Trans-issues In The News

There were a couple of news articles that caught my eye this week, the first was a New York Times article about the glass ceiling for women that is called “Before That Sex Change, Think About Your Next Paycheck” and the other article is another New York Times article about “Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School?”

The first story, I found by a back-link to another Catherine Rampell article where she wrote,

You might expect that anybody who has had a sex change, or even just cross-dresses on occasion, would suffer a wage cut because of social stigmatization. Wrong, or at least partly wrong. Turns out it depends on the direction of the change: the study found that earnings for male-to-female transgender workers fell by nearly one-third after their gender transitions, but earnings for female-to-male transgender workers increased slightly.

The study, published in the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, was based on survey data the authors collected from 64 transgender workers. The authors, Kristen Schilt at the University of Chicago and Matthew Wiswall at New York University, theorize male-to-female workers tend to be penalized and female-to-male workers modestly rewarded because of anti-woman, rather than just anti-transgender, discrimination.
…
Ben Barres, a female-to-male transgender neuroscientist at Stanford, found that his work was more highly valued after his gender transition. “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today,” a colleague of his reportedly said, “but then his work is much better than his sister’s.”

Dr. Barres, of course, doesn’t have a sister in academia.

I think that this article emphasis what women have said all along, that their ideas and contributions are trivialized in the workplace. The transgender community is in a unique position to prove that the discrimination is real. I have heard the same thing from my friends, that even though the employer supported their transition, that as a women their views were being ignored. She is a project engineer with a EE and a MBA and before her transition “his” ideas were valued. Now, her ideas are glossed over, only to be brought up later by a man and then everyone thinks it is a great idea. Conversely, I have a friend who is a trans-man and he reports that his every comment is taken as a fact, even on a topic he knows nothing about.

In the other New York Times article that was written by Jan Hoffman, she writes,

BY now, most high school dress codes have just about done away with the guesswork.

Girls: no midriff-baring blouses, stiletto heels, miniskirts.

Boys: no sagging pants, muscle shirts.

But do the math.
“
Rules” + “teenager” = “challenges.”

If the skirt is an acceptable length, can a boy wear it?

Can a girl attend her prom in a tuxedo?
…
Last week, a cross-dressing Houston senior was sent home because his wig violated the school’s dress code rule that a boy’s hair may not be “longer than the bottom of a regular shirt collar.” In October, officials at a high school in Cobb County, Ga., sent home a boy who favored wigs, makeup and skinny jeans. In August, a Mississippi student’s senior portrait was barred from her yearbook because she had posed in a tuxedo.

Other schools are more accepting of unconventional gender expression. In September, a freshman girl at Rincon High School in Tucson who identifies as male was nominated for homecoming prince. Last May, a gay male student at a Los Angeles high school was crowned prom queen.
…
But when officials want to discipline a student whose wardrobe expresses sexual orientation or gender variance, they must consider antidiscrimination policies, mental health factors, community standards and classroom distractions.

And safety is a critical concern. In February 2008, Lawrence King, an eighth-grader from Oxnard, Calif., who occasionally wore high-heeled boots and makeup, was shot to death in class by another student.
…
At Wesson Attendance Center, a Mississippi public school, just that sort of fight erupted over senior portraits. Last summer, during her photo session, Ceara Sturgis, 17, dutifully tried on the traditional black drape, the open-necked robe that reveals the collarbone, a hint of bare shoulder.

“It was terrible!” said Ms. Sturgis, an honors student, band president and soccer goalie, who has been openly gay since 10th grade. “If you put a boy in a drape, that’s me! I have big shoulders and ooh, it didn’t look like me! I said, ‘I can’t do this!’ So my mom said, ‘Try on the tux.’ And that looked normal.”

Dress codes should not be enforced based on gender, rather they should be based on the clothes. The code should not say boys will wear… and girls will wear… but rather slacks or shorts must be below the knee and skirt or dresses must be below the knee. You are enforcing a minimum standard dress code rather then a gender stereo type. In response to the comment about causing disruptions or violence in school, punish the bully or the disruptor not the victim. Have a zero tolerance policy on bullying.