Is Trans Killing Gay?

I’ve had it.

I’ve had it with cisgender and transgender folks who keep saying ‘gender is over.’

Don’t get me wrong. I’m got nothing against transsexuals, or drag queens (I am one!), or drag kings, and certainly I’ve got nothing against transgender folks who personally reject the gender binary. I only object to those who wish to eradicate the gender binary completely, for everyone.

Because has it every occurred to anyone that if gender is over, then ‘gay and lesbian’ is over too?

In a recent article in the Globe and Mail a Queens University professor named Airton (who uses the pronoun ‘they’) says “Love is love -- this is more of a young person’s discourse than -- I can choose to marry a man if I’m a man.”

I find this rhetoric hateful and homophobic.

The problem with getting rid of gender is that if there is no more gender then there are no more homosexuals or lesbians (duh!). Gays and lesbians are same sex people. We love people of the same gender; that is how we define ourselves. If gender is over, than we can no longer love someone of the same gender. No longer will we be able to celebrate ‘man on man’  and ‘woman on woman’ love and sex.

Simple, isn’t it?

On top of these objections -- getting rid of gender simply won’t work, and is not ultimately desirable.

People are mostly born with either penises or vaginas. They naturally tend to think in terms of male and female. Penises and vaginas, masculinity and femininity -- all that stuff is sexy -- the only problem comes (as Judith Butler tells us) when you think that only men born with penises can be masculine, and only women born with vaginas can be feminine. So sure -- rip the categories of male and female apart, criticize them, deconstruct them, reapply them in radical ways, challenge them -- but you cannot and should not do away with them.

I don’t blame the trans theorists who want to rid of gender. (I used to know Kate Bornstein and she is a lovely, lovely person). I doubt there is conscious agenda on the part of trans theorists to erase ‘gay and lesbian,’ (at least I hope not) but it is nevertheless the logical outcome of those who propose there be no gender for anyone, anymore.

In fact it is my suspicion that trans theorists are merely being naive, idealistic and aspirational (all, potentially good things!). But remember our shared queer history: early gay and lesbian theorists believed that the goal of gay liberation was to destroy all sexuality categories. But it is now nearly fifty years later and those labels have not disappeared.

‘No gender’ trans theory may be well intentioned -- but it is an undesirable goal that will never work.

And I have to say it.

Whatever their intentions, those who call for ‘the end of gender for all’ are being homophobic.

Period.

WHY THE POLICE SHOULD NOT MARCH IN THE PRIDE PARADE

So there I was.

At my usual gay hangout (no, I’m not going to tell you the name) and yes, truth be told, I was having sex. This was a couple of days ago, exactly ten days before Pride 2017. Suddenly, a staff member at the establishment came up to us and said “Okay cool it, stop -- no more” I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something like that. And then the staff member disappeared.

This never happens. What was going on?

I spoke to another staff member: ’Why did someone try and interrupt us having sex?’ I asked.

‘Oh that’s because of the fire inspectors,’ the staff member said ‘they always come around at Pride.’

‘So you’re saying that that the police --‘

“No it’s not the police. It’s the fire inspectors.’

‘So what you’re saying is --‘

‘I’m saying they don’t want it to look like the police are harassing us so they send the fire inspectors instead.’

Ahh. I get it. So the City of Toronto makes a habit -- in fact it is actually part of City of Toronto policy -- to harass gay people every year a few days before Pride -- to send men in uniform to intimidate queer people in their own clubs. Why? Not because these gay places are filled with people, or over capacity (the establishment I attended was nearly empty) -- just because it’s Pride!

I’m tired of reading articles in the Toronto Sun saying ‘Why shouldn’t the police be able to march in their uniforms at Pride?’

I’ll tell you why -- because the police still harass queers.

I know what you’re going to say. You are probably straight or gay and happily married with children -- ‘I’m sorry but I don’t agree with PDA (public displays of affection). People should not have sex in public.’

And I would say: ‘Okay. Let’s say you are a teenage girl on a date and you decide to offer your boyfriend oral sex in a car. Expect the police to put you in jail. Let’s say you are a married couple kissing in a remote corner of a park, late at night, and your hand wanders down to your partners’ bum. Expect the police to shine a light on you and arrest you. Let’s say you are a man and a stripper in a strip bar, and the stripper is sitting on your lap. Expect the police to haul you off to jail for having public sex.’

This is a double standard. Fire inspectors marching around gay bars at Gay Pride in lieu of police is homophobic. 

Gay, lesbian and trans people are still unfairly harassed. I know. In 2000 I was working at a gay sex club called the Bijou that was raided by the police. Have the cops ever apologized? Have they ever explained why they were harassing us twenty years after the infamous 1981 bathhouse raids they claim to regret?

No. Nothing has changed.

And that’s why policemen in uniform are not welcome at Toronto Pride.