This And That In The News – Trans Issues

"This And That In The News" is about articles in the news that have caught my eye and I want to share or comment about. These are the articles that caught my attention last week.

The first story is about something that is not new to us…

Transgender People New Targets of Hateful Political Ads
MSNBC
By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

DENVER — Even amidst emotional fights over same-sex marriage, anti-gay political advertisements have grown increasingly civil since the 1970s, new research finds. For transgender people, however, the media landscape is looking increasingly brutal.

Political attacks against transgender people increasingly portray them as predatory and dangerous, even as ads by conservative groups depicting gay people as pedophiles or sexual predators have dropped nearly off the map, said Amy Stone, a sociologist at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

"Awareness has really been focused on same sex-marriage," Stone told LiveScience. "We haven't been paying attention to the ways that transgender rights are so easily targeted by the [political] right on a local level."
[…]
Gender identity and the issue of transgender rights often come up on a local level when cities and municipalities consider nondiscrimination laws. For example, in 2008, the city commission of Gainesville, Fla., added a gender identity provision to the town's anti-discrimination ordinance. Social conservatives organized a ballot referendum, seeking to overthrow the new provision with the specter of men invading women's restrooms. (The referendum did not pass and the anti-discrimination ordinance stands.)

This April, a similar anti-discrimination proposition failed to pass in Anchorage, Alaska. In the run-up to the vote, an opposition group called "Protect Your Rights – Vote No On Prop. 5" put out a cartoon ad depicting a burly man in a dress applying for a job as a daycare worker. A voiceover then warned that under the new proposition, it would be illegal for the daycare "to refuse a job to a transvestite who wants to work with toddlers."

This doesn’t not come to us in the trans-community as a shock; we live with this bigotry every day.

The next article is about bathrooms. You know it is always about bathrooms. Those of you who went to college, how many Saturday or Sunday mornings did you walked in to the bathroom and found a member of the opposite sex in there? Someone on the floor always had their boyfriend or girlfriend slept over  used the bathroom in the morning and now most new college dorms have separate shower stalls. it is pretty private when you take care of your morning routine.

Bathroom controversy follows opening of new residence hall
The Daily Californian
By Chloe Hunt
August 24, 2012

Construction still uncompleted, students in the new Maximino Martinez Commons had to quickly adjust to concerns raised over the gender-specific bathrooms in the residence hall when they moved in last week.

Because the eight bathrooms in the newly opened dorm were originally all gender-specific, some residents felt uncomfortable using a gender-designated bathroom. After the concerns were raised, six bathrooms were made coed, according to an email sent to all residents of the building.

“Some people who consider themselves transgender would like the (coed) bathrooms,” said Ciera Dudley, a UC Berkeley sophomore and Martinez Commons resident.

She said splitting bathrooms between single-gender and coed was a good compromise.

All of a sudden it has become a “Fire and Brimstone” issue for the conservative right. Coed dorms have been around since the sixties and now it has become an “issue” because they call them gender neutral dorm and allow trans-students to live in the coed dorms.

And for all of our trans brothers and sisters who severed in the military…

For Transgender Veterans, An Awkward ID Problem Awaits Simple Fix
Huffington Post
Jennifer Bendery
August 24, 2012

WASHINGTON -- There aren't many transgender U.S. military veterans. Advocacy groups estimate the number may be somewhere around 300,000 out of the nation's 26 million vets. But nearly all will struggle to access military benefits because of an awkward bureaucratic snafu that could be easily fixed: their discharge papers show the wrong gender.

Bridget Wilson, an attorney who has represented transgender people in military and civil matters for 20 years, said if there's one thing she sees over and over again with her clients, it is complications stemming from their DD214 form, better known as the document that soldiers receive upon retirement or discharge from the military.
[…]
The problem for transgender vets, who typically transition to the opposite gender after leaving the military, is that their name and gender no longer match what appears on the form. And since the Defense Department treats the document as "a historical record," military officials aren't allowed to change its information, which means transgender vets routinely get turned down for services.

It would be "pretty simple" to fix, Wilson said. Since it would only require an administrative tweak to give people the ability to amend their discharge forms, the fix could be made as easily as the stroke of a pen by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Lastly, if you are traveling to Zimbabwe and you are LGBT… don’t go!

Arrest and Harassment of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Activists in Zimbabwe

U.S. Department of State: Press Statement
Victoria Nuland
August 23, 2012

The United States condemns the Government of Zimbabwe’s violent arrest and detention of 44 members of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe on August 11 and a second raid by police on August 20. Several of these members sustained serious medical injuries from the attacks and were detained without charges. The Government of Zimbabwe has also targeted these same members’ homes and singled out their families for interrogation and harassment.

The United States stands in solidarity with Zimbabwe’s civil society, including LGBT activists. We are deeply concerned when security forces become an instrument of political violence used against citizens exercising their democratic rights. We call upon the Government of Zimbabwe to end this pattern of abuse and to eradicate the culture of impunity that allows members of the security sector to continue to violate the rights of the Zimbabwean people.