Tag: Equal Rights

I got into a discussion the other day of the kind I really don’t enjoy.  I felt required to defend transsexual women against a stereotype of us.

There are many such stereotypes.  We are liars and deceivers, according to some.  But in the case in point, the accusation was that we are sexually aggressive.  And that brings up a difficult topic to discuss for many transfolk:  sex.

The instance in question occurred in a DADT diary and was referring to gays in the military already:

I never saw overt, mincing, steriotypical “NOLA Fat Tuesday transsexual type” of behavior, but then there are strict codes of conduct for heteralsexual relationships while in Uniform also.

I still am unsure as to what exactly constitutes “NOLA Fat Tuesday transsexual behavior”, but that may be that, while I am indeed transsexual and have been to NOLA many times, it was never during Mardi Gras.

I’ve become disgusted the past few days.  Actually it has been coming on for several weeks, but the last couple of days have brought things to a head.

My basic thought?

It is difficult enough to fight the conservatives who wish to deny us equal rights, strip away the few freedoms and liberties which we do have, and even deny us the basic necessities of life, like even the freedom to use a public restroom without having to choose between being arrested or being physically and/or sexually assaulted.

We should not have to battle the slings and arrows hurled at us by those who one would think we should be able to rely on as our friends.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

It all comes down to a matter of respect.  Who deserves some and who has some to give?

Earlier today, teacherken posted an essay entitled, American, land of opportunity – Not!.  It was mostly about the the limits of upward mobility caused by race and class.  In fact, the paper he cited discussed downward mobility caused by those factors.

Downward mobility is not strange to people in the trans community.  In the news yesterday was this report from the 2010 Creating Change conference, courtesy of Renee Baker for dallasvoice.com.

Numbers.  They were preliminary numbers, but numbers nonetheless.  And I’m a numbers person in the eyes of most part, so I thought I would share and comment on them.

They are not exactly new.  The numbers come from a preliminary report dated in November.  NGLTF released an even rougher sketch of the data earlier in last year.

But the question comes up from time to time.  Do transfolk really need to be covered by an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act?  

We all grow up with a vision of what is right and just in this world.  Many, if not most, of us grow up with the idea of pursuing “the American Dream”.  For some that has meant the pursuit, as when it was first enunciated in 1931 by James Truslow Adams, of achieving a “better, richer, and happier life”.  In his book, The Epic of America, Adams stated it this way:

that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.  It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it.  It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

Oddly, in view of today’s circumstances, Mr. Adams was a banker.

GMA – Elizabeth Edwards on Oprah

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

She is an eloquent speaker, an expressive author.  Elizabeth Edwards is effervescent, effusive, and has an excellent mind.  She understands profound policy issues as easily as she prepares a sandwich.   Her memoir appeared on The New York Times bestseller list.  Few think of Elizabeth Edwards as every woman.  Other daughters of Eve might say Edwards is exceptional; surely, she is not as I am.  Yet, life experiences might have taught Elizabeth Edwards otherwise.  Just as other ladies, she is brilliant, beautiful, and not nearly equal to a man.

I’ve been watching the Prop 8 trial…except not really, since SCOTUS disallowed us folks who couldn’t be in the courtroom to watch what may be the most important court case ever for GLBT people.  So I watched the transcripts instead, as they were posted by the people at the Courage Campaign Institute and FiredogLake.  

One of the assertions made time and again by the defense was that Proposition 8 was not based in animus.

What?  No strong dislike of GLBT people?  No enmity?  Are we seriously expected to believe that there was no hostile attitude?

I’d like to think that one could discount those assertions as being false on there face.  But this was a court of law.  I am no lawyer, but as a writer and a mathematician, I know words and logic.

Having followed the trial closely, I have to ask the following.

When you deliberately choose not to learn about people who you wish to discriminate against, what is that if not animus?

Mr. Tam admits he, at the very least, helped author the fourteen words central to Proposition 8.

Brian Leubitz wrote a piece at Prop 8 Trial Tracker, entitled William Tam: He’s like that Cute Ignorant Uncle that everybody cringes at.

No.  I disagree.  There is nothing cute about Hak-Shing “William” Tam.

I expected at any moment for him to just stand up and say “just kidding! Got you big-time, you don’t think I actually believe that garbage, do you? Ha-ha!”

Methinks that let’s Mr. Tam off the hook too easily.

 The American Foundation for Equal Rights is the leading the effort by Ted Olson and David Boies, who are the lead attorneys in the case to invalidate Prop. 8’s gay marriage ban, now has a website up.

The American Foundation for Equal Rights is dedicated to protecting and advancing equal rights for every American.

Through its groundbreaking federal court case against California’s Proposition 8, The Foundation is leading the fight for marriage equality and equality under the law for every American.

Once upon a time, way back at Forest Hills Elementary School in Lake Oswego, Oregon, we were taught about the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest.  Included in that was the Whitman Massacre by members of the Cayuse and Umatilla tribes, who blamed the Whitmans for bringing measles to them along with their religion.  I remember going to the library and reading, among other things, about the Nez Perce and how they were treated by our government.  They now have a reservation in Idaho and who usually call themselves the Nimiipuu.

Out of such things are activists born.

I became, at that moment a firm believer that people should have equal rights in the eyes of the government, that nobody should be treated as second-class citizens, or worse.

Halloween tomorrow.

Ick.

As a child I loved Halloween.  We’d go to Mrs. Silver’s house across the street and she would invite us inside and make us fresh caramel apples or popcorn balls.  Lord knows, one can’t do that anymore.

And we would go door to door around the neighborhood and get a real haul of treats.  And somewhere, later, older kids would toilet paper someone’s house or yard, which we would discover on the way to school in the morning.  I never liked the “trick” part.

Razor blades and pins and poison and just plain bad people put a stop to most of the good stuff I remember.  

As I got older, the tricks became worse and the treats were few and far between.

I had an alternate title:  Frienemies with Aging.  This could be part two of a very slow-moving series:  On Aging was published March 7, 2008.

When we got home from teaching last night, and with Debbie not having to teach at City Tech this morning because classes were canceled for Rosh Hashanah, I decided to use the fact that we had no classes this morning to do something to make the place slightly more livable.

Like assemble the cat tree we had purchased online and that arrived via UPS on Wednesday.  Photos of the finished project will be interspersed among this story of pain and fatigue and just growing old.  Now I didn’t have the camera with me last night when I was stuck on the floor, so I went the extra mile for verisimilitude and got back down on the floor in order to show the view from there and during the struggle to rise up against my oppressor:  gravity.

Someone sent me an item last week about a transitioning transwoman (video at the link), a high school mathematics teacher in West Linn, OR.  On the face of it, this wasn’t a huge story, but it struck me as a huge coincidence.

Currently I have hardly slept for two days because every time I lay down, I have to cough.  The moving that is finally over apparently left my body in a run down state and I caught something on the first day of classes on Wednesday.  So I apologize if my current delirium causes any disjointedness.

Think of it as stream of unconsciousness.