I’m back in the United States and it has, up this point, been pretty damn sweet. Granted, the flight home was a bit of a bitch considering I almost had to go to prison, my first flight was late by 30 minutes and my second flight was delayed an hour, which meant an extra hour of being seated not next to one but TWO crying babies, but now that I am back, I am savoring Chicago style pizza, Panera, and Italian beef sandwiches. Yeah, one of the best things about the United States has got to be the food, but there are other nice things too, like gas prices (look, $4.30 is a lot better than the European equivalent of about $7.50), bonfires, and not legally being allowed to drink.
Well, at least the bonfires are nice. Coming back has been a little less than extraordinary. The other day I was in Panera and it appears that American teenage girls are still as slutty as ever with shorts that give about the same amount of skin coverage as a napkin. It’s still incredibly hot as hell, so that shows that global warming is still keeping up the good work. And of course, the cross-dressing men of the south suburbs of Chicago are still as masculine as ever.
Two nights ago I went to a bar in Blue Island called Club Krave. I had no idea that the southern suburbs of Chicago had a gay bar, but apparently they do, and apparently a friend of mine works there; and once a week s/he performs in drag as the now infamous Britney Sheers. This, of course, is a play on the fact that he’s in beauty school and scissors and hardy har har.
My friend Alex brought me to this bar to introduce me to what would surely become a hangout over the course of the next month while I am still at home in the burbs. Now, if you’ve never been to Blue Island for fear of being shot, you are probably under the impression that the south suburbs of Chicago aren’t as fancy as the northern suburbs like Evanston and Winnetka. While this may be true in terms of lifestyle, amount of money in the town, architecture, beautiful parks, fantastic gourmet restaurants, art, education of citizens, and many other factors, it simply isn’t true when it comes down to the cross-dressers, for at Club Krave, they are fabulous. And they have huge ass arms.
I have never really been around cross dressers much in my day. Or transsexuals. I have this idea that the whole grouping of “LGBT” isn’t particularly … well, correct. Lesbians and gays are “different” from heterosexuals in that their sexual orientation is different, but cross dressers like dressing as the opposite sex while transsexuals feel they have been born in the wrong body. This deals a lot with that more than 2 genders conversation, but I haven’t been well-versed enough on that subject. I will get back to you on that in a later article, but in the meantime, I’m just going to make some generalizations.
The first thereof is that trans is the new gay. Jews are the original American minority, and after them came the blacks, and after them to a lesser extent the Mexicans, and now the gays, and next up the trannys. I’ve been told that this is an incredibly rude and discriminating word but I’m using it because what I have realized is that I actually do discriminate, and I have the feeling a lot of other gays do, too.
The cross dressers I met at Krave were really cool guys. I may have been partial to them because so many of them speak German (German, by the way, is the new secret language of the gays. More America gays that I know speaking German than not, and I will also write an article full of bullshit as to explain to why in the future, but stop asking so much of me!! Enjoy your trannies and be content!). The cross-dressers of the south side, however, are different from the cross dressers I have met in Champaign, Germany, and Austria. In Europe, the cross-dressers I have met were very … elegant. They wore long elegant gowns, wigs with beautiful curled blonde hair, and had fantastic makeup that really increased their femininity. The cross-dressers of Krave wore Sox jerseys, wigs with short brown hair, and had makeup that made them look like, well, ugly south suburban women. Some of them looked like their female counterparts but for some reason men of the south side tend to be big burly guys, and when they dress as women, they aren’t the prettiest of creatures.
I know a lot of gays who get pissed off when African Americans don’t fight for gay rights, “They’re a minority and they used to not have any rights, why aren’t they fighting for us? Don’t they know how it feels?”
I think the thing is, is that that is the only common ground. Some African Americans probably just don’t identify with gays, regardless if they think it’s okay to be gay or not. And I think the same goes for transsexuals and cross dressers: not all gays are able to identify with the idea of dressing as the opposite sex or having a surgical operation to find the right body. Just because you are a minority, you don’t have to fight for every goddamn person’s rights. It’d be exhausting.
African Americans had a huge presence when they were fighting for their rights. Through protests such as sit-ins and refusing to ride public transportation, and activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, African Americans had a voice and through a lot of fighting, usually peaceful, they gained more rights (I will in no way say that they are equal rights, but once again, that’s another article). Who is fighting for gay rights? Well, we have pride parades and gay months and all that, and there has arguably been an increase in rights for homosexuals in the U.S., but where is the revolution? Where is our voice?
And cross-dressers? Transsexuals? Who is their voice? Please, for the love of all things sacred, tell me that trannys will have a greater voice than that of Chris “Leave Britney Alone” Crocker. But then again, s/he’s loud, obnoxious, and doesn’t seem to give a shit what other people think of his/her lifestyle. Is Chris Crocker the voice of the revolution?
Chris Crocker in a less obnoxious moment
Liam Reed: 1987 model, runs fairly well, few dents, starts in cold weather, no baggage, loves flea markets and canned soup
Comments
Mike Consalvo (Mike Consalvo) says:
(Posted July 18th, 2008 at 10:34 pm)
I read this whole post and the one thing that keeps sticking out at me is that they were wearing Sox jerseys. That’s the Cub fan in me coming out.
Although I would like blacks to fight for us, I can understand why they don’t. That being said, I think the issue is that not that they are not fighting for us, but its that they are fighting and protesting AGAINST us. Its no big secret that a lot of the biggest homophobes are blacks. What I don’t understand is after all the shit they had been through, how can they fight to hold back our rights?
Oh and you left out the native Americans. 
Chad (Chad) says:
(Posted July 21st, 2008 at 6:19 pm)
There’s so very much that needs to be discussed here.
Yes, Stonewall was the beginning of the gay rights movement. However, the agenda presented in that era is lost today, primarily because the movement was highjacked by rich white gay males who wanted to get married. It was these individuals who have led us to believe that we can achieve equality if we write enough checks to the right organizations. The goal of the movement quickly became assimilation, rather than liberation — seemingly our one and only goal was to fit into society and be just like everyone else.
In the process, the feminist and queer ideals that were the foundation of our movement became forgotten, as did those crossdressers, drag queens, transvestites, and transexuals who helped begin the fight. And yes, those are all different terms that represent very different groups of people.
The Wikipedia article on Transgender (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender) is good at explaining the various transgender identities, as is this list of definitions: http://www.transproud.com/trans_terms.html. Also, talk to someone who identifies as transgender and talk with them about it. There are people here on campus who are transgender.
I think it’s very important that the transgender community be a part of our struggle. If nothing else, history has taught us that the discrimination faced by gays and lesbians has more to do with our defiance against stereotypical gender roles than it does with our sexual preference. Sadly, the modern gay movement does more to uphold the notions of binary gender and a system of patriarchy than it does to challenge it.
In response to the notion of the African American community supporting our movement - Racism is alive and well in the LGBT community, too. We can’t expect support from others unless we lend it, as well.
You said that we as minorities don’t have to fight on behalf of everyone because it’d be exhausting. I’d disagree. I think we have a responsibility to challenge a system of oppression - whether it affects us personally or not. It’s how we build up a network of allies.
Where’s our voice, you ask? Our allies are our voice. Without allies, we’re just whining and fighting amongst ourselves.
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the217
Buzz Magazine
Liam Reed
1987 model, runs fairly well, few dents, starts in cold weather, no baggage, loves flea markets and canned soup
Kevin McLoughlin (Kevin McLoughlin) says:
(Posted July 18th, 2008 at 12:44 pm)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots - There’s the start of our revolution. While we certainly have a long way to go, the same can be said for any minority, and in the past few decades we’ve come leaps, bounds, and catapult launches away from the way things used to be.
The reason that the ‘T’ is always tacked on to ‘LGB’ is touched on in that article. The same indecency laws that condemned you to the gallows for getting to know someone in the Levitican sense were right next to the caveats about cross-dressing. De facto and de jure discrimination against queer people often focused more on the ways in which societal expectations regarding gender behaviors were broken, instead of the actual act of homosexual sex. Even the Bible condemns ‘laying with a man as with a woman,’ presumably because doing so debased man - made in the image of God, to the level of woman - God’s sloppy second.
During the Stonewall Riots and arguably most noticeable and ostentatious battles for queer rights, gender-bending was right at the forefront. It’s probably one of the most conspicuous ways of flouting the rigid gender expectations that result in discrimination against ALL members of the queer community. Without challenging these expectations, GLB people can never expect to receive equal rights, which is why we’ve always found allies in gender-bending and feminist circles.
By not including trans people in our fight for rights, we not only betray a group of people who’ve been part of our revolution since its inception, we also lose sight of the real ‘enemy’ in the fight for our rights.
PS - Blacks have been here just as long as Jews ^_^