(Updated and smoothed out from this morning's initial post.)
The big fight over ENDA -- within the community, at least -- is whether to go for passage of a bill that focuses on sexual orientation or go for defeat of a bill that includes gender identity and expression. John Aravosis has a couple of posts on the debate, the first including Barney Frank's statement on the possibilities, and the second outlining the options. I happen to agree with Frank and Aravosis on this one -- get what we can and build from that. (And please, let's give the Democrats a chance to pass something.)
Pam Spaulding seems to be touting the other side in this argument, and there are some holes in her post:
The one thing we have on our side in the battle for a trans-inclusive ENDA is the fact that corporations have already dealt with this -- and it was clearly in evidence at this conference, where the large vendor hall featured a ton of Fortune 500 companies in just about every sector you could imagine - defense contractors (Raytheon, Boeing), banking and finance (Capital One, ING, Wachovia, HSBC, Merril Lynch, Wells Fargo), retail (Best Buy, Target, JC Penney, McDonalds), Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, Motorola, Sun, the list goes on and on. For most of them, LGBT anti-discrimination policies are a no-brainer, a done deal -- it's good for business, recruitment and retention, and a source of pride. That level of inclusion and commitment to equality makes this internal debate and debacle on the Hill about stripping down ENDA look petty -- and cowardly.
That's just the least little bit slanted. Yes, corporations are in the forefront on this -- and this is news exactly how? We're dealing with the government here, a/k/a the last bastion of the derriere garde, and I think Frank has a lot deeper understanding of the way it can work to best advantage. His statement makes a lot more sense to me than Joe Solmonese's (quoted in Spaulding's post): Solmonese seems to be getting ready for a major pout and I have no patience to spare for that. That is too much the tone of most of the statements I've heard on ENDA from the left wing of the community. It's just counterproductive and fairly immature and isn't getting us anywhere. Sure, it's quite noble to stick to your principles, but let's get real, just a little bit: the reaction to transgendered persons is not the same as to gay persons and the education process, without which nothing, is not at the same place.
Spaulding has an earlier post in which she attempts to analyze the strategies, but her focus is on HRC and the major gay and trans rights groups. I think she's also badly misreading the likely results in this Congress:
The latter point brings me to a thought that immediately came to mind when I heard trans inclusion was in jeopardy. The concern of Pelosi and others that there would be a "bruising" debate on ENDA that focused on the "T" seems like a red herring. Of course it will be bruising. No matter when this came up for debate, the usual suspects -- the professional anti-LGBT forces -- would blast disinformation and bigotry non-stop. There would be high volume bleating and hysteria based on "she-males," transvestism, drag queens, bathroom paranoia, etc.
Quite frankly, I feel like this needs to come out in debate on the House floor, and better that it does under the mantle of the Bush Administration and the legacy of a Republican run Congress, which has done everything to foment anti-LGBT sentiment for years. They should own this. The Democrats don't have the juice to undo years of this BS in the short time that they have been in power.
ENDA will fail, no matter its configuration because George Bush and allies on the Hill have shamelessly obtained their power by cultivating political support on a base of fear, hate and ignorance. The bill might as well fail now, and hold up its defeat as the first step in reviving a commitment to unite, not divide, and to move the civil rights bar forward.
As for the Republicans "owning" the defeat of ENDA, they already do, and it has done them no damage whatsoever. Having the whole bill go down because of a debate on the transgender part of it is a recipe for disaster for just the reasons that Frank outlines. (It also seems to be the mode that HRC has developed over the past twelve years: pull defeat out of the jaws of victory.) First, the debate on the House floor will happen on the Republicans' terms, because that is the pattern of the past twelve years and it hasn't been broken yet. We have absolutely no reason to believe that ENDA will be the bill to break it because, to be very honest, gay rights for most people is trailing sadly behind the war, the economy, and immigration. And, if that debate happens the Democrats are not going to tar and feather the Republicans with it because a significant number of Democrats will be joining the anti-bill forces because it includes transgenders, to whom they are not personally sympathetic and which they are going to have a lot more trouble justifying to their constituents. Basically, HRC, Spaulding and the others on that side of the issue are demanding that the Democrats set up a no-win situation for themselves, without reference to the reality of what can be done -- I guess because it's somehow ballsy.
I'd rather get ENDA passed without the transgender inclusion so we at least have something to build on. What the national rights groups seem to be supporting is an "I'll take my ball and go home" strategy. Nadine Smith has a post on this at Bilerico Project that I found highly instructive. I don't agree with her, although her historical parallels are powerful -- I'm just not sure if they're really parallel. Solid cases can be made for inclusion of sexual orientation and, in the case of the Americans with Disabilities Act, of HIV+ status in nondiscrimination laws on the basis of science and a history of increasing understanding. I think, if you stop to realize it, that gays and people with HIV are innately more sympathetic to most people simply because they are better known -- transgenders are new and strange and scary, while gay people live down the street and HIV patients are suffering from a virus. Transgenders are not the same. They are gays were a generation or two ago in terms of understanding, and the neanderthal right would, indeed, make heavy capital out of their inclusion -- their strategy rests on a very solid foundation of fear. (Actually, Smith makes a couple of statements I find ludicrous -- the remark about "This is not the time to do the bigots' work for them" is senseless -- if we were doing that, we'd just kill ENDA, which is what the transgender inclusionists want to do if they can't have their way. 'Scuse me -- just who is doing the bigots' work for them?) It's all very passionate and stirring, and I'm sure it goes down easy -- if you're a college sophomore.
Standing up for principle is laudable. When you stand up for your principles at the expense of those who are really suffering, then I start to find it not so laudable -- in fact, I find it somewhat self-absorbed and immature. (Yes, I know that transgenders are truly disadvantaged in this country, but look at it this way: because of the Black civil rights movement and the women's movement, the gay movement has had a much easier time of it. Get it?) This is democracy at work -- no one gets everything they want, not right off the bat.
After thirty years, I'd like to get something through Congress.
(PS -- I may come back to this later today -- it's a huge controversy -- although not all that substantial, really -- and I'm still catching up on it.)
Update:
Chris Crain reports on a WaPo editorial that really lays out my own position quite nicely:
It requires time and patience to educate the public and lawmakers about how prejudice harms some people. That's what gays and lesbians have been doing in their quest for equality for nearly 40 years.
And that's what transgender people will have to do. Delaying passage of ENDA, which was first introduced in the House in the mid-1970s by Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.), until the transgender community changes enough hearts and minds would be a mistake.
Read this post from Crain as well. Strikes me as right on the money.
4 comments:
Did gay and lesbian people "wait their turn" when they pushed for inclusion in civil rights legislation in the 70's?
Did gay and lesbian people 'wait their turn' when they demanded that funding for HIV/AIDS research and finding a cure for it get higher priority in the 80's?
Did they "wait their turn" when they demanded that their rights be acknowledged and respected in the 90's?
Did gay and lesbian people "wait their turn" in 2003 when you disastrously pushed for marriage equality one year before a critical presidential election?
Oh and BTW, trans people have been helping in those fights ever since Stonewall.
This isn't half a loaf is better than none. This is "I'll let other people starve as long I get fed." There's a reason the original co-sponsor Tammy Baldwin has removed her name from the revised bill.
And if think "we'll come back for you later" is really going to happen... I'd point out that:
- Barney Frank's home state of Massachusetts passed LBG anti-discrimination laws back in 1989. There's still no equivalent protection for trans people. Even after getting gay marriage, LBG organizations seem too busy to help get protections for trans people.
- New York passed LBG anti-discrimination laws six years ago. There's still no equivalent protection for trans people. We're told by LGB organization that they're too busy working on gay marriage to help.
- In Maryland, LGB groups also told trans people to wait back in 2001. We're still waiting. Maybe it's because they're too busy focusing on -- you guessed it -- gay marriage.
Need I go on...
And of course, Frank, HRC, etc. seem to miss the point that omitting gender identity leaves a gaping loophole --i.e. "I didn't fire you because you're gay/lesbian, I fired you because you're nelly/butch."
The irony in all this is that Bush will veto ENDA (with or without trans protection) and there's not enough votes to overide. So Frank and HRC are willing to creating a huge rift over something that was realistically a symbolic vote anyway. And rather than just cutting trans people loose without warning, why not first say "hey folks, we need more vote, go lobby your representatives."
As Martin Luther King Jr. said, in the long run it won't be the arguments of our enemies, but rather the silence of our friends that will be remembered.
Actually, we've been "waiting our turn" since 1951, when Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society, the first gay rights group. No, we weren't included in any of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s or the 1970s, yes, we did have to wait --and push and push hard -- to get increased AIDS funding (and that's a battle we're still fighting), and we are still fighting for equal rights nationally -- this is the first time that ENDA or anything like it is going to pass Congress, and it will be vetoed, which means it still will not be law. We know all about waiting.
The repeated citations I've seen of "trans people" leading the fight at Stonewall is revisionist history at its best. The men fighting at Stonewall were drag queens, which didn't mean transgendered then and doesn't mean that now. I happen to know a fair number of drag queens, transvestites and female impersonators, and almost none of them are interested in transitioning. Sloppy definitions lead to sloppy arguments.
By your own examples, gay-inclusive civil rights laws have been incremental, state-by-state, sometimes city-by-city. It's been lobbying, demonstrating, educating. Illinois just passed a statewide gay-inclusive rights law after thirty years of trying. Don't tell me about waiting.
Let's focus on what we can do -- this is politics, not a college bull session. Waiting doesn't mean sitting back and expecting someone to hand it to you -- it means doing what we've done since the late '50s: talking, arm-twisting, teaching, mobilizing, and every year, building on what we accomplished the year before.
"The men fighting at Stonewall were drag queens, which didn't mean transgendered then and doesn't mean that now."
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No - I knew Sylvia Rivera - she identified as transgender. Let's remember that Harry Hay wrote - "We, the Androgynes of the world," - does that mean we should consider him intersex and not gay?
Of course not - language use changes over time - homophile, uranians, homosexual, gay - some of those included both transgender & gay people. For a very long time. It's really a bit disingenuous to say they weren't transgender when that term wasn't even invented at that time.
And let's not forget something else that happened in the Fifties - the One Center was founded. It was housed in property owned by Reid Erickson - who also donated several million to sustain its operations. Reid was an FTM transsexual.
Or that Stonewall was preceded by another Riot - the Comptons Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco - which was lead by transgender people. Though they may have called themselves drag queens at the time. It's not like these people are all dead - you can ask them yourself if they consider themselves transgender or transsexual.
Oh - wait - someones answered that question.
http://www.screamingqueensmovie.com/
take a look at the folks in the movie and how many now use different terms for themselves.
Thanks for the comments on terminology, with which I agree in essence. However, I'm not convinced that one can assume that because some of the activists at Stonewall felt themselves to be female, that all of them did. It's an argument that cuts both ways. And, please also note that in current usage, "transgendered" has come to include much more than "transsexual" as our understanding of gender has grown. Nor am I often convinced by anecdotal arguments -- I'm much more prone to be persuaded by statistical trends.
All of this is really beside the point -- part of the phenomenon of homosexuality has always been the stretching of gender definitions in the public perception, which may or may not have anything to do with the way particular individuals perceive themselves. To take Harry Hay's comment about "androgyne" as a reference to sexual orientation, or anything other than metaphor, is a complete misreading. Any psychologist will tell you that androgyny and sexual orientation are completely different phenomena, and that androgyny itself has little to do with physical gender.
Please note that I have not addressed the rightness of excluding transgendered people from ENDA, but only the strategy. I'm not convinced that excluding them from this bill will mean excluding them for a significant length of time from legal protection -- look at the way attitudes toward equal rights for gays and lesbians have changed over the past ten years compared with the thirty or forty years before.
Absolutely, in an ideal world ENDA would pass with the inclusion of transgendered persons, which is as it should be -- but then, in an ideal world, we wouldn't need ENDA. As it is, we're having to deal with a flawed system that in the past few years has shown itself to be even more flawed than we had realized. This includes not only a spineless Democratic party and instransigent Republicans, but also organizations such as HRC, which seems to be paralyzed by the whole question (nothing new there).
I ran across this post by hilzoy at Obsidian Wings which seems a thoughtful and sympathetic discussion. Note especially the comment by G'Kar.
It's obvious from hilzoy's post that since I posted this originally, the game has changed. Maybe we can salvage the whole bill, which would be the best solution. If not, I'm afraid I still think we should salvage what we can and be prepared to keep fighting.
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