Affirmative action for the Trans Community

[stephanie_craxford]

A definition of Affirmative Action reads as follows:

Affirmative action (U.S. English), or positive discrimination (British English), is a policy or a program of giving certain preferences to certain (usually under-represented) groups. This typically focuses on education, employment, government contracts, health care, or social welfare.
There is much debate concerning claims that it fails to achieve its desired goal, and that it has unintended and undesirable side-effects. There are also claims that the practice is itself racist or sexist.

So what do you think?

[HelenW]

I think affirmative action works but it should always have an expiration date.  For a short time it gets the underrepresented into whatever arena it's imposed upon and the entrenched get used to the idea of the minority being there.  But if there isn't an expiration date then the action becomes institutionalized and it becomes what it was designed to eliminate, prejudicial discrimination.

I'd love it if trans people could get some affirmative action but we're too small a group, politically, to do it alone.  I even wonder if it would fly for the whole LGBT community.

We have to get the anti-discrimination laws passed first, in any event.

helen