Many of you know about San Diego’s Third District City Council race because James Hartline is running for the seat. It’s obvious that I wouldn’t vote for Mr. Hartline, but it hasn’t been obvious who I’m for in the race.
So, who I’m for is Stephen Whitburn.
I became aware of Mr. Whitburn a long time ago specifically because of his support of transgender civil rights issues. Mr. Whitburn, as a member of the San Diego Democratic Club, was there supporting the adding of gender identity protections to San Diego’s Human Dignity Ordinance in 2003.
Since the passage of the HDO amendment, I’m aware he’s attended every major transgender event members have put on at The Center. Let me tell you, it’s not because my community has a lot of resources to dole out to his campaign, or have a large population of volunteers that will rush to his electoral assistance, but just because he genuinely embraces civil rights and human equality as values.
His stands on issues — and his priorities related to those issues — pretty much matches my own. Top among his and my concerns are open government — in line with the spirit of California’s Brown Act — and honest budgeting:
Excerpt:
…My name is Stephen Whitburn. I live in North Park, in council district three, and participate in several community groups.
I’m here to ask you to vote in favor of this item.
We — the citizens — have a right to know about plans to change the city services we receive. We also have a right to participate in the decision-making process.
The right to know is at the core of our state’s Brown Act. It requires that deliberations and actions be conducted openly.
Our city is in financial trouble partly because of discussions and decisions that we – the citizens – weren’t aware of. Now, more than ever, our city leaders should embrace our right to know what’s going on…
He’s also taken a pretty stong stand for marriage equality:
His commitment to equality in general, and marriage equality in specific, isn’t just mere words. He and I both worked on the same shift a few Saturdays ago in the Decline To Sign campaign, which was an attempt to keep the marriage initiative off California’s November ballot.
Well, I’ve even donated money to Stephen Whitburn’s campaign too — I’d only donated to the campaigns of transgender candidates prior to Mr. Whitburn’s run for City Council. And, now that I’m pretty much recovered from my gastric bypass, I’m sure I’ll be volunteering some time to his campaign as well.
Thanks Stephen, for giving me a candidate besides James Hartline to focus on in San Diego’s 3rd City Council District.
Closing out Earth Week here in San Diego, we had our Arbor day/Rancho Bernardo post-fire tree planting event at San Diego’s Rancho Bernardo Community Park on Saturday, April 26th.
There are conflicting issues involving tree and plants here in San Diego. Our city was built around it’s over 100 preserved canyons, with their native trees and brush. As the San Diego Union Tribunereported in December:
Maintaining the canyons has long bedeviled politicians, residents, environmentalists and those who study fire. Clear too much of the native vegetation and more flammable, non-native plants might move in. Clear too little and an important firefighting tool is eliminated.
So on April 26th, we planted some native trees at park. Trees within the city limits help filter pollution within the city. And, shade trees save energy.
The amazing part to me is the LGBT connection to this story. San Diego has an Urban Forest Council (appointed by the Mayor and City Council) and an Urban Forestry Section in its Street Division. The city’s Republican mayor, Jerry Sanders is more famous nationally for his position on marriage equality than he is for his urban forestry, but the chair of the Urban Forest Council, who is appointed by the Mayor, is Vicki Estrada — an out transsexual heavily involved in urban landscaping and city planning.
It’s a reminder to me that Vicki was evaluated for her skills when she was appointed to the board, and not rejected because she identifies as transgender and as a transsexual. Passage of legislation like California’s Gender Nondiscrimination Act made a difference in changing the employment climate within California. It matters that a Republican mayor appointed a transgender person to chair an important city commission.
It’s also a reminder to me that when it comes to politics, we need to look at people that fill executive offices — such as Governor and Mayor — as individuals. Mayor Sanders should be a reminder to us that not every Democrat is our friend, and not every Republican is our enemy.
But, the important parts of the story is that on Saturday, in San Diego, we planted some trees, and the Mayor and my friend Vicki played important roles as to why we planted trees in an part of San Diego devistated by last year’s Witch Fire.
~~~~~Update~~~~~
Images:
L-to-R: Mayor Jerry Sanders, Councilman Brian Maienscheim, And Urban Forestry Commissioner Vicki Estrada
L-to-R: Commissioner Vicki Estrada And Autumn Sandeen
According to the St. Petersburg Times this evening, Pinellas County Commissioner Calvin Harris said …
“I don’t even know what a transgender is.”
According to the SPT, there was no “searing acrimony” involved in the 4-2 vote “to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation” and Susan Stanton said about Mr. Harris’ statement …
“I think that’s a very legitimate … very honest statement,” Stanton said. “These are all really good people, and I know none of them would want to discriminate, but they also have to be sensitive to the needs of other people in the workplace.”
Be that as it may, I share and appreciate the sentiments of Equality Florida’s Brian Winfield …
“We were disappointed that the Pinellas County commissioners weren’t able to summon the courage that it would take to provide the strongest protections to the entire gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community,” said Brian Winfield, a spokesman for Equality Florida. “But we are hopeful that in six weeks time that they will come back.”
So, I think it would helpful to let Commisssioner Harris, at least, know how you feel about transgender civil rights. The Pinellas Commissioners can be contacted here.
Recently-reported research suggests that chocolate, money, a pretty face and fairness similarly stimulate our brain …
The human brain responds to being treated fairly the same way it responds to winning money and eating chocolate, UCLA scientists report. Being treated fairly turns on the brain’s reward circuitry.
“We may be hard-wired to treat fairness as a reward,” said study co-author Matthew D. Lieberman, UCLA associate professor of psychology and a founder of social cognitive neuroscience.
“Receiving a fair offer activates the same brain circuitry as when we eat craved food, win money or see a beautiful face,” said Golnaz Tabibnia, a postdoctoral scholar at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and lead author of the study, which appears in the April issue of the journal Psychological Science.
The activated brain regions include the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Humans share the ventral striatum with rats, mice and monkeys, Tabibnia said.
“Fairness is activating the same part of the brain that responds to food in rats,” she said. This is consistent with the notion that being treated fairly satisfies a basic need, she added.
Also in the news today, the Human Rights Campaignannounced the release of its latest edition of “Transgender Inclusion in the Workplace.” A brief snippet from that report …
According to a 2007 survey conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc., 72 percent of Americans agree that “fairness is a basic American value and employment decisions should be based solely on qualifications and job performance, including for transgender people.” Younger respondents — aged 18 to 29 — went even further, with 82 percent supporting equal opportunities for all employees, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Support for equal job protections and opportunities for transgender workers has been sound over the past several years; a 2002 Hart study found then that 59 percent of Americans favored implementing laws to prevent employment discrimination against transgender people.
The full HRC report may be found here. And Jillian Weiss discusses it in her Transgender Workplace Diversity blog here.
In the March 26th column Drive-by defamation, Jeff Jacoby took a swipe at groundless gotchas…
Politics, as they say, ain’t beanbag. Unfair accusations have been lobbed in the heat of presidential campaigns for as long as presidential campaigns have been heated. In 1796, historian Paul Boller records, John Adams was denounced by Thomas Jefferson’s partisans as “an avowed friend of monarchy,” who intended to make his sons “Lords of this country.” Adams’s Federalist followers called Jefferson a “Franco-maniac” favored by “cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amidst filth and vermin.”
In his concluding paragraph of the piece, Jacoby stated (emphasis added):
The technology that makes it easier than ever to propound groundless gotchas also makes it easier to convincingly refute them. A calumny isn’t true just because it’s been reported, and no one deserves to be the victim of drive-by defamation.
So in yesterday’s column (April 13th, 2008) for the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby does a little uninformed, drive-by transgender defaming of his own entitled Pregnant, yes – but not a man (emphasis added):
A 34-year-old who grew up in Hawaii and used to compete in beauty contests – she was once a finalist in the Miss Hawaii Teen USA pageant – Tracy, who now calls herself Thomas Beatie, apparently suffers from Gender Identity Disorder, syndrome 302.85 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association…Tracy/Thomas grew a beard, changed her legal identity to male, and married her partner, Nancy.
But it takes more than a mastectomy and hormone treatments to overturn biology. Thomas may be a man in the eyes of the law, but she remains physically a woman, with a woman’s reproductive system, a woman’s genitals, and a woman’s chromosomes. So when she and Nancy decided to have a baby, she had little trouble conceiving through artificial insemination. The result is the spectacle that has drawn so much attention: a bearded pregnant woman named Thomas, who identifies herself as a man, and has a lawfully wedded wife.
What you make of all this depends on your political outlook. Transgender activists, radical feminists, and others at the cultural extreme who insist that sex differences between men and women are patriarchal constructs, not hardwired facts of life, will applaud Thomas and Nancy as gender-bending pioneers challenging an oppressive male-female dichotomy. Those of us for whom gender is not a spectrum of possibilities but a matter of either/or are more likely to regard the whole situation as profoundly aberrant and detrimental – especially for the baby about to be brought into the world.
So Mr. Jacoby, writing for the Boston Globe, damns the guidelines of both the Associated Press Stylebook (“the journalist’s bible”) on how writers should refer to transgender people by their target sex and not their natal sex. He’s assumed that, as a newspaper columnist, he’s smarter and more knowledgeable than physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists that identify the transsexual experience isn’t a merely a cultural phenomena, but a treatable condition with a widely accepted standard of care. Call his claim what it is: if a newspaper columnist declared that schizophrenia, autism, or HIV/AIDS aren’t real medical conditions, his paper wouldn’t publish it. But make it about transgender people and/or GID and a Paul Cameron-ish take on transgender people was accepted for publication.
So, continuing in his drive-by defamation of transgender people, Jacoby compares transgender people to polygamist pederasts:
When I picked Verizon for my cell phone provider, it was because of it’s good coverage and service in San Diego County. Yet now, due to some recent reading up on the company, I’m sorry I’m not with one of their competitors.
Like many LGBT people, I care deeply about the corporate policies of companies I do business with. I found out from my friend Barbra Casbar-Siperstein, who received hard copy of Verizon Communications’ 2007 Annual Report, exactly what the Board of Directors recommended when the shareholding Unitarian Universalist (UU) Association of Congregations of Boston, Massachusetts proposed that Verizon adopt a Gender Identity Non-Discrimination Policy for their overall non-discrimination policy. The Board of Directors response to the proposal ended with the sentence:
The Board of Directors recommends a vote AGAINST this proposal.
If I knew that the non-discrimination policy of Verizon Communications doesn’t cover transgender people — and that their Board of Directors specifically recommended against covering transgender people who may work for their company — I wouldn’t have signed up with Verizon.
So, I won’t renew with Verizon Wireless if Verizon Communications’ non-discrimination policy doesn’t explicitly protect employees based upon gender identity and expression when my contract with them expires. And, if I can afford it in the near future, I’ll drop Verizon as my carrier before my contract is up, despite the added cost to me. I’m not happy having an ongoing business relationship with Verizon when Verizon Communications’ Board of Directors doesn’t want to explicitly cover gender identity and expression in their employment non-discrimination policy.
I’ve sent an email to DiversityInc’s contact for their Top 50 Companies for Diversity list, and Verizon’s media contact on diversity issues. If they come back with responses that address the lack of explicit gender identity and expression protections in Verizon’s non-discrimination policies, I’ll update this post to reflect their responses.
Below the fold is the text of the UU’s proposed policy (referred to as Item 4 On The Proxy Card), and the full text of how Verizon Communications’ Board of Directors responded to the UU proposal.
The Los Angeles Times has two articles up of note on bullying this past week. The first is entitled Meaner bullying is leading schools to find new tactics. I’m not going to quote from it, but it’s well worth the read.
The second is entitled A deadly clash of emotions before Oxnard shooting. That article is a particularly hard read — it turned my stomach. So if get-wrenching stories upset you, this is your warning to stop reading here. From the article:
For teens living in a shelter for abused and neglected children, school can provide a daily dose of normalcy, a place to fit in, a chance to be just another kid.
It didn’t turn out that way for Lawrence King.
According to the few students who befriended him, Larry, 15 years old and openly gay, found no refuge from his tormentors at E.O. Green Junior High School.
Not in the classroom, the quad, the cafeteria. Not from the day he enrolled at the Oxnard school until the moment he was shot to death in a computer lab, just after Larry’s usual morning van ride from the shelter a town away.
…The anti-gay taunts and slurs that Larry endured from his male peers apparently had been constant, as routine for him as math lessons and recess bells. The stinging words were isolating. As grieving friend Melissa Reza, 15, put it, Larry lived much of his life “toward the side. . . . He was always toward the side.”
She and others recall that the name-calling began long before he told his small circle of confidants that he was gay, before problems at home made him a ward of the court, and before he summoned the courage to further assert his sexual orientation by wearing makeup and girl’s boots with his school uniform.
His friends say the verbal cruelty persisted for months, and grew worse after the slightly built Larry pushed back by “flirting” with some of his mockers. One of them was Brandon, who seethed over it, the friends say.
Brandon has been charged as an adult with premeditated murder and a hate crime, and he is being held in juvenile hall.
Lambda Legal put out an email today, letting us know about tomorrow’s California Supreme Court coverage:
Tomorrow, March 4, you can watch the arguments before the California Supreme Court in our historic marriage equality lawsuit!
Lambda Legal has been working for four years with lead counsel National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), the ACLU of California, Heller Ehrman LLP and the Law Office of David C. Codell to make marriage legal for same-sex couples in California. Tomorrow our voices will be heard in the highest court in California.
Shannon Minter, NCLR Legal Director, will be arguing on behalf of our plaintiffs: 15 same-sex couples, Equality California and Our Family Coalition.
Join Lambda Legal here in the next 24 hours and you’ll have access to our members only briefing — and your gift will be doubled!
Legal Director Jon Davidson will summarize and comment on the arguments at the Supreme Court in San Francisco. He will also respond to questions that are emailed in during the call.
Should be interesting television/computer screen watching tomorrow.
Some of you may remember that an article from the Contra Costa Times where tolerance of transgender people were derided:
Word of boys being told to dress as girls for a day, and girls as boys, touched a nerve with some parents at Valley View Elementary School in Pleasanton last week..
Parents were concerned that the supposed “Cross Gender Day” was meant to promote tolerance of transgender people.
“I think it’s absolutely appalling,” said one mother, who had heard about the event the night before from her first-grader. Then she heard it briefly explained as “gender day” by a school staff member that morning. “They should promote academics, and let morals to the family.”
My diary focused on how tolerance of transgender people is considered by many to anathema. However, some commenters in the thread pointed out that a school crossdressing day should be considered offensive to transgender people as a protected class of students. Jami wrote in a comment that seemed to sum up what some were feeling about a crossdressing day:
[W]hat the parents’ reactions would have been if the Spirit Day theme had been “Dress Like Someone of a Different Race” or “Dress Like a Foreigner”? Would the protests have been as loud?
Well, I’m absolutely amazed at how small the world is sometimes. It turns out that my best friend in the world, Vicki Estrada, has a daughter who teaches at the very Valley View Elementary School mentioned in the Contra Costa Times article. And, she put me in contact with her daughter.
Well, it turns out that there will be no more spirit week crossdressing days at Valley View Elementary School in the future — And, it won’t be because crossdressing days are considered to promote tolerance of transgender people, but because crossdressing days are deemed to promote intolerance of transgender people — for the exact reason Jami described.
The news station apparently wasn’t interested in talking to anyone with expertise on transgender children to get the child’s perspective out in their on air broadcast. The accompanying print article refers comments from Kim Pearson, the TYFA Executive Director, but these weren’t included in their on air comments.
The Rocky Mountain News is doing an article on this story soon, but they at least are getting a perspective other than the worried parent in the same classroom.
- “I see this as being a very difficult situation to explain to my daughter to explain why someone would not want to be the gender they were born with,” said Dave M.
His daughter will be in the same class as the student.
- “I do think that there’s going to be an acknowledgement that ‘Why are you in a dress this year when you were in pants last year?’” said Dave M.
- That thought is not comforting to Dave M., who believes his daughter is not ready to think about the issue of being transgender.
“I don’t think a 3rd grader does have the rationale to decide this life-altering choice,” said Dave M.
- [Dave M.] is also unhappy with the way the school is handling this. The district has been preparing for the child’s return to this school for months. Dave M. thinks other parents should have been made aware of this sooner.
“I just find it ironic that they can dictate the dress style of children to make sure they don’t wear inappropriate clothing, but they have no controls in place for someone wearing transgender clothing,” said Dave M.
Yes, let’s force everyone to conform.
For an idea of how irresponsible the press is in releasing this to public in this sensationalized way, let’s remember that the child we are talking about is in third grade. This be emotionally disastrous for this child due to the media attention. Has anyone looked at LGBT youth suicide rates lately?
And, it could have been dangerous with for this transgender third grader even without the media coverage. Let’s not forget about what the Christian Civic League encouraged in Maine. In their online publishing arm — The Record — they commended a grandfather for encouraging his grandchild to protest an m2f transgender classmate. From that commendation:
Mr. Melanson told his grandson to use the girls’ bathroom whenever he saw the other ten-year-old boy using it. Melanson reasons that the same anti-discrimination laws that are likely to be used to justify one boy’s use of the girls’ bathroom may also be used to justify his grandson’s use of the same bathroom.
His reasoning is sound. Nevertheless, he has been told by school administrators, and the local police, that his grandson cannot use the girls’ bathroom. The administration persists is allowing only one boy to use the girls’ bathroom at the Asa Adams Elementary School.
In a blog on NARTH’s website, Berger expressed disgust with a Northern California school that accommodated a cross-dressing kindergartner and other children with “gender-variant” behaviors. Berger said that instead of teaching tolerance, schools should “let the other children ridicule” boys and girls who don’t conform.
“It is a mistake for various interfering, ignorant and biased busybodies to try to ‘counsel’ the other children into accepting the abnormal,” Berger wrote. “It is very healthy to be able to draw the line between what is healthy and what is sick.”
So, with our third grader, we see religious right organizations have advocated protesting transgender elementary school kids, as well as ridiculing them. Well, I feel Christ’s love there, don’t you?
For those of us with LGBT families, do any of us think that outing an LGBT elementary school child in the media is responsible? Would you have wanted to be outed by the television news, even if they didn’t mention your name?
My best wishes are for the continued health and well being of this child, especially after this kind of press coverage.
~~~~~~
Note: I talked to Kim Pearson of TYFA on the phone Thrusday night, and she told me that GLAAD is going to take on News9 for their article and news story. That’s good news to my ears, that’s for sure.
~~~~~Update~~~~~ Sen. Clinton used the word transgender today in a response to a question posed in the San Francisco Chronicle:
I saw you on the Logo Channel debate and was disappointed with the way you answered the question about marriage equality. To my ears, your emphasis on “state-level solutions” was merely a reworking of the same “states rights” arguments used by the South to defend segregation and laws that prohibited people of different races from marrying. As a candidate who claims to want to bring America back to our best traditions of democracy and equality, why won’t you come out in support of full marriage equality for all our citizens?
- Brad Colby, 42, Millbrae
Sen. Clinton: Today, gay couples cannot grow old together, share life decisions, jointly own property, and take care of one another within a legal framework that provides them the peace of mind knowing that what they’ve worked for and built together cannot be taken away.
Civil unions give gay and lesbian couples the stability and security they need without interfering in any way with the tradition of marriage. I support full equality of benefits, rights, and responsibilities for individuals in loving, stable, same sex relationships, and believe that civil unions are the way to achieve that goal. I do not think that civil unions should be less than marriage – there needs to be equality of benefits.
I also think we have to be vigilant in protecting the rights of all Americans – and in extending equal opportunity and equal justice to all Americans, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. No one should be barred from getting a job, from renting a home, from contributing to our society and making the most of their talents simply because of their sexual orientation. We also must strengthen law enforcement and prosecution against discriminatory acts of violence against gays, lesbians and transgender Americans. Hate crimes undermine the fundamental principal of our country – that all men and women are created equal – and I will fight to pass federal hate crimes legislation to ensure that for the LGBT community.
I don’t like the answer because the term transgender is used only is reference to hate crimes legislation, and is conspicuously left out of her comments on employment anti-discrimination. But that said, at least she publicly used the word “transgender” in an answer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jason Bellini interviewed Hillary Clinton for Logo, and the video is up on 365Gay. Check out Hillary Clinton’s evasive answer to transgender inclusion on ENDA at about 1:45 into the video. First of all, Bellini poses the question as a “personal position” question vice a question of what her “public policy” is going to be transgender inclusion in ENDA. But even when phrased that way, Sen. Clinton uses the words “hopefully” and “eventually” with regards to transgender inclusion…in hate crime legislation. In other words, she didn’t answer even the poorly worded initial question before pivoting to “hopeful” and “eventual” inclusion of transgender protections in a hate crime bill. Perhaps even more telling is that in her entire answer, she again never utters the words “transgender” or “gender identity.”
Then note that reporter Bellini doesn’t press Sen. Clinton any further on the issue. It appears obvious to me that Sen. Clinton didn’t want to go on the record as supporting legislation that would protect transgender people in the workplace. Watch the video yourself, and see if you come to the same conclusions I did.
Although I care about other issues than transgender civil rights and protections within the framework of broad, LGBT civil rights and protections, by far transgender issues are the most important issues to me. In my opinion, Sen. Clinton’s answer was completely unsatisfactory on the issue — because of her evasive answer, I definitely won’t be voting for her when my state’s Super Duper Tuesday primary occurs next week.
It’s apparent to me that during this “change” election cycle, transgender civil rights and protections on the federal level wouldn’t likely be part of any “change” a Clinton presidency would bring. To Hillary Clinton’s LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee (list of names found in two press releases: here and here) — especially the four transgender women found in that list of Steering Committee members — is this the kind of position on transgender issues you all steered her to do? If that isn’t the way you’ve steered her, do you find the answer she gave to the question acceptable?
Donna Rose’s blog (rss feed here) is always interesting for her insider/outsider take on LGBT issues, especially when related to the T issues and people. For reference, Rose was the only T on the HRC’s Board of Directors until late last year when she quit the board — quitting specifically over the HRC’s position flip-flopping on gender identity and expression inclusion in ENDA.
Her February 2nd entry references her question for Mike Signiorile’s GLBT Caucus event on Sirius radio. Donna’s question goes straight to how the Democratic LGBT Steering Committees are steering Sen. Obama’s and Sen. Clinton’s campaigns with regards to transgender issues:
In light of recent events with ENDA the transgender community is understandably skeptical of promises or commitments made to us in Washington. Everyone says they’re supportive in principal until they have to actually do something, so my question is more about action than about words.
The presidential candidates have surrounded themselves with LGBT advisory teams to provide guidance on LGBT issues. Unfortunately, I have seen little or not recognition that either of the current candidates recognizes the transgender community, or gender variant people, as anything other than “Gay”. The words we’re hearing continue to be non-inclusive and I would expect that the steering committees would be working with the candidates to improve recognition of the unique challenges and concerns faced by transgender and gender-variant people. I don’t see that happening.
That said, here is my question. Two of the themes being used quite often by both candidates are “Leadership” and “Change” What would you say to a transgender employee about to transition at work who is concerned about losing his or her job, or a gender variant teen facing abuse at school simply for being different, or a street worker who can’t find a job to get her life back on track, or the parent of a victim of a transgender-based hate crime – what would you tell them that your candidate has substantively done to demonstrate that they recognize their needs? And as a follow-up, what will your candidate do if elected in terms of Leadership and Change to raise awareness, to be more inclusive, to engage qualified transgender people in positions of leadership, to ensure that GLBT legislation does not leave anyone behind, and to make the day-to-day lives of transgender and gender-variant people in this country better?
She wrote of the answers she received on air from the surrogates:
Representatives from both campaigns responded that their candidate supported inclusive legislation in their state. And that was all they had to say.
[More from Donna Rose's blog on "Change" this election season.]
This is crossposted from one of my favorite bloggers, Monica Roberts, with her permission. (She posts over on her own blog, TransGriot, and over at Bilerico).
The email by Sue is a little irritating because Sue didn’t do research on Monica — heck, Monica was IGFE’s Trinity Award winner for 2006. (IGFE’s description of the award: “Trinity Awards honor our heroes and heroines, people who have performed extraordinary acts of courage and love in service to the Transgender Community.”) I know how much civil rights work Monica has done over the years to benefit multiple communities — I know Monica meets the ultimate measure of a woman by where she stands in at times of challenge and controversy. And, from what I’ve seen, Monica understands that life’s most urgent question is “What are you doing for others?”
Frankly, Sue doesn’t know enough about Monica’s past decade of civil rights and community work make the statement “You really should stick to what you know best and keep out of the bigger picture.” I would dare say Monica has a much, much better “big picture” understanding of federal level civil rights issues than Sue does.
Let me add here that I’ve known Sue personally, as she, like me, is a San Diego resident. She has a history of working with transgender people in support groups/support organizations, worked with others at Family Health Services of San Diego to get a transgender needs assessment published, and worked with others in support of ammending San Diego’s Human Dignity Ordinance to add transgender employment protections. Frankly, I can’t figure what happened to her perspective on trangender people between late 2003 and now — I know she’s no longer in the mainstream of transgender activism here in our hometown.
The comments are turned off here, but if you want to comment on this article by Monica, please go to the original post at TransGriot.
~~Autumn~~
One of the things that’s part of being an activist, especially one who has writing talents and an ever increasing media profile is critcism.
I’m a big girl and I expect it, nor do I presume that ‘errbody’ agrees with what I have to say. I welcome constructive criticism if it is done in a loving way that helps me become a better person and a better activist.
But this is what was sitting in my e-mail inbox when I checked it early on the morning of January 25 after doing 15 hours at work.
From: “Sue Robins”
To:
Subject: I owe you thanks
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:35:25 -0800
Minica;
I wanted to thank you for showing your true colors up on Bilerico today. You really should stick to what you know best and keep out of the bigger picture. What you and others are demonstrating is the inability of the transgender community to function in a polite environment without saying disrespectful thing. I have heard it from more then a few of my post-transition friends that you and your ilk are making a mockery of the transgender rights cause. This is the very reason people have been leaving the TG movement in droves.
You don’t seem to understand you have to work with straight middle class men and women if you want to insure progress in transgender rights. You have to play the game by their rules not Barney Frank’s. One of those rules is there is only two sexes Men and Women fortunately a large part of the transgender community understands that. You just keep posting your disrespectful comments you are showing the world that transgenders are nothing more then freaks to be seen on Jerry Springer; thankfully my transgender friends don’t act that way.
Have a nice day
Hugs
Sue Robins
————–
(Cue Papi Boulevardez laugh)
FYI TransGriot readers. I didn’t put my first post on the Bilerico Project blog until 6:48 PM Friday evening. So at the time I read this e-mail I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.
I’ve since discovered that Sue Robins is one of those white transsexual separatists that I’ve been tangling with in various online transgender groups since the late 90′s.
Before I start the fun and festivities taking this e-mail apart and rebutting her WBT azz (and in this case the WBT stands for weak-minded belligerent transsexual) enjoy this music video from Jill Scott for her hit song ‘Hate on Me’.
I wanted to thank you for showing your true colors up on Bilerico today. You really should stick to what you know best and keep out of the bigger picture.
Why? What is it about lil old me that ‘scurrs’ you and your ilk so much? And as for keeping out of the bigger picture, too late. While you were cowering in your closet, I was lobbying congressmembers in 1998. I was sitting at a table at Task Force HQ in DC back in 2000 during their National Transgender Policy meeting. I’ve been in this effort for ten years now and I ain’t going away.
What you and others are demonstrating is the inability of the transgender community to function in a polite environment without saying disrespectful thing.
There you go again with that BS ‘horizontal hostility’ crap. The interesting thing is that every time this shade gets thrown by nekulturny people like you, y’all jump off crap, then you wanna whine and holler ‘horizontal hostility’ when people call you on it.
I have heard it from more then a few of my post-transition friends that you and your ilk are making a mockery of the transgender rights cause. This is the very reason people have been leaving the TG movement in droves.
Oh really? The one thing that’s making a mockery of the transgender rights cause is the inept way that it’s been handled for the last ten years by some peeps that share your ethnic background.
As for your assertion that people are leaving the movement in droves, got any facts to back that statement up? Methinks you’re just counting your whiny clueless ‘WBT’ peeps who have repeatedly demonstrated breathtaking ignorance on a vast array of subjects and the inability to work and play well with others.
You don’t seem to understand you have to work with straight middle class men and women if you want to insure progress in transgender rights. You have to play the game by their rules not Barney Frank’s.
This is priceless. White male privilege in action, folks. You are not only discounting and disrespecting my intelligence and abilities, but have the nerve to try to lecture me about how to pass rights legislation when I’ve been to Capitol Hill, two state legislatures, and recently the Jefferson County school board to do precisely that.
One of those rules is there is only two sexes Men and Women fortunately a large part of the transgender community understands that.
Umm, medical science and biology says otherwise. I think our intersex friends would have a bone to pick with you about your narrow assessment as well. Fortunately a larger section of the transgender community and our allies understand that gender is a continuum, and everybody fits somewhere along that line. The only peeps that share your gender=genitalia dogma besides some of your WBT friends are the Religious Right, the Catholic Church and Barney Frank.
You just keep posting your disrespectful comments you are showing the world that transgenders are nothing more then freaks to be seen on Jerry Springer; thankfully my transgender friends don’t act that way.
FYI, Jerry Springer’s peeps called me and asked me to come on their show in 1997. I told them hell no and loseWeight Exercise my phone number.
Funny, media professionals over the years seem to like my comments enough to continue to ask me to do interviews such as my local newspaper or the Colorlines magazine one I just did. Go pick it up at a bookseller near you.
The 600 hits per day I get on this blog seems to indicate that peeps like what I have to say. I wrote a newspaper column in a GLBT paper for three years and co-hosted a radio show for two.
So what have you done to uplift transgender peeps today or over the last ten years besides sit behind your computer all day and rant?
By the way Sue, I have a fresh batch of Hater tots prepared for you that y’all can munch on to go with that Vanilla Ice flavored Hateraid you and your friends are drinking by the 55 gallon drum.
Sometimes, you see legislation that hits the hopper and just scratch your head in disbelief. A piece of proposed legislation in Tennessee (House Bill 2997) fits that “scratch your head” description. From Out & About:
Representative Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) has filed a bill in the Tennessee House of Representatives that would outlaw any discussion or free speech about homosexuality or bisexuality in any public elementary or middle school….“We wouldn’t have expected something like this,” said Tennessee Equality Project (TEP) President Christopher Sanders. “Since it was filed we have to take it seriously. It shows the absurdity the far right will go. The bill would compromise the very purpose of education and would inhibit the free speech rights of Tennesseans.”
Representative Stacey Campfield apparently has a history of submitting some “interesting,” socially conservative legislation in the past:
He has in the past proposed to replace the state’s tax on food with a tax on pornography and last year wanted the state to require death certificates for abortions.
LGBT people can hope this bill has no traction, yet the sad part is that the LGBT community will likely have to expend time and resources to fight this astonishing piece of legislation that would obviously marginalize children in LGBT families.
ProudParenting is pleased as punch. Equality California and the GSA Network are pretty pleased too. The Student Civil Rights Act Of 2007 – SB 777 –survived an attempt at repeal by referendum. As 365Gay is reporting:
A conservative Christian group has failed to collect enough signatures to force a vote to repeal a California law protecting students from discrimination, harassment and bullying in publicly-funded schools.
But a legal challenge to the law is still before the courts.
Save Our Kids, the organization that spearheaded the referendum effort says it collected over 350,000 signatures to overturn the law – far short of the required 434,000 signatures that had to be turned in on Friday.
The Student Civil Rights Act, passed and signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year, mandates that teachers and school administrators fully understand their responsibilities to protect LGBT youth.
Various California laws have prohibited discrimination in public education on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, religion, race, disability and gender for a number of years.
But in some instances school administrators have been unclear about all the laws and what they need to do to fight bullying. The Student Civil Rights Act updated the existing Education Code to bring all the discrimination laws under one section.
Religious right organizations are attempting to put a good face on this defeat, and perhaps it’s not completely spin.
The battle in California over a new state law that would mandate a positive – and no other – portrayal of bisexuals, homosexuals, transgenders and others choosing alternative sexual lifestyles in public schools has moved into a campaign for an initiative.
Officials with Save Our Kids made the announcement yesterday after confirming that their effort to obtain 434,000 signatures for a referendum fell short, coming up with 350,000 names.
[Save Our Kids and Focus On The Family comment/report on efforts to peal back protections for LGBT youth after the fold]
It doesn’t seem to be going away — this horrible, public divide between the HRC and the transgender community’s activists. I put a little bit of commentary from others in the recent San Francisco meeting between the HRC and transgender activists in the This And That post, but now there’s some more news and more expressed anger developing from the transgender community.
Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) is gearing up for its most significant work to date –- securing passage of HB1722, “An Act Relative to Gender-based Discrimination and Hate Crimes,” the proposed statewide legislation that would add gender identity and gender expression to existing laws regarding hate crimes and discrimination in employment, housing, credit, public accommodations and public education.
…MTPC is buttressed by milestone grants, including a $25,000 Civic Engagement Grant from Boston Foundation and $25,000 total in four phases from Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC), including $10,000 immediately as a challenge grant to urge other organizations to follow suit. Other contributions are being made by MTPC’s legislative partners MassEquality, Massachusetts Lesbian and Gay Bar Association (MLGBA), Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) and AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, Inc. (AAC).
“The fight for transgender equality is the next frontier in our struggle for full equality in Massachusetts. MassEquality is excited to be working hand-in-hand with Gunner and MTPC to pass this vital legislation to protect transgender people from discrimination and violence,” said MassEquality Campaign Director Marc Solomon.
“Boston Foundation and HRC both told us that they recognize our all-volunteer work as extremely professional and important, and they want to fortify our efforts to bring the Commonwealth closer to full equality by adding gender identity and gender expression into our existing anti-discrimination laws,” said Holly Ryan, Chair, MTPC.
[Chair of the Massachusetts Chapter of the Transgender American Veterans Association Michael] West said, “The Massachusetts Chapter of TAVA feels that the timing of MTPC acceptance of funds from HRC is ill timed. The MA Chapter of TAVA felt we needed to send a clear message by leaving the Legislative Coalition headed by MTPC. This is about standing behind the entire Transgender Community and the MA Chapter of TAVA’s integrity.”
“The entire Board of TAVA fully supports Mr. West’s decision to cut ties with MTPC,” stated Monica Helms, President of TAVA. “Mr. West’s work in Massachusetts for TAVA has been phenomenal, as has his work as TAVA’s Internet Director. We applaud his show of integrity in this situation.”
It should be noted that TAVA did accept a $500 donation from HRC back in the early part of 2004 to help pay for a bus at their first Transgender Veterans March to the Wall, to help disabled veterans participate in the event. This was back when the transgender community began working with HRC. The $25,000 received by MTPC was received in December of 2007, long after HRC came out and supported a gay-only ENDA when they originally said they wouldn’t.
West feels that the decision by MTPC to align themselves with HRC will do nothing but split the transgender community of Massachusetts for many years to come. He hopes that Scott with reconsider his decision before further damage is made.
It’s a telling moment when one prominent transgender organization is disavowing another prominent transgender organization because they have accepted money from the HRC — even when the money is earmarked for as valuable and noble a cause as promoting civil rights and protections for transgender people in Massachusetts.
As the Bay Area Reporter reported on in their article Tense meeting with HRC over ENDA, a great many transgender people are really, really angry at the HRC. And as the TAVA press release and the Washington Blade‘s Transgender activists turn on one of their own show us, at this point many transgender activists are ready to throw the baby (good causes) out with the bathwater (the HRC) if an individual transgender activist or a transgender specific organization works with the HRC, or states they agree with the HRC’s position on ENDA.
I don’t think anyone should underestimate the level of transgender community anger that’s directed at the HRC. Certainly the HRC shouldn’t; certainly individual transgender activists shouldn’t.
~~~~~~~~~~
For disclosure purposes, I’m a past secretary of TAVA. I’m neither publicly endorsing or condemning TAVA’s statement and action, I’m just reporting on it.
I became aware of Mr. Whitburn a long time ago specifically because of his support of transgender civil rights issues. Mr. Whitburn, as a member of the San Diego Democratic Club, was there supporting the adding of gender identity protections to San Diego’s Human Dignity Ordinance in 2003. 
Closing out Earth Week here in San Diego, we had our Arbor day/Rancho Bernardo 
So on April 26th, we planted some native trees at park. Trees within the city limits help filter pollution within the city. And, shade trees save energy.
The city’s Republican mayor, Jerry Sanders is 
