Riddle me this: why do the B and the T in LGBT need to be umbrella terms (“pan people are included under the b uwu”) but gay people get two letters… (Hint hint biphobia and transphobia)

autismserenity:

arobislut:

tuxedo-cut-man:

justaphobethings:

thatsweetdiscourse:

justaphobethings:

^^^

damn gays taking up two whole letters. we should change the acronym thats been around since the beginning of the movement to lgbbtt to be more inclusive

“the acronym thats been around since the beginning of the movement”

That’s pretty up there on the list of things you can say to demonstrate you have nowhere near the background information necessary for this conversation.

Guess we know which side of the discourse would have been against adding the b and t in the first place

This is actually very likely. Because it was only a little over 15 years ago that the Advocate had their reader poll on whether trans people belonged in the movement.

Which means that it was still considered very much up for debate in the first place. (Actually, because it was the Advocate, it means not only that it was still up for debate, but that the debate of whether to add the T had finally hit the mainstream, as far as the gay rights movement was concerned.)

So does the fact that only half the readers voted yes.

And that the biggest arguments against it at the time were:

1. LGB trans people are already in the acronym, and het trans people are het

2. Het trans people don’t belong in a movement where everyone came together to fight oppression around sexual orientation

3. If we let trans people in, then we’re literally inviting our heterosexual oppressors in and that makes us feel unsafe

4. Het trans people are not oppressed for being het, and they’re not oppressed for being trans because all they have to do is transition and they become identical to cis het people

5. Trans people aren’t oppressed, show me one law that says it’s against trans people, show me one conversion therapy place that says it’s to convert trans people, show me one place where they can’t get married if they’re not gay or bi which as we said is already included in the acronym….

Oh yeah, and just as with the ace community, the trans community was extremely divided about whether it belonged or not. There were, and still are, plenty of het trans people who were like, “I don’t identify with these folks, and I just want to disappear into the cis world, frankly.”