Transgender Day of Remembrance 2011 & Pete Subkoviak’s Article

Posted on November 20, 2011 by


Transgender Day of Remembrance, held world-wide each year on November 20th, began in response to the 1998 murder of trans woman Rita Hester in Boston.

Each year, the community mourns the death of gender variant people and their loved ones across the world who were murdered because they were being themselves.  You can find more information about TDOR and the victims here.

In recognition of TDOR this year, I would like to call attention to a November 16th article in The Huffington Post by Pete Subkoviak entitled, “LGBT Leadership: Split Hairs and Burnt Bodies” –

When Matthew Shepard was beaten bloody, tied to a fence, and left to die alone in agony, a call was heard around the United States for tolerance toward differing sexual orientations. The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community banded together, mourned and got to work to pass the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a law that expands the definition of a hate crime to sexual orientation and gender identity. Thankfully, we’ve come to a better place and time where gays and lesbians can focus on marriage issues, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and employment discrimination. These are all extremely important issues, so naturally some other stuff is going to have to wait. Things like, say, burning bodies.

It is not surprising to me that virtually no one is familiar with the name Shelley Hilliard. Shelley’s body was just found on the side of a busy highway in Detroit last week, burned to death. Shelley’s mother, who had reported to police that her much-beloved teen was missing, had to visit the medical examiner’s office to identify her child’s torso — all that remained.

Shelley was part of a much-disparaged group whose high rates of HIV, physical and sexual abuse and murders go largely unnoticed by the LGBT community, both in terms of consciousness and in terms of programming and funding. I’m talking about transgender individuals — especially young transwomen of color. Nov. 20 is the International Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), which memorializes all individuals who were murdered because of their gender identity over the past year.

In marking this TDOR, it is time for leaders in the LGB communities to admit that they need to do more. Transgender individuals are a small minority of the LGBT community but are also the ones who need the most support this day and age. I ask you to imagine being a transwoman walking down the street and how many hateful epithets you would have to tolerate in order to pick up a gallon of milk or visit a doctor’s office. …

You can read the rest of the article here.

–ATM

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Massachusetts Legislature Passes Transgender Equal Rights Bill

Posted on November 16, 2011 by

Over the past 24 hours, the Massachusetts House and Senate have both passed the bill, “An Act Relative to Transgender Equal Rights.”  Once Governor Patrick signs this bill into law, Massachusetts will be the 16th state in the nation that affords legal anti-discrimination protections to transgender individuals.  The press release from the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition reads as follows:

Transgender Equal Rights Now a Reality in Massachusetts

November 16th, 2011

The Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) is proud to announce the passing of the Transgender Equal Rights Bill in the House and the Senate extending civil rights and hate crimes protections to the state’s transgender residents.

Last night, just before 9:00 PM, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed the Transgender Equal Rights bill without any amendments. This morning by 10:30 AM, the bill passed in the Massachusetts Senate. The bill must still be approved once more in Senate the Governor can sign it. As we wait for Governor Deval Patrick to officially sign this bill into law, we can celebrate the impact this will have on our transgender youth, adults, and families across the Commonwealth.

MTPC thanks our legislative lead sponsors Representative Carl Sciortino, Representative Byron Rushing, Senator Ben Downing, and Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz; all of the House and Senate co-sponsors, and the leadership of House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Therese Murray for providing vital protections for approximately 33,000 transgender residents here in Massachusetts.

This bill will give transgender people equal protections when seeking employment, housing, credit, and education.The bill also expands the state’s hate crimes protections to now include transgender people; a community that experiences alarmingly disproportionate levels of harassment and violence.

The final version of the Transgender Equal Rights Bill passed by the legislature unfortunately does not include protections within public accommodations. MTPC and our coalition partners fought hard to try to get public accommodations restored in the Senate version of the bill, and were unsuccessful in doing so. Although this bill does not include public accommodations, this is a historic and important victory in the fight for achieving transgender equality in Massachusetts.

“This is not the end of our fight, and MTPC is committed to getting public accommodations protections for our transgender youth, adults, and families. MTPC plans on introducing a bill for the 2013 legislative session for those public accommodations protections,” said Gunner Scott, Executive Director of MTPC. “For now, let’s be proud of the difference this bill will make in the daily lives of thousands of people across the state who need jobs, a safe place to live and access to education.”

MTPC expresses our deepest gratitude to our community members, who have spent countless hours educating their legislators and the general public about the issues transgender people face. “It is because of the courage of our community members to come forward and tell their personal stories about themselves, their family members, and their friends that we have accomplished this milestone,” said Nancy Nangeroni, Steering Committee Chair of MTPC.

MTPC thanks the members of the Transgender Equal Rights Coalition including MassEquality, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), National Association of Social Workers (NASW), ACLU of Massachusetts, MassNOW, Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, Massachusetts LGBTQ Bar Association, Jobs with Justice, and Interfaith Coalition for Transgender Equality for their tireless work on behalf of transgender equal rights.

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Founded in 2001, the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) is a 501(c) 3 that works to end discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression. MTPC educates the public, advocates with state, local, and federal government, engages in political activism, and encourages empowerment of community members through collective action.

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What Will You Be for Halloween?

Posted on October 30, 2011 by

A friend asked me the other day if I was going to dress up for Halloween.  I said,

“I dressed as a woman for 48 years.  I’m all done wearing costumes.”

But that’s me. What about you?

Whatever your plans are for Halloween, I hope that you have a safe, fun and happy time.

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Transition by Fortune Cookie

Posted on October 25, 2011 by

While I was straightening up my office this summer, I came across a collection of little strips of paper inscribed with blue font.  (Why always blue font, I wonder?)  Indications of my fondness for Eastern cuisine, these were the offspring of numerous after-meal fortune cookies that I have eaten over the past four years.

It’s not that I have kept every fortune from every cookie I have ingested over a four-year period.  I have been more selective than that, only tucking the little paper rectangles into my wallet if the inscription seemed to correlate with some aspect of my process at the time.

When I kept the first one that started it all, I hadn’t set out to collect these fortunes.  I didn’t have a plan.  It was just coincidence.  It all began in Fort Collins, Colorado, when I went there to visit an old friend with the intention of coming out to him.

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A Message From Steve Jobs

Posted on October 8, 2011 by

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” ~ Steve Jobs
2005 Stanford University Commencement Address

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Things That Happened Over the Summer Blog Vacation

Posted on October 3, 2011 by

Back in June, I made a post about how I needed a break from this blog and was going to take the summer off from writing.  There were things I wanted to accomplish over the summer and writing was taking up too much of the time that I wanted to devote to other undertakings.

And so, I made a list of about a dozen tasks I planned to accomplish in the 3rd quarter of this year.  In some ways I was successful in meeting my goals, and in other ways, I fell woefully short of the mark.

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After 9/11

Posted on September 11, 2011 by

It was about 5:20 on the morning of September 16, 2001 when the sound of a jet flying overhead broke into my sleep.  I announced to myself as my eyes snapped open, “The airport is open!”

Normally, I don’t hear the planes. Airliners noisily pass on a regular basis above the South Shore area of Boston where I have lived for ten years, so much so that when Massport decides to build a new runway or change flight patterns, towns on the South Shore complain about the noise. Sometimes the jets come in so low, I can read the insignia on their vertical stabs while standing in my driveway.

After 9/11, days of an eerily quiet sky accentuated the feeling of isolation.  Flights at other U.S. airports had resumed on a limited basis on the 13th, two days after the horrors of 9/11.  But not at Boston’s Logan airport.  Because the two planes that were crashed into New York’s World Trade Center Twin Towers departed from Boston, Logan airport became a crime scene and remained closed longer than other airports around the country.

I’m not sure how others in Boston felt, but I harbored a strange, irrational sense of guilt after the attacks of 9/11.  Half of the hijacked planes had come from Boston.  Somehow, I felt responsible, and even tainted.  The terrorists had been here among us.  As investigators pieced together their movements prior to the attacks, I heard on the radio where one of the hijackers had shopped for groceries.  It was a store I had frequented in the past.  Hypothetical images of passing an Al Qaeda terrorist pushing a shopping cart in the frozen food aisle stick in my mind to this day.

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