At odds, with no end (commentary)

http://www.ebar.com/columns/column.php?sec=transmissions
01/31/2008

Over the last few months, I've noted a distinct change in tone within the transgender community. I'm not talking solely about the clear anger and frustration you see with the debacle over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and the Human Rights Campaign and Representative Barney Frank's moves supporting a non-inclusive version of ENDA. Rather, a continuing series of heated discussions seem to be dominating our community as of late.

Excellent editorial... and all too true. We should all take heed, and work together for our rights.

y2g

She is right, however, I don't see any easy way for us to all work together as long as there is a debate about who "all of us" are in the first place.

Hi y2g I know two people that would be willing to work with you for our rights at the drop of a hat,
But I have to agree with Tekla as well.

In all 7 years of working as female I guess I was fortunate that I never ran into any problems at work or any other levels in the community. But I am still quite aware of those that got the crappy end of the stick on their jobs, Wing Walker was one of those TS's that did, but she was fortunate to find a good lawyer who got her a reasonable settlement from those A holes.

Cindy 

Interesting commentary and she has the experience to understand and express some good suggestions, of which I can only disagree with one. We have and likely will always fight amongst ourselves because of the disparate groups within the umbrella of the community, and each of the groups have their own view and agenda much to the hostility of the other groups. It's the democratic nature of the community. I agree we have to keep the focus on the goal, but when we can't agree on the goal, it's not hard to understand the in-fighting. It's only become more pubic of late because of ENDA.

The windstorm blew the umbrella away and we're all standing there in the rain. My personal view is that if we decide to be nice, we may do more harm now because an all-inclusive (meaning all expressions of gender indentity, expression and presentation) may not be publically swallowable and later because of the differences will surface again. The appearance of winning now may be a loss later. The question is if we're willing to do what was done to us, sacrifice some of the group for some trans inclusion.

And maybe that, as mentioned in the column, is the real issue, talking about who we are than what we want to do. And it may be that we evolve into separate groups with their own agenda or agree to come common values and view to get everyone out of the rain?

Just my thoughts.

I dunno, I think the 'arguments' can be good in some ways. But, i also think that in argument we tend to demonize our 'opponents' rather than actually listening to them. And we move to demonize them from the start way too often.

I have to agree with Gwen that 'confront with love' is a good idea. Although in practice it mostly seems to turn into 'hate the sin, love the sinner' which usually very swiftly conflates the sin and sinner into one thing and the love is generally superceded by the hate.