Trouble Genders: “LGBT” Collapse and Trans Fundamentality

Abstract

AbstractThis essay considers how deployments of the acronym “LGBT” often obscure and flatten the specificity of the terms the letters reference. Also of concern here is how the “T” might be the more fundamental letter, as reactions to “LGBT identity” are indexed in gender transgression, to which the “T” refers. I argue for holding the trouble of the acronym in the “T” and that the trans underlies how “LGBT,” as a marker of subjectivity or violence, becomes legible. To carry this out, the essay makes a parallel to how “LGBT” functions similarly to “people of color” as the terms obscure the fundamentality of the trans and the black, respectively; clarifies the distinction between queer and trans, and subsequently trans and transgender; and demonstrates how transphobic readings are integral to homophobic responses.