Its Marriage, Or Nuttin’

There’s a thread currently running over at Pam’s House Blend on the question of what Obama’s LGBT record “really” says.

My thought on the subject:

He co-sponsored a trans-inclusive civil rights bill in Illinois.

That’s enough for me.In 2008 - that should be enough for anyone.

And it should be.

I’m not saying that it is impossible that he could actually be lying about what he’ll actually do once he becomes president.

I am, however, saying that he’s the only major-party presidential nominee who has ever had a real pro-T record.

Of course, that’s not good enough for some.  In response to my post, QueerInSoCal quipped:

And yet

it isn’t. Not for me.

Something tells me that pro-gay marriage, but anti-T would be just fine ‘n dandeeeeee.

Clearly, if it ain’t marriage, it don’t count.  If there’s one mindset that will bless us with President McCain, that’s it. 

So What ‘Education’ Already Transpired?

From Bay Windows:

The House Committee on Education and Labor is tentatively scheduled to hold a hearing on employment discrimination against transgender people on June 26 — the first congressional hearing to focus primarily on transgender issues. The committee’s subcommittee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) will hear testimony on the issue.

Don’t start gettin’ yer hopes up.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), said the historic hearing will give Congress its first serious look at discrimination around gender identity and expression. She credited subcommittee chairman Rep. Robert Andrews (D-New Jersey) and Congressman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) with pushing for the hearing.

“I think for years [Congress] thought about gender identity as sexual orientation’s little brother, and I think Congressman Andrews and Congressman Frank are right in wanting to focus more on transgender people,” said Keisling.

Mother Mara and St. Barney.

A winning combination the likes of McGovern and Shriver?

Well, the mix gets oilier.

Alison Herwitt, legislative director for HRC, said the hearing is designed to help educate Congress in the hopes of passing a fully inclusive ENDA bill next year.

The Scampaign?

Who’da thunk that the Scampaign would be in there trying to look like it gives a damn about whether trans people live or die?

“The hearing, while not on any piece of legislation, is part of the education process to move us forward,” said Herwitt.

Hmmmmm….

Why is it that whenever I see the word “education” in conjunction with the Scampaign and trans issues my stomach wants to crawl up out through my mouth, grab a pair of pinking shears and poke my eyes out?

Herwitt said a coalition of LGBT and civil rights organizations, including HRC, NCTE, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the ACLU and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, have been coordinating strategy for the hearing and have been meeting and talking regularly. She said HRC’s differences with those organizations over ENDA have not impeded that collaboration.

Gee Alison. howza ’bout apportioning percentages of usefulness among that lot?

And apportioning blame for the pain trans people suffer?

When asked to characterize the relationship between HRC and the other LGBT groups in preparing for the hearing Keisling responded, “I don’t think I would characterize it. I don’t think it’s particularly relevant to the hearing.”

That says volumes - not about the Scampaign (we already know what it really is), but about Mother Mara’s relevance…

to anything.

 

Be There or Be a…

Ah yes…

Remember this?

Four years later, the controversy over 2003’s The Man Who Would Be Queen by J. Michael Bailey, is still boiling over.  With an impressive CV and two documentary films to her credit, Joelle Ruby Ryan - a graduate student at Bowling Green University - recently became the first MTF-spectrum trans person to receive a prestigious Point Foundation Scholarship.  She inadvertently stumbled into the fray around Bailey’s book, when she posted a call for proposals on a women’s studies listserv.

Even before questions were raised about the Northwestern University psych professor’s research methods and alleged professional misconduct, The Man raised the ire of trans women by re-asserting Ray Blanchard’s theory that transsexual women are either “feminine homosexual males who want to be women” or they suffer from “autogynephilia: a sexual attraction to, and love of, the idea of oneself as a woman.”

Ryan (joellerubyryan.com), who identifies as a transgender woman and a genderqueer, pansexual trans-feminist, says Bailey’s taxonomies are “patently ridiculous. People don’t transition for sexual reasons - they transition because of their gender identity.” Furthermore, she argues, “His theories on male bisexuality (it does not exist), his endorsement of gay gene selection (eugenics) and his connection to Kenneth Zucker (who supports reparative therapy for gender-variant youth) [also] taint him as an enemy to [the LGBT] community.”

This summer the Bailey controversy resurfaced when intersex researcher/activist Alice Dreger (alicedreger.com) released a 62-page paper (to be published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior next year) defending Bailey and accusing several trans women of attempting to  “ruin” him. 

In that light, Ryan proposed a panel for 2008’s National Women Studies Association conference entitled “The Bailey Brouhaha: Community Members Speak Out on Resisting Transphobia and Sexism in Academia and Beyond.” “Trans people have repeatedly been silenced by powerful elites,” Ryan argues. “We’ve been endlessly researched and talked about by others. We’ve been objectified and gazed at like a butterfly pinned to a wall. [Now] we refuse to let others define us in ways that we know to be harmful, specious and destructive.”

After posting on an international women’s studies listserv, Ryan was surprised when Dreger responded, calling Ryan’s post “laden with factual errors and misrepresentations,” and, in reference to another post, noting, “I also appreciate your advising Joelle Ruby Ryan ‘that she was putting herself at risk…within a controversial field (trans issues) by tolerating tactics that breed fear and stifle academic freedom.’”

“I was floored to be so viciously attacked by,” Ryan says.  “Clearly, Dreger has used her considerable power as a tenured professor at a prestigious university, as a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show, as well as her privilege as a middle-class, white, cisgendered woman to bear on someone with less cultural and institutional power than her.  Such actions are appalling and unethical and absolutely anathema to feminist principles.

Well, in the words of Lynn Conway: “In spite of Dreger’s best efforts to infringe on Joelle’s academic freedom, Joelle persisted and the panel will go on as planned.”

Why am I pointing all of this out?

Well, I was one of many (thousands?) who saw through Dreger’s assumption of the Dubya role to Bailey’s banal performance as Scooter Libby. 

Ryan extended an invitation to me to appear on that panel she was putting together and, despite the Dreger-Bailey pseudo-academic thuggery, the panel was accepted by the National Women’s Studies Association for its conference - which is this coming weekend in Cincinnati.  Some particulars:

The Bailey Brouhaha: Community Members Speak Out On Resisting Transphobia and Sexism in Academia And Beyond

 at

The National Women’s Studies Association Conference:

Cincinnati, Ohio

Saturday, June 21, 2008 : 3:45-5:00 PM

Millennium Hotel, North 200

A Ground-Breaking Panel Featuring:

 Joelle Ruby Ryan, American Culture Studies/Women’s Studies, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio

 Katrina Rose, History Department, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa

 Andrea James, Deep Stealth Productions, Los Angeles, California

 Élise Hendrick, Independent Scholar, Cincinnati, Ohio

I encourage everyone to show up and hear for yourselves the caliber of woman that the Blanchard-Bailey-Dreger axis effectively claims does not exist.

You know…

Lil’ ol’ intelligent, non-gay-male, non-prostitute transsexual WOMEN such as myself.

Its gonna be good.  Dreger herself will be spewing her own nonsense earlier in the day.

Wow! 20K! I’m Impressed….NOT!

From Queer Channel Media:

A campaign to preserve Montgomery County’s transgender rights law has begun with backing from two national gay rights groups.

Basic Rights Montgomery aims to preserve the law that voters will either approve or reject in November. The campaign has drawn $20,000 donations each from the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force.

20K from ‘Da HRC.

Wow.

That’s heavy duty.

I wonder how it compares to the amount o’ dough that was expended back in the day on ‘educating’ Maryland to include us in the statewide law to begin with.

Oh…

Still can’t divide by zero?

My bad. 

And Every Beneficiary of These Can Still Discriminate Against Trans People at Will

From Queer Channel Media:

Despite the objections of some religious leaders, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has signed into law two bills that grant gays hospitalization rights and tax breaks.

Signed by O’Malley on Thursday, the laws become effective July 1.

The Health Care Facility Visitation & Medical Decisions law grants gay Marylanders the right to visit a partner in the hospital and make certain medical decisions for them. It passed the Senate 30-17 and the House 88-46.

Another law, which adds domestic partners to a list of blood and legal relatives that are exempted from recordation and transfer taxes, passed the Senate 26-21 and the House 86-47.

Yet trans people in Maryland can still be shut out of the legitimate economy which allows people to accumulate the wealth that such a law benefits.

More thanks to Free State Just Us.

Jesse Ventura vs. Pat Buchanan……Any Guesses as to Who Wins?

My years in Minnesota for the most part coincided with Jesse Ventura’s tenure as governor.  That’s just one of many reasons I cherish those years.  His election in 1998 inspired me to blanket the state with my resume.  ‘If Minnesota can elect him,’ I thought ’its bound to have a job somewhere for me.’

I even tried getting on with his administration.  That didn’t happen, but I did find a great job there.  As luck would have it, just a few weeks after I moved up there, I had the opportunity to meet him.

Wishes sometimes do come true.

Having said all that, I can’t say I agree with every aspect of Jesse’s political philosophy (for instance, funding of universities is not a priority of his), but on stuff like this, he’s one of the few elected officials at any level in this country to be willing to tell the religionist nutbags that government is not a tool of their religion.

With that, I point you to Crooks and Liars for the encounter between Jesse The Gov and Pat the Constipated on the issue of same-sex marriage.

VENTURA: “Well, first of all, I made a statement when I was governor and stand by it today. Love is bigger than government. Who the hell are we as a government to tell people who you can fall in love with? I think it‘s absurd that fact it‘s even being debated. “

Now, again - having praised Jesse, I do want to say that I hope he does not hop into the Minnesota Senate race this year as has been rumored.  He justifiably can’t stand the current occupant of what I still recognize as being Paul Wellstone’s seat - namely, Norm ‘empty victory for a hollow man’ Coleman.  However, he also doesn’t have much use for Al Franken (as I said, I don’t share all of Jesse’s political philosophy), who seems poised to force Nahm to find a real job.

Jesse, I know it would be a step down, but could I suggest bopping over to Stillwater and forcing Michelle ‘Minnesota’s Katherine Harris’ Bachmann to find a real job instead?

Backlash? What Backlash? Oh….That Backlash

From the LA Times:

By bare majorities, Californians reject the state Supreme Court’s decision to allow same-sex marriages and back a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at the November ballot that would outlaw such unions, a Los Angeles Times/KTLA Poll has found.

And what about the effect of such an amendment on transsexuals?

<crickets>

<more crickets>

<lots of crickets>

Don’t get me wrong.  It was an amazing majority opinion.

But what are the plaintiffs going to do for transsexuals if the amendment passes and the so-called Alliance Defense Fund subsequently argues - successfully - that it wipes out transsexuals’ marital rights and even their very transition recognition rights?

<crickets>

<more crickets>

<every cricket in the world>

Surprise, Surprise…NOT

From Queer Channel Media:

Backlash from the California Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay marriage continued this week as U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said he plans to introduce an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Broun, a freshman Congressman from Augusta, announced his intent May 20.

Oh, but doesn’t Queer Channel Media know the official narrative?  There is no backlash to same-sex marriage…

Right?

Research This, Fella

From the Huffington Post, Palm Center Research Fellow Nathaniel Frank on ’separate but equal’:

America, the birthplace of freedom and the source of that bold and noble assertion that we are all “created equal,” offers no such right, and in fact barred that right proactively just twelve years ago: no matter how many states allow same-sex marriage, the 1996 “Defense of Marriage Act” makes sure the feds do not recognize a gay marriage.

…

Here, perhaps more than anywhere, words are not merely symbolic. Unlike Britain, which still has titles and a Queen, our nation was born of rhetoric that contained an idea–one that explicitly swore off the value of blood, birth and the past, and embraced the proposition that all have equal dignity. When African-Americans refused to sit at the back of the bus in the Jim Crow South, it wasn’t because walking a few extra steps was a material deprivation, but because it said to the world that they were second-class citizens.

This is why the Supreme Court declared in 1954 that separate is “inherently unequal.” A law that denies a group of citizens equal access to a public institution serves no other purpose than to declare that group to be lesser. And this is why it is nonsense to say gays and lesbians can enjoy equality before the law while they are barred from taking their place in one of the most fundamental institutions in American life–the one and only “marriage.”

Howza ’bout the E-word: employment?

And howza ’bout the T-word: transsexual?

If you’re going to rant about ’separate but equal’, don’t forget the separate-and-inherently-unequal status that non-trans gays have created for trans people in several states and, if St. Barney has his way, would also be established at the federal level.

Research that, fella.

Alabama + Zero

From the Alabama Legislature’s website:

HB829
By Representative Holmes

…

Under existing law, additional penalties are imposed against a person if the offense committed is motivated by the victim’s race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or physical or mental disability.

This bill would provide for those additional penalties for a crime motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation.

You know what’s coming, right?

“(d) For purposes of this section, “sexual orientation” means heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality.“

From Gay City News:

The Alabama House has voted to add sexual orientation to the state’s hate crimes law and it was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee late last week. A vote on the Senate floor is expected on May 19.

Now, refer back to my item about the practical permutations of Wisconsin law.

‘Tain’t much that you’ll find in common ‘twixt Alabama and Wisconsin.

Of course, they do both have transsexual birth certificate statutes.

And, in both states (assuming the Alabama bill becomes law), a transsexual who gets physically assaulted whilst on her way to utilize said birth certificate statute because the assaulter can’t stand trannies, will not be the victim of a hate crime.

At least officially.

Even if the assaulter is a gay transphobic adherent of Raymond-Vincent exterminationism seeking to rid the world of a transsexual.

And if the transsexual fights back, the transsexual could conceivably be charged with a hate crime.

‘Equal’ protection in the Incrementalist Age.

Gotta love it.

Not.