Queerty has a post on it, and right on cue the transphobic comments from GL peeps started flowing.
And from the aforementioned Queerty comment section is Nancy Nangeroni explaining what's up with the Massachusetts Trans Rights Bill.
I can’t take the time to read all this right now, but here’s what really happened:
We did not drop PA in order to “get Republican Support”. We did not drop PA at all.
However, our allies in the State House informed us that the bill as written was dead, and that the only bill that could pass this session was a bill without PA. We pushed back, HARD. But in the end, it was take what we could get, or nothing at all for at least several years. Faced with that choice, we told them to get what they could for us. Which our Steering Committee unanimously decided was the better of two bad choices.
We have commitments from our allies to keep fighting until we also get PA coverage. In the meantime, what happened to Chanelle Pickett, a black transwoman, is less likely to happen again. She was forced out of her job after someone outed her to her supervisor; unable to find work, she slid into a risky lifestyle and, especially vulnerable as a trans woman of color, was murdered by a known tranny chaser. Because he was white and she was black and trans, he got off with 2 years for A&B. That is real racism at work, and that is where our attention needs to be focused, not against one another.
I share your frustration that we had to accept this incomplete protection. But the real story here is about an opposition well-funded from out of state, that made it impossible to pass a bill that included public accommodations.
Moving forward, we will do our best to come up with a strategy to fight this pernicious force of ignorance and irresponsibility. In the meantime, it would be nice not to be torn down by other members of our community for not having the magic ability to pass a law against powerful opposition.
Nancy Nangeroni
Chair, Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition
Nancy, I'm well aware of Chanelle Pickett's story, which is one of the reasons why I was motivated to call out MTPC's behinds about the revolting development on this unjust trans law in the first place.
But I'm going to ask another question that inquiring trans minds like mine wanna know. Just how hard did MTPC push back to get a comprehensive trans rights bill?
Did anyone in MTPC publicly take your fellow white Bay Stater Elizabeth Hungerford to task over her transphobic paper that she and her partner in transphobia penned to the UN? Have you aggressively debunked the 'Bathroom Bill' lie and counterattacked MassResistance with the same ferocity they attack you with?
Has MTPC called out your local and state GL transphobes or the legislators who are actively opposing you as quickly as you are responding to my post and accusing me of 'tearing you down'?
Gee, didn't realize I had the power to tear the Massachusetts Trans Political Coalition down with a single critical blog post.
And since you mentioned it, I would rather have the story of my late transsister Chanelle Pickett used in conjunction with passing a comprehensive trans rights bill, not an unjust one that is useless without PA language in it.
Who are the outside forces making life difficult for y'all? I'm aware of the fact you have MassResistance, transphobic GL peeps, and phobic elements of the Catholic Church in your backyard. Who are the other members of the Forces of Intolerance arrayed against you in Massachusetts and opposing passage of long delayed and denied civil rights coverage for transpeople?
If the trans community here in Texas can kill a transphobic bill in a state legislature with a Republican supermajority in the House and a Republican Senate one senator short of that status, what's the story in why in the historic cradle of trans rights activism, you can't get a comprehensive trans rights bill through a legislature with Democratic supermajorities in both houses and to the desk of a Democratic governor in Deval Patrick who is willing to sign it?
Nancy, you know I have a lot of respect for you and the people in Massachusetts. Me commenting about and asking why all of a sudden PA got dropped from a previously comprehensive trans rights bill is not 'tearing you down'. You need to cease and desist with that 'horizontal hostility ' nonsense.
You and everyone in this trans community in the States and around the world know that I support comprehensive trans rights legislation with legal teeth that will FIX the problems that ail us, not kick the can down the road five, ten, twenty years from now.Nor do I want useless legislation passed that gets pointed to as a win, but will be worthless in court when Massachusetts transpeople need to access the legal system to redress trans discrimination aimed at us.
If that means I have to call out foes and friends to point out that passing comprehensive trans human rights coverage is a just and morally correct position, so be it.
The questions that I posed in yesterday's post I'll ask again. .
If civil rights laws without public accommodations language are not acceptable for cispeople, then why should transpeople be satisfied with a human rights crumb of an unjust law that cispeople wouldn't accept or want to live by?
And if cispeople and legislators in Massachusetts don't want to live by the same laws they are trying to get transpeople to accept, it is an unjust law.
And I'm not going to stop pointing that out, even if I'm the only one standing up and doing so.
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