The New Gay Agenda: Divorce (from the TQ+)

Why it’s time to separate the TQ+ from the LGB.

Pride month sees many companies and individuals trying to do the right thing, or at least be seen to be doing the right thing, when it comes to gay and trans-identifying people. I’ve written previously about things that you can do, or not do, to be useful during Pride month (or at any time for that matter). 

This year, however, I have a new, singular priority that I consider to be the New Gay Agenda. Quite simply, it’s time to separate LGB and TQ+. It’s time to stop lumping together two very different issues, to stop the forced teaming. It’s time for a divorce. Companies, and individuals, need to stop using the ever-increasing initialism of the alphabet-rainbow-mafia.

Many organisations have realised that using BAME to talk about all non-white people is not only offensive and insulting but it diminishes people. Yes, many aspects of racism and discrimination can affect, or apply to, people of Asian descent as much as people of black African descent, and other groups, in similar ways. But the BAME acronym lumps them all together and says you are all just “other”, and less than, and in need of special help. It says you don’t have distinct needs, issues, identities or cultures as individual races or ethnicities. This is why people who have previously been lumped together in that acronym spoke up and why companies have stopped using it.

We don’t talk about Martin Luther King Jr as a BAME civil rights leader. Rosa Parks didn’t sit at the front of the bus in the non-BAME section. So why do we talk about the history of the gay rights movement as LGBTQ+ history? Why do we pretend it’s always been about all of the letters? Why do we keep talking about “LGBTQ+” people as if this is a single homogenous group? 

What should organisations (and individuals) do?

• If your organisation has an “LGBTQ+” staff network, the best thing you can do is to disband it and to create a separate LGB network and a TQ+ or gender identity network.

• If you must keep the longer initialism version, at the very least you should allow, and encourage, staff to form a distinct LGB staff network.

• Either way, a SEEN staff network or group would also be beneficial.

• Stop using LGBTQ+ or longer initialisms when you are talking about only one part of that group.

• Stop conducting or citing research that lumps all of these distinct groups together. The results are meaningless.

• Stop referring to “LGBTQ+” people, either in your internal documents and policies or in your marketing materials. 

• Stop thinking of “LGBTQ+” as a single homogenous group. When faced with the choice to use LGBTQ+, ask yourself “would I use BAME here if this was content to do with race?” 

Where did the T come from?

Before we “added the T”, it was enough of a struggle bringing gay men and lesbians together, not to mention the inclusion of bisexuals. We were usually referred to as 'the gay community' but as gay increasingly tended to refer to gay men, and so that lesbians were not hidden away or diminished, it became L&G, and eventually LGB. The only thing we all really have in common is when it comes to our rights, protections and freedoms as people who are attracted to the same sex. So why was the T added?

The original adding of the T, long before Stonewall (the charity) added it, that seemed to make some sort of sense, was to include transexuals. These were mostly very effeminate men, and a few masculine lesbians, who had such severe discomfort with being the sex they were (what would likely be diagnosed as gender dysphoria today) and were so non-conforming to gender stereotypes, that the only way they could cope was to live as if they were the opposite sex. They were a vanishingly small number of the population, and the larger population of transvestites (usually heterosexual men) included themselves here too.

Meanwhile, in postmodern academia, queer theory and gender theory were discussing the blurring of boundaries when it comes to sex and gender. This academic discussion developed into activism, and (with some help from the warped mind of psychologist John Money) the foundations of what we now refer to as gender identity ideology emerged. Where the T used to mean transexual (most often homosexual transexual, HSTS), it started to become transgender and grew to encompass everything from gender dysphoric children to adult men with a fetish for wearing their wives’ clothes.

Even when Stonewall added the T and started working on “trans issues”, and other charities were extending from LGB to LGBT, organisations such as the LGBT Consortium of charities, and even the Government Equalities Office, used to use LGB&T. The ampersand acknowledged that these are two different and distinct communities. Somewhere along the line, the ampersand was extinguished. Sacrificed at the altar of gender identity ideology.

Although most children with gender dysphoria are likely to turn out to be homosexual adults, there is no equivalence between the state of being attracted to people of one’s own sex and the state of having internal feelings of discomfort about your sex, or with the state of being aroused at the thought of yourself being the opposite sex. Trans, queer, ace, intersex and 2 spirit are largely contrived, un-defined or ill-defined categories that have nothing to do with same-sex sexual orientation. Everything beyond LGB has nothing to do with the first three letters. Should the latter letters have a movement to lobby for their needs, wants, and rights? Of course. In a free society any group has freedom of association and the right to campaign. But the groups that make up the latter letters are completely different issues.

What’s more, the TQ+ encompasses an ideology that erases the reality of binary sex and thereby erases same-sex attraction. 

Time for a divorce

The LGB - lesbians and gay men coming together, and even bisexuals - was a marriage of convince. We came together as a combined initialism to lobby for the rights and issues that affected us all. When the T was initially added to denote transexuals, it was somewhat of an arranged marriage as the original meaning of the T was essentially just another form of the L, G or B. When the added T became transgender, along with the Q+ being added, it became a forced marriage. 

So now, much like an abusive relationship, we want a divorce. Many LGB people want to break away and get on with our lives as two separate rights movements, about two separate issues. But the TQ+, like a controlling, narcissistic partner, doesn’t want to let us go. They tell us we’d be nothing without them, citing myths about gay history re-written to create a role for transgenderism. No “LGB without T” they cry. Because they know that any good will their movement has is built on the coattails, the backs, and the hard work lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals did before transgenderism was even making forays into the mainstream consciousness. 

There are many things left to do, and much action needed to combat the harms of gender identity ideology, and to untangle the grasp it has woven throughout our institutions and society. But a good first step is to separate TQ+ from LGB.  Stop the forced teaming, and start thinking, and talking, about these two distinct groups as two distinct groups.

James tweets as @HumanGayMale and organises the HumanGayMale social events for gay men who reject gender identity ideology: www.HumanGayMale.com