I attended the National Real ID Town Hall today.
I got there early and located Freeborn Hall on the UC Davis campus. I walked in at 8 AM and was mistaken for a volunteer worker. I stood around and talked to some of the workers, explaining I came to participate. At about 9:15 am, they started making moves to 'let people in', so I went outside the crowd-control barrier and started the line. At 9:35, they finally started letting us participants in, and I signed up to speak on the topic of privacy.
There were about 250 people in the audience when it started. After the preliminaries, they called 5 names to speak. Mine was not one of them, but then I saw a T-girl I know who is a major activist (Johanna,) make her way to the seats for the called speakers.
Johanna got up finally, and told what not being able to adjust the gender marker would do to the trans community. After she finished, one of the people from Department of Homeland Security admitted they had not considered transgenders and the effects of fixing the gender marker to the birth certificate, and he thanked Johanna for bringing it to their attention.
At the next go-round, my name was called. I noticed they had some sort of speech-to-text transcription software running, and it identified different speakers with <MALE SPEAKER> or <FEMALE SPEAKER>, when it detected a new voice speaking.
My name was called to go to the podium. I got to the mike and said in my best female voice, "Hi, I'm Karen Savage..." and then I paused to look at the screen. Continuing, I said, "the transcription software says, 'male voice.' I've just been outed by technology," (which, of course, went over most people's heads.)
I built on Johanna's speech, quoting Lynn Conway's numbers for the prevalence of transsexuals, and telling Lynn Conway's story, how she developed out-of-sequence processing for computer CPUs in the 60's then told her employer (IBM) she was transtitioning, and was promptly fired. After completing her transition, and in deep stealth, she was hired by IBM and, as a 'new' employee, developed Very Large Scale Integration, which is the cornerstone of all our current computer technology, emphasizing that she would not be able to do this under Real ID.
I also emphasized the devastation having the birth sex on the ID would cause each time a trans person opened a bank account, applied for a job, boarded a plane, etc.
When I was finished, I was approached by a reporter from the Sacramento Bee, and I clarified the hardship having the gender marker tied to birth sex would cause.
The impression I got is that the DHS is rushing to get Real ID implemented, and they know the clock is running out. Many other people had their own angles on why this is no good, but at least DHS has now heard of TRANSGENDER.
Afterword -- the moderator of the Town Hall meeting came up to me after the meeting was over and said he was a personal friend of Lynn Conway ( I don't remember his name,) and that I'd made a good point about the contributions Prof. Conway had made to the field of integrated circuit design.
The transcript and archived video is supposed to be available soon at
www.realidtownhall.com any-day-real-soon-now...
Karen
