The mc donalds incident was not racially motivated!

[natina]

It was centered around an under aged girl and a 22 who here we know they are thought to have been transgendered,was characterized as a male in the womens rest room with an under aged girl present.

Sadly they beat the transgender


The Bathroom Battle

http://www.baltimoregaylife.com/opin...m-battle.shtml

When you are transgender and fighting for rights, it all comes down to one thing: The bathroom. It sounds ridiculous to me that my need to be treated as an equal in this world, and have the same rights as everyone else ends up always boiling down to potty politics.

On a personal level, it's one of the first things any transgender woman has to deal with in the workplace, as that Human Resources person tries to find them a place to do their business that won't cause troubles with the rest of their employees. The question, "which bathroom does you use?" becomes one every transperson comes to hate. The public restroom is the place we feel the most threatened—and yes, the place where we may well threaten others simply by being there.
That last point is one the religious Right and other extreme anti-GLBT groups have latched onto, seeing it as an easy way to target transgender rights. They see this as our Achilles' heel. They may well be right, at least in the short term.
A March 26th scare letter from Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family cited four "reports" they fielded of men in women's restrooms or locker rooms. Referring specifically to SB 200 in Colorado, Focus on the Family argues that said bill opened the door for "peeping toms" to legally be able to use the women's room to spy on your wives and daughters. They, of course, want your money to keep such a thing from happening elsewhere.
That same day, a bill that would add gender identity and gender expression to New Hampshire's existing anti-discrimination statues failed by 15 votes. In addition to arguments about male prisoners suddenly becoming female to get into women's prisons from State Representative Nancy Elliott, the specter of predators in the restroom was again raised.
I find it interesting that both this and SB-200 were dubbed "the bathroom bill" by their opponents. In both cases, the bills were more about housing and employment protections than bathrooms.
This is what it all boils down to. We can talk about the importance of our rights. We can talk about our need to be treated fairly in the workplace. We can make our best points about discrimination. Yet, if we cannot make a truly convincing counter to this tired, old "male predators in the ladies' room" cliche, we'll continue to encounter troubles like what we saw in New Hampshire.
Transgender people are, of course, not the first people to deal with this. Threats of gay and lesbian predators in the bathrooms has been a longstanding scare tactic, and before that it was African-Americans and other people of color who were viewed as a threat in the restroom. People don't like to be caught with their pants down, so much so that there's a saying about being caught with your pants down. It's considered a time of vulnerability. When those using this member evoke threats of male predators attacking women—especially the wives and daughters of their constituents—it becomes a very potent weapon. People forget their logic, and go straight into emotion.
Note, of course, that they never consider that female to male individuals would be in the men's room—after all, FTMs don't tend to exist in this scenario of theirs—nor do they acknowledge that the "men" they're referring to are not likely male to female transsexuals and others who simply want to pee in peace.
How do we counter this? I'm not sure. For one, we need to make it clear, from the start, that such bills are not about letting "men in women’s rooms." We need to address the concern succinctly, but explain just as clearly that such bill will not remove any existing protections against assault or harassment.
I feel that we also need to make it clear that those using such arguments are being disingenuous at best, and fraudulent at worse. They know that the issue is not about who should be in what bathroom, but are fabricating a strawman argument.
Finally, as always, we need to take control of the debate. We need to make it clear that this is about equal rights, not some misguided quest that will open the bathroom stalls to predatory behavior.
There is one recent fight that did not go the way of New Hampshire. Amendment 1 in Gainesville, Florida was defeated just days before the loss in New Hampshire. This bill would have repealed a number of LGBT anti-discrimination protections. Indeed, it not only would have repealed existing protections, but also sought to forbid the city from adding any additional protected classes not already in the Florida Civil Rights Act.
Yet again, those who favor the loss of rights for LGBT people brought out the bathroom issue. They even made a commercial around this cliche, archived on youtube at . In it, you'll see just what you expect: A young, caucasian, blonde-haired girl goes into the public restroom at the park. A decidedly male individual follows her in, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap to hide his identity. Then up on the screen come the words, "On January 28, 2008, your City Commission made this legal. Is this what you want in Gainesville?"
Unlike in New Hampshire, Amendment 1 failed. Perhaps the bill was simply too broad, or the town was too open-minded to let this pass, but we know that the bathroom argument is not ironclad.

[natina]

Losing the ‘Bathroom Bill’ argument without a fight


http://lgbtweekly.com/2011/02/24/los...thout-a-fight/

It seems that whenever a civil rights movement has fought in the United States, the battles have included public restrooms. From the segregated restrooms of the Jim Crow south, to the “unisex bathroom” arguments used in the fight against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), to even the repeal legislation for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), the public restroom has been used as an essential feature for fighting back against civil rights.
When it comes to transgender people and the issues of antidiscrimination protections for employment and housing, as well as the issue of antidiscrimination protections with regards to public accommodation, the LGBT community has ceded the ground on social conservatives’ and the religious right’s arguments of “men in dresses” using women’s public restrooms – their argument that has been shortened to the “bathroom bill.”
We, as a broad community, have given up trying to battle the “bathroom bill” argument.
We in the LGBT community ceded the battle space on bathrooms. We didn’t lose the “bathroom bill” argument; we never fought the argument like it needs to be fought.
The key points in battling the “bathroom bill” argument by social conservatives and those on the religious right, are these:
• The “bathroom bill” argument is an argument that assumes transgender women are really men, and that men are predators in women’s restrooms and locker rooms.
• “Fill-in the blank social conservative/religious right organization” has not presented even one case of a transgender woman – someone they identify as a “man in a dress” – engaging in predatory behavior in a public restroom.
• For the “fill-in the blank” “bathroom bill” argument to be anything but fear mongering, “fill-in the blank” needs to show firstly, that bathroom predation by transgender women is occurring frequently in public bathrooms, and secondly, for the “fill-in the blank’s” argument to be a valid argument, they need to prove that alleged bathroom predation occurs more frequently in states and localities that have antidiscrimination laws for transgender people more frequently than in states and localities without antidiscrimination laws for transgender people.
And then it needs to be followed up with some pithy summarizing statement, in the vein of: When it comes to this “bathroom bill” argument, it’s not “show us the money,” but instead this organization needs to “show us the bathroom predation.” And, you can’t send that message by a press release. To work, it would need direct action.
An example of a direct action would be the one used by transgender people who attended Seattle’s transgender conference Gender Odyssey in a 2007 protest against the Pacific Place Mall. Essentially, two female-to-male, transgender men were humiliated in a mall restroom one day and then on the next day the Gender Odyssey attendees held sit-ins in the mall’s restrooms to change the mall policy. It worked.
So I’d call that bathroom antidiscrimination model the “Gender Odyssey Model.” Adding to that basic model, there’d be a sit-in spokesperson who would rattle off the talking points and pithy summary I highlighted above.
And, of course, which restrooms that group targets would be really important. My choice of targets for these sit-ins would be:
• The headquarters’ restrooms of the social conservative/religious right organizations’ that are making “bathroom bill” arguments.
• Legislator and congressmembers’ office bathrooms.
These sit-ins, preferably including both transgender people and their LGBT community allies, would be, by necessity, direct actions that could end in the arrest of the participants.
There is a big problem with this model though. Very few in the LGBT community today take their own freedom, equality and justice as seriously as suffragists, black civil rights movements and feminist activists. We, as a group, in the LGBT community seem not willing to sacrifice for civil rights. As a community, we’ve apparently lost the burning desire for civil rights. We’ve lost the ideals that Cesar Chavez expressed about civil rights and direct action:
“…there has to be someone who is willing to do it, who is willing to take whatever risks are required. I don’t think it can be done with money alone. The person has to be dedicated to the task. There has to be some other motivation.”
LGBT community members have a moderate equal rights agenda that apparently needs radical strategies and tactics. If we don’t again embrace, as civil rights activists before us have, radical strategies and tactics, I believe we tacitly accept the inequalities of our LGBT lives, as compared to those in broader society.
In my opinion, we in the LGBT community need to stop thinking in boxes and stop ceding battle space to our community enemies, such as the battle space over transgender public restroom use. We need to start thinking in terms of the Gender Odyssey Model.

[natina]

[BellaBellucci]

This is simple. If you want to be taken seriously as a female (and you are not 'passable'), act like one and GET YOUR LICENSE CHANGED (or a doctor's letter if your jurisdiction doesn't allow gender changes yet)! People are much more sympathetic to a person who can prove that they are actually going through gender transition than they are of someone who looks, acts, and identifies as a man in women's clothing (except in the hood it seems). It's sad but true... but probably necessary. It's the Emily Howard syndrome.

~BB~

[Willie Escalade]

I agree, but...

If it's a black person harming anyone in this manner, it's racial. That's how the majority of the world will see it. They see the attackers' race first; the attacked person's gender status, race, weight, etc second.

Once people are set in their ways...

[natina]

http://www.toledofreepress.com/2009/...or-gay-rights/







Local woman fights for gay rights

Written by Allison Wingate | | news@toledofreepress.com

Toledo resident Brandi Fasnaugh said the fight for equality goes beyond this month.
June marks national Gay and Lesbian Pride month, a celebration of the impact gay lesbian and transgender persons have had on the world.
Brandi Fasnaugh

Fasnaugh said she tries not to let ignorant people faze her, but it’s hard to stay positive when she’s openly ridiculed.
One recent encounter with discrimination was in a bathroom in Columbus.
She was lobbying on behalf of Equality Ohio, an advocate group for gay and lesbian rights when a trip to the restroom led to a disheartening conversation.
“When I walked into the restroom, I could hear two women talking to each other between the stalls about someone who had been in the bathroom when they walked in earlier,” Fasnaugh said.
They commented on that woman’s “masculine appearance” and how it made them uncomfortable. One of the women looked right at Fasnaugh as they continued the conversation and stated that women like her should use the men’s restroom.
Feeling ashamed and embarrassed, Fasnaugh initially decided to internalize her pain. But when a colleague noticed something was wrong, she was encouraged to speak out.
“My shock and upset then turned into frustration, as well as a renewed sense of why the Equal Housing and Employment Act (EHE) is such a fundamental component for the everyday life of all citizens regardless of sexual orientation,” Fasnaugh said.
“One can be denied access to housing, employment and even public accommodations based simply on who they love and what they look like,” Fasnaugh said.
Kim Welter, program manager for Education & Outreach for Equality Ohio, said what happened to Fasnaugh is a prime example of how some people think it is acceptable to behave that way.
“Most of us figure what’s right and wrong, for the most part, by what’s legal and illegal,” Welter said. “By passing the EHE Act, that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to that list of conditions upon which you cannot discriminate.” That’s kind of the start, and if people knew that these things were illegal, I think they’d think twice before they behaved that way,” Welter said.


http://www.toledofreepress.com/2009/...or-gay-rights/

[Tepres]

http://www.toledofreepress.com/2009/...or-gay-rights/

[natina]

http://new.bangordailynews.com/2011/...tional-debate/


Bill on transgendered restroom use draws heated, emotional debate


Russ Dillingham | AP
Jennifer Levi, transgender rights project director for Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, addresses the Judiciary Committee Tuesday, in Augusta as they took up a bill to let businesses, schools and other agencies make their own decisions on who should use their restrooms and showers. Two adjacent rooms were filled with people on both sides of the issue patiently waiting to weigh in on the proposed bill

AUGUSTA, Maine — A bill concerning transgendered people’s right to choose which restroom they use generated heated debate at a public hearing Tuesday.
Dozens of people gave impassioned, emotional testimony on LD 1046, which would allow the operator of a restroom or shower facility to decide who can use which gender’s restroom.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kenneth Fredette, R-Newport, served on the Maine Human Rights Commission when it decided that Orono schools and an Auburn Denny’s Restaurant discriminated against transgendered females by not allowing them to use women’s restrooms. Fredette vocalized his dissent against the ruling then and again at Tuesday’s meeting of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee.
A transgendered person generally is considered someone of one biological sex who identifies himself or herself as belonging to the opposite gender.
According to Fredette, his bill would prevent the Maine Human Rights Commission from being able to find that public and private entities discriminate when they force transgendered people to use restrooms that correspond with their biological sex, but not gender. This then would prevent those transgendered people from suing, as the people in the Orono schools and Denny’s situations did, Fredette argued.
“The concept here is there is not an absolute right for a transgender to go into the bathroom they identify with,” Fredette said in front of the overflowing crowd Tuesday. “We have to draw lines in this society so we balance rights with the rights of everyone else.”
For example, he said, “What situation do we put young children in when they go into a private place and then what they perceive to be the person of the opposite sex comes into that bathroom? That could be quite shocking.”
But Tuesday morning Fredette was by far in the minority. During approximately four hours of public testimony, 30 minutes was taken up by the people supporting Fredette’s bill.
People against the bill argued the rest of the time that the measure would cause discrimination and force people who look and act like women to use the men’s room, which would make most people involved feel unsafe or uncomfortable.
Wayne Maines was one of the first to speak against the bill.
“Like many of you I doubted transgender children could exist,” he said. “However I never doubted my love for my child.”
Maines’ 13-year-old daughter knew she was a girl at age 6, even though she’d been born a boy, he said. She was happy and her friends accepted her. But by fifth grade things got scary and the family had to “go into hiding” to protect the girl.
“‘She came to me crying and asked, ‘Daddy, what did I do wrong? Daddy, please fix this.’ That’s what dads do, we fix things. I had to break her heart and say, ‘You have not done anything wrong sweetie, but Mommy and I do not know how to fix this,’” Maines said Tuesday, crying. “This bill places transgender children in a position of doom and hopelessness.”
Several organizations spoke against the bill, including the Maine Civil Liberties Union.
The bill puts businesses and schools in the position of “trying to figure out what someone’s biological sex is and if they’re wrong they open themselves up to liability,” said MCLU executive director Shenna Bellows. “It places the decision on the business owner and it places them in danger of legal action from all sides.”
While many people discussed the precarious situation of restaurant owners, Dick Grotton of the Maine Restaurant Association stood up for them.
Grotten took neither side of the argument.
“We need guidelines that we can follow that help us to not break any laws or break anybody’s rights,” he said to the judiciary committee. “Please, give us some direction.”
About 10 people spoke in favor of the bill, including Gov. Paul LePage’s legal counsel, Dan Billings.
“The governor’s position is that [the current regulations] really put businesspeople in a bad position with the law,” Billings said. “When they’re presented with one of these situations you have to presume the [transgendered] person is acting in good faith and if you don’t presume that you open yourself up to litigation.”
As Sydney resident Tim Russell said, “[Current law] has created a legal access that predators can use in order to accost women and children in public restrooms.”
“It is impossible for young children and women to safely determine whether or not the man — dressed as a woman — is a peeping tom, a rapist or a pedophile; and to continue to permit such a scenario to legally exist is unconscionable and inviting disaster,” Russell said.

http://new.bangordailynews.com/2011/...tional-debate/

[natina]

http://www.concordmonitor.com/articl...r-transsexuals


Committee votes 5-0 against rights for transsexuals


Backers of legal protections for transgender people mounted an all-out campaign for widening New Hampshire's anti-discrimination laws yesterday, holding a press conference to present personal cases, turning out en masse for a Senate hearing on the bill and excoriating opponents who weeks ago dubbed the measure the "bathroom bill."
But their late push appeared to fall short: The Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously, 5-0, to recommend killing the bill, which would forbid landlords, employers and others from discriminating against transgender individuals. The whole Senate will vote on the bill as early as Wednesday, along with a raft of other social issues.
The vote followed hours of emotional testimony, including from several transgender people - people born into one biological sex but who identify with the other - who said they live in fear of losing their jobs or worse when they go public with their struggles over gender.
Toni Maviki of Danbury choked up as she described being "harassed verbally and physically assaulted" by fellow Carroll County corrections officers who found out she was a man becoming a woman.
"I carried a badge, and I protected all you people, and there was no law to protect me from harm," said Maviki, who said she now works in law enforcement in Vermont.
Sarah Blanchette of Somersworth read aloud the letter she received from her company shortly after she told her bosses that she's transgender. "Upon consideration, you are immediately relieved of your duties," she read.
Opponents of the bill said they feared the bill would give carte blanche to predators or mischievous men to enter women's bathrooms or locker rooms. Several weeks ago, House Bill 415 burst on the public stage, with opponents, mostly Republicans, blasting it as the "bathroom bill."
"I am here in 2009 as a woman fighting for my rights," said Ann Marie Banfield of Bedford at the hearing yesterday. "Where are my rights? Where are my daughter's rights? I'm angry."
Others said the concept of gender identity as separate from biological sex violates their core beliefs.
"This bill actually discriminates against those who believe gender neutrality is morally wrong," said Rachel Robinson, a pigtailed ninth-grader from New Boston.
Supporters of the bill fought back hard against the "bathroom" label. Co-sponsor Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, a Portsmouth Democrat, said opponents had brought "the debate literally to the toilet by frivolously nicknaming this bill the bathroom bill."
"These objections are outright lies," Fuller Clark said. Of all the 13 states and dozens of municipalities that passed similar laws over the past three decades, she said, there's been "not one reported instance of bathroom miscontact."
Fuller Clark cited the fact that the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence had come out for the bill, and she read from a letter co-signed by that group and the New Hampshire Women's Lobby.
The letter read in part: "We are saddened by those individuals and groups that are deliberately misleading legislators and the public by creating an unfounded fear about women's safety in connection with this legislation. Not only does this scare tactic detract from the very real issues of violence facing women in New Hampshire, it also ignores the serious threat to personal safety that many transgender and gender non-conforming people in New Hampshire experience on a daily basis."
Betsy Janeway of Webster told senators that one of her five children may be transgender. "I have enormous fears for her and pray for her," said Janeway, whose husband, Harold Janeway, is a state senator. "It is dangerous that there are no laws protecting her."
She urged people to read up on the matter - "close the bathroom door and open the library door."
All five members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against the bill, although Democrats on the committee spoke in favor of protections for transgender individuals

Sen. Matthew Houde, a Plainfield Democrat, said the bill had been "horrendously mischaracterized as something other than a nondiscrimination bill." He voted against the bill, saying he thinks the New Hampshire Commission for Human Rights - which judges cases of discrimination against factors such as sex, race and religion - already has the tools it needs to help transgender individuals.
Commission Executive Director Joni Esperian disagreed, telling senators that there are no state laws protecting transgender people and that the commission has been able to take only some cases of transgender individuals on the basis of a 1986 court case.
"It is a thread by which only one sector of the transgender population can seek the protection of the commission," Esperian said.
http://www.concordmonitor.com/articl...r-transsexuals

[natina]

http://womensenews.org/story/lesbian...hroom-politics


Lesbian and Transgender



Transgender Rights Run Into Bathroom Politics

By Shanelle Matthews
WeNews correspondent
Monday, April 28, 2008
A county ordinance in Maryland that protects transgender rights is facing a public referendum challenge in November. One transgender advocate says it looks like a test case for national opposition to the antidiscrimination push.

(WOMENSENEWS)--A new county ordinance in Maryland makes Elizabeth Hampton Brown worry about the opposition to transgender rights that might be lurking on the national level.
"It looks like Montgomery County in particular is a test case for the radical right," says Brown, director of policies and programs for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays in Washington, D.C. "Although this gives opportunity for education it brings people from out of state into a small area to question the will of the people in that area. This will definitely have an impact on gender identity legislation in other states. We are worried that this will be a trend across the country."
Less than 1 percent of the adult population is transgender, according to the Washington-based National Center for Transgender Equality, although there are no reliable statistics. Most transgender people face intense discrimination because their outward appearance is not consistent with gender stereotypes.
At least 93 cities and counties have passed laws prohibiting gender identity discrimination, including Phoenix, Atlanta, Louisville, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Dallas and Buffalo, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Montgomery County joined that list in November, when the county council overrode the objections of some of its members and added "gender identity" to the county's nondiscrimination code, which includes public accommodation, housing and taxi services.
The ordinance spurred an opposition group calling itself Citizens for Responsible Government into action. Members of the group had previously come together to fight local school initiatives to teach certain sexuality issues, such as gender transitions.
In March it spearheaded the gathering of 32,000 signatures--7,000 more than required--and delivered the petitions a week ahead to put a county referendum on the November ballot to overturn the ordinance.
Broader Benefit

Brown says the ordinance benefits more than the transgender community. "People can discriminate against you because you choose not to wear a dress," she says. "This law benefits both genders in that it helps people who do not fit what they're supposed to look like."
Citizens for a Responsible Government, however, says it could encourage pedophiles to enter public restrooms and locker rooms.
"We are concerned for the safety of women and children," says Michelle Turner, a spokesperson for Citizens for a Responsible Government. "Any man thinking that he has a particularly strong interest in women and children who are not related to him can put on make-up and a dress and wander into the women's restroom. It's ridiculous."
To support her point, Turner tells the story of a handful of women in a Maryland gym locker room who were frightened after being joined by a masculine individual in a blue ruffled skirt and make-up. "They immediately reached for towels and made a vocal complaint to the management who acknowledged they have transgender patrons but didn't understand why they used the women's facilities instead of the unisex showers," she says.
Turner says the ordinance should have stipulated that a person who has become female through surgery may use a women's bathroom but that individuals whose gender is more ambiguous can use family bathrooms.
"For those who have had reassignment surgery, I don't expect them to use bathrooms that are not correspondent with their private anatomy," Turner says. "But family bathrooms have been used by transgender people for years and that's fine."
Marked with a sign or a logo of a family grouping, family bathrooms have been introduced to a limited number of public facilities and were spurred in 1990 by the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. They are often used by people with disabilities, breastfeeding mothers, parents attending children of the opposite sex and transgender people.
As signatures for the ballot initiative were piling up, Montgomery County's council president, Michael Knapp, accused Citizens for a Responsible Government of spreading misinformation by telling people the ordinance meant they would have to share public bathrooms and showers with transgender people.
Safety and Privacy

But Ruth Jacobs, president of Citizens for a Responsible Government, insists the group is just trying to protect the safety and privacy of women and children.
"They will likely create another law of the same kind if this one is formally rejected," Jacobs told Women's eNews.
The ordinance says nothing about the use of public accommodations and does not restrict restaurants or other public venues from segregating those facilities by biological sex.
In a March press release Citizens for a Responsible Government said the lack of specific language about bathroom access meant that conflicts arising over the issue would wind up at the county's human rights commission, which is authorized to eliminate discrimination, prejudice, intolerance and bigotry in housing, recreation, education, health, employment and public accommodations.
Stephanie Seguin, acting president of the National Organization for Woman in Gainesville, Fla., where a similar ordinance has been passed, calls the bathroom-access concern a smokescreen for a more fundamental opposition to transgender people attaining stronger rights.
"I've personally had a fear of going into an empty bathroom," said Seguin, "but I don't think there is a big fear of being joined by a male-to-female transgender person."
Brown says activists against the ordinances are spreading the kind of false information that might increase nationally.
"People are concerned because of a lack of knowledge," says Brown. "We are here to educate people and with women that is particularly important."
Tactical Echo

Sandy Oestreich, founder and president of the Florida Equal Rights Alliance, says the argument about bathrooms echoes tactics used against the Equal Rights Amendment decades ago, when opponents said it would lead to unisex bathrooms. The ERA failed to gain enough state ratifications to pass before its 1982 deadline.
"I was there and I was a lot younger," said Oestreich. "I did a lot of marching. To tell you the truth, all of those things are so trivializing and inflammatory. I think we laughed them off just as we do today."
Brown says transgender people are making headway. She says that more and more people know someone who has transitioned between genders.
"We are seeing it in the news and pop-culture media. People need more information as transgender people are becoming more and more out and it is our job to give it to them," she says.
Jennifer Sager, a psychologist in private practice in Gainesville, says bathroom-access fears being expressed by Citizens for a Responsible Government may reflect a genuine misunderstanding of what transgender identity is.
"The transgender population has been using the appropriate bathroom for decades and no one has noticed," Sager said. "I've had male-to-female transgender clients who are pre-opt and pre-hormone who have been asked for tampons."
Shanelle Matthews is a Women's eNews intern and recent graduate of the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University.


http://womensenews.org/story/lesbian...hroom-politics