Letters to the Editor
-
Response from a trans woman law student
Hello there, I'm post-op male to female transsexual. I'm also a law student and I'm currently writing a paper about sex discrimination law. I'd like to add my voice to the chorus criticizing Mr. Aravosis although I think I can offer some original reasons to oppose his position.
In his article he asks: "what I as a gay man have in common with a man who wants to cut off his penis, surgically construct a vagina, and become a woman." Given that kind of language, I doubt I'm the only trans woman who found it hard to believe his subsequent assertion that he genuinely respects transgendered people. However, I'll put aside that argument and address his question at face value.
In some circumstances, Mr. Aravosis might be right that he and I suffer different discrimination for different reasons. There are many cases of workplace harassment where it is clear from the evidence that the worker was targeted because they were perceived to be gay. However there are also many cases where the cause of discrimination is far less clear; a worker might be targeted because they're perceived as effeminate. Some courts have held this is discrimination because of sex and some have not. Without protection for gender identity, defined very broadly in the act, a effeminate gay man might lose in court if a judge or jury believed he'd been harassed because he was effeminate rather than because he was gay.
Including gender identity is even more important in cases of sexual harassment. The Supreme Court unanimously held in the Oncale case that same-sex sexual harassment is covered by title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. However, they stressed that the plaintiff still must prove that the discrimination was because of sex and to most courts sex means man or woman. This would be very difficult for a plaintiff such as Oncale to prove because he had been sexually assaulted by heterosexual men in an all-male drilling rig. How could he prove his coworkers harassed him because they didn't like men on the job -they were all men! How could he prove they sexually assaulted him because he was a man -they weren't attracted to men! There have been many cases decided after Oncale where men and some women have failed to win because they couldn't prove they were sexually harassed because of their sex.
Straight men sexually assaulting men is most commonly seen in prisons but the dynamic easily observed there paints a picture of what's going on beneath the surface in cases such as Oncale. The abusers almost universally sodomize their victims or demand the victim fellate them; this makes the victim (and not the abuser) a "fag" or more often they're referred to as the abuser's "bitch". The abuser often refers to the victim with female pronouns and asserts that the victim really wanted the sexual encounter. In many cases, a frequent victim will adopt feminine mannerisms and perform traditionally feminine chores to mollify their abuser. In the minds of abusers, sexual orientation and gender identity are one and the same thing.
This is precisely why we have a moral and pragmatic obligation to include gender identity and sexual orientation in the same bill. If someone is sexually assaulted on the job and is called a "fag" they should get the same protection as someone who is sexually assaulted and is called a "bitch" because the choice between the two words is likely to be completely random. The exact same dynamic is at work in many, if not most, harassment cases that do not involve sexual assault but instead other means of harassment. We cannot win genuine protection for gay or transgender people if we allow identical types of abuse perpetrated for identical reasons to be treated differently under the law.
-
Unbelievable!
John Aravosis, a white, gay male who obtained a joint law degree and masters in foreign service from the elite Georgetown University, where he studied under the former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, then went on to practice law and reside in the heart of American political power, Washington, D.C., wants me to believe he’s being brave in this piece for Salon—daring even. Speaking out for sources and supporters too afraid to go on record. Against which all-powerful, intimidating, and forceful lobby? Why, members of one of the most universally despised, denigrated, threatened and discriminated minorities in the world.
That's right, John, please tell me again how much we trannies have intimidated powerful white men like you. Maybe then I can stop crying over the whitewashing of LGBT history and bigoted ignorance that permeates your piece, and have a bit of a laugh.
-
BECAUSE WE WERE INVITED
I am transsexual. When we are discriminated against, when we are assaulted and when we are murdered it is by homophobes. The same people who do all those things to gays because they define us as gay , they don't see the differences that you dig for. It was TG's at Stonewall that fought the police so Mr. Aravosis has h short memory. 100 LGBT groups and NOW insisted because they KNOW the connection. THe votes were not there to get a non-inclusive bill through as Bush was going to veto it anyway.
-
We are all human
John and others
a few points:
I notice your comments only refer to "men cutting off their penises" when you refer to transsexuals - haven't you ever heard of trans men aka female-to-male transsexuals? Seen "Boys Don't Cry?"
If anyone doesn't understand trans issues - ASK! If politicians don't understand trans issues - communicate with them and educate them and clarify it.
Where does this idea come from of being in a queue for human rights - a sort of "I suffered for human rights, now it's your turn, attitude?"
Human rights for some at the expense of others are no human rights at all.
Sally
-
TS-101
There have been many posts saying how much people don't know about Transsexuality. Even some medical professionals have spouted ideas debunked a decade ago.
Without saying what should or should not be done, here's some of the facts detailed at http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/10/ts-101.html , which also gives hyperlinks to the medical and scientific articles mentioned.
There are hundreds of different serious Intersex conditions. Some result in ambiguous genitalia or none at all, or partial ones of both kinds. People can be Chimeras (fusion of opposite-sexed twins in the womb), Mosaics, or Kleinfelters, the latter with neither 46xy (male) nor 46xx (female) but 47xxy. Most such people are just normal men with a few anomalies in their bodies (and sterility). A few are normal but infertile men, a very few are normal fertile women.
The most disconcerting ones are the serials - those born looking like one sex, then changing to look like the other from natural causes. 5ARD and 17BHD deficiency are the most common causes, though there are others.
...there are two papers on the subject:
Zhou J.-N, Hofman M.A, Gooren L.J, Swaab D.F (1997)
A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and its Relation to Transsexuality.
Kruijver F.P.M, Zhou J.-N, Pool C.W., Swaab D.F. (2000)
Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus
Male and Female brains differ, both on the coarse scale (BSTc layer of the hypothalamus) and fine scale (number of neurons - brain cells - in each structure). Autopsies on transsexual women, that is, women with mostly male bodies, have shown they have female pattern brains.
Note that gay men have male pattern brains though.
From ArzteZeitung this year, detailing studies using fMRT - "brain scans" of living people:
"Radiologists can now confirm what transsexuals report - that they feel “trapped in the wrong body” - on the basis of the activation of the brain when presented with erotic stimuli. There is obviously a biological correlation with the subjective feelings."
So to say that a transsexual woman is "male" is at best a half-truth. The visible parts are. The parts that determine her personality, her gender (since we know that neither chromosomes nor external appearance is reliable), are female.Some other facts, not in the article.
The median income of Trans people in the USA is $15000
The TS fulltime employment rate in California is 25%
70% report having experienced significant job discrimination
50% have been fired at least once for being TS
With the single exception of NJ, where TS-inclusive legislation was passed 10 years after the GLB-version, every T-inclusive act was passed as part of GLBT legislation. Wisconsin has had GLB only legislation for 22 years. The T-exclusive NY SONDA legislation overturned existing caselaw that provided limited protection for GLBTs, in favour of better protection for GLB only. TS people lost existing rights. There is still no sign that TS people in NY will ever be included: their bill still lacks a sponsor 5 years later. In the meantime, several other states have passed GLBT bills, starting from a worse initial position.
NJ is a special case: the judiciary ruled that an act intended to be GLB only was worded sufficiently ambiguously so as to include GLBTs. The legislature confirmed this, but only after 10 years had passed. No other state where GLB only legislation was enacted has made it GLBT - the historical record shows that throwing under the bus is permanent.