I'm going up before the Montgomery County, Maryland Human Rights Commission on November 17 at the request of their director. The objective is to convince them of the need to schedule training on trans* issues, particularly cultural competency and ways to handle some of the common issues that arise with the trans* community, e.g., how to handle trans* people being allowed into locker rooms where people might see one another nude.

It would be helpful to have some stories about how interactions with the EEOC, state civil rights commissions, and other agencies have gone awry. If anyone has such stories and would be willing to share, I'd be very thankful if they would send me a PM.

Thank you.

The folks at the D.C. Office of Human Rights heard about my upcoming appearance and have asked to meet with me as well.  I will be meeting with their community outreach office on Monday afternoon.  Please let me know if you have concerns you'd like me to raise.

The date of my appearance before the Montgomery County Human Rights Commission has changed from November 17 to November 24. It's at 7 p.m. at the Rockville Memorial Library, 21 Maryland Avenue, Rockville, Maryland. It will be on the third floor conference room across the hall from room 330.

If there are any Marylanders on the site who would like to attend, I'd be very appreciative. You need not say a word. Just sit in the room silently. One thing I often hear from people here in the County is that there just aren't any transgender people here in the County. It's hard to say that there are none if the County's transgender population is sitting right there in the room.

My goal for this meeting will be to introduce the idea of doing transgender cultural competency training and training in handling common scenarios that come up and present issues of discrimination. This will be the first time the issue has been raised with the Commission, so I cannot guarantee it will get a yes vote on the first try. But I'm hopeful.

Today's conversation went very well.  It was a tough room, not surprisingly.  This was the first time anyone has ever presented to this body about the needs of the trans* community and they had many questions and were somewhat skeptical that there could be such a downtrodden group of people without them knowing about it.  But here is the outcome:

I've been charged with developing a plan to provide relief and improve the status of the County's trans* community.  This plan is to provide for specific actions to be taken by the Office of Human Rights and the Human Rights Commission. 

This is a pretty amazing result to come from a talk about cultural competency.  I believe that such a plan needs to be developed by more than just me, so I plan to organize a community organizing meeting to discuss and develop it. 

Look for another post, perhaps in the Communuty Alerts section in the next day or so as I wrap my mind around exactly what I need to organize.