Tag: Employment Non-Discrimination Act

Jul 13 2013

ENDA: Doom in the future

photo Kristin-Beck-615x345_zpsca0d500a.jpgBack in June I wrote about Kristen Beck, who was came out as transgender after a career as a Navy Seal.  She shares the process in her memoir, Warrior Princess: A US Navy SEAL’s Journey Coming Out Transgender.

Kristen is back in the news after having spoken out about ENDA.  She has the current platform to speak about our issues (i.e. reporters are going to listen to her for awhile when she speaks).

In a country where workers can be fired for expressing their gender identity, people are not free.

–Kristin Beck

Jun 16 2012

Historic first testimony of out transperson before Senate…Traditional Values Coalition responds

On Monday, I published a preview of Tuesday’s Senate HELP Committee hearing on ENDA.

People lose their careers. It’s over when people find out you’re transgender.

—Kylar Broadus

Speaking from personal experience, I’ll declare that one’s career is not necessarily over, like Professor Broadus said, but a person is damn well going to have to fight to maintain that career and contain the damage done.

Jan 08 2010

The People on the Fringe



Opening

The other day there was a Kossack who told me that Worker’s Rights were what it (presumably the Democratic Party) all should be about:

My point is that we have taken our focus off the core purpose of the Democratic party by elevating fringe interests above the major problems.

Fringe interests?  Aren’t the people on the fringe also workers?  Although numbers about the “least of us” are often difficult to uncover, one source lists the unemployment rate for transgender people at 35% and claims that 60% of us earn less that $16K per year.  Another source “more generously” claims rather that 40% of us earn less than $20K.

Both are appalling, if you ask me.

Anyway, the truth is that I would much rather be working on issues more central to the human condition, but someone has to stand firm for the people on the fringe.

If not me, who?  If not now, when?

There is a simple way to satisfy those of us who are on the fringe.  Give us equal rights.  Then we can work wholeheartedly on those “more important issues.”

Sep 30 2007

Employment Discrimination: Where do we go from here?

Cross-posted in Orange

Once upon a time…

That’s pretty damn vague.  Re-cue the music.  On September 30, 1992 a teacher told students in 1 pm CDT abstract algebra class that no matter what they heard about their teacher before the next meeting of the class, they should try to concentrate and study for the exam.  The teacher told the students that all Hell was likely to bust loose and there was a good possibility that they would have a new teacher by the next meeting of the class.

But they should try to concentrate and study for the exam. 

Then the teacher dropped her books in her office, walked the carefully prepared letter  down to the office of the Chair, who was not in at the moment, and laid it on his desk.  Then the teacher went to Little Rock for an appointment with a therapist…and the official beginning of hir transition.

It was not lost on her that this was also her deceased father’s birthday.  But he wasn’t using it anymore, so it might as well be hers as well.