Sat Apr 20, 2013 at 03:00 PM PDT
Pro-Trans Legislative Action in California

by rserven
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/20/1203560/-Pro-Trans-Legislative-Action-in-California

California legislators are considering a couple of bills to make life better for transgender people.

California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano published an op ed is the San Francisco Examiner last Tuesday that I feel an obligation to share, since it is in support of a cause that is dear to my heart.

Also Assembly Bill 1121 (Gender Identity: Name Changes and Birth/Death Certificates), authored by San Diego Democratic Assemblymember Toni Atkins, has passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Ammiano has introduced Assembly Bill 1266, the School Success and Opportunity Act, "to ensure that transgender students are not made to feel like outsiders in California's public schools."

[...]

Ammiano acknowledges that other students...but more often their parents...will be hesitant to accept transgender students.  But opportunity for all should outweigh the discomfort of a few.

    Will transgender students make some other children uncomfortable?  Perhaps.  I don't want to minimize that, but new experiences are often uncomfortable.  That can't be an excuse for prejudice.  I was a gay teacher at a time when that made some parents uncomfortable.  They tried to ban people like me from the classroom.

    Let me tell you, there's a big difference between being uncomfortable and being told you don't belong.  My eye patch was physically uncomfortable, but that didn't mean I shouldn't have worn it for the sake of my vision.  On the other hand, being told I didn't belong in a classroom struck deep inside me.  It taught me to fight for others who are told they don't belong.  Today, that's transgender youth.  Instead of making those kids feel like outcasts, we should ensure they have all the same opportunities and experiences as other children.

As a Californian, I am sad that we need such laws, but happy to see we will probably get them!!  When your own home has only a single bathroom, you learn it is used by whoever needs it.  I suspect that very few young children with brothers and sisters have not taken a bath tub bath with hetero gendered siblings and are really that shook up unless their parents make a big deal of it.  The first question to a parent objecting to their brat using a bathroom with a trans child should be "was the child ever in a family bath with a different gendered sibling.  If that answer is Yes, the complaint should be voided.