Calling the Question

(posted for Robert because of Blogger sketchiness)

Police Commissioner Theresa Sparks at the First Annual San Francisco Trans March June, 2004



I get really irritated/angry when I hear about people being fired for being gender non-conforming. Queer, trans, straight. It happens to
people who don’t fit into everyone’s neat little gender check-off box.
The truth is that San Francisco has its problems too. 70% of the
transgender community in San Francisco is unemployed according to the
San Francisco Human Rights Commission. Clearly there is a problem that
most people won’t acknowledge to themselves or others, even in San
Francisco. For some reason, it is incredibly threatening to people to
be around, work with, or spend time with people who are gender
non-conforming. Looking for a job or a home can be a nightmare. A trans
friend of mine who is looking for a job tortures himself on how "out"
to be in the interview. Keeping a job can be hard too. Most of the time
you have to do your job three times as good as someone else in order to
be considered competent.

California and many other states have taken a step in the right direction by enacting legislation that adopts protections for gender identity in employment and housing.

On the national level, there has been quite a debate over whether the ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) should include gender identity along with sexual orientation. I think what many gays and lesbians miss in this debate is that plenty of gay men, lesbians, and heterosexuals for that matter, get discriminated against because of how they express gender, not their sexual orientation. How many times have you heard people say a woman is too butch or a guy is too feminine? Finally the national LGBT groups are paying attention. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force had come out in favor of protecting transgender people from discrimination, but it was only last year the Human Rights Campaign, in a significant move, signed on as well.

Many, many, many activists from across the country are responsible for this shift, but I can’t help but also think that are own local hero Theresa Sparks is also responsible. I went to the Human Rights Campaign dinner in San Francisco last year because Theresa was being honored and I wanted to be there to support her. Many of us have boycotted the dinner for years because they wouldn’t include gender identity in ENDA.

I think Theresa and I were the only trans folks in a room full of hundreds of lesbians and gay men from San Francisco. When Theresa spoke, I truly choked up. In a quiet, steady voice, she called the question. She talked about how Equality California had done the right thing and truly included us in their agenda by moving legislation that protected us from discrimination. Everyone in the room just kind of sat there. She wasn’t attacking HRC. She was smarter than that. She just made them understand how well it could be done and how important it is for HRC to care about our issues. Mainly because our issues are everyone’s issues.

HRC changed their policy shortly afterwards. Again, I just want to say that there were hundreds, if not thousands of trans activists who made the difference in moving this issue for many, many years. Including Transgender Menace and folks like Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, Shannon Minter, and many, many others. But my friend Theresa had the guts to stand up and say and do the right thing in a critical moment.