Michael K. Lavers at the Washington Blade has an article full of facts and interviews with Transgender people in the South. There you will find details about the trials and tribulations of Transgender people during Katrina. You will also find tales of survival despite overwhelming efforts to make survival impossible.
Students that come out to their parents receive draconian treatment.
“She thought that my school did it to me,” Gage told the Blade during the Dandelion Project’s July 9 meeting. “She thought that the people I was hanging out with like that she knew turned me into being gay. She took my phone. She took everything from me. I wasn’t allowed to do anything.”
I'm familiar with this one too. I sent Time Magazine a picture of a cat tucked in* and didn't even get a response to my resume.
Ksaa Zair, a 29-year-old trans woman from Baton Rouge, La., who identifies as demisexual, told the Blade during a July 12 interview at a local restaurant with members of the Louisiana Trans Advocates, PFLAG Greater Baton Rouge, Baton Rouge Pride and Equality Louisiana that she has “never been successful at finding a job.”
And how the legal system at every turn is hostile to our ability to thrive. From making identification congruence required to prevent arrest. To requiring expensive surgeries to gain accurate identification. And if in the grip of the prison industrial complex then denial of needed medical service.
“The bottom line is that she led a life that many people who can’t participate fully as themselves lead where some of her behavior was not in the confines of the law, right,” Dinielli told the Blade. “A lot of her problems arose from what often times are called survival crimes.”
Having employment protections for Transgender employees of Federal contractors is a good start. But the entire culture is driven to oppress us from cradle to the grave so we need a bit more than protections for jobs we can't afford the degree to get.
*the Holy Grail of cat pictures