Tag: transgender

Quite a few people have written me asking about the (not so) new airline travel regulations in Canada.  Many of the headlines scream about the fact that Transpeople will not be allowed to fly.

Transgender People are Completely Banned from Boarding Airplanes in Canada reads one headline.

Conservative MPs laugh at concerns that trans people face flight ban reads another.

Discrimination Takes Flight reads an editorial.

I’d like to be able to say that’s all hyperbole.  I’d like to.  But I try not to spread falsehood.

Justin Trudeau, Liberal MP, brought up the issue in parliament.

Later he tweeted:

This government keeps pushing its agenda of intolerance and hopes we don’t notice. This is just wrong.

Transgender people have historically had little or no protection under federal and state anti-discrimination statutes. Occasionally, this exclusion is made explicit, as under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, which specifically states that its anti-discrimination protections do not apply to transgender people. More often, there is no explicit exclusion, but the courts interpret the statutes so as to exclude transgender people from protection.

–GLAD, Transgender Legal Issues:  New England (pdf)

Last evening I had a brief moment to chat with Governor O’Malley just after he had finished a rare and wonderful performance with his band O’Malley’s March in Annapolis. I asked him about the upcoming Gender Identity legislation and he stated clearly “The gender identity bill is a legislative priority!” I could not be more encouraged to hear this.

—Sharon Brackett, Board Chair of Gender Rights Maryland

In the wake of the beating of Chrissy Lee Polis in a Baltimore McDonalds, the governor had released a statement which included the following:

it is clear that more must be done to protect the rights and dignity of transgendered people. In the struggle for justice and equality for all, I’m committed to working with the Maryland General Assembly during the next legislative session to increase awareness and provide even greater protections for transgendered people.

There is hope that recent passage of transgender protections in Howard County, MD presages something greater, but there is also worry.

Last year, the houses of the Maryland legislature seemed to think that transgender protections couldn’t be passed unless marriage equality passed as well and so trans protections went down in flames in the Senate because the Senate was irked that the House didn’t pass marriage equality.

Folks, these are separate issues.  Please separate them.

Mel Wymore is running for the District 6 City Council seat for 2013 in New York City.  District 6 is also known as Upper Clinton, Lincoln Square, and the Upper West Side.  Now I don’t live in NYC…or even in the state of New York, but rather across the Hudson in north Jersey, though we often travel to or through those neighborhoods to visit places like the American Museum of Natural History (we were there yesterday as a matter of fact).

Democratic Councilwoman Gale Brewer is retiring and Mel wants to succeed her.

He’s well qualified, having served on Community Board 7 for over a decade.  Mel ran for Chair of CB7 in the 90s and lost, but didn’t give up, running for Chair again in 2009 and winning.

Mel has lived in the neighborhood for 24 years, moving to The City from Arizona at the age of 26.

I have gone through three lives of my own since I’ve been here.  I came here, got married, and had two children. We lived as a nuclear family on the Upper West Side.  Then we divorced, and I came out as a lesbian.  Then I realized, ‘transgender,’ and I’m now in a different stage of life.

If elected, Mel would become the first known transgender person elected to public office in New York.

Look, I’m the qualified candidate here, but I happen to be transgender.  I do realize, however, that I’m an exemplar of a certain kind of difference that’s in a very small minority, so recognizing that, I have a particular responsibility and a voice to speak about difference and inclusion.

England Justice secretary Kenneth Clarke recently announced that “the starting point” for sentencing by judges in the murder of people with disabilities and transpeople would be doubled from 15 to 30 years.

That’s the same starting point for sentences for murders in which race, religion or sexual orientation is an aggravating factor.

The proposal is part of the government’s first strategy to tackle transgender prejudice in England and Wales. The equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone, said the strategy included support for transgender pupils in schools, measures to tackle discrimination in accessing public services and greater steps to protect transgender people’s privacy, including not having their transgender identity revealed at work without their consent.

Featherstone said the first transgender equality plan was needed because statistics showed that 70% of children who were uncertain about their gender were subject to bullying. The official figures also show that 88% of transgender employees experienced discrimination or harassment at work, and that hate crime against transgender people had recently risen by 14% to 357 incidents last year.

Ace Nelson already published some of this story.

Several people have recently tried to make sure that I noticed the Boston Globe article about Nicole Maines and her family, entitled Led by the child who simply knew.  Jonas and Wyatt Maines were born twin boys but, as Jonas is reported to have said early in their childhood:

Dad, you might as well face it.  You have a son and a daughter.

The twins are now 14 and Nicole is being treated by the relatively new Gender Management Service Clinic at Children’s Hospital Boston.  The GeMS Clinic was founded in 2007 by endocrinologist Norman Spack and urologist David Diamond.  It is the first pediatric academic program in the Western Hemisphere to evaluate and treat pubescent transkids.

Not everyone agrees with what GeMS does, of course.

Not everyone agrees that they should, of course, and Spack has heard the arguments: Man should not interfere with what God has wrought. Early adolescents are too young for such huge decisions, much less life-altering treatment.

Vandiver Elizabeth Glenn, who goes by Vandy Beth, is a transgender woman who was fired from her job editing legislation for the Georgia General Assembly Office of Legislative Council when she informewd her supervisor that she would be transitioning from male to female in 2007.  Legislative Council Sewell Brumby conceded to the court that Vandy Beth’s “intended feminine appearance” was the reason for the termination.

The federal District Court ruled that termination to be a violation of the Constitutions’s Equal Protection guarantee and discriminated againston the basis of her failure to conform to sex stereotypes.  The state appealed the case to the 11th Circuit.

The decision is now in.  Writing for the unanimous panel that included Judge William Pryor (appointed by W) and Judge Phyllis Kravitz (Carter), Judge Rosemary Barkett (Clinton) wrote:

An individual cannot be punished because of his or her perceived gender-nonconformity.  Because these protections are afforded to everyone, they cannot be denied to a transgender individual…A person is defined as transgender precisely because of the perception that his or her behavior transgresses gender stereotypes.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has asked all ob-gyns to either prepare to provide routine treatment and screening to transpeople or else refer them to other physicians in order to address health care disparities and improve our access to care.

In a Committee Opinion published November 22, The College also states its opposition to discrimination on the basis of gender identity and supports both public and private health insurance coverage for treatment of gender disphoria.

Transgender patients have many of the same health care needs as the rest of our patients.   It would be wonderful if all transgender patients had the resources to be seen in a specialized clinic, but the reality is that many forgo care because they don’t. By increasing the number of ob-gyns providing care to transgender patients we can help improve the overall health of the transgender community.

–Eliza Buyers, MD, former member of The College’s Committee on Health Care for Underserved Women, who helped develop the new recommendations

The Massachusetts House approved An Act Relative to Transgender Equality late Tuesday night on a vote of 95-58 after Democrats limited debate to one hour, thereby stifling republican proposed amendments intended to water down the already watered-down bill, which does not include protections from discrimination in public accommodations.  No lunch counters for us.

The intent, of course, was to keep us out of bathrooms and locker rooms.

The Senate approved the bill on Wednesday on a voice vote.  Wednesday was the last day of the legislative session.

Governor Duval Patrick signed the bill today, according to one source.  Massachusetts becomes the 16th state, along with the District of Columbia, to protect transpeople from discrimination and leaves New Hampshire as the only New England state without protections for transpeople.

What’s up in New York, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania?  We’re waiting.  And in some cases, we’re dying.

The Massachusetts Legislature today recognized that transgender residents should be treated equally and protected under the law.  The Transgender Equal Rights Bill has languished for years, but today the Legislature sent a clear message of fairness and equality.

—Joe Solomonese, Human Rights Campaign

The bill provides protections from discrimination in employment, housing, education and employment and also adds gender identity and expression to the Massachusetts hate crimes bill.

I generally troll the Transgender news regularly looking for stories to use in my quest to enlighten people about why transpeople need to be treated better than vermin.  This week I was deleted to discover a feature article by Ann Tornkvist at GlobalPost, entitled Transgender Actress mourns her “forcible sterilization”.

We like to think that Scandanavia countries like Sweden are bastions of good treatment for people like us.  I read the article and stand corrected.  Some things are apparently pretty much the same all over.

The article features the story of Swedish actress Aleksa Lundberg.  Now 29 Lundberg completed transition when she was 18.

Aleksa Lundberg remembers being four years old and standing by the kindergarten’s wading pool. The teachers began separating the children into groups for an autumnal walk through the nearby woods, ushering boys to one side, girls to another. Lundberg remembers being unsure which side to choose.

“I knew that I was expected to join the boys, but equally I knew that I wanted to join the girls,” Lundberg says.

As Lundberg moved to join the girls’ side, a teacher with a tight, graying perm framing a face contorted in anger grabbed Lundberg by the wrist and “half led, half pulled” her to the group of boys, telling her firmly that this was where Lundberg belonged.

“It was my first experience of an ‘authority’ telling me what I could do, what I should be, and it led to what is my first memory of an anxiety attack,” says Lundberg, now a popular 29-year-old actress who completed the transition from male to female when she was 18. “The silhouettes of the boys standing around me transformed into jail bars in front of my eyes.”

This remembrance strikes so close to my own experience that I had to keep reading.