Connecticut To Consider Transgender Anti-Discrimination ProposalOf course, the opposition has to bring up the bathroom and teacher issues…
By DANIELA ALTIMARI
The Hartford Courant
January 6, 2009
Transgender activists believe this is the year they will gain equal protection under the state's anti-discrimination laws.
"We feel good," said Jerimarie Liesegang, who leads the Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition. "We've done the groundwork, we've done the education and we know we have the votes."
A proposal, to be introduced in the legislative session that begins Wednesday, would prevent people who in any way blur gender lines from being discriminated against in the workplace or while seeking housing or obtaining credit. More than a dozen states, including California, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon and Rhode Island, have enacted similar laws.
Bills that bar discrimination based on gender identity or expression have come up several times over the past few years, but failed to win passage. In 2007, both the judiciary committee and the Senate approved such a bill, but it died in the House of Representatives.
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Activists say the new proposal would extend those protections to people whose appearance doesn't mesh with gender stereotypes, such as women who favor traditionally "masculine" clothing or hairstyles, or men who appear effeminate.Such individuals would be protected even if they don't view themselves as transgendered.
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"How many times do we discriminate against someone based on how they look?" Liesegang asked. "If a woman is a little more masculine, that doesn't mean she has a right to be fired. ... This isn't about special rights, it's about basic human rights and making people comfortable with difference."
The measure has its critics. Kevin Witkos spoke out against the bill in 2007, while he served in the House. Witkos, a Republican from Canton, was recently elected to the Senate and continues to have reservations.As a police officer, he should know that there is already laws on the books in Connecticut mandating sex segregated facilities. This law would not in any way change those laws. In addition, he should also know that in Connecticut the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities has already ruled that gender discrimination is sex discrimination.
In particular, Witkos expressed concerns about the ramifications of the measure on the state's public schools. "It impacts the learning environment," he said. Witkos and other critics would also like to see a "restroom except" to prevent men from using a public women's bathroom, for instance.
"There are a lot of perverse people, I see it as a policeman," said Witkos, a Canton police sergeant. "They could use the provisions in this bill to try and go into the opposite sex's bathroom. That would have to be addressed in the legislation or it will not get my support."
He should also know that there are Anti-Bullying laws covering students here in Connecticut. When a teacher transitions, it can be a positive learning experience. It can teach the students about diversity and accepting people who are different. On the other hand, by banding teachers from transitioning it teaches students that it is all right to discriminate against people who are different. Which lesson do you want to teach you children?
See also my blog on Kalamazoo Equal Rights Ordinance Suspended
As an intersex person from Connecticut, I am against the bill because the bill would make it look like intersex people need the same thing that LGBT people need. It would cause society to confuse intersex with trans and it would make people think that intersex is associated with the trans.
ReplyDeleteFirst, some people fear that adding the "I" would give the wrong impression that all or most intersex people are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/ or transgender. Obviously, some intersex people are, and some aren't--but when we are dealing with young children and their parents, there is a concern that the association with LGBT would drive away parents of intersex children who would otherwise seek out information and resources about intersex conditions. Worse, the misperception might push parents to demand more surgeries to ease their concern about the child's future sexuality or gender identity.
Second, there is already a lot of conflation between LGBT and intersex in the society, and constantly being combined with LGBT might prevent intersex from getting its own visibility, or make it hard for intersex people to find intersex-specific resources. For example, if you search for the word "LGBTI" on the internet, most articles that would come up deal with LGBT issues--marriage, discrimination, hate crimes, etc.--with no mention of any issues that actually apply to intersex people.
Similar to this, there is also a concern that adding the "I" would make it appear as if what intersex people need is the same thing that LGBT people need. For example, adding intersex to the non-discrimination ordinance or hate crime law is completely insufficient to address the human rights issues faced by intersex people, but it gives the false impression that intersex people's rights are protected.
Lastly, the model of organizing is very different. People with intersex conditions generally do not organize around the "identity" or "pride" of being intersex; "intersex" is a useful word to address political and human rights issues, but there is yet to be an intersex "community" or "culture" the way we can talk about LGBT communities (although this may change in the future). In other words, adding the "I" does not necessarily make the organization appear more welcoming to intersex people. For many people, "intersex" is just a condition, or history, or site of horrifying violation that they do not wish to revisit.
Intersex is not the same as a transsexual (gender dysphoria) or as a transgender state. Neither term is one that we recognise as belonging in any general discussion of intersex. We are not happy with the recent tendency of some trans groups/people to promote transgender as an umbrella term to encompass, for example, transsexuality, transvestitism and intersex. We object to other organisations/individuals putting us in categories without consulting us, especially categories that imply that interexed people, of necessity, have gender identity issues.
ReplyDeleteThe problems this causes...
We are constantly trying to get away from the idea that intersex is necessarily to do with gender identity, a notion that others (including the press/media) like to impose on us. Moreover, the prefix trans- infers a "moving across" and although a few people with intersex conditions may choose to change their gender role, the vast majority never "go" anywhere in terms of their sex or their gender, but are happy to stay in the status in which they grew up.
XY females may suffer various problems on finding out their diagnosis. Problems such as:
* confusion
* anger at secrecy and paternalism (withholding of diagnostic information)
* shame
* an existential type of identity crisis
* low self-esteem
* difficulty grasping how this biological phenomenon can come about
* grief at being denied fertility and rites of passage (e.g. lack of menstruation)
* a feeling of freakishness and isolation compared to their peers
* a fear that others might see them as 'male'
* a concern regarding their ability to function in a relationship (e.g. vaginal hypoplasia)
* the burden of keeping a secret, or uncertainty over who to tell and how
* a retreat from medical care leading to failure to take HRT with a risk of osteoporosis
* etc., etc.
These are the issues that are of major concern to most of our members; and none of these issues necessarily means that their inner sense of gender identity is compromised.
This trend towards 'muscling in' on intersex issues seems to be a initiative on the part of certain politically-minded people in the 'trans' community, to bring intersex under their banner (for whatever reason - it lends more credibility to their cause?) or even to actively interfere in clinical issues relating to intersex.