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Canadian gay fraternity in trouble for excluding women, using incorrect trans language, breathing



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Various activist voices in the McGill lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) communities angrily derided the frat for professing to be open and accepting, and yet excluding women from the group.
Frats are supposed to accept women now?  And sororities guys?

This also caught my eye.  The guys were trying to be accepting, before they got yelled at, and said trans people were welcome in their frat, which is great.  But the same gay group that freaked out over the notion of not accepting women to a frat also freaked out over the fact that the guys didn't use the proper language to describe trans people in their welcome statement.
Now there is controversy over how the fraternity has circumscribed who can and cannot join. Delta Lambda Phi (DLP) recently stipulated that it’s open to “males and those who identify as male.”

While some might have thought that would sufficiently encompass transgendered individuals who consider themselves male, McGill’s main LGBT group, Queer McGill, wasn’t happy when it saw the frat’s literature.

Queer McGill thought the language separating “males” and “those who identify as male” implied that transgendered individuals were somehow not real men. They were “just pretending to be men,” explained Queer McGill administrator Elyse Lewis, 20.

“There was a lot of misunderstanding with this whole thing,” Lewis said. “People from DLP didn’t know there was a problem with the language. They saw it as an attack in general.” [emphasis added]
Ya think?

Note that the "they're just pretending to be men" comment isn't from the frat, it's from the leader of the gay group at McGill, who's being a snide jerk.

No kudos for being openly welcoming of trans guys into their frat. Hell, I don't even know what language to use. Is "trans guys" correct? I'd have probably said the same thing these guys said, "men and anyone who identifies as male." What are they supposed to say?  Just "Men"?  Imagine the outcry had they done that - clearly "men" excludes trans people, the gay group would have then said. And in any case, why assume that "men and anyone who identifies as male" means the guys don't think trans people are real? If they didn't think trans people were real, they wouldn't have invited them to be a part of the frat in the first place.

It feels like Queer McGill's problem with these guys is that they're gay.  And nowadays, among some segments of our community, that's a crime in and of itself.
(H/t to Towleroad.)

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