Lez Keep It Real

Being gay isn’t the easiest thing in the world. It’s confusing and tormenting, yet at the same time it’s both beautiful and wonderful. It’s a mixture of things really, a blender filled with endless thoughts and emotions all thrown together to form one, whole individual. That’s the best way I can describe it.

As hard as being gay is sometimes, or was since it really hasn’t been hard for me lately, I know that it wasn’t as close or as hard I guess, to being transgender.

I’ve always been enamored with the transgender aspect. For a time being, I thought I wanted to be a boy. I remember even pretending that I was a boy to other kids I met in the neighborhood who didn’t know any better. I, and don’t ever repeat this, even stood up in front of the toilet to try and pee like a boy! I don’t know why, all I know is that I wanted to be one. It could be because I had two brothers and no sisters, so that’s all I knew. Or it could be the fact that all of my friends were boys because the neighborhood I grew up in lacked other girls for me to play with. Whatever it was, I eventually grew out of it.

My attraction to girls never wained, but as I grew older I began to appreciate my body. There was nothing inside of me that yearned to be the opposite sex, other than the simple fact that I liked to wears boy’s clothing more than the frilly girl’s clothing. There was no longing to have a different anatomy either, I was perfectly content with my breasts and vagina. The penis frightened me actually. What would I want with that thing?

Growing up and finally becoming comfortable in my own skin, I realized that I was a lesbian. But the wonderment and intrigue into transgender issues always captivated me.

I thought, imagine being trapped in the wrong body? Imagine having to deal with that concept. What if I hadn’t grown “out of” wanting to be a boy? What would I have done? How would I have handled it?

The fact is that I have more respect for trangender people that I do for most. They are brave, they are beautiful and yes, they have it harder than I could ever imagine. So why do they keep getting the short end of the stick?

The Seattle Times ~ From New York to Seattle, gays are divided over a workplace protection bill in Congress, not because of whom it covers but because of whom it leaves out: transgender people.

At a rally on Seattle’s Capitol Hill today, gay-rights activists will join a nationwide call for defeat of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, which would ban discrimination in the workplace against people who are gay.

This is huge for the gay community, which has waited nearly 30 years to reach this point. And when U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., first introduced the measure earlier this year, it included protections for the entire community — lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

But in recent weeks, Frank, who is gay, told the LGBT community that he needed to strip gender identity from the measure, essentially excluding transgender people, because with them he didn’t have the votes to win passage in the House of Representatives.

“What I have learned in the past month was that we weren’t yet at the point where we could wish away this prejudice” against transgender people, Frank said in a speech before Congress last week.

“We can say, until we are able to do everything we are going to abandon this effort… ” he said. “Or we can take one of the biggest steps forward in the anti-discrimination march… ”

ENDA is largely symbolic — it lacks the votes needed to pass the Senate, and President Bush is unlikely to sign it. But the exclusion of transgender people from workplace protection has sparked division and fierce debate among gays across the country.

Some say the gay community cannot abandon its own, while others argue that an all-or-nothing position helps no one at all.

Gay bloggers have weighed in: Some questioned whether transgender people have enough in common with lesbians and gays, only to find themselves skewered by other bloggers for their selfishness.

More than 270 gay-rights organizations — including several in Seattle and across Washington state — oppose the bill and say they will work to see it fail. READ MORE

I guess it’s my turn to weigh in. We’ve waited 30 years for this … what’s another year or two? I’m sorry but what’s GLB without the T? We compromise now, and maybe we’ll compromise later on other bills and laws and regulations. We can’t stand as one on other issues and then chop off a leg for this one. If we do, we will surely fall.

All of my life it’s been GLBT. Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual AND Transgender. I believe in rights for ALL people. I’m not going to feel good about a law that protects me if it doesn’t protect someone else. Who would?

Think about it.

trangender, glbt, seattle times, enda, workplace protection bill, capitol hill, barney frank