down the labels and really make a unified front for diversity, because we are beautiful. No matter where we come from, who we are, and how we got here, we are beautiful and deserving human beings. That simple factor alone makes us deserving of respect.
Hey Coops,
thanks for commenting. I agree and hope one day trans people will be seen as equals in the LGBT community. We have come a long ways in a short time to get there but there's still a lot of work to do, especially for the most marginalized of our community.
GNC POC aren't going to wait at the intersection of racial and gender diversity for a kind cis person to trip the light anymore.
Ashley tripped that light fantastic.
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