GayCityNews.com – By Andy Humm
Gay and lesbian activists, me included, have a long, shameful history of throwing people of transgender experience under the bus, and out gay Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, whom I otherwise admire, is prepared to cut them loose again. If there is anything good to come out of his likely successful effort to remove “gender identity and expression” from the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA – leaving only “sexual orientation” as a protected class – it is that gay people and some non-gays are finally waking up to the fact that we are all transgendered, that is, somewhere along the “man” to “woman” spectrum with very few people at or near the poles.
The oppression that those of us who are gay and lesbian encounter is primarily based on our failure to fulfill stereotypes about what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman, not whom we have sex with – though that is one of the ways in which we do not conform to gender norms.