Do We As A Trans Community Throw Ourselves Under The Bus

I had an interesting discussion over the weekend about gender fluid, gender non-conforming, and non-binary trans people.

For many trans people it is hard to wrap their head around gender non-conforming trans people. For me it is easy if you think of gender as a continuum, if you believe that then accepting people in the middle of the spectrum is easy.

What do we do with “gender non-conforming”?

Do we say the law is only for those who have a “F” or a “M” on their driver license and not an “X”?

Do we do as one person suggested in not so many words… thrown them off the bus?

They were concerned for the Massachusetts’ ballot question to keep public accommodation law on the books and they worry that these “queer” kids could ruin it for the rest of us.

I asked what do we do, set up a panel of judges to determine if you are trans enough to be covered by the law? Do we thrown Do we throw them under the bus and say this law is only for the “true” trans person?

When we were trying to pass the Connecticut gender inclusive non-discrimination law one of the things that we said was that the law had to cover everyone who crossed the gender norms. Not just transsexuals but also crossdressers, gender non-conforming, drag queens and even straight people. We would have pulled the bill rather than limit protections. If the all-inclusive bill didn’t pass so be it.

The law states…

(21) "Gender identity or expression" means a person's gender-related identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person's physiology or assigned sex at birth, which gender-related identity can be shown by providing evidence including, but not limited to, medical history, care or treatment of the gender-related identity, consistent and uniform assertion of the gender-related identity or any other evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held, part of a person's core identity or not being asserted for an improper purpose.

Do you see anything in that language that limits the protection to just transsexuals? It covers everyone.

Do we allow only trans people who can integrate in to society to be the only ones covered by the law? Do we only allow those who identify as binary be covered by the law? Who will be the judge?

The law has to cover everyone!

We cannot in good conscious divide the community, we have to make sure the law covers all people; even straight people. We cannot allow gender fluid, gender non-conforming, and non-binary trans people to be not included in the discussion.

In New York State we were thrown under the bus with a promise of coming back for us in 2003 to pass the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA) and they never passed the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA).

I cannot support anything that divides us. If it doesn’t pass… so be it. We will be back next year.