Alan, Bill, Charlie and Dan love poker and started a club that played the first Friday of each month. Ed heard about the game and asked to join the club. He fit right in and they all had a great time at the next game. The following month Ed suggested that they go bowling instead. Everyone except Ed wanted to restrict the club's activities to poker. A rather intense discussion ensued and Ed was asked to leave the club.
There was nothing wrong with bowling and if the club had been established to participate in varying forms of social events each month, bowling might have worked. But the purpose of the club was quite specific -- to play poker -- and the members weren't interested in other types of events. They had a common interest in poker and formed the club to meet their specific purpose.
How does the poker club relate to Our Gender Family? One of our continuing issues is whether every gender organization ought to be required to have open membership for anyone who wishes to join or be allowed to restrict membership based on certain criteria. Before we end up passionately arguing about this subject only to discover that we interpreted a term differently, let's check Random House's Second Edition Unabridged Dictionary now to establish some common definitions.
Association - an organization of people with a common purpose and having a formal structure
Club - a group of persons organized for a social, literary, athletic, political or other purpose
Organization - a group of people organized for some end or work
Purpose - the reason for which something exists or is done, made or used.
The Speakers Lifetime Library lists an aphorism (a short saying that embodies a general truth or makes an astute observation) for clubs. "A club has to have more than one person and it also has to exclude more than one person. If everybody's a member, it is no longer a club."
Given those definitions and aphorism, the question isn't whether a membership line should be drawn but where it should be drawn and for what purpose.
Different types of organizations have unique membership criteria. Religious groups require adherence to certain spiritual beliefs or principles. Businesses or companies organize around certain common markets, products or distribution channels. Fraternal societies, men's and women's groups and singles clubs all have different common bonds and exclude those who don't fit their purpose. A few simple illustrations make the point -- the Catholic Church does not accept a professed atheist as a member in good standing and most single groups strongly discourage or prohibit a married person from joining. Without such basic membership requirements the fundamental purpose of the organization would be subverted.
One case where a membership requirement should not be tolerated is when it is based on discrimination. Requirements such as a golf club excluding Blacks or a business organization excluding women, deserve to be challenged.
How ought we approach membership inclusion and exclusion? The concept of a Gender Family that includes everyone who considers themselves part of either the gender or gay/lesbian communities is wonderful but doesn't mean that a single organization can create that unity. We have common goals but are also quite different in many ways.
We share the objective of bending, shifting or breaking society's enforced link between birth sex and gender role. Yet, the goal of a male cross-dresser to PASS as a woman has precious little in common with the needs of a female-to-male (FTM) transsexual to learn to BE a man. Perhaps the best approach is embodied in the theme for the Gay, Lesbian & Transgendered parade in San Francisco this year -- "One Community, Many Faces" -- One gender family with many organizations reflecting our differing faces
For a club to achieve its reason for being, it needs to focus on meeting the needs of its constituents. Experts on poker can help poker players and experts on bowling can help bowlers. But poker players and bowlers have little in common. Drawing a seven to fill an inside straight and picking up a 3-10 split appeal to two very different audiences. At the same time, bowlers can support poker players' rights and poker players can support bowlers' rights. If the club is large enough and has sufficient resources it may have alternative programs for poker players and bowlers. If critical resources are unavailable, the founding poker players clearly have precedence.
The difficulty of meeting divergent needs became clear to me at the July S.P.I.C.E. conference. Some wives were experiencing high stress levels in dealing with their husband's cross-dressing. Cross-dressing wasn't allowed at the event but these women didn't even want the men to be present. Many steps were taken to increase their comfort level. No publicity was allowed, confidentiality pledges were required, special program tracks were developed, one-on-one counseling was readily available and provisions were made for women-only meals. Every reasonable concession was made to accommodate their needs.
While S.P.I.C.E. has the needs of women as its primary focus, they recognize that their ultimate goal is to help couples find ways to integrate cross-dressing into their relationship. That goal makes it necessary to work with men, so other program tracks were designed for men and for couples. Fortunately the organization has adequate resources to properly support the entire program.
Given the magnitude of the trauma already in existence, imagine what would have happened if FTM transsexuals who had relationships with lesbian women had been invited as well. The wives who couldn't handle cross-dressing husbands would have been totally unable to deal with that situation. Furthermore, S.P.I.C.E. doesn't have the expertise to deal with transsexual issues. The result of such an inclusive action would have been the destruction of an effective support group for the wives of cross-dressers without establishing anything effective for transsexuals. Where is the value?
Suppose for a moment that we were to require an open membership policy for all gender and gay/lesbian groups. Who would be in charge of setting and enforcing the rules? Do we want a universally recognized umbrella group that can dictate policy to all groups? If open membership became a requirement, what would prevent "straight" members of society, say the religious right, from joining gender and gay groups and turning them into poker and bowling leagues? Where would we draw that line and what would make it any more valid than existing lines?
As a practical matter we don't have to choose either open membership or restricted membership -- we already have both. Some organizations choose to be totally open. Others impose varying degrees of restrictions. As long as no one engages in discriminatory behavior, multiple choices provide the maximum value to all of our family members.
We need to avoid internal struggles that drain energy and direct our attention away from relevant issues. Territorial disputes dilute our ability to function as an effective group. I for one don't want to end up as a fulfillment of Groucho Marx's words -
I don't care to belong to a club
that accepts people like me as members.
Additional personal observations
