The Advocate reported yesterday that a Maryland county and a Missouri city took steps to protect transgender citizens from discrimination in a variety of fields.
Howard County, MD added “gender identity and expression” to its list of protected classes for employment, housing, public accommodations, financing, and health and social services. Officials are hoping this will help a statewide nondiscrimination bill pass next year.
Columbia, MO also passed a bill protecting trans people from “discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodation.”
Baby steps make big differences. We’re getting there.
There are currently no openly gay baseball players in the MLB.
Transgender Day of Remembrance
November 20th, 2011
A day to remember every person. A day to give pause for every story. A silent prayer/thought to those who still close their eyes wishing to see a smile that will never repeat before them. A moment to tell a family member that you are our family and we are grieving with you. A deep desire to do what is possible to educate, assist and encourage 2012 to have less names.
A promise to be another ally who strives to keep 2012 clear of any name.
“If I was a male, I had the right to, when I stepped out the door, take off my shirt,” Jones, who has had a partial sex change, explained. “It’s not right for the state to ask me to be both male and female. A choice needs to be made. They cannot hold me to both standards.” —Andrea Jones
She’s totally right, too, and that’s the best part. Much appreciation for this woman.
“TRANS” is a feature documentary now in post-production, scheduled for exclusive release in selected festivals and markets in early 2012. For more information, go to TransTheMovie.com. It offers a “up-close and very personal journey into the transgender world.” Watch the trailer.
Read more: http://www.andersoncooper.com/2011/11/15/trans-documentary/#ixzz1du3xjXvkTRANS (by SexSmartFilms)
- You are human. You are worthy of respect. You deserve to be treated with the same dignity as anyone else. There is nothing inherently wrong with your gender. You are not broken, you have nothing to be ashamed of, and you do not deserve to be hurt.
- You’ve been brought up and live in a world that’s designed to erase and demonize your existence; you’ve probably internalized a lot of that, and that’s not your fault. It can be hard to deal with, but you aren’t alone in dealing with it. And sometimes you have to buy into it to be able to handle it, and that’s okay.
- Your gender is no more or less than anyone else’s. Your history doesn’t make you ‘less’ your gender than someone with a cisgender history, it just makes you a person of your gender with a different history.
- You do not deserve to be held to higher standards than cisgender people. You do not have to ‘prove’ your gender by forcing yourself into societal roles that may not fit. You are not ‘failing’ anyone by fitting into societal roles that are comfortable. It is not your job to break down the binary, patriarchy, or anything else. If you want to, go for it, but you have no obligation to do so just because you are transgender.
- Being yourself does not hurt trans rights (so long as you aren’t trying to do so while stopping others from being who they are) and is not a reason for people to disrespect you. There is nothing wrong with being a feminine man or masculine woman, or being a person who’s comfortable in their body, or being a person who doesn’t transition all the way, or being out about having a non-binary or genderqueer gender. You have not ‘failed’ anyone by doing this, you are not ‘less’ your gender than someone else. Being who you are is not a valid argument for why people can’t treat you as who you truly are.
- No one else has the right to say your body needs to be changed. It only does if you need to change it. Or if you want to change it. Your body does not make you ‘less’ your gender. It doesn’t make you ‘not really’ your gender. It doesn’t mean you’re trapped in someone else’s body. You do not have to fix your body to ‘become’ your gender; you already are your gender. All you need to do is what you need to do to be comfortable in your body. And if that includes reclaiming your right to label your own body, you can do that.
- You have just as much of a right to privacy as anyone else. You do not need to tell anyone about your body, your medical history, or anything else. You do not owe anyone intimate details about your personal life before you can be treated as who you are.
- You have no obligation to educate anyone. This includes trans people, but is most important with cisgender people. You are not a walking encyclopedia of transgender and/or transsexual information, you are a person. You do not have to answer every question any cisgender person comes up with, you do not have to represent trans people as a whole, you do not have to bare the most personal and vulnerable parts of your soul to other people on demand.
- Not educating people does not ‘hurt’ trans rights. Never let anyone try to guilt you into educating people or doing something you don’t want to do by insisting that not doing so will ‘destroy trans rights or acceptance’. Trying to force trans people to become walking information desks or to put themselves in dangerous situations destroys trans rights and shows a great deal of intolerance.
- If you do want to educate people, you are allowed to set limits and boundaries. You are allowed to say that you won’t talk about certain issues, or that you will only talk about them on your terms. You are allowed to decide which people you will talk to about which issues. You are allowed to change these boundaries if you become uncomfortable educating people you were previously willing to educate. You are not obligated to educate anyone just because you educated someone else.
- You deserve to take care of yourself. You deserve to be comfortable and safe. You deserve not to be in dangerous situations. If you can’t handle something alone, you deserve to ask for and receive help or. If you can, take a break from it until you can handle it, or just stop doing it all together. Taking care of yourself does not make you weak, it does not make you an attention-grabber or over-dramatic, it does not make you ‘less’ your gender, it does not mean you’ve betrayed other trans people by not being a full-time (or even part-time) activist. You’re human, you have limits, and that’s okay.
- You deserve to have your boundaries respected. Boundaries about how and where people can touch you, what information you give to who and when, what places you feel comfortable going or who you feel comfortable going with, what people can tell others about you.
- You deserve to have the words you are and aren’t comfortable being referred to as respected. You deserve to have the proper pronouns used (and, if there are times when it’s unsafe for that to happen, you deserve to have your safety maintained by those around you), you deserve to be called the proper name, you deserve to have the words you want used to describe your body used, you deserve not to be called by any label, pronoun, word, or name that you don’t want to be called.
- If you’re asking for something that you need to feel respected, comfortable, and safe, you are not asking for too much. Your identity is not ‘too complicated’. Your needs are not less important than anyone else’s.
- You are human. You are worthy of respect. You deserve to be treated with the same dignity as anyone else. There is nothing inherently wrong with your gender. You are not broken, you have nothing to be ashamed of, and you do not deserve to be hurt.
Damn this is so beautiful, I really needed this tonight <3
I’ve seen this before, but I’m really happy to see this show up on my dashboard today.
The Wayne County Medical Examiner’s office has confirmed the death of 19-year-old Shelley Hilliard, a transgender teen also known as Treasure, after her mother identified her torso this morning.
The teen, who was born Henry Hilliard, went missing in the early hours of Oct. 23 and was last seen on the 900 block of Longfellow on Detroit’s west side.
The Medical Examiner’s office received her torso later on Oct. 23, and Lyniece Nelson, Hilliard’s mother, identified her this morning.
Nelson said she had no idea who might’ve done this.
“She was loved by a lot people, a lot of friends a lot of family,” Nelson said. “She just brought joy to everyone that she came in contact with. She was always there for her family.”
Stop violence. Spread awareness.
(Source: librarybear)
This Novemember 20th is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hate and prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.
The Transgender Day of Remembrance serves several purposes. It raises public awareness of hate crimes against transgender people, an action that current media doesn’t perform. Day of Remembrance publicly mourns and honors the lives of our brothers and sisters who might otherwise be forgotten. Through the vigil, we express love and respect for our people in the face of national indifference and hatred. Day of Remembrance reminds non-transgender people that we are their sons, daughters, parents, friends and lovers. Day of Remembrance gives our allies a chance to step forward with us and stand in vigil, memorializing those of us who’ve died by anti-transgender violence. [tdor.org]
I urge my followers, and the followers of those who may have reblogged this to tint your icon purple on Novemeber 20th in honor and support to those who are transgender and to pay respects to those who have passed because they were simply being who they are. I think too often the T is thought of separate from the LGBT, but in reality we are all equal and we are in this life together, side by side.
E
(Source: hedlunds)
I’ve read a couple responses in the queer community to the statement from parents and other authority figures that queers with “confuse the children,” often with the sentiment of, “Oh, I accept you just fine, but don’t talk to the children about these things. I don’t want you…
Despite some pretty ignorant stuff from the clerk, I think this was well handled by Massachusetts! Tempted to move there, now…
In order to better serve the Tumbling community, I have decided to split this off from my personal blog, which will still be used to have the normal fun and tomfoolery for which it is known. This blog I will use to focus on LGBT/GSM issues, which are important enough, I feel, to take up a Tumblr blog (where, let’s face it, I’m basically preaching to the choir). That said, welcome, everypony!