What did I get wrong, Lish? I'm sorry if not using buzz words and code words that people don't understand, like gender identity, offends you, but I think I gave a pretty accurate definition of pre-op transsexual, did I not? This is exactly what I'm talking about. I can't even define in honest, frank, open terms what a pre-op transsexual (a member of the transgender community) is without people declaring war. Yet, you expect gay men and lesbians to say that you are their brothers and sisters, and just like them, so long as we don't actually discuss the details of who we are so that we can compare if in fact we are the same. Are you suggesting that transsexuals aren't members of the transgender community? Or that, once again, no one is permitted to talk about these issues, except you?

John Aravosis says:

"The topic of discussion is whether the transgender community has the right to, along with elite gay activists, kill gay rights progress for the next twenty years because their movement is years behind ours. You took ENDA hostage, and now are playing the bereaved party. I'm sorry, but you don't have the right to claim the moral high ground when your bill wasn't go to pass and ours was until you demanded that we get no rights until you can get yours. 25m gays and lesbians were to be protected by that legislation. But you'd rather have no one be protected if you can't be protected (yet). Again, now who has dirty hands?"

John, this is patently false and you know it. The ENDA without trans language is NOT going to pass and yet you continually state that it will. Are you using Dick Cheney's math? It will pass the House, but the Senate isn't likely. Do you really think Mitch McConnell is going to let this have a simple up or down vote? Even if he does, where are you finding the votes? Is your former boss, Senator Ted Stevens, going to come over from the Dark Side to support this? I just don't see it, not from this Senate.

But for arguments sake, lets say it does pass both houses, then what? Bush vetos the damn thing in a huge Rose Garden Presentation and those 25 million gays and lesbians still don't have anything. And if you think he won't then you are delusional.

1. So again, why is it important to jettison the trans language now when you still aren't going to get a law?

2. You say that it will be decades till a trans inclusive ENDA is passed. Why? All of the Democratic candidates for President have all said that they support an inclusive ENDA. Odds are, one of them will be the next President. Couple that with expected Democratic gains in both Houses and it would seem to me that your decades turns into two years.

3. Finally, the people who are fighting ENDA, with or without trans language, could really care less about whose on the list, it's all the same to them. Read the action email sent out by Tony Perkins, he makes no disintcion and hates us all equally:

"If this legislation passes, it will mainstream homosexuality and transgenderism and provide "homosexual" activists a legal tool for punishing employers who do not approve of this lifestyle."

It doesn't matter to the opponents of this bill who is included. They are still going to fight it just as hard and just as viciously. The same cowards in the House and Senate that were afraid because of the T will still be as scared because of the GL and B. Nothing changes with this Congress so lets work hard between now and next November to get a better congress and a better President and them move with a fully inclusive ENDA.

John Aravosis wrote:

"It is simply not p.c. in the gay community to question how and why the T got added on to the LGB, let alone ask what I as a gay man have in common with a man who wants to cut off his penis, surgically construct a vagina, and become a woman. I'm not passing judgment, I respect transgendered people and sympathize with their cause.

This petulant complaint demonstrates that Aravosis has no respect whatsoever for trans people. By describing transwomen as men who want to mutilate themselves, Aravosis betrays his adamant refusal to accept the validity of gender identities outside his own narrow experience. His claim to respect and sympathize with trans people is contradicted by his own bigotted words.

Aravosis does not represent the mainstream LGBT community, he represents straight-laced assimilated Democratic Party operatives like himself, Barney Frank, and Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign. This episode represents yet another example of how beltway Democrats have BETRAYED US.

Now that Salon has provided the reactionary HRC wing of the LGBT movement with a forum to promote their case, when will we see equal time offered to the overwhelming majority of LGBT organizations who immediately voiced their opposition to the Congressional Democrats' gutting of ENDA?

A paid space.

And yes, you do write well and even better than your word-workery is your bravery. Alas, you might not be famous enough. And Mr. Aravosis is prickly enough and calcified enough to generate contentious copy and contentious copy garners attention and attention sells ad space. But, Ms. Runs, you're more than good enough. And funny enough too.

Your devoted fan,

The Capote Who Doesn't Golightly when it Comes to Equality

When I wrote my original response to this post, I hadn't had a chance to look through other people's letters, or to read Mr. Aravosis' letter. I'd like to add a couple of thoughts.

I've noticed that the most confused ('What do I have in common with trans folks anyway?') or the most vicious ("Selfish trannies trying to hold us back!') responses to the protests against the splitting of ENDA seem to come from somewhat privileged gay men. I wonder if this is because so many transmen have historically spent a good deal of time in lesbian or queer women's spaces before transitioning -- so many transmen used to be butch women, and so many gender-normative lesbians or bi women are partnered with gender-non-normative (butch or androgynous) women. I know transwomen do not, for the most part, have the same close relationship to the gay male community that many transmen have with the lesbian community. Is this why it may be harder for gay men to see how the T relates to the LGB?

Three other points, semi-related to Mr. Aravosis' follow-up letter:

1. One, the argument about not being able to force top-down cultural change (instant acceptance for trans folks). If I have my history right, that's exactly what the 1964 Civil Rights Act did - the federal government said that Southern states with Jim Crow laws would just have to deal with the fact that racism was no longer acceptable law in the U.S. That's the aim of federal 'gender identity' protections: it wouldn't immediately change everyone's mind, but it would make clear to businesses what kind of standards they should be held to. (Again, if you can't see how the T fits into the LGBT, this argument might not hold water with you.) That's why the law is so powerful; it doesn't matter if every Floridian thinks that gays shouldn't adopt, if the law says they can, they can. And then social change begins to happen because of the law, because people begin to see that gay parents aren't evil monsters bent on seducing their adopted children into sin. As Mr. Aravosis points out, being gay isn't universally accepted in the U.S. yet, but we're still trying to gain legal acceptance.

2. About no employers being sued and then using the excuse of 'gender identity' to get around 'sexual orientation' anti-discrimination laws. This is one of those things that's hard to predict. It's still legal in so many states to discriminate based on sexual orientation, how do we know what kind of numbers will try for the gender identity loophole once that road is closed? (As I mentioned before, Darlene Jesperson was fired for refusing to wear make-up under a new company policy, and the firing was upheld in appeals court.) At the same time, many state and municipal laws have included 'gender identity' along with 'sexual orientation' -- as does the federal Hate Crimes Bill passed last month. What makes some people so quick to give up on 'gender identity' in this case when it has succeeded in others? Mr. Aravosis says that he wants to see a federal law passed in his lifetime. What makes him so sure one wouldn't be? With a Democratic president, the threat of veto would lessen. Why does it have to pass this year?

The argument is that trans folks and gender-non-normative folks (gay and straight) can wait, but haven't they been waiting for protections just as long as gay folks? Why can't we all wait together? Because people are dying? Trans and genderqueer folks are killed and discriminated against just as often, if not MORE often, than gay individuals.

3. Not necessarily in this piece, but throughout the argument over ENDA, I find the language used to tell trans folks that they should just put up with ENDA passing sans 'gender identity' (the language of 'wait your turn') condescending and short-sighted. Frankly, I'm skeptical that the gays and lesbians who have worked hard for gay rights will put any energy at all into expanding gov't protections to include 'gender identity' after a non-inclusive ENDA passes -- partly because so many (like Barney Frank and Mr. Aravosis) see 'gender identity' as something that has to do only with transsexual folks, and not gay, straight, and trans alike, and partly because history has shown that after getting theirs, they do little in solidarity with the T in LGBT. In New York, the gay rights bill was passed in 2002 and the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) is still waiting for a vote in the heavily Democratic state Assembly. That's why the response of so many state and national LGBT groups to the split ENDA was so heartening -- some solidarity at last!

If you don't think the T should be in LGBT, that's your opinion, fine. But don't sing me a song of solidarity when you feel no such thing. If you don't feel it now, you won't feel it in two years (or five or ten) when the 'gender identity' bill goes up for a vote. So I don't actually buy that it'll be sweet and simple to just go back and "amend ENDA later on" if it turns out gender identity is needed (and who could doubt that it is? Are we only going to go back and try to amend it if it starts to affect fey gay men, as in Mr. Aravosis' example?).

If you can't see that gender identity norms affect gay people (as well as straight and trans people), then I guess you won't feel any solidarity with anyone except those who fulfill your ideas of what it means to be gay and discriminated against. But for many gay and queer people of color, especially youth, the lines between sexuality and gender identity are harder to draw. Although we have our in-fighting, LGBT people sink or swim together. All of us or none of us -- for me, it's a question of morality, not practicality.