7/7/13

MTPC Needs Your Letter For The July 9th Public Accommodations Hearing

Take action NOW for the July 9 Equal Access Bill hearing

Trans-Equal-Access
Cross posted from the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition.

MTPC’s legislative focus is on An Act Relative to Equal Access in Hospitals, Public Transportation, Nursing Homes, Supermarkets, Retail Establishments, and All Other Places Open to the Public (House Bill 1589/Senate Bill 643), which would add “gender identity” to existing state civil rights laws, which currently permit the exclusion of transgender people in public spaces.

How You Can Help

The hearing for the Equal Access Bill is scheduled for July 9, 2013, and WE NEED YOUR TESTIMONY. We provide a letter template below and sample letters that you can use to provide written testimony in advance of the Equal Access Bill hearing. The July 9 hearing is also open to the public (details to come), so please come out and show your support.
If you are registered to vote in the district of any of the members of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary who are hearing this bill (listed below), please let them know you support Equal Access. The most helpful would be for you to meet with your legislator from the Joint Judiciary Committee in person. Please let us know if you want to meet with you legislator about the Equal Access Bill. We’re happy to help you prepare for your meeting. You can also call their office and use our calling script.
Below is a template you can use when writing a letter to your state senator or representative. Please feel free to add more about your reasons for supporting this bill or describe your own experiences of discrimination in a place of public accommodation. If you are unsure of who your state House and Senate legislators are, you can look them up by searching for your town or zip code on https://malegislature.gov/People/Search.
When your letter is complete, email it to us at jesseb@masstpc.org. We’ll take care of the rest. 

Letter template

Dear Senator Clark, Representative O’Flaherty, and members of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary,
My name is ___________________ and I live at ____________________________ [include your address (optional) and the name of your town. Optional: what’s your family situation?].   I am _____________________ [include occupation, group memberships--be short and selective].
I am writing to urge you to support An Act Relative to Equal Access in Hospitals, Public Transportation, Nursing Homes, Supermarkets, Retail Establishments, and all other places open to the public, introduced in the House by Representatives Carl Sciortino and Byron Rushing and in the Senate by Senators Ben Downing and Sonia Chang-Diaz. This proposed law would prohibit discrimination in places of public accommodation such as [list three to five types of public accommodations. Some examples are: hospitals, hotels, restaurants, stores, nursing homes, theaters, convention centers, libraries, public transportation, public streets, offices of state and local government, and polling places--see the Examples of Public Accommodations PDF for other places].
I believe this bill is important because ________________________________________ [please add your personal story or reason for supporting this bill].
With the passage of this law, Massachusetts would send a clear message to its citizens that all people are entitled to feel safe in their communities and to be offered the full protection of the law, regardless of their gender identity or expression.
By offering protection in places of public accommodation where people experience harassment and discrimination, this law would increase productivity, freedom, and safety for transgender youth and adults who are employees, consumers, residents, and students.
Please help Massachusetts join the many communities–including the states of Rhode Island, Vermont, and Maine–that already provide protection in places of public accommodation on the basis of gender identity and/or expression.
[Write a closing sentence that sums up what you believe this bill will accomplish and/or how your life would be better when this bill passes.]
Respectfully,
[Your Name]
When your letter is complete, email it to us at jesseb@masstpc.org. We’ll take care of the rest. 

Resources

Download PDF about Testifying at a Public Hearing (MGLPC)
Download Oral/Written Testimony Worksheet PDF

7/6/13

VICTORY! Toronto TERF RadFem 2013 "Rise Up" Protested by MP and Public is Denied Venue

Victory! Beaver Hall Gallery Cancels as Venue for Radfem Rise Up

Posted on July 4, 2013 by notoradfemriseup.

"Toronto’s Beaver Hall Gallery at 29 McCaul Street had until recently been scheduled to host a conference called RadFem RiseUp! featuring bigoted so-called “radical feminists” who have engaged in hate campaigns against trans women, sex workers and 2-Spirit people."

"The conference had planned to provide a forum to participants and presenters such as Rachel Ivey and Lierre Keith, both who espouse extreme hate toward transgender women and sex workers. As well the conference had been hosting radical feminists who have engaged in harassment, bullying, dehumanizing language, stalking, outing transgender teenagers online and blaming us for the violence we experience."



"They have also used similar hate tactics against sex workers in order to purposely, viciously, attempt to ruin lives; they repeatedly and publicly deride and denigrate sex-workers. They repeatedly, publicly, misgender trans people and 2-Spirit people and in fact they say we don’t exist; they also say that trans women are merely a perverted outgrowth of “porn culture.”

according to the Radfem Riseup website the new location will remain secret: "The address of the venue will be sent to each individual participant after she registers."

Beaver Hall Gallery just released emails stating that it will no longer host the conference:

“Beaver Hall Gallery is a space within Beaver Hall Artists’ Housing Co-operative, where artists and their family members both live and work. The gallery is managed and staffed by volunteer members who live in the housing co-op. When gallery events may affect the entire community of the co-op, the Board of the Co-op is required to make determinations in the best interest of the co-op members.

A final decision has been made by the Board of Directors to not host RadFem Rise Up! at Beaver Hall Gallery this coming weekend.

While we realize this news is disappointing for some, we hope that all parties concerned will respect and understand the decision.

The Gallery Committee of Beaver Hall Artists’ Co-op”

It's a great day when hate groups are denied venues in result of our advocacy. Great work.


Laverne Cox in the new Netflix series "Orange is the new black" Life Inside Danbury Prison

Buzzfeed reports Cox, who shares an acting coach with Nicole Kidman, plays Sophia, a trans woman who, pre-transition, was a firefighter. In the third episode, guest-directed by Jodie Foster, we learn about her complicated relationship with her wife and son. “I don’t know of a trans character on television played by a trans person that has as much humanity as this character,” Cox says. It’s true. Generally, trans folks are portrayed as tragic or heroic, but Sophia is multidimensional and complex, part hard-won confidence, part sweet underbelly.

In one flashback scene, we see Sophia’s wife help her into a dress early on in her transition, and the pained tenderness when they kiss is palpable (Cox says Foster was so moved by the scene that she came out behind the camera with tears in her eyes). Later, when Sophia is cut off estrogen in prison for bullshit bureaucratic reasons, her panic — over not only the hair appearing on her chin, but also the serious medical issue of not having any hormone production in her body — is a nuanced portrayal of a pretty universal fear for trans people who take hormones, but one rarely discussed outside our communities.

From the A compelling, often hilarious, and unfailingly compassionate portrait of life inside a women’s prison

(Based on the memoirs of Piper Kerman) who was sent to prison for a ten-year-old crime, she barely resembled the reckless young woman she’d been when, shortly after graduating Smith College, she’d committed the misdeeds that would eventually catch up with her. Happily ensconced in a New York City apartment, with a promising career and an attentive boyfriend, she was suddenly forced to reckon with the consequences of her very brief, very careless dalliance in the world of drug trafficking.



Kerman spent thirteen months in prison, eleven of them at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, where she met a surprising and varied community of women living under exceptional circumstances. In Orange Is the New Black, Kerman tells the story of those long months locked up in a place with its own codes of behavior and arbitrary hierarchies, where a practical joke is as common as an unprovoked fight, and where the uneasy relationship between prisoner and jailer is constantly and unpredictably recalibrated.

Revealing, moving, and enraging, Orange Is the New Black offers a unique perspective on the criminal justice system, the reasons we send so many people to prison, and what happens to them when they’re there.


Counter the Christian Family Coalition's Miami Dade Anti Trans Hate Tactics


This is the picture and message posted by the christian family coalition imploring readers to take action against the proposed transgender amendment to the Miami Dade county regulations embedded below.
"The Miami-Dade Commission wants to pass a dangerous law that will force all places to open bathrooms and dressing rooms to "transsexuals." (men who allege they are women, and women to allege they are men) If one objects, they will be fired, sued and fined!"

I would ask my readers to take action as the CFC asks except with a slightly more accepting, loving message. You know, one that is in line with the Bible's teaching. Or just do it because you're a decent human being.

The CFC's members are targeting two county commissioners with a hateful message.

This is the message I posted on  Commissioner Jean-Monestime and Jose Pepe-Diaz's  Facebook pages. Feel free to copy and past.

I am not a resident of Florida but I am appalled by the hate being displayed by the 'christian' family coalition. In all of the areas in the US where similar ordinances have been enacted there has not been one instance of it being abused by a transgender person.This is fear mongering by Christians and it is shameful and goes against the bible that they proclaim to follow.
Please enact the ordinance amending Chapter 11A of the code relating to discrimination in housing, public accommodations and employment based on gender identity and expression.


Thank you,
Kelli Anne Busey

You can also tweet Commissioner Jean Monestime.

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

Did Four transgender athletes compete in the 2012 Olympics?

There are now allegations that four top woman athletes who competed in the 2012 Olympics were in fact transgender by definition and that their of transitions had not progressed enough to meet the criteria set in 2011 by the IOC regarding hyperandrogenism. This is a condition found in both cisgender and trans people in which conditions exist allowing muscles to be larger and have more endurance than what would be normally found in females and is used as a benchmark when determining the gender of a athlete.

According to the International Business news (IBN) the four were castrated so they could compete as woman.  The competitors, who remain anonymous, were found to have XY chromosomes, which genetically define men, rather than the female XX. According to the IBN all four females had internal male testes which were removed prior to competition after being referred to the hospital by the the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

The IAAF has since denied the woman had tested positive for hyperandrogenism, had the genetic makeup of a male or had gender reassignment surgery.

"The surgeons have neutered these individuals," a consultant from London Bridge Hospital is reported to have said.

"They have castrated them by removing the gonads, by which I mean their male testes, and they've had gender reassignment surgery.

"You could do that to any man."

However, the IAAF has told insidethegames  that "not one athlete was investigated at London 2012 and found to have had hyperandrogenism"  

Officially the only transgender athlete to compete was Keelin Godsey, a transman, who tried out for the woman's hammer throw but didn't qualify. Under The rules that was fine since Godsey hadn't begun hormones.

Stay with me it's going to get bumpy.


Video: Highest ranking Transgender Officer Lieutenant Colonel Cate McGregor Speaks About Transition

Transgender Lieutenant Colonel Cate McGregor speaks out about abuse and support in the Australian Army. Original news report by Ian McPhedran seen on ABC and uploaded to youtube by Trans Health Australia.

THE person behind the stirring speech delivered by army chief Lieutenant General David Morrison in the wake of shocking revelations about an army email sex ring was his transgender speechwriter, Lieutenant Colonel Cate McGregor.

Formerly Malcolm McGregor, Lieutenant Colonel McGregor is the highest ranking of six transgender people serving in the Australian Defence Force, as well as being a globally renowned cricket writer.

One of her strongest supporters is Lt General Morrison, who refused to accept her resignation when she went public and told him that she was causing embarrassment to his office.





The support was in place early and as soon as McGregor confided in her boss and friend Morrison told her that "I want you to know that I'm privileged that you felt you could tell me about the crisis you're facing and I will be with you every step of the way''.

"And I was very moved by that. I felt, up to that point, very isolated, I couldn't see a future in the army with this condition and he said 'let me know what you need to do, but you have my support.'

"More often than not I've quit and resigned and said 'I'm causing embarrassment to your office' and he has unfailingly supported me and insisted I continue to serve on,'' she tells ABC TV's "One Plus One'' program today.

Expanding on the themes touched on in the now famous speech, Lt Colonel McGregor says that her boss took the view that the army simply could not survive if it became a demographic ghetto, a smokestack industry in a changing world.

"He knew that there needed to be more women in the army ... that if you were physically and mentally good enough to be a soldier, then the army wanted you and he's rigorously enforced that, whether on grounds of gender, race or sexuality.''

The email ring, known as the "Jedi council'', distributed degrading images and messages about women, both in and outside the services, who might be exploited for sex.

"Those who think it is OK to behave in a way that demeans or exploits their colleague have no place in this army,'' Lt Gen Morrison told the troops by video.

"Show moral courage and take a stand against it.''

Lieutenant Colonel McGregor said the most difficult part of her transformation had been telling her then wife.

"It was very taxing for both of us. It was the hardest conversation I have ever had with another human being, telling her what was going on,'' she says.

"She had watched with growing alarm and sadness as I struggled with something that I couldn't put a name on and it was distressing in the extreme for her.

"She's experienced terrible loss in this in that she's seen a husband essentially die but not had the closure of a funeral. But we get on very well. We're soulmates, we're very, very close and she's the most wonderful person I've ever met."

* Lieutenant Colonel McGregor will today appear on One Plus One in her army uniform to tell Jane Hutcheon and the world about her struggles, including the "drumbeat of personal abuse'' she has suffered and the incredible support she has received.

As McGregor told her good friend and news.com political editor Malcolm Farr last November: "Actually mate, in the best tradition of the Australian army I have become Cate - or mate which represents the amalgam of mate and Cate.''