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von–gelmini:

tenitchyfingers:

Anyway the LGBT community is for anyone whose identity is outside of the heteronormative rule (heterosexual, heteroromantic and cis, all three of these) and any “older” LGBT person is gonna confirm BECAUSE THEY BUILT THE DAMN COMMUNITY. Try asking them. Ask a 40-50 year old (or older) gay man or lesbian what the community is for. Ask them. Do it though. Learn some of your own history from them, and then come back to me then try and tell me I’m wrong. 

You’re wrong.

I’m a 59 year old gay man and I’m telling you in no uncertain terms, You. Are. Wrong.

Here’s a history lesson from someone who both lived it and has read extensively about LGBT issues, as well as being involved in many different organizations. I realized what I was when I was very young. I first came out in the late 60s. I was an activist during the 70s, 80s, and early 90s.

This is long, but history is long. It’s important. I tried to break it down into smaller paragraphs for easier reading. But it’s long. I debated not putting this under a cut, but holy hell it’s long. 

If you’re actually interested in WHY you’re wrong, OP, I hope you’ll read it.

The LGBT community began in the 50s and 60s as two separate communities, one for lesbians and one for gay men. Various homophile organizations, such as the Mattachine Society; and lesbian ones, the main one I knew of back then was the Daughters of Bilitis. They rarely worked together.

Around the time of Stonewall, there began to be some events designed to gain the attention of the straight public and that’s when you started seeing lesbians and gay men working together frequently. For public visibility and advocating for legal changes. The first Pride events got organized that way, with communities of allies joining in to show support for lesbians and gay men. NOT as an attempt to insert themselves into the community as a whole, but as support.

I was part of the organizing group for the second Pride parade ever in San Francisco. In addition to groups of lesbians and gay men, there were many mixed gender and mixed orientation groups as well as some plain old straight people groups.

There were general kink groups (the Society of Janus), there were general (mainstream, presumed straight) women’s/feminist groups, there were general anti-porn groups (Women Against Violence And Pornography [WAVPAM], ironically placed in marching order right next to the kinksters), there were general polyamorous groups, etc. These were included because either they had lesbian and gay members or because they marched in support of the lesbian and gay cause.

And because they paid the fees. We had expenses to meet for permits, security, promotion, etc. and we were desperately in need of funds. These open groups weren’t included because they were “outside of the heteronormative rule”. Pride was a public event and we wanted it LARGE to show the media how much support we had. We wanted lots and lots of allies in the parade. Basically, any group who was supportive and could pony up the fee could march, no matter how irrelevant the group was to the event.

This was contentious and argued over greatly in meetings. Whether general straight women feminist groups should be included. Whether an anti-sex, anti-porn group should be included. Whether leather/kink groups that were other than gay male/South of Market should be included (Samois [lesbian leather] and Janus [mixed orientation]). Whether or not commercial groups should be included. Any time you stick a group of lesbians and gay men together and expect a consensus, you have arguments to get through first.

Eventually, the need for money and compromise won the day, and so Pride was never a strictly LGBT event but always included allies, commerce, and anyone who supported the cause. Who is allowed to attend/be in Pride is not a good argument for historic inclusion. EVERYONE is allowed to be in Pride, no matter how irrelevant, as long as they’re a supporter with the entry fee.

There were always bisexuals throughout the community’s early years. BUT… bisexual as an identity rather than an activity didn’t start to coalesce until the late 70s and early 80s. Bi was pretty much contingent on the discrimination you faced over your same gender attraction/activity. People who settled down and married in opposite gender relationships tended to drift away from the community as anything other than allies. The idea of bi-in-theory, or bi but not attracted to my own gender, or bi as asexual, or bi whatever modifier, just didn’t exist as a politically active, cohesive group.

The fight, back then, was for the legal right to exist and not be arrested, not be murdered in the streets if you were seen with a same gender partner. For people who had same gender relationships to be allowed to be teachers. For people who had same gender relationships to receive equal rights. For people who had same gender relationships not to be considered pedophiles (ask me separately about the expulsion of pederast groups from mainstream LGBT circles, I was there for it.)

If you were a bi person in an opposite gender relationship, you were still in the community if you wanted to be (most didn’t) but it was more of an allyship position because you were no longer in direct, daily risk (unless your relationship status changed). Concerns about passing was very much a real, life-and-death thing for so so many people – bi, trans, and gay – back then.

There wasn’t “identity politics” as we know it today. If you were a wlw or a mlm, actively involved in the community and in having relationships with people of your own gender, you were considered lesbian or gay. If you had opposite sex relations in the past, or were open to them in the future, it really didn’t matter. No one was splitting those kinds of hairs. Very few people were ‘gold star’ because most people tried to suppress their same gender desires and had opposite gender relationships in their past. Your ‘identity’ was based on your risk of arrest and discrimination, etc.

Because of the law, being gay or lesbian or bi (or trans, more on that later) was a matter of your action rather than your identity. If you were a ‘straight passing’ closet or celibate gay man who stayed that way 24/7 and never sought out same gender partners, you knew you were gay but no one else did and there was no ‘identity’ to claim as such until the 70s.

But of course very few lesbians or gay men could live like that and so if you were same gender attracted, eventually you would run risks and whether you liked it or not, you would be externally identified as gay.

I’m sure I’m not explaining this well, but it’s a whole legal, externalized, internalized ball of wax. Femme lesbians and straight-acting gay men were at less risk than butch lesbians and effeminate gay men. Top/bottom played a part and was much more strictly enforced by gay society. It was all a matter of how straight society viewed you rather than your own internal identity. This changed after Stonewall. But before Stonewall and the societally visible liberation movement? Oh god was it ever complicated! Ask me and I’ll explain better.

Asexuality, as an identity, did not exist. There were sub-groups amongst lesbian groups who were survivors and sex repulsed, or who were ‘political lesbians’ and not open to having sex with women because they were heterosexual but not open for political reasons to sex with men. But there was no IDENTITY of asexual.

Neither did the identity of bi exist as a cover for asexuality. No one asked if you actually banged your partner. If you were in relationships with both men and women, you were bi. If you said you never actually fucked or had a vague internal ‘sexual attraction’? You’d get a few odd looks but mostly a ‘*shrug* I never asked’.

So sure, there may have been a few people who fit today’s definition of asexual in the bi community, but they weren’t themselves identifying as asexual. It was a non-existent identity. If the person you held hands with could get you arrested, you were considered lesbian, gay, or bi. If they couldn’t, you were bi or straight. And if you couldn’t get arrested, why are you worried about it?

Some people still used the euphemisms of “confirmed bachelor” or “spinster”, especially if they were closet, but these were always known by everyone to mean “gay man” and “lesbian” respectively. Not asexual.

In the gay male community there definitely was no such thing as asexual. Not until the AIDS crisis took hold. Then, there were men who were too terrified to have sexual contact. But being afraid for your life and being celibate or unable to function because of paralyzing fear isn’t an identity, it’s a tragedy.

It is so hard to explain the way the spectre of arrest, public shame, assault, murder, and later illness and death, shaped the community. To people of today, it probably sounds like an alien landscape. But trust me when I say that identity politics was irrelevant.

Within the community you were safe. As safe as you could get for the times. There were places you could hold hands. Places you could kiss. Places you could just laugh and relax and be. Tangible, real places. Not tags on tumblr.

If you lived in the Castro (for gay men) or in the Duboce Triangle (for lesbians), it was like living in paradise. Yes, you were still at risk. I was twice badly physically assaulted in the ‘safety’ of San Francisco. But you saw people like yourself. You saw other same gendered partners holding hands over a candlelit dinner table.

Ah, how can I explain how miraculous that was having grown up in the 60s and being terrified all the time? To know that there was a place like that? That things were changing? It was nothing short of miraculous. But it was all based on same gender attraction. If you weren’t same gender attracted, you didn’t need that. You had the rest of the world.

Unless you were trans.

The trans communities were not considered a separate community for a long time. Way way way back in the day (the 40s-70s), trans was considered as a “cure” for being gay. The ONLY way you could get GRS or HRT was if at the end of it you would appear to be in an opposite gender relationship. That’s all the straight medical establishment was interested in. You had to break off all sexual contact with your same gender. You had to divorce your spouse.

You couldn’t wind up being a gay trans man or a lesbian trans woman. No gender clinic would treat you if that’s how you identified. In the early 80s this began to finally change. There was a few important studies (notably one at the University of Minnesota) that helped realize that gender and sexual orientation were two different things.

Because of trans women being assumed by the straight populace and the medical establishment to be men who wanted sex with men, and trans men to be women who wanted sex with women, some of the earliest alliances between the trans communities were between gay men and trans women, and lesbians and trans men.

I’m not saying that any of this was right. It’s just the way the medical and legal establishment was. You can argue otherwise til you’re blue in the face, but this was the facts of existing as a trans person back in the day.

This is why it was natural to include the T from the very first. It’s why trans women were in a gay bar called Stonewall. It’s part of why drag has always been part of the gay community. We were already together. Trans people had always been there amongst lesbians and gay men.

So when forming the acronym during the AIDS crisis activism (by that point bisexual had become a separate identity) it became L G B T. No plus, nothing else. No other letters. Just LGBT.

But as public visibility gained, two other letters came – sometimes. Here’s the history of the other letters, when they were included. It wasn’t often.

The Q stood for questioning. The A stood for allies. This came about when school and university organizations popped up. In order to access school property, many schools had rules that in order to hold meetings, every meeting had to be open and available to every student.

Just saying you wanted to hold an LGBT meeting wouldn’t fly. It excluded straight students who had paid fees to access every school sponsored event, and so wasn’t allowed by school rules. They added the Q first. But it still got objected to because not ever attending student might be ‘questioning’, plus, it could out students who were in the closet. Adding an ‘A for ally’ satisfied both worries. It now meant that the meeting on school grounds was open to everyone, and closeted students had plausible deniability.

The only time that LGBTQA was used over LGBT was for general open public events held on public grounds. In every case, the A always stood for ally, the Q for questioning.

About the word ‘queer’. It was, and still is, a slur. Equivalent to the n-word, f*g, d*ke, etc. Yes, like those other slurs, some people have ‘reclaimed’ it. But it was never used against cisgender, hetero (romantic or sexual) people except by accident. It has always meant gay, lesbian, same gender attracted bi, or trans people.

When Queer Nation and ACT-UP started using ‘queer’ as an in-your-face chant: “We’re here, we’re queer” – it was meant to rally people who were trans and same gender attracted and dying of AIDS. It never originated as an ‘umbrella’ term for people who were “outside of the heteronormative rule”. Queer never originated as a reclaimed slur to encompass every micro-identity that MOGAI came up with. It was gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans people. That is what queer means. Not a bunch of Latinate prefexes tacked onto the words *-sexual or *-romantic, providing cover for straight people to insert themselves into the LGBT community for oppression points.

This assertion that you make, OP, that the LGBT community was founded to accept everyone who was “outside of the heteronormative rule” is simply wrong.

The original foundations were fighting prejudice and laws against same gender relationships and sexual acts. That’s the origins of the DoB and the Mattachine Society and the like. Then post Stonewall, the community expanded to include two groups separately that had always been a part of the first two: bi and trans people.

At no point historically were the goals to include everyone who was different or felt broken or didn’t quite fit the Donna Reed, Father Knows Best, 50s image of heterosexuality. Which, news flash, is most every single heterosexual couple. That image has never reflected the reality of heterosexuality. And simply not fitting it doesn’t make you LGBT.

Now, if the community is going to change, that’s a totally different discussion. But to come out and say that the history was everyone “outside of the heteronormative rule” is a lie that you hope you can get away with because of the younger demographics of tumblr, the fact that most people my age are off involved in things other than fandom/tumblr, and the fact that so many gay men of my generation are dead.

OP, you’ll probably just write this off. Tumblr is entirely a hugbox echochamber and no dissenting viewpoints are tolerated. But this is the actual history you’re trying to erase. I’m tired of seeing history rewritten to suit your purpose.

I’m not being aphobic. I’m not being biphobic. I’m not being transphobic. I’m not being homophobic or lesbophobic. Or any other phobia or ism. I’m telling you the HISTORY.

I’m not saying that the community can’t change, that it shouldn’t change. That’s a discussion for younger people than me. I’ll be dead and gone by then. I have no skin in that game except for assuring the safe and sane future for my bi, trans son.

But to rewrite the history of the LGBT movement/community to say that “asexuals have always been there”, that it’s “for all non-heteronormative people”, that “bisexuality has always included asexuals”, that “bisexuality itself has always been a distinct ‘identity’ from lesbian or gay”, that “trans has never been about sex rather than gender”, etc. etc. etc.

You’re simply historically wrong.

I’m more than happy to give more information on any of this if you’re actually interested in learning LGBT history and not just ‘queer studies’ from a bunch of academics.

_________

* – correction: the second major Pride event in SF. There were smaller ones that had been sort of organically grown, so to speak. But the ones I was involved in began with the second one that looks like what Pride has become as we now know it. 1978 - 1980.