femininity, combined with harsh humour full of “bitches,” “sluts” and “whores,” providing gay men with a poor, perhaps misleading education about trans people. “When trans people get upset over the word ‘shemale,’ people will say we’re being too sensitive,” says Banks. “But we’re still living in a culture where, when someone says ‘shemale’ to me, I’m waiting for them to hit me.” Gay culture’s obsession with masculinity might also be to blame. Some psychologists would suggest that encountering someone first identified as male who is now a woman may be threatening, especially for someone who’s spent his life trying not to be a “sissy.” But maybe the simpler explanation is more accurate: Misogyny trumps sexual orientation. In the decades of community politics I’ve witnessed, I’ve found the relationship between cis gay men and trans men to be much less fraught. So it could be a guy thing. The trans men I talked to have had more positive experiences than the women. “I think the relationship between gay people and trans people is getting better,” says Taylor K. Gesner, arts and culture manager at Pride Toronto. “If it seems worse, I think it’s just because we have more opportunities to hear people’s opinions.” When he came out as trans, his straight peers were more straightforwardly congratulatory, his gay ones more vocal—judgmental even. (Lesbians who feel betrayed by trans men are fodder for a whole other story.) For Gesner, that’s an aspect of community engagement. We argue, we learn, we continue the struggle. “We all wish we were all together,” says Gesner, “and fighting together and Last July, writer, broadcaster and motivational
exactly that frenemy turn that can damage trust.
all on the same page and all for the same things, so here’s our list of six things. But there’s really a
speaker Shaun Proulx wrote a SiriusXM piece about
In a February 2015 interview with U.S. lesbian
Caitlyn Jenner, who originally rose to fame as the
activist Cathy Renna, Proulx started a question
track superstar Bruce Jenner. The piece raised a
warmly with, “I’ve always had a special place of
When you’re looking at 600 things—for
firestorm with sentences like: “Her walk in heels is
admiration and respect in my heart for anyone who
example, full access to health care, supports
clunky, the handbags are not yet carried skillfully,
is so hell-bent on their own authenticity that come
for LGBT youth, inclusive education and hiring
list of 600 things we need to change.”
practices, homophobia and transphobia outside urban centres—there’s still much unfinished
“Here we are at each other’s throats when we should be hand in hand.”
business on which gay and trans people can work together. If gay men and trans people didn’t rush to judgement about appearances or carelessly used pronouns, if they could find compassion in both humour and politics, they might see how much they still have in common. “Our struggles are still interconnected,” says queer activist and artist John Caffrey. “We are sadly mistaken if we can’t see that.” Recognizing that won’t just
and a lot of the movements on the whole made by
hell or high water, they’re going to be authentic,”
benefit trans people, but gay men, too, if they take
the former muscular Olympic athlete are less than
only to quickly shift gears into what sounds like
a look at the big picture and where they’ve come
feminine and nowhere near that of the graceful
conspiracy theorizing: “Do you feel there’s been a
from themselves.
supermodel she is being touted as.” Proulx, a
trans take-over of the LGBT movement?”
friend I’ve worked with in the past, declined to
And
then
there’s
the
cultural
bubble
comment for this story, but seemed blindsided by
created by drag. Despite their delight in gender
the controversy, particularly because he’s written
transformation, female impersonators employ
admiringly about trans people in the past. But it’s
an exaggerated and sharply defined sense of
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