The Gender (Identity) Divide
The exclusion of gender identity from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act helped guarantee the bill's failure in 2007. Now that ENDA is once again moving on the Hill, will it finally protect those who need it most?
By Andrew Harmon
http://www.advocate.com/Print_Issue/Current_Issue/The_Gender_Identity_Divide/ (http://www.advocate.com/Print_Issue/Current_Issue/The_Gender_Identity_Divide/)
Toni Beasley wanted this job — badly. She was once a certified nursing assistant, and ostensibly she had the qualifications for the post she was seeking: a peer health educator for an outreach program in downtown Los Angeles, where she would be counseling people on HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Known by the transgender men and women in her Skid Row support group simply as Ms. Beasley, she'd lived in the neighborhood since 1998, in shelters or motels, sleeping in tents, a van, or county jail. She had struggled with drug abuse in the past, but Beasley was sober now, grateful for what she had, and sympathetic to transgender women in the area who survive on the streets, often through sex work.