LGBT Perspective: The ‘T’ in LGBT
September 4, 2008
A child is born. The doctor holds the baby, looks at it and congratulates the exhausted mother on having delivered a healthy son or daughter. Once sex is assigned, implacable social forces begin to grind: Roles are defined, behaviors taught, expectations formed.
But what if that simple biological identification dictates expectations that do not match how the child feels he or she really is?
The “T” in LGBT stands for transgender, an umbrella term used to describe people who are uncomfortable with the roles assigned at birth. The American Psychological Association (APA) defines sex as a person’s biological status as either male or female, and throughout the world that basic classification is the same. Gender, on the other hand, describes how people feel about themselves, and how they act in social settings. And that is not the same throughout the world.
It is difficult to say how often an assigned sex does not match the person’s gender, partly because the term transgender encompasses several categories, from cross-dressers (people who wear clothing designed for the opposite sex) to transsexuals (people who live as members of the gender opposite to their sex). The APA estimates that two to three percent of males cross-dress, and the occurrences of biological males wishing to be female and females wishing to be male are 1 in 10,000 and 1 in 30,000 respectively. Across large populations, that is quite a number of mis-identifications.
Transgendered people are among the most marginalized of all Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. And while gays and lesbians are beginning to receive their hard-fought recognition and acceptance, transgendered people remain on the outermost margins.
In Newark, Calif., on October 4, 2002, 17-year-old Gwen Araujo was murdered. Her death was the 25th homicide of a transgender person that year. The National Transgender Advocacy Coalition estimates that people who cross gender lines are killed at a rate 16 times greater than that of the general population.
One of the four men on trial for Araujo’s murder said that he didn’t know she was a biological male when he had sex with her. After he found out, he didn’t want people to think he was gay, therefore he killed her. The men’s lawyers used the “gay panic strategy” as a defense: That the perpetrators had no intention of murdering their victim but flew into such a rage upon learning that the victim was gay or transgender that the homicide should be classified as manslaughter—a lesser offense. California passed the Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act that limits the use of social bias to influence the proceedings of a criminal trial.
It seems to us that the more we know the more important it is to change social norms, lest some are left behind.
Belinda and John Dronkers-Laureta are board members of Asian & Pacific Islander Family Pride (apifamilypride.org).
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2 Responses to “LGBT Perspective: The ‘T’ in LGBT”
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Belinda and John Dronkers-Laureta:
Thank you.
A sobering contribution.
AsianWeek should be proud.
Society has so far to go to begin to understand itself, much less “deal” with its own savageries.
The APA, here the psychological gurus, has, of late, itself been taken to task from within for its refuaal to face its nexus with this administration’s shameful embrace of “waterboarding” for one as a don-t-ask-don’t -tell sort of fudging in the highly immoral sense.
It isn’t a matter of “tolerance.” It’s a matter of common human decency, as Gwen Aranjo joins Matthew Shepherd in the annals of idiot human brutality.
Frank Eng
P.S.: The brainwashed “sexists” here should ALL be forced to watch that incredible film, “The Crying Game,” and then be sentenced to a thorough course of analytical therapy. By NONpolitical therapists, of course.
hey john and belinda–
i agree that transgendered individuals are amongst the most marginalized groups in America, and it’s extremely important to cultivate awareness, insight and understanding in this highly misunderstood group!
with that said, this was a great article, and i would definitely love to see more coverage of this topic.