Trans Rights Flow From Marriage Equality? Um, No,

Peeped the latest lie spin coming from the 'all marriage all the time' forces trying to pimp the meme to the huddled trans masses yearning for human rights that GL people gaining marriage equality will mean trans rights flow in their wake.

Really?  Seems like that hasn't happened in Massachusetts, New York, or New Hampshire. 

Jillian Weiss' quote from a Bilerico project piece on the subject tells it like it T-I-S is along with Kat's post at ENDAblog.  

"The idea that marriage equality is going to help transgender rights is a theory that has no evidence to back it up.".

Let's make this crystal clear once again.  Civil rights do not flow from marriage.  It is the other way around.  Out of all the things we marched for during the Civil Rights movement, jobs, voting rights and stopping the violence and brutality aimed at my people had a much higher priority.

Amber Yust Case Settled

The Transgender Law Center announced yesterday that Amber Yust has settled her privacy and civil rights lawsuit filed against the California DMV and the employee who precipitated it.

In October 2010, Thomas DeMartini, a San Francisco area DMV employee who had a known history of denying equal service to transgender customers, retained Yust's personal information through his employment at the DMV.   He then used the information to send her materials condemning her transgender status, and calling for homosexuals to be "put to death."

DeMartini was suspended for his action, and Yust through her attorneys Chris Dolan and the Transgender Law Center, filed a lawsuit in December 2010 against the DMV, alleging violating of her rights under the California Information Practices Act and Unruh Civil Rights Act.  Yust brought similar claims against the DMV employee, who voluntarily resigned from his position with the DMV shortly after the incident.

The matter was resolved with the State of California for $40,000, and with the former DMV employee for $15,000.  According to the Transgender Law Center press release, as part of the settlement, the DMV agreed to work with the Transgender Law Center in an effort to incorporate transgender sensitivity into its ongoing employee training. 

Chris Dolan said, "this suit affirms the right of all people to equal access to government services, regardless of their orientation or decision to make a transition to live life as their full and complete self.  In the big picture, this suit promotes the privacy rights of all Californians by ensuring that confidential information retained by our government stays confidential."

Kristina Wertz, legal director of the Transgender Law Center said "All Californians have the right to do something as simple as going to the DMV without fear of harassment and threats of violence. What happened to Amber reminds us that for transgender people, our state's promise of equal treatment is often unfulfilled. The case serves as a reminder to all businesses that nobody should be treated differently simply because of who they are."

Amen, and thanks for the wonderful work.

If You Respect Transpeople, Then Treat Us The Way You'd Want To Be Treated

One of the downsides of being back home is increasingly running into peeps that knew the pre-transition version of yours truly before she morphed into the Phenomenal Transwoman she is now.   They continue to stumble over pronouns and misgender me instead of dealing with the reality that the pre-transition me left the building over a decade ago and ain't coming back.  

It's annoying when I've spent almost two decades being Moni, so they should have long since got the memo that this ain't a phase.

I'm also tired of cis people when they are in conversations with transpeople using the word 'ilfestyle' in conjunction with talking about our lives.   It also more irritating and insulting when you throw in an incorrect pronoun or two while doing so. 

Frankly I'm sick of trans people inside and outside the TBLG community using that right wing framing as well.  You do not use your oppressors words to define you or your lives, we need to be the ones writing the dictionaries and defining the terms.

Once again, a transperson lives a life, just like you, not a 'lifestyle'.   Respect that.  .

The Oldest Trick In The Anti-Civil Rights Playbook

While I'm amused at times about the hysteria being whipped up about transpeople and the bathrooms we relieve ourselves in, it is never too far from my mind as a transperson of color that the same arguments people are uttering now about us are the same ones that the Forces of Intolerance fighting to defend Jim Crow segregation were using to defend 'separate but equal' facilities back in the day.

I'm more than a little sick of the arguments being whipped up by predominately white radical lesbian separatists and their WWBT apologists that it's okay to discriminate against transpeople because of your specious arguments about 'safety'.   

Well, people who shared your ethnicity made the same 'safety' agruments to justfy Jim Crow segregation.      .

It's the oldest trick in the anti civil rights playbook to 'scurr' on the fence people into opposing the enactment of legislation to satisfy the legitimate human rights demands of a marginalized group based on lies about the bathroom, and you need to be ashamed of yourselves that your unhinged hatred of transpeople is taking you to that desperate level.

Don't get mad at us calling your butts out on that BS or refusing to allow you to trample over our human rights without a fight.   This is the 2K10's, not 1981.   The days of y'all talking loud and spouting unchallenged lies about transpeople are over, especially when those lies deleteriously affect my community.  .  

Hey, you can oppose the passage of trans civil rights all you want, it's your call.  But you transphobic oppressors are not going to be able to hide behind nor will you be allowed to mask your transbigotry behind a discredited meme riddled with lies to do. 

It Gets Better-Paris Lees

Another trans themed It Gets Better video with British transwoman Paris Lees.

Still Not Happy About The Trans Free NAACP Town Hall Meeting.

If you think that the passage of time has lessened my pissivity over the NAACP's trans free LG(bt) Town Hall that will be taking place at 2 PM PDT today, nope it didn't.

And their repeated deletion of this comment from their FB page made me even madder.

NAACP, if your goal is to have a serious discussion of the issues that face African American LGBT people, then you can't erase trans people, the folks who are taking the brunt of the casualties and discrimination, from the July 25 discussion due to no African descended trans people sitting on that panel.
 
Note to NAACP...I have a blog that a lot of people read...big mistake   And I'm not the only transperson of African descent pissed about your GL(bt) panel either   Our allies are standing in solidarity with us.  Kat at ENDAblog also has some choice words about it as well. 

Yeh – and black T people share a common history (one that they have in common with Ts of all colors) of continuing to struggle against being fucked over by non-T Gs and Ls of all colors.

Yep, sad but true.  

And it took them several hours, but the Advocate, that paragon of GL journalism stenography finally credited me for the quote they borrowed for their article on the festering NAACP controversy, but took their sweet time doing it.   

I found out about it just before I went on air on TransFM at 7 PM CDT yesterday to talk about the erasure from the NAACP panel.   It still hadn't been corrected when I went to bed at 1:00 AM CDT


I'll still be interested to watch this sham town hall meeting and see how many times they mention the T-word and appropriate our stories without a representative of our community being there.