There is good news: ENDA has passed the House, creating the possibility that gays, lesbians, and bisexuals will receive some protection against discrimination in employment. That's a really good thing. Whatever I may think about the appropriateness of such legislation, the idea people could lose their jobs simply because of their sexual preference is abhorrent. Unfortunately, ENDA did not include any protections for transgenders, because the votes just weren't there.
That was expected. Politics is the art of the possible, and it just wasn't realistic to expect people to accept the idea of extending 'special' protections to us oddballs. LBG culture is slowly making inroads into the mainstream, after decades of hard work, but TG culture remains largely misunderstood. Let me pause here to note that I am far from an expert on TG culture, having only recently come out to myself, so my thoughts here are based strictly on my own assumptions which are undoubtedly flawed in many respects. That having been said, I think that TGs are hidden in no small part because we would prefer it that way. When I have finished the technical aspects of transition, I don't want to be known as 'the woman who used to be a man,' I want to be known just as Kaija. Getting involved in activism is just asking the crazies of the world to come down on your head and 'expose' you as the freak they perceive you to be. Fair or not, trans men and women are rarely seen as 'real' members of their chosen gender, and as such I suspect would prefer to focus attention on who they are rather than who they were. If we're going to convince people that there's more to us than bad movies, we're going to have to take a lot more risks by stepping into the limelight and accepting it's often-unpleasant glare, and we're not there yet.
Having said that, it's more than a little annoying when Andrew Sullivan, prominent columnist who happens to be gay, hails the passage of ENDA by noting that "every other minority is federally protected from discrimination in employment". Actually, Andrew, that's not true at all, since trans persons were intentionally omitted from the bill, something that was hardly kept secret in the news. It is more than a little frustrating when someone who ought to understand how easily minorities can be swept out of sight does so himself.
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