Sunday May 7, 1916
From the International Socialist Review: "Hands 'Round the World"
Loretta Lynch spoke with Buzzfeed's Chris Gender on Friday on a range of issues, including transgender protections.
Lynch’s Justice Department is one of the key agencies advancing that Obama administration position — first adopted by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — that sex discrimination bans for the workplace and schools should be read to include a ban on anti-transgender discrimination, including allowing people to use restrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
A crowd of about 150 people opposed to Initiative 1515 gathered in Renton, WA on Thursday. I-1515, which will need 246,000 valid signatures by July 8 to be on the November ballot,
would amend the Law Against Discrimination to state that, with exceptions, covered public and private entities may restrict access to "private facilities" to "biologically" male or female individuals regardless of their gender identity and limit state and local regulations governing gender-identity discrimination. It requires that public-school bathrooms and locker rooms open to multiple people. be sex segregated, and authorizes lawsuits against schools that grant students access to those facilities based on gender identity.
On Monday the US Commission on Civil Rights called the "bathroom bills" recently passed in North Carolina and Mississippi "discriminatory and potentially dangerous."
North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory recently signed into law H.B. 2, legislation blocking local governments from passing anti-discrimination rules that grant protections to gay and transgender persons. The law also repeals existing municipal anti-discrimination laws which protected LGBT people from bias in housing and employment. Critically, the new legislation also forces transgender people to utilize public bathrooms and changing facilities based on the sex issued on their birth certificates, and not according to their gender identities. This jeopardizes not only the dignity, but also the actual physical safety, of transgender people whose appearances may not match societal expectations of the sex specified on their identification documents.
In Mississippi, Governor Phil Bryant recently signed HB 1523 into law. The new statute is far- reaching and allows people with “religious objections” to deny wedding services to same-sex couples. It also clears the way for employers to cite religion in determining workplace policies on dress code, grooming and bathroom access. The physical safety concerns for transgender people are the same as in North Carolina.
Kyle Knight and Neela Goshal have written an interesting essay on the rights...or lack of same...of transgender people around the world.
The process is as universal as it gets: when a baby is born, a doctor, parent, or birth attendant announces the arrival of a “girl” or “boy.” That split-second assignment dictates multiple aspects of our lives. It is also something that most of us never question.
But some people’s gender evolves differently, and might not fit rigid traditional notions of female or male.
That should have no bearing on whether someone can enjoy fundamental rights. But for transgender people it does—to a humiliating, violent, and sometimes lethal degree.
Lane Moore gets to the root of the matter at Cosmopolitan: Why Do So Many Laws Protect Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual People, but Not Transgender People?
When I posted about the report of the UK parliament's Committee on Women and Equality from the parliamentary inquiry into discrimination against transgender people in education, health and criminal justice ten days ago, backlash had yet to coalesce. It stood to reason there would be some, but it was not known for certain from whence it would come.
Maria Miller, chair of the committee, probably expected attacks from right-wingers in her Conservative party. But Miller says they have remained largely silent.
[T]he former Culture secretary said she was taken aback by the “extraordinary” hostility from a minority of women “purporting to be feminists.”
Deluxe Financial Services, Inc. is a check printing company. Britney Austin used to work at their Phoenix call center. Then she informed her supervisors that she would be transitioning from male to female. Her managers and co-workers proceeded to shower her with harassment and offensive slurs. The company refused to let her use the women's restroom and refused to change her name and sex on employment records, saying she would have to complete gender confirmation surgery first.
Then Austin's attempts to utilize the company health plan for medically necessary health care were denied even though the company claimed it was a requirement before they would change the documents.
When the company laid off employees at that location, which has since closed, Austin argued, the company denied her severance pay and COBRA benefits.
That's why it's reserved for cisgender people.
Jamison Green is president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), formerly the Harry Benjamin Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA). He has a new book out now, Making the Case for Transgender Health and Rights.
Jamison spoke Monday at the Capitol Hill Library to a capacity crowd.
In a federal district court in Pennsylvania there is an ongoing challenge to the transgender exclusion in the Americans with Disabilities Act. Passed in 1990 the ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of a medical or mental condition but includes the Helms Amendment, along with a portion of the original act included in hopes of enticing support from the extreme right, which some call the "moral code": the act excludes from protection "transvestism, transsexualism, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, and other sexual behavior disorders
Kate Lynn Blatt was hired as a seasonal stocker at Cabela’s Retail in the fall of 2006, according to allegations in the complaint. Before starting her job, she attended a two-day orientation dressed in female attire, and used the women’s employee restroom without issue. Once she started working, however, Blatt was prohibited from using the women’s restroom and was forced to wear a name tag depicting her name as “James,” even after she presented the director of human resources with documentation of her legal name change.
Blatt claims her colleagues called her “ladyboy,” “freak,” and “sinner.” Cabela’s made Blatt use the single-sex “family” restroom at the front of the store, rather than the female employee restroom closer to her work area, according to the complaint. Blatt claims she endured harassment from management and coworkers, and was abruptly terminated in March 2007.
