Why A Trans Rights Bill Is Needed In Canada

Liberal MP Dr.Hedy Fry and NDP MP Randall Garrison just introduced Bills C-276 and C-279 a few days ago in the Conservative majority dominated Parliament.  

Why did they do so?   Because it's clear that the Great White North and the trans people who live inside its borders need that human rights coverage.

A blatant case of anti-trans discrimination has blown up and become international news centered on the Trail's End Farmers Market in London, ON.

On September 10 Karen Clarke, the cis female owner and proprietor of True 2 You of London, a business that sells candles, oils, air fresheners and incense was called by the manager of the farmer's market and told she could not set up a booth in their 'family friendly' facility the next week if she planned on having a trans person running it. 

Clarke had worked a morning shift in the booth, then left it in the hands of her trans employee Dani Dominick in order to prepare for the next day's business.   She was shocked to receive the transphobic call at 8 PM that evening.

"He said it made everyone uncomfortable and it just wasn't right. This is a family place, a family market and this just isn't right. I just kept insisting what happened that was wrong and he said you walk up to the person and they're dressed like a woman and they've got big hands, a deep voice and tattoos and it's just not right. It's just not a family place he kept repeating that over and over again. And I kept trying to get from him what was wrong, what was so not right, what was it that people were complaining about and there was no details forthcoming that way. He called them 'those people' several times."  

Dani, the employee in question is according to Clarke one of her best employees and has worked without issue at the Children's Festival, Rib Fest, and Food Fest this past summer. In addition to working for Clarke, Dani also lives with her as part of a rent-for-work agreement.

Attorney Michelle Boyce is providing legal counseling to Clarke and a discrimination complaint has been filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission.   Boyce says that if it rules in their favor, the fall out could be significant.

"We're in the process of filing human rights against Trails End Market, its blatant discrimination of what they've done. I've never seen a case so obvious."

There is a Change.org online petition that has sprung up in support of Clarke and the trans workers discriminated against that has garnered over 3700 signatures .

But let's hope that some of the fallout from this incident that Boyce talked about is a groundswell of positive public opinion that gets the Trans Rights Bill passed even in this Conservative dominated Parliament.

Brown Sentenced For McBeatdown

Teonna Brown faced the legal music earlier today in Baltimore County Circuit Court for the April hate attack of transwoman Chrissy Lee Polis in a Rosedale, MD McDonald's. 

Judge John Turnbull II sentenced her to 10 years in jail with five years of the sentence suspended, plus two years of probation when she gets out.  The 14 year old juvenile is in a facility and could be there until she is 21.

Polis did not appear in court today, but her victim impact statement was read during the proceedings.

In it, she said, "While being beaten, I felt like I was going to die that day. I was kicked in the chest, crotch and head. Chunks of my hair were pulled out. They were all over me, and I couldn't get them to stop."


Polis said she felt her identity was taken away."My private life has been exposed to the world. I lost my job. I can't go anywhere without the fear of getting hurt again. I want to go into a hole and hide. I do not forgive them for what they did to me," Polis said.

Vicky Thoms who tried to break up the attack and was hit as well said in a WBAL-TV interview, "I never dreamed I would see anything like that in my life -- never. It's like you were watching someone being murdered almost."

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Yeah, it was that ugly and it's a miracle that Polis wasn't killed.

Justice was served.   But I also would have liked for Judge Turnbull to have added a requirement that Brown and the juvenile do community service with an organization that works with transpeople.  I would have also sentenced them to attend the Baltimore area TDOR to further drive home the point that unbridled hatred of trans people sometimes leads to their deaths.

Well, Brown and the 14 year old juvenile will have plenty of time to contemplate that question.

WTF Washington DC?

This is getting ridiculous now.   I write about a trans Latina who they are still trying to identify who was killed yesterday in Northwest DC, and now this morning I wake up to the news that another transwoman was shot in the neck in Southeast DC

According to WUSA-TV the unidentified transwoman drove herself to the 7th District police station located in the 2400 block of Alabama Ave around 2:00 AM ET. 

Washington MPD officers investigating the incident determined that it happened earlier in the 2300 block of Savannah St. and are searching for a man with a dark complexion known as 'Tyrone' who was wearing dark pants and a tan shirt at the time of the incident.

The transwoman was conscious and breathing when she arrived at the station and was transported to a local hospital where her condition is unknown at this time.

What the hell is going on Washington DC?  

Shoot, just as the State Department and human rights organizations are expressing concerns about how dangerous Honduras is for the transwomen who live there and needs to be investigated, maybe those organizations and the Department of Justice need to get busy investigating what the hell is happening in Washington DC.

TrnasGriot Note: The trans Latina report turned out to be engineer Gaurav Gopalan who was dressed en femme when killed in the Columbia Heights neighborhood.

Chaz Bono On DWTS-Cue Transphobia In 5...4...3...2...1.

The new competitors for Season 13 of DWTS have been revealed, and among the celebrity contestants chosen to compete for the mirrored ball trophy one surprise was Chaz Bono.    He will be the first trans contest ever for the show and will be partnered with Lacey Schwimmer.

"At this point I want people to know that transgender people are just like everyone else. We're not people to be afraid of or misunderstood," Chaz told Us Weekly. "I would love to get that message across."

Unfortunately some peeps not only don't want to get that message, they don't wanna hear it.

While that piece of trans and television history excited and pleased the trans community and our allies, it didn't take long for the transphobes and christohaters to chime in on this historic moment.

Kmto61056 said, "This show has completely lost a viewer(s). I am DISGUSTED that you would have Chaz Bono on there. He/she can live however he/she would like to live, but do we need to flaunt it for ratings? Really? I hope your ratings sink as low as you have sunk in having Chaz on there."

Your ignorance is showing Kmto61056.

Cher took to Twitter to defend her child and others swarmed the DWTS website to do battle with the transbigots.

I'm usually watching other shows instead of Dancing With The Stars, but in solidarity with Chaz I will be tuned in starting on September 19 and will keep watching it as long as he is competing .

A New Orleans Trans Evacuee's Story

Many people in the wake of Katrina's devastating landfall in the New Orleans area were evacuated to Houston and other places in the metro area.

New Orleans also has a large cluster of transpeople who were also affected by 80% of the city being flooded in various ways.   Some of them found themselves transported out of the city as evacuees and spending time here in the Houston metro area.

One of those evacuees was then 20 year old Sharli'e Dominique Vicks, who was working as a substitute teacher when she began her transition in January of 2005.

Sharli'e's story begins after the levees failed and she and her two cousins sought higher ground than their downtown neighborhood.   One of the cousins was 18 year old cis female Rolanda Grisham, and Rolanda's 16 year old sibling was a trans female in the early stages of transition .  

In Sharli'e's case, because she's 5' 7", was taking hormones and was a little further along the feminine body development path in her transition she blended in a bit easier than her slender 6 foot tall trans cousin. 

Over the next five days Sharli'e and her cousins found themselves navigating a real life edition of Survivor: New Orleans.  

They walked and swam 1.5 miles to the New Orleans Convention Center where they spent two harrowing and uncomfortable nights there before leaving it and spending two hot, uncomfortable and hungry days on an I-10 overpass. 

She and the Grisham siblings finally made it to the Superdome, where they received help and a bus ride to Houston enroute to the shelter that had been set up in the Astrodome.

When the bus arrived at the Dome a few hours later it was turned away and redirected to College Station and Texas A&M University northwest of the city.   A shelter had been set up at Reed Arena on the A&M campus and after the bus spent another two hours in transit to Aggieland from the Astrodome area Sharli'e and her cousins arrived there at 1 AM on September 3.

The shelter was under the command of then A&M Corps of Cadets commander John Van Alystine and after Sharli'e talked to a volunteer about her and her cousin's trans status, she expressed her desire to take a shower.  She also expressed her fear about showering with men for obvious reasons.

The volunteer didn't have a problem with it since the shower facility set up for women in the Reed Arena shelter was curtained off.  It was the early morning and she and her trans cousin did so with no problem.

They also took two more showers in the women's facility without incident.   But somebody had a problem with Sharli'e and her trans cousin using the female showers and reported it to John Van Alystine, who warned them not to use the shower again.  

Sharli'e and her cousin after being inoculated against diseases and hearing the briefing about what they had swam and waded through, wanted to take another shower.   But with Van Alystne's warning reverberating in their heads and fearing what would happen if she used the men's shower, got permission to do so from a shelter volunteer before heading back to the facility again.

After emerging from it, they were arrested on Sept 4 by Texas A&M campus police on criminal trespass charges.  The trans cousin of Sharli'e was hauled off to a juvenile facility and later released to the custody of her sister Rolanda, but Sharli'e found herself being hustled off to the Brazos County Jail under a $6000 bond for taking a damned shower.

Sharli'e spent a stressful four days locked up there until Bryan-College Station Eagle reporter Laura Hensley stumbled across her case while researching another one.  She got in contact with Sharli'e, interviewed her at the Brazos County Jail, published her story in the Eagle and then the fun began.

The story got national attention, outraged national TBLG groups and a certain Aggie alum and Houston trans attorney named Phyllis Frye.  She was also in the Corps of Cadets during her time on the A&M campus.   She was hired to represent Sharli'e and was about to train her legal sights on Brazos County when then prosecutor Jim Kuboviak declined to press charges in the case..   

As Phyllis said in a Houston Chronicle interview about Sharli'e plight, ""Six thousand dollars is a hell of a big bond for criminal trespass with no allegation of violence," she said. "I mean, she had to to shower someplace."

Bryan resident Claudette Peterson, who has years of experience working with TBLG people was moved by the story and picked up Sharli'e from the Brazos County Jail.  She took Sharli'e to her home for the evening and during their long conversations she broke it down about her trans issues and informed Sharli'e about the organizations that could help her.

The Houston TBLG community was getting mobilized as well after hearing about Sharli'e's case and another Houston suburban shelter incident involving a trans evacuee who had been harassed at a Conroe shelter.  

They discovered that Sharli'e's mother Djuana was at the shelter set up in the George R. Brown Convention center, and the Montrose Counseling Center booked two rooms at the swank Hilton Americas Hotel next to the George R Brown for mother and trans daughter. 
 
The Chronicle story ends with Sharli'e, her mom, sister Antoinette, niece and cousins considering a move to Houston.

As of now don't know if the story ended that way or they eventually moved back to New Orleans like some of the evacuees who were evacuated here but missed the Big Easy did.

What Sharli'e situation did do was galvanize us in the Houston trans community to set up every hurricane season a Transgender Foundation of America maintained list of people in this community who would be willing to take in trans evacuees.

Whatever happened, do hope life got better for Sharli'e, her cousins and her family.   I also don't ever want to hear or write about ever again a transperson spending five days in jail because some transphobic idiot had a problem with then taking a shower in an emergency shelter.