Seeing My Transgender Roommate Transition Changed Me Too
Posted by: Erica Maxwell
2:00PM, Thursday January 7th 2010
http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-my-experience-living-with-a-transgender-person/There's a certain amount of brouhaha amongst some evangelical Republicans over a minor presidential appointment in the Commerce Department. Amanda Simpson will perform a job for the public benefit that I can't define. I'm pretty sure most of the American public doesn't know what the Senior Technical Adviser for the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security does. But, because she's transgender, it's prompted an associate dean at the extremely conservative Liberty University to propel himself into the media's light to proclaim that, "This isn't like appointing an African-American in order to try to provide diversity and right some kind of discriminatory wrong. This is about political correctness."
Absurdly stupid. Because, of course, it should be no issue at all, because people are people, and work ought to go to the person whose experience best merits it. And stupidity compounded because I'm unsure how obstinately self-blinded someone must be to believe that transgendered people don't face deep prejudice. The prejudice is dumb, as it is at all times, but especially so when directed at a scattered group with no agenda other than to fit in and be left alone. But I guess there's always a learning curve. I had one.
