I asked Pam’s permission to post this on the front page. This isn’t a piece that reflects Pam’s opinion — I’m taking full ownership of this piece as my personal opinion. Frankly, I’m just borrowing Pam’s front page to vent.

So, this is my opinion piece, and isn’t a necessarily a reflection of the opinions of anyone else who posts at Pam’s House Blend. Take it for the angry rant it is.
~~Autumn~~

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Sometimes, I just want to be a good little tranny and just shut up. I’ve learned through experience that good trannies aren’t supposed to talk about LGB behavior perceived as anti-transgender — Think HRC and ENDA, version 2007. If we keep pointing out bad behavior, we’re seen as engaging in gay-bashing…HRC bashing.

Specifically, to be a good member of the broader LGBT community, a good tranny can rail against oppression of transgender people by non-LGBT people, but that same good tranny needs to leave their LGB counterparts that engage in “bad,” anti-transgender behavior alone. That’s because other transgender activists (“trannies”) will have to work these folk later to pass fully inclusive (as in sexual orientation and gender identity and expression inclusive) civil rights legislation, so good trannies can’t anger LGB people who engage in “bad.” anti-transgender behavior.

Well, today I’m going to be a bad tranny, and not stay in my quiet place. I’m really pissed off that Rep. Barney Frank is apparently ready to rewrite his part in what happened with ENDA in 2007, and I’m not going to buy into the bullsh*t rewrite of my community’s history with this gay congressman. Nor am I going to let his bullsh*t attempt to rewrite his part in ENDA 2007 history pass by unnoticed. I’m calling foul.

In the May 2nd issue of Just Out, Representative Barney Frank made some comments about transinclusion in ENDA (among a few other subjects). The Just Out article is tellingly sub-headed U.S. Rep. Barney Frank to trans community: Get your own train. One of his “stir the pot” comments in the Q&A, interview piece was:

Part of the problem, I have to say, is this: I’ve never seen a worse job of lobbying done by the transgender community. They seem to think that all they had to do was to get the gay and lesbian community to say “OK.” I think they thought that this was a train, and that they were a car on the train. I said to them, “You’ve got to work this, you’ve got to lobby people.” They did a terrible job of lobbying, and so we didn’t have the votes.

I’ve talked to my transgender peers and other activists over the past year, and no activist has ever reported that Rep. Frank gave any such warning — the only ones I’m aware of who sounded any alarm to the transgender community regarding ENDA/hate crimes legislation was the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC). They heard that rumors had been floating around the Beltway since April, 2007 that gender identity and expression was going to be dropped from the main ENDA/hate crimes legislation bills during the NTAC Transgender Lobby Days of May, 2007. NTAC in turn mentioned that possibility to some transgender community e-groups that same month.

But that was it for even for a semi-public comment.

And, my trans friends in NTAC have told me that their source wasn’t Rep. Frank, or anyone in his office — their sources were in other congressional/senatorial offices. The line allegedly delivered to (a) transgender activsist(s) of “You’ve got to work this, you’ve got to lobby people.” apparently was never delivered to any transgender activist(s) by Rep. Frank.

And, this wasn’t the only stir the pot comment in Just Out piece that rewrote history.

[Rep. Frank: "The overwhelming majority of opinion in the gay and lesbian community was supportive of what we did." after the fold.]

A few other “history rewrites”:

No. I understand the problem of having [transgender protections] put in the bill and taking it out. It would have been better not to have put it in the bill in the first place and to have two separate bills in the beginning…. Unfortunately, people in the trans community and their allies didn’t want to accept reality.

Checking the record, one can see Rep. Frank was the primary sponsor for HR 2015 — the fully inclusive ENDA. Apparently Rep. Frank also didn’t want to “accept reality” either

Was it a mistake not to push for gay rights in the ’50s and ’60s? No, it just hadn’t occurred to people. Movements take time. There was not a lot of self-awareness of people being transgender in the ’80s and ’90s. You can’t artificially create these things; they come up. The transgender community organized and came forward, but it’s only been less than 10 years.

Transgender people have organized independently, and they were there in the gay liberation movement. Perhaps we should note that transgender people were in large part thrown out of the gay liberation movement in the early seventies — by people of Rep. Frank’s age:

1973 was a watershed year. Sentiments against transgender people participating in gay and feminist work reached a fever pitch. Sylvia Rivera was physically prevented from speaking at the Stonewall commemoration in New York. Beth Elliot, a lesbian transsexual woman who had once been vice president of the San Francisco chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis lesbian organization in San Francisco was ejected from the West Coast Lesbian Conference in Los Angeles, by vehemently anti-transgender feminist Robin Morgan, who divided the crowd on the transgender issue in much the same way that the issue is threatening to divide the LGBT community today. With the war in Viet Nam winding down for the United States, the androgynous hippy style of the “Freakin’ Fag Revolution” was replaced with the new macho of the “clone look.” With the successful removal of homosexuality as a psychopathology list in the psychiatric bible, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, gender-normative gay and lesbian people could say that they were healthy and transgender people were sick. And repression continued from the outside, too. Police planted narcotics in the office of the National Transsexual Counseling Unit, framed them, and sent some of them to jail. It was a perfect storm, in which many progressive-minded people, self-righteously thinking they were being so advanced in their condemnation of transgender people, unwittingly marched in lock step with truly reactionary social forces.

Thirty years of advancing gay and feminist causes through solidarity with conservative definitions of gender and by trashing transgender people is what produces the seeming paradox of the right-wing Christian hate groups like Americans For Truth About Homosexuality actually quoting Barney Frank’s phobic attitudes about transgender people on the front page of their website.

And that quote, by the way, is:

“There are workplace situations — communal showers, for example — when the demands of the transgender community fly in the face of conventional norms and therefore would not pass in any Congress. I’ve talked with transgender activists and what they want — and what we will be forced to defend — is for people with penises who identify as women to be able to shower with other women.”
– Homosexual Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), back when he opposed including “transgenders” in the Employment NonDiscrimination Act (ENDA). Frank later relented but since has signed on to a watered-down version of ENDA (H.R. 3685) that dropped the “trans” language.

Lastly, this is one more questionable statement by Rep. Frank:

[Stephen Marc Beaudoin]: You took a lot of heat for your work on ENDA.

[Barney Frank]: Not much. The overwhelming majority of opinion in the gay and lesbian community was supportive of what we did.

Even before October of 2007 when ENDA turned into a community debacle, this wasn’t true. This is what Cheryl Jacques — then the executive director of the HRC — wrote in 2004 for the Washington Blade:

There is broad agreement on the goal: passage of ENDA that includes sexual orientation and gender identity and expression. The question has always been about how we get there as quickly as possible and there is understandably some concern that adding gender identity or expression could delay passage of the bill.

She also made two other statements in that Washington Blade piece that I believe are worthy of note:

Congress moves very slowly on legislation and we need to make sure the bill our allies introduce in January is as fresh and inclusive upon enactment as it was at introduction.

PASSING ENDA WITHOUT gender identity and expression is like passing a copyright law that covers books and television shows but doesn’t cover digital music or videos.

And…

At a time when President Bush is trying to divide Americans over gay marriage, we know that unity is one of our greatest strengths.

Rep. Frank is a powerful man, and is someone the transgender community will need as an ally if we’re ever to pass a fully inclusive version of ENDA within the next four years. A good little tranny would probably leave his misstatements of fact alone — not pointing out on his less than accurate statements. But hell, Rep. Frank is denigrating transgender activists like me in an attempt to rewrite history in a light that flatters him. I don’t want Rep. Frank’s version of history to be the one that is accepted as truth in 20 years — My transgender peers and I owe future generations of transgender people better than believing their past activists were nothing but thoughtless harlequins.

In my opinion, Rep. Frank is actively working against the unity that Cheryl Jacques called one of the LGBT community’s greatest strengths by continuously working to the LGBT community over the T community.

So, whenever I refer to Rep. Frank in the future, I will refer to him as a gay congressman. At this point I don’t even want to make the mistake of referring to him as LGBT when he obviously only thinks of himself only as a member of the gay and lesbian community.

H/t: Susan

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Further reading:
* Transgender Activism After Falls City
* If Its Barney, Its Bullsh*t

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Related:
* Pam’s House Blend on ENDA
* Pam’s House Blend on Barney Frank