Tag: Williams Institute

The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law has released a new study, this time concerning the affects of Voter ID.  The Potential Impact of Voter Identification Laws on Transgender Voters in 2014 General Election, written by Jody Herman, concludes that there could be over 24000 eligible transgender voters across ten states who will not be able to vote because of Voter ID laws.  

The Institute finds that there are approximately 84000 eligible transgender voters in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.  All those states have photo voter ID laws except Wisconsin…which might have one come election time.  The study estimates that 28% of those eligible voters do not have valid photo ID that reflects their gender and name sufficient to the standards of the laws.  

Lawmakers should not overlook the consequences of enacting stricter voter ID laws on transgender voters.  Election officials must consider the potential impact of these laws in the upcoming November elections.  Voter ID laws create a unique barrier for transgender people who would otherwise be eligible to vote.

–Herman

The most basic of human needs can be simply stated.

The third part of that can be a big problem for transgender people.  The results of a survey were recently published in the Journal of Public Management and Social Policy, authored by Jody Herman who is now with the Williams Institute.  Gendered Restrooms and Minority Stress: The Public Regulation of Gender and Its Impact on Transgender People’s Lives is a pdf.

Herman begins with the following introductory paragraph:

The concept of two separate and opposing genders – men and women – is entrenched in our society and reflected in our built environment.  Public spaces throughout the United States are constructed with gender-segregated facilities, which serve to determine who is and is not allowed to use a particular space.  Gender segregation is commonly found in public restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, homeless shelters, jails, and prisons and is intended to provide safety, order, modesty, and security in these facilities.  However, the concept of gender that underlies the design of these facilities ignores people who do not fit into a binary gender scheme, particularly transgender and gender non-conforming people.  Traditional beliefs about gender are being challenged now more than ever and we must address the inadequacies of our built environment to meet the needs of all people regardless of gender.

Yesterday was consumed with our buying a new car.  Our ’95 Saturn gave up the ghost last weekend and prolonged renting of a car didn’t seem like the best deployment of our financial resources, so Debbie’s brother freed up some funds from Debbie’s money market account (never had one of those myself) and we were able to afford the down payment on a used car.  We shopped at Enterprise and got what we think is a good deal on a 2011 Hyundai Sonata, which we completed the paperwork on last evening.

List of top things I hate doing (for future reference):   (1) Moving  (2) Looking for a job (3) Buying a car.

So I didn’t really get a chance to write my regular column ysterday…so I had to spend what little time I had available this afternoon (between my classes) to scribble something down to share.

News Items!

You’ve probably already heard about some of these.

1.  Because of Jenna Talackova’s successful bid to be un-disqualified from this year’s Miss Universe Canada competition, the parent organization has decided to change their rules.

The Miss Universe Organization, which is co-owned by Trump and NBC, announced on April 10 that it will be officially changing the house rules to allow transgender contestants to compete in their pageants, which include Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA.