Why Is T In LGBT?

Earlier this week, a friend and I went to a comedy club in Nashville.

Throughout the evening, the topics were selected from the usual comedic menu: Sexist jokes, racist jokes, commentary on COVID-19, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. There were even some Tennessee-related roadkill quips thrown in.

Toward the end of the evening, however, one comedian approached the black hole of immediate comedy death that is transgenderism. After laughing through every sexist, racist, and political joke, a few audience members suddenly started to boo when the comedian made a comparatively innocuous joke about a man who decided to become a woman. To add context, these same audience members almost fell off their chairs with laughter after one joke involving animal abuse.

In a strange attempt to escape the void in which he was suddenly trapped, the comedian decided to spark a discussion with an audience member who said he was gay. Citing the fact that the “LGBT” (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) community is viewed as a collective unit, the comedian asked the audience member a question about how sex change surgery works.

“I don’t know, I’m gay,” the man responded, triggering arguably the most raucous laughter of the evening.

Jokes aside, this was actually a pivotal moment that sums up the absurdity of the entire notion of the LGBT community: Why are these four groups united under one banner?

Another comedian, Dave Chappelle, made that same point in 2019.

“You hear all those letters together all the time — LBGT, LBGT — and you think it’s just one big movement. It’s not. All those letters are their own movement — they just travel in the same car together,” Chappelle said during his “Sticks and Stones” Netflix special.

Let’s take it one step further. Why are they “in the same car?”

It makes sense, of course, that lesbian, bisexual and gay people find themselves beneath a single “movement” umbrella. With obvious differences, they all have sexual orientations outside of the strict “male-female” relationship pairing.

The “identity” of transgender people, however, has nothing to do with sexual orientation, by definition. To be transgender, you believe that your sex and/or gender does not match your “biological” sex. The sexual orientation of such an individual is immaterial, and is often bootstrapped retrospectively as part of their broader identity. For example, a straight biological male who decides they are a woman will then describe himself as a “lesbian transgender woman,” without any actual change to their original sexual orientation.

Yes, it makes sense that transgender activists would work to shelter beneath the larger umbrella of “LGB” in order to build a more powerful coalition, but beyond a varying sense of victimhood in today’s society, is there anything substantive that binds this ever more broad “movement” together?

“I don’t know, I’m gay,” seems to suggest otherwise.

Ian Haworth is an editor and writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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