#trans

A “how-to kit” at Philly Trans Health Conference

Dan Massey and I are here at the 11th Annual Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference with 2500 trans and genderqueer folk and their allies. On the conference’s last day, we will be presenting, “Ending Police Bias and Anti-Trans Violence: A Grassroots Approach.” We will be joined by Ruby Corado and Kiefer Paterson in outlining our successful approach to bringing about substantial and substantive change in DC through our work with the DC TLGB Police Watch coalition. Here are some the materials we are providing at our workshop as a “how-to kit” for use in your community if you are suffering and similar epidemic.

For further information: DC TLGB Police Watch, 202-290-7077.

The steps we took . . .

  1. Identify community concerns including interviewing victims of police bias and anti-trans violence.
  2. Identify local and national stakeholders, organizations and individuals, too form coalition willing to remain as a continuing presence after the first action (more actions are planned if demands are not met). Continue to add new coalition partners after work on action begins.
  3. Tabulate community concerns, including especially victim’s concerns. This can be a long list.
  4. Assay goals that articulate these community concerns. Again, could be a long list.
  5. Select 3-4 goals that address most of the top community concerns.
  6. Identify change-agents with power to change the status quo (Mayor, City Council, Police Chief, Attorney General, for example), the same people who have to date have refused to make substantial and sustainable changes to end police bias and anti-trans violence.
  7. Discuss strategies that might be used to force implementation of changes and achievement of the selected goals (street protests with list of demands, visits to change-agents’ offices, letter-writing campaign, petitions, media exposure, etc.). Select the strategies that come closest to representing and start planning action/s.
  8. Fully vet and finalize set of demands with all coalition partners, and implement chosen representative action.
  9. After the action, debrief with the coalition partners and tabulate results, especially lessons learned.
  10. Continue to work with coalition partners to monitor response and actions, or lack thereof, by change-agents; re-organize and take to the streets again when necessary.

Our Call To Action, here and here.

Our Poster

Our Action

Our Demands

Images  

Sample PR

Sample media results, here and here.

Sample results from change-agents, here and here.

Testimony by DCTC member Jason A. Terry before the DC Council Committee on the Judiciary Oversight Hearing on Hate Crimes and Police Response July 6, 2011.

Testimony by DCTC member Jason A. Terry before the DC Council Committee on the Judiciary Oversight Hearing on Hate Crimes and Police Response November 2, 2011.

Testimony by DCTC member Alison M. Gill before the DC Council Committee on the Judiciary Opposing Bill 19-­567, the Prostitution Free Zone Amendment Act of 2011 Tuesday, January 24, 2012.

Jason Terry-Mayor Vincent Gray Letter, February 29, 2011

Testimony by DCTC member Jason A. Terry before the DC Council Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary Oversight Hearing on the Metropolitan Police Department March 18, 2011

The Sexual Freedom Project: Homophobia in Trans Community

(También en Español)

Have you ever felt homophobia or discrimination from one group within the LGBT community? Where does this anger come from? How can we cope with anger without bigotry?

Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

Video by Tiye Massey.

Sweden’s “Forcible sterilization” and Creating Change

Sweden: Transgender actress mourns her “forcible sterilization” – “Many countries typically seen as progressive on LGBT rights continue to mandate the practice.”

“’Forcible sterilization’ has been quietly practiced for decades in countries typically cast as progressive on LGBT rights: France, the Netherlands, Australia and a number of U.S. states still require it. Italy and Germany have just recently overturned similar legislation.”

Having just returned from Creating Change (3000 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender activists and allies, annually), I found this coverage of actress Aleksa Lundberg, a well-known Swedish transwoman, particularly ridiculous.

Although Swedish actress Aleksa Lundberg made her complete transition in her late teens, before her career, her birth gender just entered the public’s consciousness 4 years ago when she started telling her story to the press and on stage to take a stand against efforts to block the repeal of this heinous law.

Transwomen in Sweden cannot obtain their desired gender documentation (the completion and certification of their transition in the governments eyes) unless they undergo a full surgical removal of all male sex organs, while being prohibited from pre-freezing sperm for future use. These forced surgeries are a clear violation of human rights, something 50 Swedish transwomen, in a population of only 9 million, needlessly suffer every year.

This practice unfortunately harkens back to Sweden’s questionable medical research experiments on humans that didn’t officially end until the early 70s, as pointed out by Par Wiktorsson, president of the organizing committee for this year’s Stockholm Pride Festival.

“. . . the current law is reminiscent of eugenics programs that Swedish academics and doctors began to pursue in the 1930s and actually continued to practice until 1976.

“Supporters of the law don’t want the sterilization referred to as ‘forcible,’ but they didn’t want to call it that in the past either,” he says. “But . . . the state has always stood behind this demand with the threat of [withholding medical] treatment. It is shameful that we have forcible sterilization in the year 2011.”.

“Forcible sterilization” has been a practice for a century in America, notably in the southern states. Women and men, trans or not, are rightly seeking compensation as highlighted recently in North Carolina, where an intrusive state government shattered life aspirations of 1000s who were forced to undergo this despicable practice, by force and/or without informed consent. In the 60s, just being an unmarried teen mother was justification for sterilization.

‘They cut me open like I was a hog,” testified Eliane Riddick, who was sterilized by  North Carolina at age 14 under the premise that she was promiscuous and didn’t get along with others. “I couldn’t get along well with others because I was hungry. I was cold. I was a victim of rape.”

This is a practice that is disturbing especially to human rights defenders in this 21st century. I know that centuries ago, people didn’t have many choices in regard to rights and the governments were left largely unchecked. England exiled its own citizens, those deemed undesirable by the state, to primitive and barren lands 1000s of miles away. This business of creating a perfect world in places through erasure has been going on for a long time but civilization cannot stop banning practices like forced sterilization and others forms of disenfranchisement or it will stay in this modern dark ages.

“It infuriates me that a group of people think they have a right to tell another group of people what they can and cannot do,” Lundberg says.

As a human rights activist, I say, They don’t!”

It’s high time every lover of liberty and equality is coming together to denounce such heinous acts and continue to CREATE CHANGE.

 

Human Rights Day 2011 – Part II

December 10, Saturday, was Human Rights Day 2011, and I reported on its origns, history, and background, noted the important role Eleanor Roosevelt played in drafting The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and delved into the direct connections between human rights and sexual freedom contained in the Declaration.

Last week, on December 6, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton surprised a lot of people all around the globe when she made an historic address to international diplomats gathered at The United Nations Office at Geneva (Switzerland) about the specific intersection between lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights and human rights. The Secretary said, “Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.”

Secretary Clinton gave a powerful and moving address, in which she put the world on notice that:

It is a violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished. It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape, or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments, or when people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives. And it is a violation of human rights when life-saving care is withheld from people because they are gay, or equal access to justice is denied to people because they are gay, or public spaces are out of bounds to people because they are gay. No matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we are, we are all equally entitled to our human rights and dignity.

In response to Secretary Clinton’s statements, as well as a coordinated proclamation from President Obama on the same day, religious bigots and certain Republicans gave the expected outcry, claiming this amounted to the United States using tax-payer dollars to forward what they call “a homosexual agenda.” But her comments are already making a difference in the international community: the country of Malawi has already announced that they will re-examine their laws as they relate to the LGBT community.

Unfortunately, the condition of human rights as they relate to LGBT rights in Secretary Clinton’s own United States is pretty deplorable. In most states, LGBT citizens are not protected from discrimination in housing, employment, or public accommodations. Same-sex couples are prohibited from marrying in most states, and even in the few states where they are allow to marry, there is no federal recognition of such marriages due to the misnamed “Defense of Marriage Act” (ironically, signed into law by a President who was cheating on his wife at the time). This law is a blatant violation of the “full faith and credit” clause of the U.S. Constitution, and as a direct result of this single law, same-sex couples are discriminated against under at least 1,138 separate Federal laws that cover everything from taxes to immigration and beyond.

What do you think can be done to bring the United States more into compliance with the kinds of LGBT protections Secretary Clinton called for in the rest of the world? America likes to think of itself as “the land of the free,” but when it comes to sexual freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens, is this a hollow and hypocritical promise?

Studies show that the younger people are, the more likely they are to support the kinds of changes that Secretary Clinton has called for in her historic speech. What does this mean in terms of how soon the LGBT community can hope to achieve full equality under the laws of the United States, and in other countries around the world?

Let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

Flag image by Julyo, used pursuant to Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Human Rights Day 2011 – Part I

Today is Human Rights Day 2011. To mark the occasion, this video is from Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted by a committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, and was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948.

This Declaration contains a number of Articles that directly relate to sexual freedom, and that apply to issues around human trafficking, marriage equality, and being lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans (LGBT). There is a prohibition of the slave trade in Article 4 that directly relates to human trafficking, when it states “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” Regarding marriage equality (also known as “gay marriage,” a term that does not adequately describe the issue), Article 16, Section 1 says, “Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.” Clearly, the United States is in violation of this article, as are most countries around the world.

Whether we point to the right-wing religious zealots (such as “The Family”), including American congressmen, who are helping to pass laws that would imprison for life or execute LGBT citizens in Uganda and other countries, or to the police who harass and unfairly prosecute trans people here in America, our world is filled with rampant violations of Article 7, which states unequivocally “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.”

What does the concept of “human rights” mean to you? Do you believe that sexual freedom is a human right? Does your country respect your human rights, and if not, how could they do better? What role can we play in improving human rights in other countries, including those relating to sexual freedom? How can we ensure that sexual freedom is considered and included as a priority in discussions about human rights around the world today? Have you ever felt that your human rights were being denied? If so, how did you feel, and what did you do to respond? What have you personally done to help promote human rights here and/or abroad?

Let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

Coming in Part II, on Wednesday: Obama and Clinton’s historic efforts confirming LGBT rights as human rights

Call to action this Thursday, November 17, Washington, DC

This urgent Call to Action for Thursday, November 17 starts at 1 PM in front of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD300 Indiana Avenue NW). Local activists have mobilized on behalf of Trans people in the District who have unfairly suffered police profiling, police bias, police harassment, undertrained police, and, indeed, violence at the hands of police. The disproportionate statistics in our nation’s capital reportedly tower over any other city or state.

WHAT: Transgender Day of Action

WHEN: Thursday, November 17, 2011, starting at 1 PM

WHERE: MPD Headquarters (300 Indiana Avenue NW) to the US Attorney’s Office (555 4th Street NW) and City Hall.

WHY: Because you don’t want to miss joining the trans community and its allies coming together to demand change.

HOW: Activists deliver a set of written goals and demands with date certain expectations and consequences.

WITH: Transgender Day of Remembrance, Sunday, November 20, 5 PM, at Metropolitan Community Church (474 Ridge Street NW)

MEDIA: Miguel, glaatuasmig@gmail.com, 571-218-7505; Alison, alison@venusplusx.org, 202-290-7077

The grim media reports trumpet the District’s rise in violent crime against Trans people, including two murders this summer, LaShai McClean, 23, on July 20, and Gaurav Gopalan, 35, on September 10, while experts content that crimes against Trans people are generally under reported or misrepresented by the police. And MPD’s clearance rate for assaults and murders involving trans victims is just a quarter of the average rate, 20% versus 80% of crimes solved, respectively, according to Police Chief Lanier.

The coalition called DC TLGB Police Watch organized this summer to support our community leaders who have tried for years to bring about systemic and sustainable change and instead have seen violent crimes and the Trans murder rate skyrocket. TLGB conveys our assertion of Trans issues when advocating on behalf of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans (LGBT) rights.

On November 17, working in concert with our community leaders and the upcoming DC Transgender Day of Remembrance (Sunday, November 20, DC’s Metropolitan Community Church474 Ridge Street NW), we will take to the sidewalks and street to expose publicly this national shame to every American, and in this way also participate in remembering and honoring the many trans folk who have laid down their lives in the struggle for dignity and equality. On their behalf, we will hand-deliver to our city and federal officials, including MPD, a set of specific, written demands with date certain expectations signaling unrelenting public pressure until they take the serious, emergency measures this urgent crisis warrants.

Help us end the culture of transphobia and homophobia that exists within the MPD, city government, and DC’s federally administered justice system.

Volunteer to participate at Facebook/Transgender Day of Action or TLGBpolicewatch.tumblr.com. Download the Poster for your homepage or blog, listen to TransFM’s Ethan St. Pierre’s interview with Ruby Corado and Alison Gardner, and catch up with last Wednesday’s recent Hearing on Hate Crimes before members of the DC City Council. (Media contact 202-290-7077.)

We are counting on your boots on the ground at the November 17 Transgender Day of Action, and your welcomed presence a few days later at the November 20 Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Work with us to demand systemic and sustainable change in Washington, DC.

DC TLGB Police Watch (to date): DC Trans Coalition (DCTC), Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS), Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance (GLAA), GetEQUAL DC,International Socialist Organization (ISO), Woodhull Sexual Freedom AllianceCedar Lane UU Church LGBT Task Force, Rainbow ResponseTransgender Health EmpowermentGender Rights Maryland, and VenusPlusX.

The Sexual Freedom Project: “I AM” Gina

Here’s another great video from the I AM: Trans People Speak project of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. Please be sure to check out their website for more information and videos of trans individuals telling their own stories in their own words.

Gina identifies as a union elevator constructor, a parent, a dog owner, and trans. She talks about the results of coming out as trans to her mom and dad, her children, and the owners of her company and her union, and her joy in how she has been accepted and welcomed. Gina reminds us that by living one’s truth and walking through our fears, we open our lives up in new, better, and unpredictably exciting ways.

What is your coming out story, and what were the results?

Tell us your story, let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

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Nov 17 Transgender Day of Action Poster Available

We hope you will lift this poster and put it up on your website or blog, where you work, play, and live. The direct action planned for November 17 is in conjunction with the DC Transgender Day of Remembrance to follow on November 20. We are getting the word out and hope that anyone in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area will come to speak in unison with transgender activists and allies who want to stem the explosive rate of violence and unsolved murders in our nation’s capital.

The Day of Action is being organized by DC TLGB Police Watch, which (to date) includes VenusPlusX as well as DC Trans Coalition (DCTC), Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS), Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance (GLAA), GetEQUAL DCThe DC Center for the LGBT Community, Gays & Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV), Woodhull Sexual Freedom AllianceCedar Lane UU Church LGBT Task ForceRainbow ResponseTransgender Health Empowerment, and Gender Rights Maryland.

Thanks for your interest and participation.

Southern Comfort—Historic Gathering

What is “gender non-conforming?” “What does a transexual person have in common with a part-time cross-dresser? or with a transgender person who identifies as neither?” “Can transgender and gender non-conforming people, cross-dressers, transexual men and women who have undergone Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS), and other segments of this diverse cohort group ever speak as one?” To feel the power of collective action that is sleeping beneath us? “What are the limits of working in coalition with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and interesex people?” “What are the shared policy priorities we can all work on together, in unity without uniformity?

These are just a few of the brain-twisting questions we heard and engaged in while attending Atlanta’s Southern Comfort Conference, our second year at this awesome and inspiring event. There were many firsts in this 21st gathering, now closely associated with the name of Robert Eads, a transman who died 13 years ago in Georgia because not one doctor would agree to treat his ovarian cancer. Eads’ case was internationalized with the release of the 2001 documentary film Southern Comfort, which received awards at the Sundance, Seattle, and Berlin film festivals. Talking to some social workers from Japan, I found his cause and the American trans movement is known in Asia as, simply, Eads. Just now, the CAP 21 Theatre Company in Manhattan is presenting a new musical, Southern Comfort, based on the 2001 documentary.

Southern Comfort was featured last year in Chaz Bono‘s history making documentary, Becoming Chaz, about his transition from Cher and Sonny Bono’s daughter Chastity to the Chaz he always knew he was. Bono attended last year’s conference and met many of us, and at the same time has emerged as a fierce advocate for trans and equality rights. This year he called into the Saturday night gala to say hello to everyone by phone, saying he couldn’t be there this year because he’s in training for his groundbreaking appearance on TV’s popular Dancing With The Stars.

This year, Southern Comfort broke all attendance records and must be credited with bringing together the largest gathering of trans men ever, 60 among a crowd of nearly 1000 dominated by feminist expression. Noteworthy to the media was the first-ever joint seminar with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA) that comprised Southern Comfort’s last day.

You can call this one of the happiest week in the calendar, where all these segments get together in an environment of safety, acceptance, and celebration. It is the courageous lives of these most tolerant, compassionate, relatively highly educated people on the front lines of obtaining full legal equality and the freedom they deserve to live their lives as they choose and in peace. It’s the happiest because it’s a taste of a world totally free from sexual oppression, free from government interference, man-made religious precept, and outdated social customs and discrimination. While the questions we wrestle with often disable an otherwise productive unity of purpose among this most select community of gender benders, every encounter leads to more shared understanding of what we are fighting for.

For this and many other reasons we are trying to get an online national conversation going about building trans unity and trans leadership. Together we can bring the rest of the world to understand that gender freedom is a crucial and unfairly maligned gateway to creativity, truth, and love. Together we can move the political debate forward, influence state and federal policy and lawmaking, and bring about trans-inclusive legislation that will save so many lives.

We welcome guest bloggers and cross-posts, or just leave a comment here or on Facebook or Twitter. Let us know what you are doing to educate and advocate for trans equality. If you work with one or more organizations, are they making trans rights a priority? What will bring about comity among superficially different segments of the trans community? What are the shared policy priorities that will have a universal appeal, not only in the gay and trans community, but to all Americans and citizens abroad?”