A striking sentence thought blurb

"Possibly the most damning rap against drag comes from inside the gay and lesbian neighborhood."
-Aleshia Brevard, The woman I was not meant to be.

The concept that perhaps most surprised me in this course, but now that I think about it makes a lot of sense, was that in lgbtq discourse and life, transgender (I'm not making this synonymous with drag, but just taking this sentence and thinking and applying it further to other class concepts) issues and gay and lesbian issues are distinct, and sometimes even contradictory. And while they're put together in this lgbtq community for differing from the norm of cisgendered heterosexual people, their needs and desires are different. And while their distance from the norm unifies them, their discrepancies with each other can cause tension.
There's this concept in political science regarding violence (that I think was developed by S. Huntington, but don't quote me on that just yet) that states that under oppressive regimes, the oppressed peoples are all struggling together and controlled by this dominating outside force, so not a lot of action goes on. However, once the area or peoples claim democracy, there isn't any outside suppressive force, and choosing who gets to rule or have positions in government brings out ethnic and cultural differences among the people. So what ends up happening is that more violence and bloodshed occurs in those beginning stages of democracy from the oppressive regime. (Ex: Sikhs and Hindus in India, pretty much anything that goes on in Eastern Europe)
Anyway, so here we've got the transgender and transsexual community with their needs to be understood and accepted as they fit into a desired gender, with many understanding themselves as heterosexual. The gay and lesbian community have the same desire to be understood and accepted, but for different reasons-as cisgendered people with different sexual orientations (Gender identity and sexual orientation are different! woot!). It's interesting to see that to outside forces, they support each other, but inwardly, there's disconnect.
In Modern Family, they even jokingly shed light on the tension between the gay male community and lesbian community as Mitch and Cam don't initially get along with two lesbian parents at their daughter's school.
I think it's important to realize the distinctions for each group, because every person desires to be known the way they want to be. And it's hard because there's such a variance--you can't have billions of people on earth and expect black and white definitions for everyone. But it's important to do anyway. And learning each subcommunity's differences or person's self identification can be really messy, but maybe that messy process is sometimes necessary to move forward. Do you think we'd be where we are now in lgbtq communities if it didn't have or go through those earlier struggles and shifting goals? And imagine what struggles it goes through now that will benefit growth and understanding later.