If ENDA Doesn't Protect the Transgendered, It Doesn't Protect Me

[katia]

If ENDA Doesn't Protect the Transgendered, It Doesn't Protect Me

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gabriel-rotello/if-enda-doesnt-protect-t_b_67202.html
By Gabriel Rotello
10/4/2007

'It's heartening to see that LGBT activists are coming out of the woodwork to insist that any meaningful bill that does not protect the transgendered isn't worth the paper it's written on'.

[RebeccaFog]

I liked that commentary.  I agree with the reasoning and it made me feel good because, for once, it felt like someone was taking me into consideration.

[Hypatia]

This assertion caught my attention:

Researchers now think that this is all connected, that all gay and transgendered people occupy places on a continuum between the two main genders.

Long ago, the Magnus Hirschfelds of sexology conflated homosexuality and transgender into a single phenomenon. After Christine Jorgenson and Stonewall, the differences came to be understood better and the two were separated -- how many times has each of us explained to people that sexual orientation and gender identity are two totally different things? -- to the point that gay and trans people even questioned why are we sharing an LGBT alliance, what have we to do with those people?

This is reunifying the two, not conflating them as before but seeing the connections that link us across the differences that divide us.

[RebeccaFog]

I always see the connection since I read "Transgendered warriors" by feinberg

[Shana A]

Good article. Many years ago I read something similar, stating that the reasons queer people were discriminated against are more because of transgressing gender norms than who we sleep with. I agree with this line of thinking. Including gender identity in ENDA protects straight people too.

y2g

[Hazumu]

Kate Bornstein wrote the same thing in her book, Gender Outlaw -- that a gay who was being bashed was not being bashed because the basher had a mental image of the gay performing gay sex, but because the gay's gender presentation was out of the basher's bounds of what constitutes a 'male' presentation.

My step-father and his two sons were right in that sense -- to them, I was (and am) a '->-bleeped-<-got'...

Karen

[Shana A]

Kate Bornstein wrote the same thing in her book, Gender Outlaw

Thanks Karen, it's likely that I originally read this in Kate's book.

zythyra