Today three of my transgender peers and I met with Rep. Susan Davis.

Our group “director” was Vicki Estrada, who is a representative of California’s Transgender Equality Alliance (TEA). Kelly Moyer (a.k.a. kellyanon) was there as one of the representatives of the Transgender Advocacy and Services Center of San Diego (TASC). She facilitates a support group for gender variant youth, and another support group for gender variant young adults. Connor Maddocks was representing TASC as one of the organization’s Co-Chairs. He’s also the San Diego Chapter Chair for FTMI. And, me, also representing TASC.

As well as being the representative of Sodom California’s District 53, Rep. Davis is on the House Education and Labor Committee — the very committee that will mark up any/all of the versions of ENDA.

Well, our gang of four had planned to go in with a six talking point presentation, but we changed the presentation based on what we heard from the Office’s chief of staff — he communicated to us that Rep. Davis, being one of the 171 fully inclusive ENDA sponsors and on the committee that will review the ENDA bills, is already very familiar with the details of the sexual orientation only ENDA, and the reasons pro and con for supporting a fully inclusive ENDA. Rep. Davis is also aware that just about every LGBT specific and LGBT friendly non-profit in San Diego, as well as non-profit chapters in San Diego (including the San Diego LGBT Center, the Democratic Club, Pride At Work, etc.) has come out with a statement in support of a transgender inclusive ENDA. And, she’s aware of how many of these organizations/organization chapters have stated that they would oppose a transgender exclusive ENDA.

What Rep. Davis wanted to hear instead is personal stories. She wanted to know where and how members of our community has experienced discrimination in the workplace, where and why some of us haven’t experienced discrimination in the workplace, and how all of these experiences have effected us.

So, we went to the meeting and told our stories. We also told some of our peers stories. She’s now heard several reasons why passing a fully inclusive ENDA is really necessary.

I was there to give my “gender variant” story. Here’s what I had for notes:

(my story and my leassons learned after the break)
Read the rest of this entry »

Black Wednesday. It sure has been keeping the transgender activists busy — there are so many voices, using all the skill sets the have at their disposal to add to the complex dialog. I’d like to highlight a few transgender voices.

Christine Daniels posted a blog entry yesterday where she made a revelation about her employment that, well, shocked me. I posted back in April:

Christine Daniels’ story is an example of what a law protecting people against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity can do for LGBT employees. The Gender Nondiscrimination Act of 2003 (AB 196) changed the employment climate in California; the Los Angeles Times didn’t fire her. The Times may have accommodated her transition without legislation, but as it is they don’t really have a legal choice whether or not to accommodate her — they are required by law to accommodate her transition.

I met Christine a few months ago, and we’ve become friends. Little did I know back in April, before we’d met, how much that transgender non-discrimination employment law affected my friend Christine’s L.A. Times sportswriting gig:

You are reading this [blog] right now, in no small part, because in 2003 the state of California passed its version of ENDA, the Gender Non-Discrimination Act (AB 196). Back in early March, I scheduled a meeting with a person in The Times’ human resources department to do some exploratory research about transitioning at The Times. I was told, “Well, The Times cannot discriminate against you because California has a law in place.”

She went on to say:

Well. That was worded somewhat more bluntly than I wanted to hear. But it was also comforting. I had protection. I could be myself, and I could continue to draw a paycheck. From those crude beginnings, I was able to work with HR and my editors to formulate a transition strategy that enabled me to not only change my byline and keep my job but boost my career to an all-time personal fulfillment level. Today, I am writing 3-4 columns a week for the Times Sports section along with two blogs, including this one.

I realize I am lucky. California is one of about a dozen states with such protection for transgender employees. My friend Susan Stanton did not have that kind of backup in Florida and lost her job as Largo city manager in February despite a long and outstanding record of public service.

My friend Kelly Moyers and I were talking tonight; we both attended a community subcommittee meeting tonight discussing web issues for our community transgender group. Kelly is a programmer over at Sun Microsystems. DiversityInc is going to profile her in an article soon — I believe she said it was going to be in the magazine’s December print edition. She also transitioned within the last couple of years, and told me her transition at work has been relatively easy; we were both wondering aloud tonight if she’d have had such an easy work transition without AB 196. We both knew the answer.

The stories pretty much highlight reality: sometimes good behavior by corporate America has been because laws were what first required the good behavior.

~~~~~

Over at Left In San Francisco, guest blogger Susan Stryker wrote a piece entitled It’s Your History—Use It! Talking Points for Tran-Inclusive ENDA Activists (it’s available in PDF format over at UnitedENDA.org). To quote the bio found at the bottom of the article, Susan “earned her Ph.D. in United States History at UC Berkeley in 1992, the same year she transitioned male-to-female, helped found Transgender Nation, and got fired from her first job for being transgendered.”

There are so many key points in Susan’s history lesson, but I’ll just quote an excerpt from her item number 6:

When did organized gay activism start in the United States?
Henry Gerber founded a short-lived group in Chicago in 1924 called The Society for Human Rights, which was inspired by his contact with the homosexual emancipation movement in Europe. The first long-lasting groups were the gay male-oriented Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, and the Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian group founded in 1956. One important development in the immediate post-World War II period was that gay and lesbian people began to understand themselves to be members of a minority community that was being denied its civil rights. Part of this came from the perception of many gay and lesbian people that they had served honorably in the war (or on the home front) but were not treated as full and equal members of society.

Transgender people began to think of themselves the same way, at the same time. The first organized transgender group, The Society for Equality in Dress, was founded in Southern California in 1952. It didn’t last very long, but published two issues of a journal called Transvestia. Later, in 1960, one member of The Society for Equality in Dress, a cross-dresser who later started living fulltime as a woman, took the name of her old group’s publication and launched the first successful transgender publication the United States. This second Transvestia was published into the 1980s. The magazine’s founder, Virginia Prince, also founded national organizations for heterosexual cross-dressers, such as The Foundation for Personality Expression, and the Society of the Second Self.

Prince (still alive in her 90s as of this writing) is the classic example of a homophobic trans person, but that didn’t stop the federal government from arresting her in 1959, through the same kind of sting operations it used to arrest gay men. At the time, individuals who used the U.S. mails to send letters to prospective sex partners could be charged with using the mail for obscene purposes. Prince got caught, and charged with a felony, because one person she was corresponding with (who turned out to be another cross-dresser pretending to be a lesbian) was having his mail surveilled by the federal government.

Trans and non-trans people, gay and straight, were subjected to the same kind of paranoid McCarthyite repression of anything outside of procreative heterosexual reproduction—and you could fall outside of that for reasons having to do with your gender expression as well as your sexuality. While we may not always like being in the same boat as a GLBT community, we all wound up here together for a reason.

Susan’s piece is well worth the read.

~~~~~

Lastly, Mara Keisling over at the National Center for Transgender Equality has announced the start of a Daily Update on ENDA email. You can sign up on the mailing list here to read her daily reports, of which she says:

…Now that there are dozens of people working fulltime and thousands engaged in a lot of different ways on getting a transgender-inclusive ENDA passed, we are going to try to take a few minutes every evening for the next two weeks to explain what’s going on. It will be kind of an informal blog style.

I made a PDF of the first email, and posted it here.

On Friday, April 6th, San Diego will be celebrating our fourth annual Transgender Day Of Empowerment (TDOE). Originally conceived by Project STAR Director Tracie O’Brien in 2003, this is an “opposite day” to the international Transgender Day Of Remembrance (TDOR).

TDOR is an important day set aside to annually memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. TDOE, on the other end of the spectrum, is a day set aside for transpeople (like me) and our significant others, friends, families, and allies to celebrate transgender history and future, as well as our transseniors and our transyouth.

The transgender community is filled with a rich diversity of individuals; of every age, race, faith, identifiable gender, and socioeconomic background.  The next generation of transpeople can look forward to less discrimination than the generations of transgender people past — we celebrate those who helped us get to where we are now, and those who will enjoy the advances in the future, and help us in that future to reach for broader equality and new individual heights.

I dream that one day the idea of a day of celebration of transgender diversity will catch on as an idea for the broader transgender community — for all of us transpeople, our significant others, our friends, our families, and of course our wonderful allies.

*****UPDATE*****

There is a review up of the event with San Diego’s Indy Media.

Also, there is an MP3 of my friend Vicky’s song Wrong Gender Blues.

I’m on the planning committee for this summit coming up in March.

 This is going to be a great summit for transgender people and out allies.  Click on the image to the left, and check out the full size version of the flier on the left on the event.   

I’m personally going to be in charge of working up a class/seminar/meeting topic for alternate media and the transgender community.  I was chosen mostly due to the work I do with news archiving at transgendernews, and with blogging on the Ex-Gay Watch, Pam’s House Blend, and here.  I’m going to be looking for transgender podcasters that are based out of California to add to a discussion table of transgender “alternate media” types. 

Anyone reading this whose interesting in attending the event (which, by the way, is much larger than my participation in the event),  can register for the free conference here. 

I’m looking forward to this conference a lot. 

The Family Health Centers of San Diego developed a project called Project STAR, which is using a case worker model to help meet the needs of trangender people — The California Endowment is funding the project, after initially funding a transgender needs assessment. I’m on the Transgender Advocacy and Services Center planning group, which hopefully will be able to take over the caseworker functions of Project STAR (after the California Endowment funding runs out in a couple of years).

Project STAR, the FHCSD, and the San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Center of San Diego were profiled in an Out In America article. Here’s and excerpt from the piece:

The San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center’s (The Center) Health Services, in partnership with Family Health Centers of San Diego’s Project STAR, will offer a specialized training for mental health providers addressing issues facing the transgender community.

The training will take place on Wed., Jan. 17 from 11am-1pm at The Center, 3909 Centre St. All mental health providers in San Diego County are encouraged to attend.

The recent San Diego County Transgender Needs Assessment, conducted by Family Health Centers in 2006, identified numerous barriers to health care and support services for transgender individuals, including mental health and counseling services. The goal of this training is to increase the awareness levels of service providers to the issues facing their transgender clients, or potential clients, and to increase their comfort level and ability to effectively address these challenges.

For additional information, or to RSVP for the training, contact Michelle Morrison at The Center’s Health Services at (619) 260-6380, ext. 105 or mmorrison@thecentersd.org.

I’m excited by this development.