BREAKING: 'Transgender' excluded from ENDA

[Ashley]

http://www.bilerico.com/2007/09/gues...ssman_fran.php

Maybe you think this doesn't effect you, but if you're trans you should be absolutely pissed right now.

Basically...

Due to a lack of votes, representative Barney Frank decided to split the once comprehensive equal rights bill into two distinct parts.

The ENDA bill (Employment NonDiscrimination Act) without trans-inclusion will be marked up by the chamber’s Education and Labor Committee next Tuesday so that it can be sent it to the House floor for a vote.

The other one, GENDA if you will, will move on a separate track and will be most certainly killed.

...

This is terrible.

It would be 2-5 years before the Congress would be able to pass a trans-inclusive ENDA, but it will be decades before a transgender-only bill will pass.

Even in San Francisco, only 25% of transgender people have full-time jobs. Our GLB "allies" have betrayed us.

[Ashley]

...Oh and even after taking out trans protection it will still be called the "Employment Non-Discrimination Act". Cause, ya know, trans people aren't real people, so when you fire them for being a tranny it's not real discrimination.

[Ashley]

CymruInstinct:

Yeah. It sells out our friends so a select few can reap the rewards.

The fact still remains:

Transgender people are the ones in MOST need of protection. Many, if not most, Fortune 500 companies already cover sexual orientation in their employment policies.

This person said it best:

The gay rights movement was founded by the transgender community - the "impersonators" from Compton's and the "drag queens" from Stonewall - not the cissexual gay men and women who will reap benefit from the revised ENDA. Make no mistake, the transgender community wants these men and women to receive these benefits. They are our family, our brothers and our sisters. We have fought for their concerns and their rights as fiercely as we have fought for our own. We don't, however, want to be excluded from these benefits at the same time they receive them. After all, what are we? Subhuman? Less deserving of employment or self respect? What have we been fighting for if not basic human rights? What do we want that is more elaborate than the right to exist with common dignity?

[Shining Star]

Never really liked Barney Frank, and not that this is all his idea, it is yet another example of how the gay agenda, especially the upper classes of white gay Americans are intent on getting theirs even if they have to let others go by the wayside.


Here is my personal take on this "movement":

Since this country was founded, white males, in particular WASP males have be top dogs. However once they come out as homosexual, they drop down in the rankings and join the rest of us working in the fields, always longing to get back into the big house where they "belong".

If you are the average minority gay person, you have more problems than worrying about weather or not you and your partner can legally marry and all that entails (children, legal transfer of property, tax, immigration benefits and the whole other bag of tricks). However the white gay male who goes to Yale or Harvard, and wants to be a partner at a white shoe law firm may run into some problems. They cannot put him off because of his education,background or any of the other "things", because he is "one of them", except he is gay. So slowly we have all these laws turning sexual preference into a protected class because gays claim it is just like when blacks fought for civil rights as they cannot "help" what they are. Never mind homosexuality was removed from being a mental disease over 30 or so years ago now, and is called a "preference".

Anywho, this sort of thing has played out in many states where gay rights bills passed, including New York State. Gays fought there for over 20 years to get a bill passed into law, and when it came down to getting something passed into law that did NOT include transgender, the gay power brokers stated the same thing: "oh it's no problem, we can add transgender at a later date". Well it has been several years and somehow that has not happened. I suspect if this Federal bill ever passes, the results will be the same.

It is no secret many gays, especially those in certian areas of that society do not like nor really care for anything remotely transgender. This was true back in the 1980's and has not changed that much.

Suspect the gays will get their law, if not now then when the next president comes in 2009. The rest of us will be left out in the cold, once again.

[BrendaQG]

Gay's like Frank are almost as bad of an enemy as the religious right.

Looks like to get a fair shake I may have to go to a foreighn country. The USA is at it's base still in the stone age when it comes to transsexuality.

But gays and religious people are not the only ones to blame.

I BLAME THE TRANSGENDERED ACTIVIST! THEY HAVE MADE A WORSE IMPRESSION ON THE PUBLIC MIND THAN ALL THE STREET WALKERS AND EROS HUSTLERS COMBINED! I mean they have gone out of their way to protray a positive media image. They have done their best to make all media visible transsexuals are doctors and lawyers, and race car drivers, whith fat tax exempt 401k's and nice houses. While at the same time being presentationally inept! What has it got us? A country that resents transsexuals so much that we are the most maligned minority. People who's image is one of power privilage and self determined choice. A image that makes the question of transsexual employment one of keeping suits from getting fired instead of young people scratching to survive.

To the activist I will say bravo and thanks. If I get beat to death by a john, because I cannot get a good job due to discrimination, I know he will get 3 consecutive life sentences instead of two.

[SarahG]

I would think that the general public associates GID with the fetishist components alleged by certain figures, proliferated by certain fringe individuals within the community, and stereotypical images of late nonpassing transistioners vastly more than a notion of us all being rich, accomplished professionals with extensive nest eggs...

But otherwise, I agree it appears that much has been spent in the wrong direction, ignoring bigger issues.

Granted, the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend. The only thing we have in common with the lgb groups are those that would do us harm... alliances are based on self interest, not sacrifice in the name of other groups.

Not that this measure would have done much at the end of the day anyway. Employers have always had great liberty to fire or refuse to hire those whom they dislike, its easy enough... all bills such as these accomplish is a polite false facade in which superiors find unrelated justifications for getting rid of undesirables without just being up front and expressing their predispositions. The threat of wrongful termination suits may, vaguely help those already in positions prior to transitioning from being discarded, but its not going to do a thing for someone having transitioned prior to entering the workforce with mixed identification papers and other red flags.

[dan_drade]

I heard about that the other day and that really sucks. Apparently, even those on the left were scared to support a nondiscrimination act that supports Transsexuals. The problem is that they are all scared of the religious right, The fear is that they will protest and say that Trans people perverts (as if no one in the religious right is a pervert. What a fucking joke that is). They think those religious freaks will say that if trans pepole are included that male teachers will go to school in miniskirts and bras and molest all the little boys and girls and not be able to be fired from their jobs. Hmmmm, isnt that what a lot of perverts that belong to the religios right already do? I guess it's ok for them since they do it behind closed doors. Now I say that in jest a little bit, but the bottom line is that is the fear.

Transgendered pepole need this protection more than gays and lesbians in my opinion and it really sucks that they have been excluded. I know too many girls who's legitimate working livelyhood has been destroyed just because they have decided to transition.

Frank figures that if the act only pertains to gays and lesbians it will be far less threatening to those on the right and will more likely be passed. The reality of it is that it is a joke. Everyone knows that the religious right has just as many closet faggots and perverted crossdressers and any other group of so called straight people. Maybe someday everyone will see that and not give a shit what the far right thinks.

[Nowhere]

Ok, this post might be controversial, but I believe it is in the TS Community's best interest to quit being associated with the gay community and, especially to stop relying on them for protection of rights.

It's fairly clear by now that they've really had no interest in the betterment of the TS Community at all. There may have been some coincidental alliances back in the days of stonewall, but that is long in the past.

People clearly know that most gays consider the girls "gay men in denial" and most lesbians consider the girls as "men with a fetish" which neither hold an iota of respect for, or even belief in them being women, as they are.

Oh, they may act politically correct and pretend otherwise, and there may be limited support due to everyone being traditionally under the same umbrella, but I think, at best, they don't really care.

What I also believe is that, intentionally or not, they've made a point to promote their negative beliefs of the girls in many not-so-obvious ways. For example, their support (and involvement) of the drag community consistantly makes girls be not seen as true women, but as parodies of themselves - spectacles of femininity, yes - but always exaggerated and with a touch of "man", forever keeping the reminder that they are "amazing, but not women at the end of the day."

They have teams of people to bring hate crimes to the front of media, at their beacon call, but they somehow never do it for the girls, who have a far, far higher frequency of it, than others. The only ones that have made it through the media (like Gwen Araujo) have done so by the efforts of the TS Community itself, not them. Miriam, who had a TV show, for God's sake - didn't get her crime covered, at all.

So, I think this is just expected and should be yet another example of why the TS Community should stop associating themselves with the gay community and realize that they must fend for themselves.

The best and only way acceptance will come about is by showing how they are simply women, the same as everyone else. And, that means having girls that are extremely passable, in the media as much as possible, not remotely associated with the gay community at all. As long as they are associated with anything that is reinforcing the idea that they are "not women" they will not make progress, at all.

The earlier people in the TS Community learn this and accept this fact, the better.

[Shining Star]

What this in fact all boils down to is quite simple:

The gay agenda has been for some time now to show the world how "normal" they are and represent no threat to the established order. We own homes, have/are raising children, and now marry, etc, etc, so goes the argument. There are many qays who avoid "Pride" marches, and "circut" parties because there is no need to show their lifestyle from the roof-tops.

Apparently a man sleeping with a man is normal, while a man wishing to change to the opposite sex is "wrong" and "weird", thus why rock the boat. If they can get the win by selling "those men in dresses" down the river, so be it.

Slowly over the years in many areas there has been a breaking off of the gay/lesbian movement from transgender, especially, IMHO as gays move into the main stream of acceptance. Choose any Sunday New York Times wedding section and you will see happy gay couples happily annoucing their "marriages" or "commitments". They are doctors, lawyers, hedge fund managers, stock brokers, graphic designers, owners of companies, and so forth. Meanwhile as often pointed out, transgendered persons can and are often fired from their jobs, denied employment, harassed, mocked, beaten, and generally regarded as freaks.

As Bille Holiday sings: Thems Dat Got Shall Get

[Nowhere]

What this in fact all boils down to is quite simple:

The gay agenda has been for some time now to show the world how "normal" they are and represent no threat to the established order. We own homes, have/are raising children, and now marry, etc, etc, so goes the argument. There are many qays who avoid "Pride" marches, and "circut" parties because there is no need to show their lifestyle from the roof-tops.

Apparently a man sleeping with a man is normal, while a man wishing to change to the opposite sex is "wrong" and "weird", thus why rock the boat. If they can get the win by selling "those men in dresses" down the river, so be it.

Slowly over the years in many areas there has been a breaking off of the gay/lesbian movement from transgender, especially, IMHO as gays move into the main stream of acceptance. Choose any Sunday New York Times wedding section and you will see happy gay couples happily annoucing their "marriages" or "commitments". They are doctors, lawyers, hedge fund managers, stock brokers, graphic designers, owners of companies, and so forth. Meanwhile as often pointed out, transgendered persons can and are often fired from their jobs, denied employment, harassed, mocked, beaten, and generally regarded as freaks.

As Bille Holiday sings: Thems Dat Got Shall Get

I think that attitude is further proof on how i'm right with this.

If the gay community cared about the TS community, they would have made efforts to make their lives be perceived as "normal" to the rest of the world, in spite of prejudices, just the same as themselves.

They'd care that they're making strides while the TS Community is left in the dark ages.

They'd not leave them behind.

Simple as that.