Defending the LGBTQ+ Alphabet Soup

LGBTQ+ first began as LGBT in the early 1990s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, when people saw the use of combining sexual minorities (the LGB) and those with transgender identities (the T) in a unified search for social justice for members of these communities. In later years, the letter Q was added for queer, among other letters.

Not everyone is happy with putting these letters together, particularly those who see transgender goals as distinct from or even incompatible with LGB goals. For example, the LBG Alliance was founded directly to oppose inclusion of transgender concerns to achieve political goals, and the term TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminists) has been coined to describe a political identity that opposes the transgender movement. However, it is a mistake for the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community to exclude members of the transgender community, because these groups are united in their challenge of the gender system. In other words, gender is the key ingredient in the alphabet soup of LGBTQ+.

The fact that gender and sexuality are inextricably intertwined is a foundational idea behind my research program. That is, I believe you cannot think about sexuality—lesbian, gay, straight, bisexual—without thinking about gender, gender roles, femininity, and masculinity. Although I hardly originated this idea, nor is it an idea that will be especially surprising to many, there are some fascinating and unintuitive consequences that come from this interplay.

The biggest consequence in recent American history was the 2020 Supreme Court ruling on Bostock v. Clayton County that declared discrimination against sexual orientation a form of sex discrimination. Sexual orientation is still not a protected class in the United States in the same way that sex (really, gender) is, based on the 1964 Civil Rights Act that also protects race, color, national origin, religion, etc. Up until the Bostock v. Clayton County ruling, it was perfectly legal to fire employees who came out as LGB simply because of their sexual orientation and for no other reason, except in states or cities that had already outlawed it. Now job discrimination based on sexual orientation is illegal everywhere in the United States.

Transgender individuals are also protected against job discrimination by Bostock v. Clayton County, but I don’t think it is especially surprising that transgender concerns are about gender. It is more surprising that LGB concerns are about gender, and, indeed, the two dissents to Bostock v. Clayton County, one written by Justices Alito and Thomas, the other by Justice Kavanaugh, both emphatically state that LGB has nothing to do with gender. As Kavanaugh noted, “Seneca Falls was not Stonewall. The women’s rights movement was not (and is not) the gay rights movement.” Alito and Thomas agreed, stating that “heterosexuality is not a female stereotype; it is not a male stereotype; it is not a sex specific stereotype at all.”

What is the basis, then, for claiming that LGB discrimination is a form of sex discrimination? If you read the court proceedings for Bostock v Clayton County, you will encounter a lot of confusing legal terminology. From my analysis, however, the decision comes down to an important Supreme Court case in 1989, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, that declared sex stereotyping a form of sex discrimination. In that case, Ann Hopkins, a straight woman, was denied a promotion at Price Waterhouse because her colleagues were uncomfortable with her masculine assertiveness—indeed, the very quality that may have helped her succeed in a competitive accounting firm. Ann Hopkins was denied a promotion not because she was a woman, but because she was not behaving according to the expectations of how women should behave. The Supreme Court declared this illegal by deciding that sex stereotyping is a form of sex discrimination. The proceedings from the perspective of the social psychologists who influenced the decision reads like a thriller novel.

This case paved the way for Bostock v. Clayton County, once courts understood the connection between sex stereotypes and being lesbian, gay, and bisexual. LGB individuals violate traditional sex-based expectations in two important ways. First, contrary to Alito and Thomas’s opinion, heterosexuality is a sex stereotype: Men are traditionally expected to pair with women sexually, and women with men. But, second, in the public imagination, LGB people violate what it means to be a man or a woman beyond just heterosexuality, insofar as gay men are perceived to be feminine and lesbians are perceived to be masculine. That is, people’s distaste for LGB people may reflect their discomfort with these individuals not fitting how men and women should behave. Because that distaste is based on sex stereotypes, discrimination against LGB individuals becomes a special case of sex discrimination. All of this argumentation can be applied to transgender individuals, but the logic is more obvious to me: Transgender men are seen as violating what it means to be a woman, their given gender at birth; transgender women violate what it means to be a man, their given gender at birth.

The point is, to the everyday perceiver, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender men and women all violate traditional expectations of what it means to be a man or a woman. Of course, there are differences among the groups in the LGBTQ+ alphabet soup. For example, gay men and lesbians who identify with the gender on their birth certificates do not have to worry about which bathroom to use in the same way that transgender individuals do. Nevertheless, these groups are unified, whether they like it or not, in the fight against the roots of the prejudice that exists against them. Members of the LGB community who reject transgender individuals therefore may be unwittingly upholding and encouraging the very gender systems used to keep themselves down. The fact that these groups all challenge traditional gender stereotypes should be enough to motivate their continued, united fight for justice.