The piece speaks about very legitimate issues in a very unfortunate way.
--Jodi Jacobson, RH Reality Check
Campaign is necessary, but maybe they could've done it without throwing trans folks under the bus.
--Janet Mock
GLAAD, a media advocacy organization for the LGBT community, said the video "missed the mark." While the fight for equal pay continues, "let's acknowledge that for transgender people, the workplace is usually a very hostile environment." As GLAAD noted, you can be fired in 32 states for being transgender.
Some say, It was just of joke...and follow that with the usual "Transgender people just have no sense of humor.
Issue was raised by CNN Money
But the point of the humor was not the joke, but activism for Equal Pay. So it was not, "Just a Joke."
The National Women's Law Center's Equal Payback Project is not "just a joke."
Despite the fact that it’s 2014 and you can shave your legs with lasers, the average working woman still makes only 78 cents to a man’s dollar.
Over the course of a career, that’s $435,049 lost to the wage gap.
With nearly 69 million women in the workplace, that’s a total loss of as much as 30 TRILLION FRICKIN DOLLARS.
Clearly, the policies in place don't go far enough. It's time we won the battle we've been fighting for fifty years. It's time we enlisted the Internet.
Ladies, we’re crowdfunding the wage gap.
This was social messaging in comedy. That's a very different thing and has a very different yard stick.
--Jacobson
Transgender men and women experience double the rate of unemployment as cis-gender people and are four times as likely to have a household income of less than $10K.
--2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey
NWLC co-president Marcia Greenberger says the controversy is a good thing.
It's our job that [the campaign] works in a positive way for the full community. The center will use some of the resources raised by the project to benefit transgender men and women.
--Greenberger
In 2008 University of Chicago and NYU researchers uncovered the fact that while there was a slight "uptick" in pay for FtM transgender workers, earnings for MtF transgender workers fell by a third.
By living as a woman they can face the sexism that's in the economy and in the workplace and that can lead to lower wages.
--Tico Almeda, Freedom to Work
So anyway, we don't mind if you laugh at the campaign's video. So do many of us. But while you are laughing, please give some thought to the plight of transgender people.