Survey Says . . .
HRC took a poll at the 11th hour before the ENDA vote to prove that GLB doesn’t really support T rights wanted to push ENDA through now and stick with the incremental model that means cutting some people out of the political process. This isn’t really news, of course. It happened weeks ago, and there was much discussion about it.
Two days ago, the Washington Blade posted the story Experts question HRC’s ENDA survey:
Experts question HRC’s ENDA survey
Researcher says methodology ‘doesn’t make sense’
By JOSHUA LYNSEN | Nov 28, 4:47 PMPolling experts are questioning a recent Human Rights Campaign survey that asked gays about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
The survey’s results, circulated last month by HRC when many gays were locked in heated debate over the measure’s lack of transgender protections, show most people who responded support the bill as written.
But John Stahura, who specializes in survey research and directs the Purdue University Social Research Institute, said the survey’s methodology is problematic.
“They’re playing games,” he said after reviewing survey excerpts at the Blade’s request. “It doesn’t make sense.”
The questions were leading and designed to get HRC the results they wanted - which are the results they received, unsurprisingly.
In this post at TransGriot, one of the commenters asks:
OK, How do you explain this Hunter College poll, conducted by the same group (Knowledge Networks), also funded by HRC, which showed that, “when asked about the proposed federal law making it illegal to discriminate against lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in employment, LGBs (by a margin of 60 to 37 percent) said that those seeking to pass the law were wrong to remove protections for transgendered people in order to get the votes necessary for passage in Congress.”
Quoting the specific passage:
When asked about the proposed federal law making it illegal to discriminate against lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in employment, LGBs (by a margin of 60 to 37 percent) said that those seeking to pass the law were wrong to remove protections for transgendered people in order to get the votes necessary for passage in Congress.
The Hunter College Poll was funded by a grant from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. Sole control over the design of the study’s questionnaire and analysis of the data were maintained by the study’s investigators. The survey was conducted among those who identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual to Knowledge Networks, which recruits its nationally representative sample of respondents by telephone and administers surveys to them via the Internet. The survey has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4 percentage points.
This poll was funded by HRC, has a larger sample, lists a margin of error (unlike the HRC poll), and gives results practically opposite what HRC published a month ago, and was taken only 2-3 weeks afterward. What’s wrong with this picture?
It’s completely within the realm of possibility (and probability, based on this information) that HRC intentionally manipulated statistics to justify removing gender protections from ENDA. It’s not even controversial to propose this, and I doubt many held any illusions that it was otherwise. The main reason I’m posting this is because of this second survery which - I might add - is explicitly about “GLB” people and not GLBT.
That “GLB” language in the Hunter poll bothers me, as it implies a certain assumption about HRC’s current approach - are they going ahead and dropping the T from their work? Are we going to see HRC continue to try to exclude trans people from future activism? Perhaps as punishment for not quietly going along with Barney Frank’s revised ENDA?
Honestly, it looks like HRC is up to business as usual.
December 1, 2007 at 6:43 pm
My views are… uncertain on this one.
On the one hand, as an anarchist (and a utopian at heart), i don’t think legislation can truly solve anything.
On the other, i think that, within the confines of the statist, capitalist, patriarchal (etc) society we have now, legislation banning discrimination can definitely have at least some positive effects. It isn’t, and never will be, a substitute for actually changing the deeply embedded attitudes and beliefs in society that make people discriminate in the first place, but it can give people more power to challenge discrimination when it occurs.
The thing is, taking an outsider’s view to the whole legal system and process, it kind of seems like the result of opposing a non-trans-inclusive ENDA would not be a trans-inclusive ENDA, but no ENDA. And i really don’t know whether, in the absence of protection against discrimination for all minorities, it would be better for some minorities to get protection (thus classifying the minorities who don’t get protection as “not really valid minority groups”, and arguably marginalising and oppressing them even further), or for no one to get that protection…
It kind of reminds me of the recent-ish ruling (i think the link was at The Gimp Parade) that “mental retardation” is not classed as a “disability” under the ADA…
Of course, IMO there is a good argument that trans* rights might be best served by protection under the ADA than under ENDA… but that’s probably bound to piss off nearly everyone…
December 1, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Legislation is used to protect because we don’t have an easy way to dig out the prejudice. Legislation at least provides consequences for acting on that prejudice. It’s not a “true solution” in the sense that legislation can make prejudice go away entirely.
The thing is, that it was never as clear cut as “opposing a trans-exclusive ENDA means no ENDA at all.” Barney Frank waited until the last minute to say “we don’t have enough votes to protect gender identity, so we’re cutting that out.” He didn’t do what is normally done, which is to meet with people and say “We need X more votes and these are the representatives that are probably your best bet,” and then working with the activists to make passing the bill possible.
On the other hand, there’s a long history of cutting trans rights out of GLBT legislation to sell that legislation, along with the promise that “we’ll come back for you later.” In only two cases has anyone come back for trans rights (California and somewhere else). Everywhere else, it’s like King said, “later means never.”
HRC was quick to jump on the bandwagon to support the trans-exclusive ENDA, and was pushing for that even while saying that it wouldn’t support a trans-exclusive ENDA and wanted to see a trans-inclusive ENDA. HRC also didn’t exert much effort at all to promote a trans-inclusive ENDA after Barney Frank split ENDA into two bills (what I like to call “now” and “never”).
Incremental legislation that works by only getting rights for some minorities tends not to get rights for the excluded minorities over time. Incremental legislation that works by getting some rights now and working on more later tends to work better, largely because once you’ve got people protected under the law on some level, expanding those protections is easier than getting them protected in the first place.
The whole thing - everything - about trans people and our political viability for civil rights protection was spin to sell the idea that we’re too risky to campaign for right now, and it just plain wasn’t the truth.
Also, Chanelle Pickett’s story is a perfect example of what the lack of workplace protections can lead to: Harassment on the job, fired for standing up for herself, turning to prostitution to survive, getting murdered by a man she meets while doing this.
Jesse Helms made sure that ADA would specifically not cover transsexualism, even though there’s a strong ethical argument that it represents disability in the cultural sense (which is really where things go wrong for most people with disabilities, as I understand it - on a cultural level?). Since living with transsexualism can lead to depression and even suicide, and treatment alleviates these problems fairly efficiently, it probably should count on some level. Especially considering that being trans can sabotage your work prospects for no good reason.
I wouldn’t mind if we could challenge the exclusion from ADA, and I think there’s a legal and ethical basis to do so, I’m just not sure how to go about it.
Oh, thanks for dropping by. :)
December 2, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Hmph. And I was asked at my blog (by someone whom I respect) why I would say that the HRC “happily threw transpeople under the bus.”