Gatekeeping the Trans Community

A friend of mine was derided recently in a public Facebook forum for "not being Trans enough". When I found out after the fact, a mild way to put it was that I was LIVID. This is not what our community is about. Many of us  feel that the T is mostly silent in LGBT, on our best day. Do we really need to form our own circular firing squad and beat down on people who aren't same as being somehow lesser?

Is there some magical checklist for the gateway to "Trans", which I can only assume is ripped in two pieces and stored for safety on an alter and locked inside two vaults - one hidden within the women's restroom at the Stonewall Inn and the other half buried beneath the ruins of the old Queen Mary's notorious back bar? Or could it just be that there are people among us who only feel "Trans enough" themselves by blocking the gate on someone in their own community?

This is not only outdated, it shows a genuine lack of knowledge and understanding of your own gay community as a whole. 


The path of what would eventually lead me to Today started really in the late 90's. The gay community back I remember wasn't even LGBTQ+... wasn't even LGBT, yet... I actually remember it referred to in the San Diego Reader as "GLBT", I guess because we still didn't know our manners and lesbians shouldn't go first? I dunno. But I digress... 

It was also very confusing, for me at least, what the T actually stood for. Nobody used the term "transgender" then. They were "transsexuals", but you were only a transsexual (it was always "a transsexual", not just simply "transsexual" for some reason) if you were on hormones and were started transitioning . Drag queens were part of the "G" because they were gay men. "Crossdressers" were guys that dressed like girls when their wives were out of town; if you got off sexually by doing that, then you were a "Transvestite". CDs and TVs weren't transsexuals. 

I was dressing fully, buying wigs, learning make up, practicing walking in heels that I had no right to wear. But I didn't know who I was. I wasn't a transsexual; I wasn't just throwing on a few things out of curiosity, so I felt more than a CD, and sexual gratification wasn't the driving force so I was no TV. Who the fuck was I and why was I like this? What was "this"? 

Going out, when I finally did, was the same minefield. There was a Yahoo group that had a "Gurls Night Out" close by to me, between Downtown San Diego and Hillcrest (Gay San Diego). Now suddenly we had another term, "gurl". I've always hated "gurl". Anyway, It was one night a month, first Saturday I believe. Tons of these "gurls", anywhere from 50-100 in this tiny bar. I liked the atmosphere because most were like me, somewhere in that gray area we didn't have a name for. It was there at GNO that some others laid out the rules of the road for me:

• "Gurls" was basically synonymous with CD/TV
• Gays do not play well with the others. They feel that Drag Queens and Transsexuals give them a bad name because they enforce a bad stereotype to the mainstream, that gays are not just "normal people"
• Gay bars in SD are for Gays. Not L, or B, or T. Going into a gay bar when it wasn't a night specifically set aside for T's, or CD/TV, would get you harassed and possibly hurt
• Furthermore, transsexuals do not like to mingle with CD/TV because, again, they feel that CD/TV people give them a bad name because they enforce a bad stereotype to the mainstream, that Transsexuals are just men in drag.

Now I'm not saying it's like this now. I club hopped in San Diego as recently as a few weeks ago. I feel I can go anywhere, and so should anyone else. This was 1999-2003.

At that point I relocated to Denver and found the absolute greatest term I've ever learned of. I was a "Tgirl". I had Tgirl friends. Soon, a Tgirl roommate, eventually a Tgirl best friend. This was such a paradigm shift for me personally. I had a "T" to call my own. The community was truly LGBT, and the T was no longer silent. We had an online presence so large that Tgirls from other parts of the country could come to us to be shown this jewel in the Rockies.

I eventually was lucky enough that I traveled to the largest Transgender convention in the U.S., Southern Comfort Conference. I've attended twice, and learned what the T was supposed to be about. I saw the multitudes of initials interacting. Laughing, drinking, doing umm, other stuff...  But everyone was on the same page with each other. We weren't initials at all, we were Transgender. Finally, I'd learned an all-inclusive term for all those initials and acronyms. We were a spectrum. And you know what? If you're brave enough to delve into murky depths of your own self, sort out the clutter, pass GO, and land on that space marked "I think I am/maybe/might/could be Trans" then Congratulations. YOU ARE. Now be safe and carry extra shoes in your car.

So where are we really? Do we throw this away to start at a new jump off point where we should divide ourselves according to an imaginary list? There is NO checklist for transgender. It has taken years to understanding even within our own community to cement this in with the rest of our community. Years of personal journeys and common goals. Let's stop for a moment and ask ourselves, REALLY ask ourselves - As we find ourselves living in a time when we are literally being hunted because of who we are and as people see us to be, is this how we want to treat each other?