Unjust Tennessee Anti-Trans Bill Dies In Committee!

I was alerted by the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition to the introduction of an unjust bill aimed at our trans kids in the Volunteer State.   The latest attempt to legislate anti-trans hate, HB 2414, the Transgender Student Bathroom Harassment Act.was sponsored by Rep Susan Lynn (R- Mount Juliet).

Those of you who live in her district know what to do to her this November.  Vote her butt out of office.

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam (R) had also expressed concerned about what the unjust bill would do to imperil the state's Title IX education funding.

Thanks to the efforts of the TTPC, the Tennessee trans community, our fair minded allies, and the countless other folks who called, showed up for the meetings of the House Education Administration and Planning Subcommittee to urged the members of that committee to not go forward with that bill, your efforts were successful.

According to chatter and reports from multiple sources, I'm pleased to report that HB 2414 has died in committee!    A unanimous committee vote was taken to study it over the summer, effectively killing the bill.

 "Once again we saw today how meeting with trans young people changed hearts and minds," said ACLU Staff Attorney Chase Strangio in a statement.  "Our common humanity can unite us and we can push back against these costly and discriminatory impulses if we center those most affected."

" It is an exciting day in Tennessee and I am thankful for the brave young people who are making the world a better place for us all,." added Strangio.


As to what is happening with the unjust senate companion bill, SB 2737, we'll have to keep an eye on that to ensure it dies as well.

Congratulations to my Tennessee trans family for killing that unjust legislative attack on the humanity of our trans kids who live in the Volunteer State.

Andraya Williams Update

'Appears as though the CPCC peeps seem to think that if they keep stonewalling instead of coming to grips with the fact they have seriously screwed up by disrespecting Andraya and resolving the matter, this will all go away.'
--TransGriot, April 7, 2014   'Tired of Black TBLG Women Getting Harassed For Going To The Bathroom.'

Since it's been a little quiet in Charlotte concerning this case, decided to check in with Andraya to see if she's received justice yet from Central Piedmont Community College for their transphobic sins or are they doing what I suspected was their game plan back in April. 

She confirmed to me they were still stonewalling the situation.  CPCC has not apologized, nor made changes to their nondiscrimination policies to make them more inclusive for trans and gender variant students either.. 

Okay, so that's the way they want to play this.    For starters, here's the petition calling for CPCC to do the right thing, apologize, and take the necessary step to respect trans and gender non conforming students on campus.  

They can do it the easy way or have the legal hammed dropped upon them

But will be keeping an eye on this situation in Charlotte.

Attacking The 'All Transwomen Are Sex Workers' Meme

Now that Monica Jones has been found guilty of 'Walking While Black Trans' in Phoenix, the question that comes to my inquiring mind is what are we going to do about getting the word out about this injustice being aimed at her and frankly, all trans women of color at times?

Yes, it's easy for all of us to say that we stand with Monica Jones when this obvious injustice is being aimed at her.

But I just feel we need to do more.  I think we can start with a national, coordinated 'Walking While Trans' protest events next month before the May 28 sentencing date of Ms. Jones.  

We could have walks that lead to rallies decrying what happened to Ms Jones.  Put together a coordinated campaign that calls for an end to the 'Walking While Trans' profiling.

Since trans human rights issues are suddenly getting national and international media attention, let's use this moment to do more education about our trans lives. 

I believe we have been given another opportunity to attack and destroy another meme deployed against us that feeds into the unjust treatment being aimed at us.

It's the 'all transwomen are sex workers' meme.   

And before I get accused of pushing 'respectability politics' or attacking sex workers, let me make crystal clear that's not where I'm going with this post.  I am already quite aware of the fact that some of my trans sisters engaged in or still do engage in sex work to pay the bills.   I'm also quite aware that transphobia, racism and gender policing also play debatable levels of a role into the 'Walking While Trans' issue

What I'm focusing on in this post is attacking is the 'all transwomen are sex workers' meme that feeds into the 'Walking While Trans' harassment and arrests that are far too often aimed at transwomen of color.

In New York, the NYPD stop and frisk shenanigans were disproportionately aimed at Black and Latina trans women because in the cops minds, 'we're all potential prostitutes'    

In New Orleans trans women who are just minding their own business are routinely arrested and harassed by the city's police force on prostitution related charges.. 

The 'transwomen are sex workers' meme is also front and center in the ATL 'Queen of Mean' Peggy Denby's efforts to get a draconian law passed that would permanently banish persons convicted of a second prostitution arrest from Atlanta.  

That meme was on a drunk Kenneth Furr's mind when he propositioned a transwoman in a northwest Washington DC CVS store.  It led to an ugly incident in which he ended up firing shots from his police  service pistol at the vehicle the trans women were traveling in. 

There's also a  2012 study by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) that found transgender people across the United States experience three times as much police violence as cisgender individuals.  Not surprisingly to moi, those numbers are even higher for transgender people of color.  

Even when transgender people were the victims of hate crimes, 48 percent reported receiving mistreatment from the police when they went for help.

So in order to confront the Walking While Trans issue plaguing the community, we will have to attack the superstitions and myths that undergird it. 

One of the major ones buttressing it that needs to be destroyed is the 'all transwomen are sex workers' meme.

The Assault On The ATL Trans Community Continues

Our trans elder Cheryl Courtney-Evans continues to be on the case watching Peggy Denby AKA 'The Queen of Mean' and her acolytes in the MPSA (Midtown Ponce Security Alliance) continue to attack, denigrate and harass the ATL trans community and push for a draconian (and probably unconstitutional) ordinance that would banish people from Atlanta for a second prostitution arrest.

The MPSA is now enlisting conservative leaning blogs to help with their 'fear and trans smear' campaign aimed at the ATL trans community in order to drum up support for their unjust ordinance.

Here's Cheryl breaking it down for you and her previous posts about the ongoing drama.

***

With these meetings going on, all the while Peggy and her MPSA continue their campaign against the transgender community via constant media attacks in so-called "finger on the pulse of the community" blogs  and online communications through their web site. Following is one such example from a local blog called the "Midtown Patch" which professes to keep the Atlanta community informed of the 'happenings of midtown Atlanta'. Titled "MPSA Gives Update on Midtown's Trans-Prostitute Gangs", posted by Marc Richarson (Editor), it supposedly details the actions of  'trans-prostitutes'. To give an indication that the MPSA uses strongly derogatory terms in reference to our trans* community, the editor begins the publication of the article with this disclaimer:

The original article written by the MPSA that is below contained language that I believe was inappropriate for Midtown Patch.  We decided to delete the word and replaced it with something else more appropriate that we placed in parentheses to note the edit.

Notice the air of fear-mongering utilized in the piece, as well as the inclusion of the photo (most likely used from some totally un-related incident).

Notice how this author tries to give the impression that he (or she) has done an indepth 'study' of the "trans-prostitute situation"...as if he knows something about "walk-in" versus "drive-ins" and three different types of "johns"...

And what would an MPSA stalker know about "prostitute traffic shifting to Stone Mountain, GA." [which is miles away from 'midtown' Atlanta]?? The MPSA is a half step above a neighborhood watch group, however with some its members being off-duty Atlanta police officers [who really try to intimidate]; there's not suppose to be any "connection" with the Atlanta Police Department [officially], so how would they be privy to information/records from the Stone Mountain area?? Their "jurisdiction" doesn't extend nearly that far!

You can read the rest of Cheryl's post at her abitchforjusticeblog

It's Hell To Be Trans In Kuwait

While we think we have it tough being trans in the United States, there are some parts of the world where just trying to live our trans lives can lead to severe harassment, arrest or death.

Our transsisters in Kuwait since 2007 have been dealing with the deleterious fallout from an amendment to Article 198 of the Kuwaiti Penal Code that arbitrarily criminalizes 'imitating the opposite sex in that nation.  

It has led to a rise in transphobic discrimination against trans women and according to a Human Rights Watch January 2012 report and trans activists in that nation, they face daily persecution, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse both at the hands of the police and the Kuwaiti public.  This is despite the fact that GID is officially recognized by the Kuwaiti Health Ministry as a legitimate medical condition

Police were given the freedom to determine whether a person’s appearance constitutes “imitating the opposite sex” without any specific criteria being laid down for what exactly constitutes violating Article 198.

Human Right Watch documented cases in which trans individuals were being arrested even when they were wearing male clothes and later forced by police to dress in women's clothing in order to claim they arrested them in that attire. 

Other Human Rights Watch cases documented interviewed trans women stating police arresting them because they had a soft voice or smooth skin.

A trans activist who spoke to Gay Middle East said, 'The situation in Kuwait is horrible for us, just intolerable. There are at least 13 transgender women in jail right now.' .Sheikh Sheikh Jaber Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, the Prime Minister of Kuwait, denied was happening when he was approached by international human rights activists.  

The trans prisoners the prime minister claims were arrested for other offenses were not allowed by Kuwaiti authorities to be interviewed by human rights activists to corroborate the veracity of his statement.

Kuwaiti media has been gleefully pushing transphobic coverage of the harassment, which doesn't help the situation.     

There have been calls to not only to repeal that portion of Article 198, but release the trans women who are in Kuwaiti jails and stop the persecution of trans women in that nation.  

I know we have our own problems in the United States, and I've documented them in this blog's electronic pages.  But that shouldn't stop us from being concerned about what is happening to our trans sister's human rights in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.