This is a brief talk I wrote to give in China. I had an awesome translator – a colleague named Brigid Vance – and we got at maybe 10% of what’s here. The language is meant to be simple because I was speaking to a group who either had no or very little English and was also trying to take it easy on my translator.
That said, in the light of the ongoing bathroom laws, it might be helpful for those who are wondering how bathrooms became the place of contention, and maybe it answers a little bit of why.
Not that understanding will help you feel less angry. Nothing should. Stay angry. Keep fighting.
Marginalized Minority Backlash and the LGBTQ*
I want to talk today about the ways that minority groups have diverse needs even within group, specifically about how some types of marginalization may not be obvious or identifiable while trying to provide services to them. That is, different populations within a marginalized community may not access or use those services equally. I will talk specifically about how marginalized communities may not only not benefit equally, but will as well contend with significant backlash due to the change in the group’s status as a whole, and how that backlash is likely to target the most discriminated against group in order to undermine the group’s rights as a whole.
In the United States, there have been significant gains for the LGBTQ population. Gay and lesbian people can now marry, serve in the US military, and in many places, adopt children. Crimes against them are now monitored and recorded in a way that they have never been before, and extra penalties are added to sentences if a crime against them was motivated by hate, or specifically, by homophobia – which is the specific fear/hatred of gay and lesbian people. For some people, these gains have happened very quickly, when it has taken decades of work by gay and lesbian activists to make this happen, which was, in turn, motivated by life and death issues such as the AIDS crisis, high rates of discrimination in employment, substance abuse, depression and suicide. Nationally, then, gays and lesbians have more rights and acceptance than they ever have in US history, but there are many more people than only gays and lesbians in the movement on their behalf.
The term LGBTQ* (or +) is used to indicate the many identities that make up the “gay” movement. The letters stand for lesbian, gay. Bisexual, trans, and queer people, but those are only the first few. Other times may include people who are agender (no gender) or androgynous, crossdressers, drag queens, drag kings, and those who are in some other way GNC (Gender Non Conforming). The diversity is diverse. It includes anyone who is discriminated against due to their sexual orientation (who they have sex with) and many people who are discriminated against due to their gender identity (who they are) or gender expression (what they look and act like).
This group as a whole is very small – estimates vary from 5 – 12% of the population, but the subgroups within are even smaller. Some are only 1-2% of the population, and in US politics, minorities often need to make alliances with similar others in order to make any political headway. Often, the governing idea is that the LGBTQ+ population is made up of all the people who other groups of people dislike for their gender and/or sexuality.
The US was one of the last Western nations to make marriage between people of the same sex legal, but it has now joined a growing number of countries which recognizes not only same sex attraction but the need to legally recognize those relationships. It is a very significant victory which solidifies the rights of gay and lesbian people as well as their children’s rights; in fact, the Obergefell v Hodges ruling underscores the rights of the children of gays and lesbians – by previous marriage, adoption, or reproductive technology – in its decision. Marriage, however, does not solve many problems for many other sexual and gender minorities; instead, it benefits those who are already in better shape than others.
As I mentioned before, the push for marriage rights for same sex couples began in the midst of the AIDS crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the rate of infection for gay men was very high as was the mortality rate. There were few known treatments, and even those, at the time, only extended the patient’s life for a few years at best. One of the ramifications, however, was that couples were left unprepared for an untimely death, and so many couples were faced not only with the loss of a life partner but with the loss of the shared possessions – a house might be in the name of one person and not the other, as they could not legally own the house together as a couple. Similarly, any financial savings, retirement funds, even a pet. And because gays and lesbians often left their place of birth to live in big cities where it was possible to be gay or lesbian more openly, they were estranged from families of origin. Upon death, these families were legally next of kin and so could take possession of anything that their dying son or daughter had left – even if it was a house shared with a partner of many, many years.
In some ways, then, the gay rights struggle came out of a deep domestic need and out of a crisis that was unforeseen. It made the needs for such rights urgent in a way they never had before. As a result, the larger LGBTQ community decided it would be the key issue of the next years, even though some argued that other things – such as employment non discrimination – were more important. Gay men were dying in droves, and as a result, they set the agenda for the larger LGBTQ community.
Because gay men are both men they potentially have more economic power than many others within the LGBTQ community. Lesbians are both women, and often are not in middle or upper management positions. Trans people pay for their own healthcare because it is not covered by the health system, so they have little financial power as well.
But because this group is seen as one big group, with few people recognizing the diversity within it, legislation written to benefit this community often does not benefit all of it due to the differences in laws governing sexuality and gender. The subgroup of gays and lesbians, for instance, often need legal recognition of their relationships, such as due to the AIDS crisis or the desire to have or adopt children. But transgender and GNC people often need recognition of their legal selves or freedom from employment discrimination. To summarize, problems arise because some groups within this larger group experience their marginalization at various levels of compounded and chronic ways. We can put these into three main categories: First, some have more economic power than others due to various reasons – gender, class, education. Second, Cultural Legibility and Acceptance. Gay and lesbian identities are better known and understood because they have been more visible in mainstream media for a very long time, and have “come out” so that people know who they are. Third, intersectional aspects of identity may make it more difficult for them to access what rights they do have.
Intersectionality is what it sounds like – the meeting of two or more aspects of identity in a single individual, such as being both gay and an ethnic minority, or being both female and poor.
Being same sex attracted, for instance, is not the same for gays and lesbians; throughout history there have been laws against sex between men with no similar or equal law against sex between women. Moreso, intersectionality explain as well how a white gay man may thrive in a system where white skin is privileged, while a black gay man will not. That is, the experience of being gay is not consistent for all gay men because of the ways other aspects of identity intersect in their lives – their class, ability to earn, have careers, gain an education, their family background, skin color, ability, religion, and HIV status can all alter how much a gay man has to work against. Intersectionality is the theory that the more ways a single person experiences oppression, the more difficult it will be or them to achieve success or happiness.
So while the Supreme Court ruling did make same sex legal – a tremendous victory for those who want to be married – other people within the LGBTQ+ have not benefited as much from this ruling. It does, of course, increase general acceptance on behalf of heterosexual people toward gay and lesbian people. But marriage does not prevent a gay man for being fired for being gay.
What has happened, however, is that groups who are opposed to homosexuality are upset that same sex marriage is now legal. They have not stopped in their ambition to limit the rights of gay and lesbian people. But a Supreme Court decision is not likely to change any time soon, and so they look for new and different ways to limit rights, and one of the ways they do this is to take advantage of the weakest link – of the group within the larger LGBTQ group that has less financial stability, less visibility and acceptance, and more intersectional roadblocks.
To give you an idea of what I mean, women are often discriminated against because they may want to marry and have children. It makes them vulnerable to discrimination. As a result, groups do not want women to be equal focus on the needs of women who marry and become pregnant, even if not all women do those things. The group is vulnerable due to the smaller subgroup within in.
So I want to talk about a few ways these minority issues become complicated by the mix of identities within the larger group by highlighting a few pieces of pending legislation in the US that have been proposed on the heels of the Supreme Court verdict on same sex marriage.
More conservative groups who oppose same sex marriage have responded by trying to pass laws which make the lives of trans people – who are a minority within a minority – more difficult. The same fear is used, as well, not only to promote laws that trouble trans people but that also work against other groups in need or protection from discrimination.
For this I need to explain a little bit about politics in the US. There are several layers of government – there is the national, or federal level. There are state governments, and after that there are city and town governments. And each fish can eat the smaller fish – federal laws and decisions like the Supreme Courts, overrule all of the laws and precedents enacted at the state or local level. State governments can do the same with laws in cities and towns in that state.
For instance: in Wisconsin, a local school board decided last year to change the bathroom and locker room policy for trans students so that they could change where they felt the safest, the room that was the most accurate for them. In this case, the student had been successfully doing so even before the policy was changed. Then some parents found out and objected, and so the issue came to the school board which decided – based on federal legislation – that what they had been doing in allowing the student to change where they felt they belonged was correct. They made it policy.
After the Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage, conservatives who were unhappy with the ruling looked for other battles – having lost the marriage battle. As a result, a new statewide law was proposed that would allow (1) for legislating groups or individuals to decide the gender of the student, that is, someone other than the student would decide the student’s gender, and more importantly, (2) would overrule any local legislation so that it was in line with the state. Because the pending state legislation was more conservative than some of the local ordinances, it would make life more difficult for trans students who were going to school in districts that accepted them.
Let me explain transgender experience as briefly as I can here. I know some of you are thinking why there might be any confusion over what gender a person is. For whatever reason, some people are born with a body that indicates they should be one gender but they aren’t. Science currently suggests this is a result of a hormonal wash in the womb that tells the brain one thing and the body the other. It is not conclusive – just as the “cause” of homosexuality isn’t – but the overall result is that some people are in bodies that are not accurate to who they are. And because transgender people face a very high risk of violence from others, their safety is important.
Many people do not know who transgender people are, which is how the efforts against them often succeed. The second example I want to share with you is a similar story with different results. A few months ago in Houston, TX, a law that would ban any discrimination against people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation was up for a vote. Opponents of the law used trans people – and a popular misunderstanding about them – to frighten other voters against it. In this case, the opponents scared voters with the idea that men wearing women’s clothes could enter women’s bathrooms in order to commit crimes against women. Despite the fact that here is no evidence this has ever happened in any place that has this kind of law in place, the general misunderstanding and stereotypes against transgender people worked. The non discrimination law was defeated, leaving many people who would have been protected without these benefits. People argued that they should leave transgender protections out of the law in order to preserve it for everyone else, while others argued that the way the fear of trans people was being used was the best evidence for why they needed protection.
In both of these cases, a minority within a minority which has less economic power, less legibility and cultural acceptance, was used either to restrict their own rights and the decisions of a local ordinance, or to restrict the larger group’s rights. This model is one that can be applied to other cases – such as the example of women I gave above – and to other vulnerable groups who need protection from stereotypes and discrimination.
Thank you.
Wonderfully clear, thank you.