My Story Part 72 – The Vote

As you probably read, the gender inclusive anti-discrimination made out of committee Tuesday.

As I sat there listening to the debate, I was struck by the feeling that most of the legislators had no idea what they were voting on. Some of the comments made showed their lack of knowledge. I do not think that other than four or five legislators actually know that there are also trans-men. All they talked about was transgender women and surgery. I really don’t think that they would want a trans-man in the women’s bathroom. It also sounded like many of the legislators had no clue of the process that a person has to go through to transition, one amendment said that a teacher could be transferred out of the classroom while transition… please define the word transition. I know for me I transitioned in one day, I was in male dress at 11:00AM when I got laid off on June 30, 2007, by one o’clock I had gotten rid of all my male clothes and was living as Diana ever since. Do they mean when you started on hormones, well for me that was three years earlier or did they mean when you have surgery? For many, they cannot afford surgery, so would that mean that they could never teach again?

Then you had the amendment on sex segregated facilities, well where prey tell do they want us to go the bathroom? Are there going to be gender police at every door checking IDs? It seems to me that they never thought through what it would happened if they passed the amendment. I think that the amendment would have placed an even harder burden on public establishments, they would now be in business in trying to determine peoples gender when they otherwise they could be breaking the law by letting the wrong person in. It seemed to me that they were just throwing out amendments to block and delay the vote.

A number of legislators voted in favor of the bill because it was the right thing to do. Many voted against the bill because their leaders are against the bill, you could tell by the way they talked that they hadn’t a clue what transgender means.

Many of the legislators made comments that it was hard to vote against this bill because they believe that discrimination is wrong. I believe that is true one senator, I think he is making an effort to do the right thing… but he said that he had made promises to others that he must honor. Why senator did you make those commitments when you knew they were wrong? The other legislators who said it was hard to vote against this bill… did you reach out and try to understand and maybe talk to a trans-person or did you listen to the distortions that the opposition said. That brings me to the lobbyist against the bill; everything that he said was said about other minorities before. When blacks were fighting for their human rights and to end segregation, they used the same arguments against integration. When the gays and lesbians were demanding equal rights, Anita Bryant warned about bathroom and teachers. They weren’t true then and they are not true now.

I know this was only one victory that we still have the House and the Senate to get through, the trans-community and our allies still have a long way to go before the governor signs the bill.