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Bisexual TransActions
What do Transsexual and Transgender have to do with Bisexuality?
This article appeared in a zine I made for Pride Week 2002, called Bi Dyke.
Remember musical chairs? There's a circle of chairs and the music starts and we all run around the circle. The music stops and everyone darts for a chair. But it's a trick, because there's not enough chairs for everyone. Lately I'm feeling trapped in this game. There's only three seats, and gay and lesbian already have two of them. Trans and bi stand staring at each other and at that last empty chair....
I'm not transsexual, and I don't identify as transgender, so I can't speak from that experience. I write from a long-held feminist position that gender is a social construction, and trans theory doesn't always fit my political landscape. That said, I'm strongly against the type of politics that quotes lines from Janice Raymond's Transsexual Empire at people before kicking them out of women's groups, shelters, or rape crisis centres.
Even if I don't always understand trans theory, I understand trans activism and the experience of being excluded. I've seen the same types of things said about bisexuals get used against transmen and transwomen. I've heard people claim that including trans in their group title will "confuse" people, or "distract from the [real, more important] issues." In light of the similarity between our exclusion from gay and lesbian community, transsexuals and transgendered people are our natural allies.
There's just enough space (or so it's claimed) on banners, logos, and newspaper headings for three words: a holy trinity of sexual diversity. Increasingly, I've seen people use "gay, lesbian and trans." (See, for example "Pride's Naked Truth," in Xtra, pg. 9, no. 461, June 27, 2002). I admit, it makes me resentful, and angry. But the appropriate target for those feelings isn't the trans community. It's the people who pretend there's only so much liberation to go around, and who would have us fight our trans allies for that last coveted spot.
By agreeing to fight for third place we lose a lot. Many transfolk are supportive of bi inclusion. Many are also part of the bi community as activists, organizers and participants. There's no clear-cut line between us and them, men and women, masculine and feminine. Trans perspectives can help us define what we really mean by bisexuality in a world that is revealed to be multi-sexed and multi-gendered. They challenge us to practice the type of inclusion we usually demand.
To return to the metaphor of musical chairs, I think that playing by these rules is a mistake in the long run. Because every round they remove another chair, until there's just one kid left sitting.
