HRC Tries to Win Us Back

Marti Abernathey efiskerates HRC’s condescending plan for transgender inclusion and regaining trust.

The plan, without comment:

#1

Comments/Edits: 1 of 3.
Suggested Action Steps:

1. A professional survey to teach us just what the American people understand about trans and what they don’t. By region, by demographics, by religion, etc. Let’s do the state of the art survey so we know what we’re starting with. Questions like “what does transgender conjure up in your mind”? “What is the difference between gay and trans”? “Do you know that just as many females transition to male as vice versa”? Let’s get down to the core issues.

2. Then we research the 110+ jurisdictions with protections and characterize what was done right and what was done wrong. We need to work with other groups that have been doing this. I also don’t think it would hurt for Joe to sit down with them, apologize and begin the rebuilding. Trust is essential but will be hard to come by, and it would be a terrible waste of energy to try and go this alone. UnitedENDA should be a resource.

3. Use the above info to assist those states that have s.o. only laws such as MA, NY, MD and WI as a first step, or those states with active lobbying efforts.

4. Work with NCTE to find trans persons to target those 50 or so Congresspersons, and give them the data to help them lobby. But remember that nothing beats face-to-face contacts, and that means the rep and not the chief-of-staff or LA.

4. Work with GLAAD to develop video and PSAs for the targeted states and Congresspersons. We need to show them that we have materials that will help them withstand any hypothetical attacks.

5. Redouble the corporate work — they’ve been doing a great job.

6. Work with John Isa on the health insurance survey to increase coverage for medical and surgical transition.
7. Offer to assist NCTE for psychiatric members and those who would have contacts that could help us remove GID from the DSM. The APA Task Forces for the revision are now being formed.

#2

Attached is comment document 2 of 3. (These intro sentences include edits)
In the wake of the House vote on ENDA, the Human Rights Campaign recognizes in a new and profound way the important role it must play in advocating in Congress, among the general mainstream population, and even within the GLBT community, for transgender protections.

We recognize that HRC’s decision to follow a different strategy to secure a fully-inclusive bill was hurtful to some members of our community and we regret that. Because we share the same goal of a fully-inclusive ENDA, HRC is immediately launching a new public education campaign designed to continue the mainstreaming of transgender issues, with three initial priorities:

o To forge stronger collaborations within the GLBT community
o To convincethe GLBT and progressive community of the necessity of understanding transgender issues
o To advocate for transgender acceptance among mainstream Americans

To meet these goals, HRC will engage with an organization-wide effort to redouble our educational efforts around gender identity and expression, while also continuing to enact changes that help build fairness and equality for transgender people at home, at work and in their communities.

I. Research
II. Completing Targeted State Non-Discrimination Laws
III. Legislative Work – a 50 District Plan
IV. Redoubling our Corporate Work
V. Communications, Advertising and Media Promotion
VI. HRC Family Project Transgender Education
VII. Continued Publication of Educational Materials on Transgender Issues

Other thoughts (not sure where these fit above):

* Repositioning all of HRC’s messaging to be more inclusive of transgender people, and more humble/apologetic about HRC’s past exclusion of the transgender community

* Recognizing that transgender people are not “new” – that they were present at Stonewall and other early uprisings, and what kept them from being visible for many years (I’d be happy to elaborate about this)

* Encouraging transgender people to come out and tell their stories, perhaps providing forums where they can do so safely

* Requiring each HRC Regional Steering Committee to undergo transgender awareness training, and to actively work to increase transgender participation on the Committee

* Holding “lunch and learn” sessions at HRC headquarters, where staffers can hear from transgender people directly on topics such as trans law, history, insurance, healthcare issues etc.

* Urging HRC staffers to consider transgender people for job openings

#3

This is the third of three comments/edits to our DRAFT Transaction Plan.

The first step in rebuilding our trust in HRC must be for HRC to own up to the fact that we were promised one thing and the promise, for whatever reason, was broken. Members of the transgender community I’ve spoken to want an apology and an explanation, and the explanation must be sincere and convincing. They want to see a stop to public announcements that contradict private activity which many believe is still going on. Until that is done, it will be near impossible to get increased participation from the transgender community.

And this is a sad state of affairs. Sure there are 200-300 organizations in United ENDA (depending on how you count them), but so many of them are small. None of them has the resources to mount a nationwide educational campaign about transgender. HRC does. Mainstream media has been wonderful to us this year. Barbara Walters 20/20, Larry King Live, Opera, the Discovery Channel, Ugly Betty, All My Children, and others have done a largely commendable job of bringing a positive view of transgender issues before the public. Yet we still have to overcome the image that Jerry Springer shows them on TV and the image we ourselves give the public with our Gay Pride and Halloween parades. We can tell our stories all we want on HRC’s web site and on Donna Rose’s proposed website. The only people we will reach there are those who are specifically looking for this kind of information.

At this time, I believe that only HRC has the resources to help us get the message out to mainstream America.

The second step would be to truly understand the transgender community . As you well know, many in the transgender community are unemployed or underemployed. They cannot afford the time or the money to visit their political leaders and speak for themselves. Many have been denied the opportunity for higher education and thus cannot express themselves as they would need to when speaking to politicians and business leaders. Many have been expelled or shunned from churches and do not know the bible well enough to defend themselves from religious attacks. Many, far too many, live with the internalized self-doubt and self-loathing that result from relentless attacks on their very existence. They cannot represent us as well as others might.

On the other hand, there have been more fortunate transgender individuals, particularly transsexuals, who have survived the attacks, found the strength to go on, found the opportunity for education, and found the conviction to live their lives as they should. They are accepted in their proper gender. These transsexuals are educated, with good paying, respectable careers. These people can speak for the community. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of them, the fight to get where they now are has been too long and too hard. They don’t want to fight anymore. They have changed their gender, their birth certificates, their college records and work histories. They have moved hundreds, indeed thousands, of miles away from home to start new lives. They want to live the years they have left in relative peace, in their proper gender. I cannot fault them for that. Just as no one should be compelled to live in shame or fear, no one should be compelled to ‘come out’ and expose themselves to renewed expressions of discrimination and bigotry.

To come out after successfully living a new life can ruin careers and families for them. HRC needs to appeal to these individuals to come out, but must be prepared to accept that few will heed the call.

Somewhere in the middle of these two groups are transgender and transsexuals who have managed to survive and now live openly. There are transgender who have education and who have careers that are relatively safe from ruin thanks to the work of HRC and NCTEquality, IFGE, and others. The combined efforts on workplace initiative have already resulted a great many employers adding gender expression to their workplace affirmative action policies. This has been wonderful. Capitalize on that. That may be the place for HRC to appeal to the transgender community to speak up and to speak out.

The third step would be to build trust through actions; communicate with our employers, develop new talent, and help us tell our stories to our lawmakers. Those employers who have signed on to equality will most likely listen to HRC. Convince those employers that allowing an employee a few days away from work to fly to Washington or their State Capital would be a good thing for business. There may be employees at those companies who don’t even belong to HRC. Seek out those who would like to speak up if given the chance. Give us some training on how to present ourselves. Help the employees with airfare and lodging when needed. Help us get the lawmakers to receive us and to talk to us. Arrange the sit down time that many cannot get with our lawmakers.

Give us the opportunity to put a face on transgender; to demonstrate to our State and National legislators that we are worthy human beings, worthy of protection from harm, and of freedom from discrimination.

I believe HRC needs these first three steps of rebuilding trust and demonstrating commitment before the fourth step, The fourth step is what you really have asked how to do. By this time transgender who have responded to your call will have acquired the self-confidence of knowing they can speak up for the community. You will have developed new talent in the transgender community. At this point you can ask them to serve actively in HRC and expect them to serve well.

HRC has the political and financial clout to do all this. We have two years to prepare for the next volley in Congress. I think this would be a good start.

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 PM

Polling 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.

Donna Rose and Jamison Green Leave HRC Business Council

Also, they’re forming a new organization.

Open letter here:

November 27, 2007

An Open Letter To:
                Daryl Herrschaft, Director, HRC Workplace Project,
                Staff of the HRC Workplace Project,
                Members of the HRC Business Council,
                Joe Solmonese, E.D., Human Rights Campaign (HRC),
                Members of the HRC Board of Directors,
                Members of the Transgender Community:

It has been an honor and a privilege for both of us to serve on the Human Rights Campaign Business Council. Since joining the Business Council in 2002 we have both played active roles in advancing workplace equality, providing education, guidance and leadership, and ensuring that workplaces in America are fair for ALL employees. Our collective work has been at the forefront of the successes that HRC has enjoyed in recent years, has affected the daily lives of GLBT employees throughout this country in profound and substantive ways, and is a continuing source of pride for us both.

Rather than rest on past achievements, the Business Council continues to develop critical new initiatives to support transgender employees. We are working to raise the bar on the Corporate Equality Index. We are planning to revise and re-publish the booklet Transgender In the Workplace: A Tool For Managers. We are planning a Female-to-Male educational DVD. We have been working on insurance issues affecting transgender employees. Never before have so many important efforts for transgender workers been underway and we are both heavily involved in all of them. That is why the decision we are announcing today is an extremely difficult one.

Recent HRC policy decisions – to actively support a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that excludes our transgender brothers and sisters as well as gender-variant lesbian, gay, and bisexual people – have placed us in an untenable position. On November 8, the day after the ENDA vote in the House of Representatives, we requested an opportunity to meet personally with HRC President Joe Solmonese to share our concerns and to discuss HRC’s strategy for addressing recent legislative shortcomings before making a decision to stay or go. As the only transgender representatives on the Business Council our community expects us to have some influence, or at least to receive the courtesy of a consultation. Almost 3 weeks have passed since that request and we have heard nothing in response. This lack of response speaks volumes, so we feel compelled to take this stand today.

We are announcing our resignations from the HRC Business Council, effective immediately. Considering recent broken promises, the lack of credibility that HRC has with the transgender community at large, and HRC’s apparent lack of commitment to healing the breach it has caused, we find it impossible to maintain an effective working relationship with the organization.

We have truly enjoyed working with the amazing group of corporate leaders who comprise the Business Council. We thank Daryl Herrschaft, Eric Bloem, Samir Luther, and the rest of the Workplace Project team for their steadfast support, their passion for full equality and inclusion, and their friendship. We are extremely disappointed that HRC legislative decisions have contradicted Business Council efforts to enact only fully-inclusive policies and that we must leave the important work we have been planning unfinished. But principles are not for compromise, so today we do what we feel we must.

The need for education on transgender issues in this country has never been greater or more apparent. In addition, a significant learning from recent events is that, while alliances are necessary, valuable, and often crucial, the transgender community cannot rely excessively on others for success and must assert greater control over its own destiny. Our resignation from the Business Council in no way diminishes our commitment either to the transgender community or to ensuring that workplaces have access to professional training, support and guidance on transgender issues. Rather, it provides new challenges and opportunities.

Since we cannot in good conscience continue these critical efforts in the name of HRC through its Business Council, we will be forming an organization whose sole purpose is to provide ongoing education on transgender issues for businesses, governmental agencies, NGOs, and educational institutions. Our Transgender Education Partnership – TransEducate.com – will be a platform from which we can engage community leaders, develop tools and publications, and establish partnerships with like-minded organizations to work for ALL gender-variant people everywhere.

Although it saddens us to say good-bye to our colleagues on the Business Council we are energized by our vision of the future. We look forward to being a pre-eminent voice in the ongoing effort to provide education about the transgender community. We look forward to the day when the LGBT community can address its issues with a unified voice, and without diminishing any of its constituents. And, we look forward to a day when gender-variance is appreciated as ordinary and non-threatening, and education on these topics will no longer be necessary.

In Solidarity for Equality,

Jamison Green and Donna Rose

ENDA Discussion

Terrance of The Republic of T has a couple of great posts about ENDA, which he’s also cross-posted to Pam’s House Blend. For that matter, Pam’s House Blend is filled to the brim with ENDA-related posts that are worth reading.

In Terrance’s first post, LGB-T = ENDA, pt. 1, he discusses his experiences with the kind of incrementalism used to justify the removal of gender protections. He says, about the statement, “the implication of gradualism is that some people will have to continue to endure injustice without remedy,”

Its one thing to be an incrementalist and at least be honest about that last sentence. It’s quite another to declare that it is the right thing to do to ask others to continue to suffer injustice without remedy is the right thing to do, that they ought to be glad to do it, and that they are wrong for objecting to it.

That’s what’s asked of of gay folks by progressives on the marriage issue. And now that’s what gay folks are asking of transgender folks on employment discrimination, which for some transgender people is literally a matter of life and death.

That’s it in a nutshell. GLB-rights activists (for they are surely not *T rights activists) who magnanimously sacrifice someone else’s chance at fairness or equality to get theirs first aren’t really making concessions - a true concession requires you to give up something that matters to you.

Terrance continues with LGB-T = ENDA, pt. 2. Here he nails down just what workplace discrimination against trans people means. Seriously, even in San Francisco where trans people have a large number of civil rights protections, you’re looking at something like 75% unemployment. Looking at numbers like that, it’s hard to see how anyone could argue that we don’t need our civil rights yet if it means everyone else waiting an extra year or two. Because, really, unlike John Aravosis’ belief that including T could set his civil rights back decades, we were really close to having enough votes to get a trans-inclusive ENDA passed in the House, and we don’t even know for sure if we didn’t have those votes. People have observed a few irregularities surrounding the alleged whip count.

Terrance mentions how getting employment can be a matter of life or death for trans people, and specifically mentions trans women who had been murdered by men who discovered their trans status, who were in sex work to support themselves because of the difficulty in finding employment. This is called “survival prostitution.” The four women he names are trans women of color, who not only had to deal with transmisogyny, but also racism and sexism. Since transphobia and transmisogyny barely register as unacceptable to many people, it’s also more acceptable to turn up the heat on the racism and sexism.

Terrance highlights that the lack of protection for transgender people really is a matter of life or death. To call us selfish, to tell us we’re holding the gay rights movement back because we are very clear on how badly we need those rights, demonstrates a profound lack of compassion. I would like to know how many trans women have to turn to prostitution to survive, have to live on the edge of homelessness, how many have to die before we’ve earned our place at the table. Is it because the trans people who suffer most - who die most often - are trans women of color? Why is this lack of protection acceptable to civil rights “activists” like Joe Solmonese? Why does John Aravosis constantly characterize our need for these protections as selfish and demanding?

LGB-T = ENDA, pt. 3 further condemns incrementalism as a political strategy, emphasizing the cost to those whose rights are sacrificed “for the greater good.”  As he states in these two paragraphs:

If Democrats and progressives are convinced that righting for legal marriage isn’t effective right now, then we need to find another way to protect our families right now, not ten or twenty or thirty years down the line. We need to do more than shake our heads and say it’s a shame that happens. If civil unions are the answer, then great. Let’s craft legislation, or pour resources into states where it’s achievable. But let’s do something besides “just wait.”

If we believe that employment discrimination transgender persons is wrong and shouldn’t happen, and an inclusive ENDA isn’t gongi to work right now, then we need to find another way to protect transgender persons right now, not ten or twenty or thirty years down the line. We need to do more than shake our heads and say it’s a shame that happens. Let’s start educating Congress on transgender issues now, get a panel of transgender persons who’ve experienced workplace discrimination in front of a committee hearing, or sitting down with key members of congress, or pour some resources into public education campaigns in key states or districts where legislators might be influenced. But let’s do something besides “just wait.”

I wish we had more voices like his.

His posts are also on Pam’s House Blend: LGB-T = ENDA, pt. 1 and LGB-T = ENDA, pt. 2.

On Pam’s House Blend, AHiddenSaint tells her personal story.

Autumn Sandeen discusses the dilemma for some representatives - whether it was worth voting against civil rights legislation in order to oppose the trans-exclusive ENDA.

Daimeon talks about picking up the pieces now that we’ve been thoroughly backstabbed and thrown under the bus.

Also, keep an eye on Donna’s ENDABlog as she posts post-mortem analysis. Donna Rose was on the HRC board until HRC voted to not oppose the trans-exclusive ENDA, at which point she resigned.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it

The title comes from Upton Sinclair.

To celebrate Wednesday’s development in Congress, I’ve decided to pick on John Aravosis, who tells us every chance he gets that he isn’t a transphobe, that he’s not a misogynist, that he’s not a homocentrist. He wrote this article for Salon to explain why trans people are recent additions to the gay rights movement, and perhaps shouldn’t be part now, that perhaps it was a bit rash to let us in.

His article has many of the hallmarks of a classic concern troll:

Gay activists and 220 national and local gay rights groups angrily demanded that gender identity be put back in the bill, guaranteeing its defeat for years to come.

Notice the implication that this action will have terrible consequences. Mr. Aravosis repeats this theme in the article’s discussion, inflating the time to potential decades. He’s basically panicmongering, claiming that trans people are an albatross around his community’s neck, dragging them all down and forever denying them civil rights.

He revises history and implies that trans people have so much power, that it’s dangerous to question our inclusion in the LGBT community:

I have a sense that over the past decade the trans revolution was imposed on the gay community from outside, or at least above, and thus it never stuck with a large number of gays who weren’t running national organizations, weren’t activists, or weren’t living in liberal gay enclaves like San Francisco and New York. Sure, many of the rest of us accepted de facto that transgendered people were members of the community, but only because our leaders kept telling us it was so. A lot of gays have been scratching their heads for 10 years trying to figure out what they have in common with transsexuals, or at the very least why transgendered people qualify as our siblings rather than our cousins. It’s a fair question, but one we know we dare not ask. It is simply not p.c. in the gay community to question how and why the T got added on to the LGB, let alone ask what I as a gay man have in common with a man who wants to cut off his penis, surgically construct a vagina, and become a woman. I’m not passing judgment, I respect transgendered people and sympathize with their cause, but I simply don’t get how I am just as closely related to a transsexual (who is often not gay) as I am to a lesbian (who is). Is it wrong for me to simply ask why?

Check out the little quote buried in the middle: “. . . ask what I as a gay man have in common with a man who wants to cut off his penis, surgically construct a vagina, and become a woman . . .” He defines trans people as, well, that. We’re reduced to our genitals and nothing more. Not only that, but we’re reduced to our genitals in a vulgar, base fashion, as he invokes a lurid castration image to emphasize his separation from trans people. Of course, John is lying. Trans people have been here from the beginning. We were pushed out of the movement in the early 70s, despite having kicked it off. It wasn’t just us - the gay rights movement felt it was necessary to push away those who were “too different” to increase chances of acceptance for those who looked and acted straight - like the Mattachine Society:

Unfortunately, the new leadership shared none of the vision or experience of the original founders. They drastically revised the goals of the organization, backtracking in every area. Instead of social change, they advocated accommodation. Instead of mobilizing gay people, they sought the support of professionals, who they believed held the key to reform. They stated, we do not advocate a homosexual culture or community, and we believe none exists. (Mattachine: Radical Roots of Gay Liberation).

John Aravosis, Barney Frank, and others like them have more in common with these socially conservative Mattachine gay men than much of the LGBT community. Unlike the Mattachines, John is willing to acknowledge that there’s a gay and lesbian community, writes off bisexuals as part-time gays, and wants to push trans people out altogether, but the sentiment is the same.

He goes on to write:

I wrote on my blog last week about this issue, and shared my doubts and concerns and questions. And I was eviscerated for it. While the majority of my readers either agreed with me, or found my questions provocative and relevant, a vocal minority labeled me a bigot, a transphobe, a rich, white boy living in a big city who didn’t care about anyone but himself, and worse. An old activist friend even told me that my words were prejudiced, wrong and embarrassingly uninformed, and that no one of any consequence shared my concerns, and if they did, they were bigots too.

He appeals to his readership’s agreement with him, dismisses those who call him on his bigotry as a “vocal minority,” implies that his old activist friend is overreacting, and goes on to say that it’s not safe to ask questions in the gay community about how transgender people fit in.

Of course, as we all know, bigoted people are the best witnesses to their own bigotry. You can totally trust them when they deny their bigotry.

He refers to this blog entry of his, and this response.

He ends the “Transgender Fiasco” blog entry with a sensationalist tone:

A STATE OF FEAR

People are simply afraid to ask any questions about this issue, and those unresolved conflicts are coming home to roost. I know I was afraid to write about this issue, and still am. I thought long and hard about even weighing in on this issue last week. Did I really want to have to deal with people screaming and calling me a bigot? And I’ve got gay journalist friends and gay political friends who have sent me private “atta boy”s supporting my public essays, while refusing to go public themselves.

There is a climate of fear and confusion and doubt about the transgender issue in the gay community. And no one wants to talk about it. And when you don’t talk about your small concerns, when you’re afraid to talk about them, when it’s not considered PC for you to talk about them, one day those small concerns turn into big problems and the revolution comes tumbling down.

I don’t know if he thinks there’s a trans mafia out there waiting to whack transphobes, but this just looks like the kind of fearmongering that bigots like to use to turn their audience against those they detest. He also appeals to the old fallacy of political correctness to imply that his ability to speak freely is somehow controlled - never mind that no one has stopped him from posting his transphobic and transmisogynistic commentary ever since he started whining about transgender inclusion in ENDA. He’s been criticized and called out for his bigotry, but I don’t believe he’s come to any real harm, beyond the social embarrassment of expressing obvious prejudice in public.

I admit, he’s typically much cannier about expressing it than the radical feminist stuff I’ve been looking at. He does, however, have his moments.

For example, this particular paragraph in the Salon article:

I support transgendered rights. But I’m not naive. If there are still lingering questions in the gay community about gender identity 10 years after our leaders embraced the T — and there are — then imagine how conflicted straight members of Congress are when asked to pass a civil rights bill for a woman who used to be a man. We’re not talking right and wrong here, we’re talking political reality. Our own community is still grappling with this issue. Yet we expect members of Congress, who took 30 years to embrace a gay ENDA, to welcome the T’s into the bill in only five months.

He supports transgender rights, but . . . Questioning Transgender claims the same thing before saying we flash our penises at cis women and might possibly start raping them, so that means absolutely nothing. But that’s not really the problem with this paragraph. He goes on to say that straight members of congress are too conflicted to pass a bill that includes gender protections, or rather “for a woman who used to be a man.” That is to say, John is saying (and this theme is repeated throughout his writing and Barney Frank’s own words on the issue) that a minority that suffers increased prejudice doesn’t really deserve to get their civil rights until they’re socially acceptable enough to get those rights. He’s not prejudiced against us or against us having these rights, but we just can’t have them until we’re not so freakish.

Here’s a bit from his “The White House will totally not veto ENDA” post:

PS As an aside, I’ve just learned that there’s at least one senior transgender leader in America who is married (and I’m sure other straight transgendered people are married). That’s nice, and I support their right to marry. But I do find it odd that the gay community is being asked (well, told) to put our employment rights on hold until the transgender community can get theirs, but the transgender community isn’t putting its marriage rights on hold until we get ours. Then again, I’d never ask them to put their rights on hold until I got mine.

Of course, he wrote an entire article in Salon, and articles on AmericaBlog to painstakingly explain why transgender rights need to be put on hold until he gets his rights. Check out the “half a loaf” comment at the end of the Salon article. Never mind that he’s mischaracterizing United ENDA’s position, which is that we need transgender rights along with everyone else’s, not that anyone should wait. This is just based on the fallacy that working toward transgender rights would delay ENDA’s passage by 10-15 years, that we “didn’t do any education,” (an excuse produced in the 11th hour, with no information on who needed to be educated), and that we’re too freakish to get those rights.

Where you can really see John cut loose is in the comments in his ENDA posts. He scornfully edits his commenter’s posts when they call him on his transphobia, practices fallacious reversals (I’m a transphobe? You’re a homophobe because you don’t want me to have rights!), says some pretty hateful things to trans people like telling them they’re “playing ’sick and twisted’ Barbie.”

John is cannier in how he communicates. He knows how to play the subtle game, and not say the things that make good bigoted soundbites. Also, AmericaBlog is just plain awful to navigate, complicating the ability to find those shots he takes at transgender people. His best shots are in the comments, where he doesn’t filter himself very well. The comments for each of the posts I’ve linked here, plus those in the Salon article and Susan Stryker’s response paint a pretty clear picture. He’s fond of transphobic variations of “Wite Magic Attax”, most especially fallacious flips, oversensitive, and drowning maestro, but I believe he manages to touch on all of them but the carom-scarom.

An example from the comments for Tammy Just Pulled Her Amendment (and John’s attitude toward the way the amendment was handled is either pure ignorance or considered politicking).

NOTE FROM JOHN: Funny how the same bill was fine for years, but now suddenly it’s really bad and really watered down. The only thing that’s changed is that a small group of PC activists has decided to kill our chance at getting some civil rights, so now suddenly ENDA must be poo-pooed. There hasn’t been one case of discrimination against gay people based on gender identity, not one that LAMBDA or anyone else can point to. NOT ONE. Yet now you’re hanging your “kill ENDA” hat on this bizarre notion that somehow we’re are really transgender and that’s how we’re all going to lose our jobs. As for fracturing communities, you’ve done a pretty good job of that all by yourself by trying to kill a civil rights bill that we’ve been trying to pass for 30 years.

Notice how he implies that everyone was fine with ENDA before T was added, never mind that trans people have been working for years to get T included - everyone was just happy. He also implies that it was a small group of “PC activists” that decided to “kill [his] chance at getting some civil rights.” 350+ LGBT organizations signed onto United ENDA, and they were supporting doing everything necessary to pass a complete ENDA. Unfortunately, Barney Frank chose to shoot it down rather than helping this coalition do what was needed to pass an inclusive ENDA, and Aravosis cheers him on because it supports his desire to kick transgender people out of GLBT activism entirely
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Yes, John’s writing - in the Salon article especially - makes it clear that he doesn’t want us in his civil rights movement, and that’s why he supports the removal of gender protections from ENDA.

He’s also selective about how he addresses the gender protections, which are not specificed as transgender protections, but protects people from being fired for not fitting gender norms. This would include transgender people, but would also include people like Ann Hopkins and Darlene Jesperson, who were straight people who suffered discrimination for not being feminine enough on the job. If straight people can be fired for not being feminine enough, take it to federal appeals court and be turned down, then gay, lesbian and bisexual people are just as vulnerable to this loophole. Barney Frank and John Aravosis both tried to deflect this issue by insisting that no gay men or lesbians had been fired for this reason. To be honest, though, we don’t know. We only know that there’s only one case that’s ever come up. We don’t know how many gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight people who have been fired for not conforming enough who never tried to take it to court. I would guess that there’s been more than a few, and with the loophole in ENDA, anyone who wants to fire lesbian, gay, or bisexual employees will have a way around ENDA by labeling it a matter of not being masculine or feminine enough.

So, what are we to make of a man who obsesses on the fact that trans women surgically invert our penises, who does his best to distance trans people from him in every way, who constantly questions whether we even deserve to stand alongside LGB people, who consistently presents a version of gay rights activism in which transgender people only came to the party very recently and forced our way in, who implies that there’s some kind of transgender mafia waiting to come down on anyone who criticizes our inclusion? A man who indicates his contempt for bisexuals as “part-time gays?”

We’ve fought to carve a place in LGBT activism after we were forced out for over 20 years. While we can and should forge coalitions and build bridges to other activists - to people with disabilities and people of color - the fact is that as far as many straight white Americans are concerned, we’re not that different from gay and lesbian people, and our goals are not really all that different. Yes, we don’t gender conform, but neither do feminine gay men, butch lesbians and drag queens, and where we transgress gender by identifying outside male/female or moving from one to the other, they transgress gender by being attracted to and having relationships with people of the same sex. Also, a large number of trans people are gay, lesbian, and bisexual. We’re intertwined, and while we may not be much like John “Mattachine” Aravosis’ version of gay, we have a lot in common with large swaths of the gay and lesbian communities.

We’ve done the work, we’ve spent years engaged in activism, trying to educate, trying to forge our way to, well… an inclusive ENDA. Anyone who tells you different, who tells you we weren’t here at the beginning, that we don’t do the work, that we don’t try to educate, has his own motives for trying to alter history, or at least how we remember it.

Yeah, We’re Selfish

John Aravosis writes about how he believes that Bush’s veto of ENDA is not guaranteed. I think TransAdvocate covers most of the relevant information, but what stood out for me was the final paragraph:

PS As an aside, I’ve just learned that there’s at least one senior transgender leader in America who is married (and I’m sure other straight transgendered people are married). That’s nice, and I support their right to marry. But I do find it odd that the gay community is being asked (well, told) to put our employment rights on hold until the transgender community can get theirs, but the transgender community isn’t putting its marriage rights on hold until we get ours. Then again, I’d never ask them to put their rights on hold until I got mine.

First, I want to address the last sentence with John Aravosis’ own words:

I support transgendered rights. But I’m not naive. If there are still lingering questions in the gay community about gender identity 10 years after our leaders embraced the T — and there are — then imagine how conflicted straight members of Congress are when asked to pass a civil rights bill for a woman who used to be a man. We’re not talking right and wrong here, we’re talking political reality. Our own community is still grappling with this issue. Yet we expect members of Congress, who took 30 years to embrace a gay ENDA, to welcome the T’s into the bill in only five months.

He’s blogged extensively about asking us to put our rights on hold while he gets his. He makes it clear he’ll take a half-a-loaf as long as that half-a-loaf is all his.

As for his marriage comment - wow. Does he even read about this stuff? Does he realize that the marriage issue is a trans fight as well? Does he just assume that we all get surgery and go on our happy ways to heterosexual marriages?

Or does he just make blind rhetorical assertions to put us trannies back in our place?

Trans people do not have an uncomplicated right to marry. Aravosis does not acknowledge that many trans people cannot get surgery - they lack the funds or health problems preclude it. Many choose not to undergo it for personal reasons. We can only change our birth certificates in some states once we’ve had surgery, and at least one state won’t change the birth certificate if you receive surgery outside America. Also, John must be aware that many trans people are gay, lesbian, or bi, and even after we get surgery, we can’t marry who we want to because same-sex marriages are illegal.

But really, this paragraph is more about bashing trans people than anything else, and bashing doesn’t require factual information to justify it, at least not to those who engage in bashing.

Oh, look! HRC baits and switches. We didn’t expect that, did we?

Marti Abernathy posted about this on TransAdvocate today:

Thousands of hardworking GLBT Americans have lost their livelihoods simply because of who they are. The Human Rights Campaign is leading the charge to end this bitter injustice by passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a federal bill that would make it illegal to fire, refuse to hire, or refuse to promote employees simply based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

This historic legislation will be up for a vote in the U.S. House this month. But the radical right is flooding lawmakers with misinformation about ENDA.

You can set the facts straight. Send your lawmakers a message today. Make sure they know passing ENDA is the American thing to do!

I guess we know what HRC meant when they said “We won’t support HR 3685, but we won’t oppose it either.”

This isn’t new. We’ve had years of this kind of crap, as Monica Roberts chronicles.

Seriously, we need to just throw HRC off the bus. We can’t trust them, ever. Not one more time.