Letters: ENDA
Via acrimonyastraea, gudbuytjane: “Barney Frank, get out of my pants.”
In response, I wrote an email to my representative; I urge you to write to yours (find them here), as well as to Pelosi in her capacity as Speaker of the House (contact link).
Dear Rep. Pelosi,
I am emailing you to urge you to support a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that will fully protect the rights of transgendered individuals. Transgendered people are vulnerable to discrimination, harassment, and outright violence in our society for no reason other than their gender identity, and it is up to our government to take a stand in defense of their civil rights by passing an ENDA that includes their rights as well as the rights of GLBQI people. I was appalled by Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA) transphobic comments about trans people, which were reported in RollCall on Monday:
“He said concessions were made in the drafting of the language to address moderates’ concerns. For instance, Frank said, transgender people with “one set of genitals” would not be able to go to a bathroom for people with another set of genitals.
And, Frank said, they also would have to have a “consistent gender presentation” in order to be able to sue for discrimination.
“They can’t sit there with a full beard and a dress,” Frank said.”
Those remarks call upon damaging and fearmongering stereotypes of transgendered people. Instead, I urge you to support a fully inclusive ENDA.
Sincerely,
[PD]
Transgender Day of Remembrance
Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Queenemily has written about witnessing and remembering:
So what I want to acknowledge is that there’s a paradox, that no trans person can truly witness for the murdered–especially those we’ve never met. And yet, with due caution, I think we should. Not to further our own goals, not to get legislation passed that protects only the already-privileged or to wallow in self-pity, but to honour the memories of every single trans person murdered this year, and to acknowledge the violence that our community lives with as a whole. To acknowledge that even in death, transphobia and cissexism mean that the murdered are not properly remembered, not even by the correct names and pronouns–and those people should be remembered as the right sex. That is our task for today (surviving ourselves, as well as prevention of more of the same is our task for the rest of the year). The example of Levi suggests that the task of witnessing may well be impossible, but we should attempt it nevertheless.
Gudbuytjane writes:
In the face of a cisdominant culture that enforces false narratives to keep trans women marginalized, it is imperative we make our voices heard. I’ve written about this before, and I believe it is an essential process for dismantling cissupremacy. The most important voices to be heard are our dead, and the responsibility for those voices lies with those of us who are still alive. Not for cis culture to consume, not even for ourselves, but for these women who are no longer with us; By giving them dignity we give ourselves dignity, and demand it from a culture which withholds it from us. Even if it is only knowing their name or a tiny bit of their story, it gives back to them some of the humanity their killers took.
Although cisdominant media inevitably focuses on the murders of these women, pieces of the stories of their lives nonetheless get through. This is how she died is supplanted for brief moments by This is how she lived. Amplify that. Know the stories of their lives, and tell the stories of your own. Not just on November 20th, but every day.
Remember. Remember throughout the whole year, and bear witness for the dead.
Hate Crimes, Not Hoaxes
Via Liss, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), lied about Matthew Shepard’s death on the floor of Congress today:
Transcript from Liss:
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina): The, uh, hate crimes bill that’s called the Matthew Shepard Bill is named after, uhn, uh, a very unfortunate incident that happened where a young man was killed, but we know, uh, that that young man was killed in the, uh, in the commitment [sic] of a robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay. This—the bill was named for him, the hate crimes bill was named for him, but it, it’s, it’s really a hoax! [emphasis mine]
Text: FALSE. Fact: “According to local police and prosecutors, the two men lured Mr. Shepard out of a bar by saying they were gay. Then, the Laramie police say, the pair kidnapped Mr. Shepard, pistol-whipped him with a .357 Magnum, and left him tied to a ranch fence for 18 hours until a passing bicyclist spotted Mr. Shepard, who was unconscious.”—The New York Times, 10/12/98
The representative’s sentence is ambiguous in that it could suggest that Matthew Shepard was killed as the victim of a robbery or that he was killed while committing a robbery. Now, his murderers robbed his body after killing him for being gay, so it’s possible that she meant the former (which would still be factually incorrect), but I’m not inclined to give Rep. Foxx the benefit of the doubt.
A hoax. In 2007, the Department of Justice found that 16.6% of bias-related incidents (i.e. hate crimes) were based on sexual orientation. The 16.6% rate was an increase from 2004′s 15.6%. There are multiple factors involved, but one is surely that people think it’s acceptable to assault people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. Why else would they boldly admit to bias-related murder, saying, “Gay things must die”? (Allen Andrade, convicted of murdering Angie Zapata in a hate crime, quoted in CO Independent) When Rep. Foxx lied about Matthew Shepard’s death, she sent the message that targeting and killing queer people was acceptable. She sent the message that our lives and our deaths don’t count. She sent the message that even though bigots target queer individuals specifically to make us live in fear and to wipe us out of existence, politicians and people in power will whitewash our suffering as a robbery gone wrong and accuse our family and friends of perpetuating hoaxes when they seek justice. She sent the message that bigotry is acceptable, even when it takes on the form of violence and broken bodies punished for the sin of being lesbian, gay, or trans.
Fight back and reject these messages any time you hear them, starting with Rep. Foxx and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Show them that there are consequences to homophobia and transphobia and to denying the existence of hate crimes based on race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability.
Foxx’s D.C. office: 202-225-2071
North Carolina office: 1-866-677-8968
National Republican Congressional Committee: 202-479-7000
Here, have a sample message:
“Hi, this is [PD], calling about Representative Foxx’s statements in Congress today on the Matthew Shepard Bill. The representative dishonestly claimed that Matthew Shepard was killed during a robbery, when in fact his murderers have confessed to targeting Matthew Shepard specifically because he was gay. They beat him and left him to die, tied to a fence on a freezing Wyoming night. This was a hate crime, and I ask that the representative publicly retract her statement and apologize. Her statement is an insult not only to queer Americans, but to all Americans who support justice and equality.”
The bill passed in the House, 249-175 (10 no votes) and is moving onto the Senate. Please look up your legislators and let them know you support the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act.
NotAlwaysRight is Not Always Right
NotAlwaysRight.com is a site that posts “Funny & Stupid Customer Quotes.” Most of the time, the quotes are funny and show how amazingly entitled, racist, rude, and sexist, among other horrible things, customers can be. I like reading it because I did some patron-facing work at a library for a while, and got some experience in dealing with stupid, rude, and entitled patrons. I also like to read it to remind myself to not be stupid, rude, and entitled as a customer. One of today’s posts was irritating, however, because I’m certain that it was posted for “ha ha, that woman was so stupid, thinking she had a prostate!” laughs.
Sometimes Being Too Thorough Can Backfire
Military | Maryland, USA(This took place at our health clinic. The patient was an older female.)
Me: “What type of appointment do you need?”
Patient: “I need a prostate exam.”
Me: “I’m sorry, those appointments are for men only.”
Patient: “That’s discrimination – I want to talk to your supervisor!”
Sergeant: “The specialist is correct, ma’am, these appointments are for men only. You do not have a prostate.”
Patient: “How would YOU know? I’ve never had surgery in my life!”
Me: “Have you ever had a penis and testicles at any point in your life?”
Patient: “What?! How insulting! You’re sick! I’m going to sue you!”
Me: “If you were not born with boy parts, then you were not born with a prostate. Good luck suing the Army.”
It seems clear from the dialogue (“How insulting! You’re sick!”) that the patient was a cis woman, and likely a transphobic woman, at that. However, the assumption that, because she was a woman, she didn’t need a medical exam that she specifically requested is rooted in cis privilege and in not even considering the existence of trans people. It could have been the case that the patient was a trans woman in need of a prostate exam. There have been and are trans people in the U.S. Armed Forces, after all.
Just as outright transphobia leads to death, as in the cases of Robert Eads, a trans man who was denied treatment for his ovarian cancer, and Tyra Hunter, a trans woman who was denied medical care after a car crash, so, too, can ignorance of trans peoples’ medical and health needs. S is a med student, and a while ago, she attended a panel that included a Mexican trans woman.
S: hmm this is very interesting. She related an anecdote about her trans friend who died of prostate cancer. The doctor didn’t realize that prostate exam was still necessary and didn’t detect it in time.
PD: sad and interesting
S: ignorance – the root of all evil
PD: basically
S: she’s talking about a nurse practitioner who wanted to refer her out, because he “wouldn’t even know what he was looking at” (vaginal exam), which is a ridiculously insensitive way of putting it
PD: yeah
S: but i wonder if anywhere in our education we’ll be trained how to examine transgender patients
It was casual transphobia and cis privilege on the part of the clinician and the sergeant to assume that the woman was cis. It was casual transphobia for NotAlwaysRight to post the incident as a “haha, that woman’s so stupid she didn’t realize that only men have prostates!” because that thinking erases the existence of trans people.
Zapata Family Statement
[Trigger warnings: anti-trans violence]
Allen Andrade was convicted of first-degree murder and hate crimes charges (CO Independent):
A man convicted Wednesday of using a fire extinguisher to crush the skull of a transgender Greeley woman was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole just over an hour after a jury returned guilty verdicts on all four counts charged, including first-degree murder and hate-crime charges. Weld District Judge Marcelo Kopcow imposed the mandatory life sentence on Allen Andrade, 32, for murdering Angie Zapata, 18, last summer in Greeley.
“Mr. Andrade, I hope as you’re spending the remaining part of your natural life in the Department of Corrections that everyday you think of the violence and brutality that you caused on this fellow human being and the pain you have caused, not only on your family but the family of Angie Zapata,” Kopcow told Andrade, who re-entered the courtroom an hour after the jury verdict shackled and wearing a bright orange prison jumpsuit.
Andrade faces additional sentencing next month on the bias-motivated, or hate-crime charge and on felony automobile and identity theft charges. Prosecutors plan to pursue habitual offender charges against Andrade, court officials said.
Via Sarah in Chicago, the Zapata family’s statement, as read by Angie’s brother Gonzalo:
Transcript:
[Introduction]: This is the immediate family. We have sisters Monica, Ashley, Stephanie, Natasha,niece, and mother Monica–Maria, excuse me, and Gonzalo.
[Gonzalo]: Angie was my sister.
She was a member of our family. We loved her very much, and we will miss her every day. Every day and every night my mom has to deal with the great pain that she saw one of her babies being buried, an experience no parent should have to witness. Every day our siblings and I reach for the phone and realize we’ll never hear her voice. There are times we call and try to get her advice and realize there’s no answer anymore.
A part of our family is missing, stolen from us. Angie was 18, her life was just beginning. Angie was brave, she had guts, she had courage, and was beautiful, was fun, and loving. She was our little sister.
Throughout the past week and a half, we have watched as our sister Angie was lied about in this court. We watched angrily as defense presented an image of my sister that wasn’t true. Their strategy, and make no mistake about it, it was bullying, tearing down my sister to make a monster look a bit better, it will not work.
We want to make things clear: Angie was our sister, an aunt, and a daughter. Life was sometimes difficult for her, we learned along with her to understand that she was born a girl with a body that was wrong for her.
We know Angie was one thing above all else, she was honest. It took such courage to be who she was. Life wasn’t always easy, but she was so strong, and there was no reason to believe my sister was anything but strong and honest with everyone.
This week, we are deeply saddened and angry as we witnessed graphic details about the last few minutes of my sister’s life. A big brother is supposed to protect his–[sobs]–I got it. A big brother’s supposed to protect his little sister. It breaks my heart to think there was nothing I could do. [sobs] To protect my little sister.
My sisters, Monica and Ashley, when they saw what this monster had done, they wanted to hold her, to comfort her and to make her feel better. It was hard to realize that there was nothing they could have done.
He stole something so precious from us. Only a monster can look at a beautiful 18-year-old and beat her to death. This monster not only hit my sister, but continued to beat her head in over and over and over, and over again, until her head was crushed in. Then, he left her there to die.
He’ll never understand how angry we are at him and how much he has hurt us. This past week and a half, we’ve seen attorneys working their hardest to seek justice for my sister. Our family wants to thank Robb Miller, Brandi Nieto, Detective Thorpe, Kelly Winters, Kelly Costello, Crystal Middlestadt of CAVP, Mindy Barton, and the GLBT Community Center of Colorado, Fred Sainz of the Gill Foundation, and Adam Bass of GLAAD, along with the entire Weld County District Attorney’s Office, Ken Buck, for their support of our family and standing with us, and standing with Angie.
We are grateful Colorado has tough laws that make it clear that attacking people because of anti-gender bias will be taken seriously. Targeting someone because she is transgender will be prosecuted aggressively in Weld County. This means a lot to our family. We are grateful that the laws are in place that make hate crimes wrong.
In memory of Angie, we call on Colorado’s leaders to pass a federal hate crime law to protect everyone.
Justice was achieved for my sister today. A message was sent loud and clear that crimes targeting LGBT people will not be tolerated in Colorado, and specifically, Weld County.
We would ask everyone to remember my sister. Remember her like we do, as a beautiful, wonderful, precious teenager. She would want us to remember the happy times in her life. And together, and in Angie’s memory, make the world a better place.
We will always love you, Angie, and we will always miss you, mija.
Thank you.
Allen Andrade Trial
Autumn at Pam’s House Blend has a post on the trial of Allen Andrade, who is accused of murdering Angie Zapata in an anti-trans hate crime (note: Andrade has admitted to killing Angie; the defense are trying to get him out with a trans panic defense, i.e. claiming that it’s perfectly acceptable to beat someone’s head in with a fire extinguisher and kill them if that person is trans.)
Crystal Ann Gray has updates on the trial at TransGriot.
I remember discussing the murder with some colleagues last summer, particularly “legal analyst” Scott Robinson’s assertion that the murder was “not a classic hate crime.” The colleagues, both former lawyers, laughed at the idea of trans panic defense; they thought it was beyond belief that any lawyer would try to get an admitted murderer off on the claim that the murder was justified because the victim was trans. Cis privilege.
My roommates were talking about prostitutes the other day and as soon as the word “transgendered” came up, began cracking up. Why? No reason other than that they thought the very concept of being trans was laughable and funny, a freak show to point at and giggle over.
These attitudes allow transphobia to flourish: seeing people as ridiculous solely for their gender identity. Not understanding how much hatred there is and dismissing it. The first contributes to the marginalization of transpeople as being worth less than cispeople, and therefore acceptable targets for violence. The second denies that the marginalization happens and denies the reality of constant discrimination.
Andrade should rot in hell, and I hope that the jury convicts him of murder and a hate crime. But these explosions of violence are not isolated outbursts, they are facilitated by the casually transphobic remarks and cis privilege.
