Problems within the LGBTIQ+ communities

Something that has been reasonably widely acknowledged for around 15 years now is that there are problems of discrimination within and between the various LGBTIQ+ communities. Publicly acknowledged for around that length of time, but known for longer - and I am thinking of several people I knew in the 90s who were quite eloquent on the topic, and one in particular talked about the evidence from history of how some members of minority groups reacted to discrimination in a way that I - today - would describe as collaboration. 

Some of the problems also include broader forms of discrimination - for instance, sexism and racism are also problems found within some LGBTIQ+ people. 

Some of the problems relate to the desperate struggle for survival that many LGBTIQ+ people are forced into. 

Of the latter, the issue of transition is an extreme challenge for TGD (trans and gender diverse) people, and can be all consuming because of the bigotry and hate from society. One well known trans woman I knew in the 90s (and afterwards) commented then that some TGD people would find themselves at a loss after transition - "what do I do now?"

Others were happy to disappear into the community and get on with their life. 

Unfortunately, as I wrote here and elsewhere, society has a history of trying to control people who transgress its barriers of comfort, and thus every few years tries to coercively control or regulate TGD people and members of other minorities - e.g., the utterly evil John Howard's ban on Equal Marriage. 

The latest such effort is the ABS's attempt to - allegedly - count LGBTIQ+ people (which potentially involves risks to those LGBTIQ+ people who are identified as such in the event of us getting an even worse government than we have now). Unfortunately, the ABS has chosen to do so in a way that is psychologically harmful; even more disturbing, they've done so after "consulting broadly" - including with a number of LGBTIQ+ groups. 

And that takes us back to the problems of discrimination between LGBTIQ+ communities - in this case, discrimination that is possibly based on ignorance, but also possibly based on cis-normativity. 

If cis-normativity were not a problem, we would not have had decades of surveys that lump all TGD people into "trans" - despite TGD people pointing out for decades that such was a problem, and explaining why.

When that is done, that constitutes erasure of binary TGD people - it is as damaging and as offensive as lumping all male and female people into "cisgender" . . . but that is what I am seriously contemplating doing (e.g., addressing communication to "Dear privileged cisgender person", or using CG as a courtesy title rather than Mr/Ms/Mrs/Miss), to try to get through to cisgender people in the LGBTIQ+ people what they are doing. 

There is also the issue that, in their struggle to survive, non-binary TGD people may not be aware they are erasing binary TGD people - that is an error I also saw in the 90s and 2000s, although more often TGD people erasing IS people. (There were also problems such  as MTF erasure of FTM or operative vs. non-operative.)

In any case, it is wrong. 

But . . . I am also so devastated by the discovery of consultation, that I think I will - again - withdraw from the LGBTIQ communities.

Of course, it may be that the ABS has misrepresented what the submissions to it were, but if that is so, then those who made the submissions need to go public - and that does NOT mean through the "gay press": many LGBTIQ+ people do not access the "gay press", which was something I knew even back in the 90s.