Autumn, at the the left in the picture, is seen chatting with HRC Business Council members Diego Sanchez and Meghan Stabler. Hearing witness Sabrina Marcus Taraboletti and NCTE Executive Director Mara Keisling are in the background.
The Advocate has a article out on a new Hunter College poll, entitled Poll: Only 2.9% of Americans Are LGB.
Hunter College released the results of a groundbreaking poll Wednesday that found only 2.9% of Americans older than 18 identify as LGB, lower than the 4%–5% often cited in voter exit polls.
Professor Patrick Egan of New York University, one of the poll’s authors, explained that exit polls generally provide an over-representative sample of LGBs. “Exit polls are based on voters — the people who show up at the polls. Gays and lesbians vote much more consistently than the general population,” Egan said.
Why weren’t the transfolk included in the numbers?
…Transgender individuals were not included because to date their numbers are too few to provide a statistically accurate representation.
Lots of other interesting stuff in the poll results, including:
* LGBs are more politically active than their straight counterparts (partly due to a sensibility developed during the coming-out process)
* LGBs may be having a disproportionate impact on the political process, not only through participation at the polls but through civic engagement in activities such as volunteering for campaigns, writing letters to editors, contacting government officials, and attending protests and rallies.
* The poll also found that LGBs are younger overall than mainstream America, with the average age of those over 18 being 41 years of age, versus 46 for the general population. Even more striking, only 3.5% of LGBs are 65 or older, whereas seniors constitute 16.3% of American adults.
With the HRC’s recent credibility problems, it probably should be noted that:
The Hunter College poll was funded through a grant from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. Professors Murray Edelman of Rutgers University and Kenneth Sherrill of Hunter College authored the poll along with Egan.
In Montgomery County, Maryland, lawyers “involved in a challenge to the referendum on overturning the county’s new protections for transgender people were in court last week to talk about the scope and timing of the case.”
Also in Montgomery County, Dan Furmansky of Equality Maryland “said a review of signatures collected to overturn the Montgomery County law has been hastened so it can be completed by month’s end.”
In Massachusetts, a state legislator filed legislation to block payment for a prisoner’s sex-change operation.
On the Isle of Mann the government has introduced draft legislation entitled The Gender Recognition Bill 2008. “The main points of the Bill include allowing a transsexual person who has been issued with a full gender recognition certificate to be legally regarded as being of their acquired gender, and that a transsexual will be able to marry a person of the opposite gender to their acquired gender.”
In Detroit, Michigan, the City Council passed a “gender identity discrimination ordinance.”
In Florida, “the Pinellas County Commission expanded its human rights ordinance to protect gays, lesbians and bisexuals. Included in the vote was a promise to explore expanding the ordinance to bar discrimination against the transgendered.”
In Ventura County, California, the attorney representing the teenager accused of murdering Larry King sought to have his client tried as a juvenile. The attorney also broached the possibility of employing a “gay-panic-esque defense“, saying “he believes school administrators supported one student expressing himself and his sexuality — King — and ignored how it affected other kids, despite complaints. Cross-dressing isn’t a normal thing in adult environments, he said, yet 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds were expected to just accept it and go on.”
In California, a transsexual former inmate settled an abuse case against the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. “The inmate suffered severe bleeding and lost more than 25 pounds after deputies didn’t give him prescribed testosterone shots in October 2004. Instead, jailers harassed the inmate, such as snapping his mug shot, taping it to a glass on which deputies had written “FEMALE” on it, according to court records.”
Employment and education …
In Texas, a “Houston business has settled a lawsuit filed by a transgender woman who said a job offer was rescinded because the company learned she was born a man.”
Also in Texas, Gerald Jeanmard “is suing a company he says fired him. The Port Arthur man claims he was removed from his position with KT Maintenance at the Motiva Refinery after KT found out he was becoming a woman.”
In New York, there was a meeting in Manhattan to discuss the proposed Gender Employment Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA). Regardless of Empire State Pride Agenda “polling data showing that 78 percent of New Yorkers support the legislation,” the prospects of advancing the legislation in the state legislature this year do not seem promising.
In Texas, United Methodists met to discuss trans people.
Science …
A research report released last week showed some evidence that how “much a mother eats at the time of conception may influence whether she gives birth to a boy or a girl … ” “The reason food intake may influence the development of one sex of infant rather than another isn’t fully understood. However, in vitro fertilization studies show that high levels of glucose encourage the growth of male embryos while inhibiting female embryos.”
People …
In California, Victoria Kolakowski is “running for Alameda County Superior Court Judge.”
The National Center for Transgender Equality’s Mara Keisling spoke in Ohio. According to the Gay People’s Chronicle, Keisling spoke at length about (non-transgender-inclusive) ENDA and “said members of Congress should be told to reject any attempts to take transgender protection out of ENDA.”
Between The Lines wrote about Aaron Watkins and Crystal Proxmire (”FTM? Fine by me“).
Zagria wrote about Virginia Prince at her Gender Variant Biography blog.
In Arizona, a “ceremony honoring the memory of Amancio Corrales will be observed with a demonstration of unity and support on May 6, the third anniversary of his murder.”
In television news, Ugly Betty’s Rebecca Romijn and her transsexual character, Alexis Meade, will be fading out.
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.
There is so much work that must be done around the creation of hospitable work environments for transgender employees, particularly those who transition while on the job, and HRC is committed to doing that hard work.
Next week, the HRC Foundation will release a new resource that aims to provide executives, managers, and staff, including human resource professionals, with best practices for transgender workplace inclusion. “Transgender Inclusion in the Workplace” covers topics such as appropriate terminology with which to discuss gender identity and expression, the creation of policies that protect transgender workers from discrimination, and the expansion of diversity programs to include gender identity and expression.
The HRC Workplace Project team has worked tirelessly to develop “Transgender Inclusion in the Workplace,” and their efforts are evident in this comprehensive and easy to use guide. The new guide recommends steps that employers can take to facilitate safe and healthy gender transitions for employees. Among these are the adoption of inclusive non-discrimination policies, removal of discriminatory health insurance exclusions, development of dress codes that avoid gender stereotypes and can be enforced consistently, the protection of employee privacy, and the incorporation of gender identity and expression into diversity training programs.
Until we have a majority of fair-minded lawmakers and a president who will make a fully-inclusive ENDA the law of the land, there will be an urgent need for employers to use resources like “Transgender Inclusion in the Workplace.” And even after ENDA is enacted, we’ll need this resource to eradicate the ignorance and fear that make it so difficult for workers to transition in the workplace.
I am so proud to include this new resource as part of all HRC’s efforts of behalf of transgender equality. HRC continues to pursue work across the organization to educate policy leaders and the public on the need for gender identity protections.
…
This is but a sketch of all the work on transgender issues HRC has done and will continue to do. I will keep you all updated as we continue to roll out our groundbreaking efforts.
Justin Bond wasn’t mincing … words … on transgender politics and the HRC (Human Rights Campaign) in this interview yesterday with New York Magazine …
In the show, you gave some alarming statistics about a national rise in violence against transgender people — like the 15-year-old Lawrence King, who was shot and killed in a high-school classroom two weeks ago. What accounts for that in this day and age?
The people that run organizations like the Human Rights Campaign are privileged white people. In all honesty, they’re out for themselves and getting what they can get. When they have power, they’ll look out for those who they consider to be less powerful or less important than they are. They don’t represent me. They represent their own selfish interests as bourgeois white people who really are angry that they’re looked down upon. I think they’re disgusting sell-out pigs. But, hey, that’s always been the split in the gay community: “Why don’t you just put on some pants and be a man and go and get your rights, faggot!”
Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, used his keynote address at the group’s annual Midtown Manhattan dinner to answer critics who fault it for going along with a version of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that does not include protections for transgendered Americans.
The Gay City News said this of Joe Solmonese’s speech:
“I understand and I hear every day that some members of our community are feeling forgotten or left behind. It is easy to understand why,” Solmonese told a crowd approaching 1,000 in the ballroom of the Hilton on February 23. But he also said, “We have to overlook our differences and we have got to see instead of our individual wants and immediate desires… a vision for the America that we all want to live in.”
…In his toughest volley against some in the LGBT community who argue that HRC has lost its right to lead the battle on ENDA, Solmonese suggested it is others who have left the field.
“I have to ask myself: When did we all become so impatient? When did we say to ourselves, okay that civil rights thing, I’ll give it a year, maybe two, then I’m done,” he said. “Let me be very clear: No, we are not done. We are in the grueling, blinding middle of this fight and the middle of this fight is the hardest part.”
Having stated HRC’s commitment to delivering hate crimes and job protections — as well as marriage rights — for all members of the LGBT community, Solmonese said, “Some of us may want to stand back or check out, but there is no standing back. There is no checking out. Because sometimes — and I know this is frustrating — the fight for our rights feels like hell, but as Winston Churchill so aptly put it, ‘When you are going through hell the most important thing is to keep going.’”
It seems there were a lot of “scheduling conflicts” …
I’m looking through you, where did you go
I thought I knew you, what did I know
You don’t look different, but you have changed
I’m looking through you, you’re not the same
Your lips are moving, I cannot hear
Your voice is soothing, but the words aren’t clear
You don’t sound different, I’ve learned the game.
I’m looking through you, you’re not the same
Why, tell me why, did you not treat me right?
Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight
“The last thing we should do in this moment is change our campaign in any way,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Washington-based group, which bills itself as the nation’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil-rights organization.
Maybe he really means it this time, about change, that is.
“Less than a month ago, HRC President Joe Solmonese stood before almost 900 transgender people at the Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta to pledge ongoing support and solidarity,” said Rose, in a statement released to the media Oct. 3. “In his keynote address, he indicated that not only would HRC support only a fully inclusive ENDA, but that it would actively oppose anything less. That single pledge changed hearts and minds that day, and the ripple affect throughout the transgender community was that we finally were one single GLBT community working together. Sadly, recent events indicate that those promises were hollow.”
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.
In the last week or so there has been some interesting commentary coming from the religious right, as well as an editorial in this morning’s Los Angeles Times, regarding transgender folk. There’s been a few interesting stories too. So, instead of writing up a bevy of individual posts on a variety of transgender stories, here’s a “This And That” post to catch y’all up on the news and commentary relating to gender identity and expression.
~~~~~~~~~~
○ The Phoenix Arizona LGBT publication Echo Magazine picked their woman of the year: Regina Gazelle.
Almira Enos had used meth since she was 13 years old. To get drugs, she would often prostitute herself. She was born a man, but always knew she was supposed to be a woman. Her own mother told her so. Her confused gender state fueled the chronic drug use. She often felt lost and suicidal. Enter Regina Gazelle, Echo’s Woman of the Year.
In April, Enos met Gazelle, who helped the now 26-year-old clean up and learn how to live in her own skin. Enos enrolled in Gazelle’s halfway house for transgender girls, “This Is H.O.W. (Honesty, Openmindedness, Willingness),” and today is sober and even has a job.
She credits Gazelle with her remarkable transformation.
So it is with great pride I announce Echo’s first transgender woman of the year, the fabulous Regina Gazelle.
We know there may be some controversy in making this decision. We thought about having “people of the year” because Regina’s accomplishments were so amazing we knew she had to get the much-needed recognition she’s earned.
But at the end of the day, Regina is a woman, period. And she’s been through a hell of a lot more and created so much with what little she had to work with, she’s made our community a far better place for having her in it.
~~~~~~~~~~
○ And, the first thing you should know is you should be afraid of me and my kind because we are a bunch of bullies — so says the Catholic Online in their editorial Beware of the ‘Gender Identity’ Bullies. The article begins by framing San Francisco’s plan to begin issuing some municipal identification cards without gender markers for undocumented workers and transgender people. Some choice excerpts from the piece:
● Rather than seeing our gender as a gift and a given, this movement is a part of a growing effort to place some perceived power over sexual identity in the hands of individuals so that they can make their own decision as to whether they are men or women; or to change their mind regularly.
These new municipal identification cards will contain birthdates and photos. However, they will not indicate whether the holder is male or female. Why? Because the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco have determined that to do so is somehow “discriminatory’.
So called “transgender” activists added this provision to the ordinance.
● In the USA TODAY article, Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council was quoted as the only voice which even questioned the ordinance. He told the paper that he was concerned that the use of such cards would encourage the idea that gender identity is flexible. “It gives support to the philosophy that says gender is a social construct,” Sprigg said “I think that philosophy is harmful to society at large.”
● No longer content to keep their lifestyle choices private, these activists have decided that the police power of the State must now enforce their vision of a brave new world on everyone else. They have also decided that anyone who sees things differently is “intolerant” or bigoted, and must be stopped.
Oh, I know some may consider that my even commenting on this issue is somehow “insensitive”. Well, when a group goes beyond the pale by forcing a change in the law to accommodate their own lifestyle choice, and, in so doing, risks the safety of others, I will not remain silent.
They are the ‘Gender Identity Bullies’ and they may be coming to a City or town near you.
So apparently, since San Francisco is going to issue ID’s without gender markers, the terrorists win. I probably should tell the Department of Defense that, since my Military Retiree ID card is sans a gender marker.
A trans woman is suing a Catholic hospital, claiming medical officials blocked her from getting breast enlargement surgery there because she had a sex-change operation.
Charlene Hastings, 57, told The [San Jose] Mercury News that when she called Seton Medical Centre, a Catholic hospital in Daly City, California, to inquire about breast enlargement surgery, an official told her it wasn’t “God’s will” for her to have such a treatment, because “God made you a man.”
…Significantly, the IRS ruled in 2005 that a woman’s transsexual sex reassignment surgery is not allowed as a deductible medical expense. Moreover, consider what Johns Hopkins professor of psychiatry Paul McHugh has concluded: ‘I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment.’ In other words, the government sees the requested surgery as elective in nature and experts like McHugh see it as destructive. Why, then, should Catholic hospitals be forced to cooperate with this objectionable venture?
○ One of my hero’s, Monica Roberts, has a piece up (from November) entitled Why Is The Catholic Church Hatin’ On Transpeople? It’s a pretty good summary piece on the history of the Catholic Church with transsexuals.
#1 - Grammatically speaking, trans goes transitive: An excerpt from a book review today in the Boston Herald …
Tommy Kaczmarek, Glenn Feldman and Malvina Lathan are among the most prominent boxing judges in the world, and must have scored close to a thousand title fights between them. The book manages not only to get all three names wrong, but transgenders two of them.
#2 - In Baltimore, you can yo your own way …
Baltimore, a city that for years clung to the word “espantoon” to describe what the rest of the world calls a “nightstick,” has always gone its own way with the language. Now comes an innovation, out of the city’s middle schools, that offers a solution to one of the more annoying aspects of English.
That’s the pronoun you use when referring to someone else. It might be “he,” or it might be “she,” but if you don’t know, it gets complicated or cumbersome. Sometimes you’re stuck with that “he or she” business that saps the energy out of just about any sentence.
Enter “yo.” This is a word that’s perfectly familiar in the sense of “yes,” or “hey,” or sometimes “you.” It used to be an Army term, and then it was Rocky Balboa’s, and now it’s a staple of African-American slang.
But Elaine Stotko, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins, began hearing of kids here who say “yo” to indicate another person of whatever gender, and after pursuing survey work over two years has nailed that usage down. Now she has a paper in American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society.
Some examples: “Yo handin’ out papers.” “Yo threw a thumbtack at me.” “She ain’t really go with yo.”
A little further study showed her (showed yo - it can stand in for “her” and “him,” too) that this use of the word doesn’t show up in other cities; kids in Washington say “youngin’” in a general sense, but typically that’s reserved for boys.
Ms. Stotko thinks it’s a great invention: “Why are we always forcing people into categories? Our society needs to change and stop dividing people on gender.”
Her son is a transgender person, so there’s a personal interest in the question, but still, yo is on to something here. Yo is on to “yo.” And it just might catch on, hon.
How quickly the lessons regarding how the Democratic Congressional Leadership managed to publicly divide the LGBT community over ENDA — how much energy and resources were wasted by LGBT civil rights and other LGBT non-profit organizations battling over the “real or perceived gender” language that was first in, then out of ENDA — have been apparently lost on Sen. Kennedy.
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) is expected to push for a Senate vote in 2008 on the same gay-only version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that the House of Representatives passed in 2007, a Kennedy spokesperson said this week.
Kennedy stated on the Senate floor on Nov. 8, one day after the House passed ENDA by a vote of 235 to 184, that he hoped the Senate would follow suit by passing the employment protection bill in the current Congress, which lasts through 2008.
But until this week, Kennedy’s office had not stated publicly where Kennedy stood on the demands by many gay and transgender organizations that Congress should withhold any action on ENDA unless it includes protection for transgender persons.
“Although Sen. Kennedy strongly supports protections against job discrimination for transgender workers, inaction won’t advance justice for anyone, and will just make it harder to pass any version of ENDA in 2009,” said Kennedy spokesperson Melissa Wagoner.
“We will most likely work to move the House-passed bill, rather than introducing a separate Senate bill,” Wagoner told the Blade by e-mail. “Because the same legislation must pass both the House and Senate, now that the House has acted, the only realistic way to get a bill to the president’s desk this Congress is to have the Senate pass the House bill.”
Further into the Blade piece, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he’s in favor of an ENDA vote in 2008 — he’s looking for a bipartisan “super majority” to protect the gay-only ENDA from a filibuster.
Speaker Pelosi, Rep. Frank, and Rep. Miller were surprised by how grassroots LGBT activists organized and fought against the sexual orientation only version of ENDA. Senators Kennedy and Reid should be under no such illusion — what Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Reid are contemplating is a prescription for dividing the LGBT base for a second time in the same presidential election cycle. A sexual orientation-only Senate ENDA bill will also likely expose Democratic Senators to preexisting backlash on this controversial issue; it will expose Senators Obama and Clinton in particular to either voting for a civil rights bill that intentionally leaves parts of the LGBT community behind, or vote against a bill that would increase the protections of most LGB people — a no win vote. Secondly, presenting a gay-only ENDA for will provide a fairly significant distraction for LGBT activists at a time when the community is trying to focus on the 2008 presidential election.
[More on Senate sexual orientation-only ENDA, and the Gov. Huckabee/Evangelical/Social Conservative Christian factor]
Yes, it’s unfortunate … that, like a Rosa Parks, she didn’t know her proper place on the (ENDA) bus. So, Meredith, and any other like-minded travelers, mind your place, or — naff off!
In the show, you gave some alarming statistics about a national rise in violence against transgender people — like the 15-year-old Lawrence King, who was shot and killed in a high-school classroom two weeks ago. What accounts for that in this day and age?
Some of the gender and transgender-related blogs we’re reading today (Super Tuesday - please vote!), all of which may be found 
Baltimore, a city that for years clung to the word “espantoon” to describe what the rest of the world calls a “nightstick,” has always gone its own way with the language. Now comes an innovation, out of the city’s middle schools, that offers a solution to one of the more annoying aspects of English.