Right off the bat, I want to provide my pro-trans bona fides. One trans best friend, one genderqueer 15 year old I mentor, I work out a dojo with multiple trans members, and I live in Seattle, which seems to be the FTM capital of the world. Trans people are protected on a local and state level, and legally, at least, it's surprisingly easy to be trans here. A simple letter gets the state to change your gender, and that's all great. I would love it if the votes were there to include trans people in ENDA.
But they aren't, and that isn't the fault of the GBL community. It's a natural result of the trans rights movement being essentially brand new, at least on a national level.
A little history. The Mattachine Society, the first gay rights organization, was founded in 1950. It was a pretty modest organization, providing social support, and as far as legal changes go, seeking only to have sodomy laws repealed. The Mattachine Society had local chapters in many major cities, and held polite protests in which men had to wear suits and even the butchest dyke had to wear a dress and put on makeup, probably applied by the sad drag queen who was putting on loafers for the first time in five years.
Success came on a state level for the first time in 1961, but not mainly due to the overtly political activities of the Mattachine Society, but because of changing attitudes. The Mattachine Society can claim some credit for that, because by providing a social support network, gay people had somewhere to turn.
Another major success of the gay rights movement was getting the American Psychological Association to remove homosexuality from their list of psychological disorders. There were minor victories as well, things like repealing laws that discriminated on a subtler basis, regarding criminalizing cross dressing, same gender dancing, and the like, but it was agitating on first a municipal level, then a corporate level, and then a state and finally, at long last, a national level.
None of that would have been possible without first off, the courage of individual gays and lesbians everywhere who came out and lived openly. No one recognizes that a group is worthy of civil rights until they recognize the humanity of that group. When the only gays people ever heard of were people busted for hiring teenage hustlers or having sex in parks and bathrooms (hi, Larry Craig!), and other unsavory characters, it was easy to characterize us as monsters. As more and more people know gays and lesbians, they realize we're just normal people, and can't see any reason why we shouldn't have full civil rights.
The other thing is AIDS, which forced so many of us out of the closet, and made the above visibility mandatory for so many people. No doubt both Liberace and Roy Cohn would have died in the closet if they'd been lucky enough to die of old age.
The (pardon the pun) fruits of our struggle? When Lawrence vs. Texas was decided, 36 states had already struck down their sodomy laws. Twenty-nine states currently have non-discrimination laws. Legal same sex marriage in one state, five states with marriage in all but name, four states with domestic partner laws, and California just one signature away from full gay marriage. Even in states like Washington, which have rather weak DP laws, the ripple effect has been huge. For instance, the company where I used to work, and where my husband (we married in Portland and again in Canada) now works, I can get on his insurance, though they denied us this a few years ago. I can list "domestic partner" as insurable interest when I sell life insurance, and I don't need any documentation.
And now, we're getting a national ENDA law.
At least if we can get the trans community to see reason, and if they'll understand that there aren't the votes, and why there aren't the votes.
It all comes down to:
- They're too new.
- They haven't done the work.
There have been some local successes, often piggybacked on the gay rights movement. There are five states with ENDAs that apply to trans people. A good number of localities and some corporations have also added non-discrimination policies. But visibility has been minimal, in part, because many trans people who can pass do so, and never let anyone know what their birth gender was. Educational efforts have spread, mainly in large cities, which is normal. These things are still in their infancy, and by going for inclusion in ENDA, they're hunting elephants before they've managed to kill some rabbits.
On a national level, it's nowhere near where it should be. There's only one national trans organization, GenderPAC, which has been around only since 1999, and isn't actually a political action committee. They don't have a single lobbyist, and have relied on the Human Rights Campaign, which is incredibly ineffectual.
If I were a trans activist, I would argue for the following course of action:
- More visibility. Commercials, interviews, TV specials, etc.
- Get the APA to redefine gender dysphoria so it's not a mental disorder.
- Tackle laws that are discriminatory on the most day to day level. Trespassing laws for entering the restroom of the gender you identify with. Laws to get the right gender on your driver's license. Laws that will ensure that if arrested, you end up in a jail for the right gender.
- Go after the Fortune 500 for non-discrimination, along with municipalities.
- Next, lobby on a state level. Get included in all existing state ENDAs, and then work on receptive states that have no ENDA at all. The lobbyists who work on these campaigns will gain valuable experience that will be useful once fifteen or twenty states have trans inclusive ENDAs, and you move onto the next step.
- National lobbying. Work on the federal level. This is the end game.
Until then, I want to hear the following statement about the non-trans ENDA that should pass this year: "While we are disappointed at being excluded, we take joy whenever any group of Americans receives legal recognition of their civil rights. We congratulate the gay community, and will continue to work until all Americans have equality under the law."