No, the Gay Movement Did Not Spawn the Trans Movement

In fact, society was more ready to accept sex changes than same-sex marriage

Left: A cover of Transvestia magazine. Right: Photograph from the first night of the Stonewall riots, taken by Joseph Ambrosini.

For many people, the modern trans movement seems to have come from nowhere. One minute, we were celebrating the legalization of same-sex marriage, and the very next, we are talking about “trans kids” and learning that male rapists are being housed in women’s prisons.

To the casual onlooker, it appears that the slippery slope was real after all. We let those dastardly gays get married and now look.

Yes, the massive gay rights advocacy and lobby apparatus, especially in the United States, did need a new goal once the pinnacle of gay rights, same-sex marriage, was reached, and yes it settled on “trans.”

But the trans movement and its nonsensical ideas regarding legal sex changes, self-identification, and outright sex denialism did not suddenly spring into existence in 2015. It was brewing all along, very often quite separately from the concerns of everyday gay and lesbian people. In some cases, the legal strides made by the trans movement even came well before any type of recognition for same-sex couples.

The trans movement has its own history and has always had its own concerns. The trans movement is not our movement.