Have We Evolved in our View of Transgender People?

by Debbie McMillan, Transgender Health Empowerment

September 13, 2012 - 4:29pm

[Video: <http://vimeo.com/47945483> Debbie McMillan - International
AIDS Conference 2012]

Like most people, the sum of who I am is much more than my individual
traits. However, there is one fact about me that puts me way outside
the mainstream. It’s that I’m a tran-sgender woman.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported
<http://online.wsj.com/article/AP44567dc68ea24512bcbe49247af9cfd4.html>
that Massachusetts judge ordered prison officials to provide
sex-reassignment surgery for a murder convict.

The piece started by talking about a transgender woman who used to
meet in dark parking lots with other transgender people for support.
“How things have changed since then for transgender men and women in
America, who have made great strides in recent years toward reaching
their ultimate goal: to be treated like ordinary people,” the piece
noted.

I agree, strides have been made. But “great” grossly overstates the
reality. Discrimination and misunderstanding is still rampant. I
frequently feel that I’m assigned to a class of sub-humans. Even the
judge who ordered the surgery said it was to treat “gender-identity
disorder.” As a society, we still view transgender people as being
against the natural order and place the blame on our minds, rather
than where the real problem is: our incorrect bodies.

A recent article
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/magazine/whats-so-bad-about-a-boy-w...>
 in the New York Times Magazine would indeed lead sympathetic readers
to believe things are not so bad for transgender people and that
there’s really just left over misunderstandings to clear up. The piece
told honest, compelling, sometimes gut wrenching stories of good
people trying to navigate the world for and with their gender
non-specific children.

Consider that it was only in April of this year that the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunities Commission ruled that that discriminating
against an employee or potential employee based on their gender
identity is in violation of the Civil Rights Act. Forty-eight years
after that Act passed Congress
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/24/transgender-employees-anti-d...>
!

Twenty states now have laws prohibiting gender discrimination against
LGBT people. However, that still means that 30 states do not.

I work with transgender people every day. Many of them have trouble
finding housing or jobs, no matter what the laws say. Many of them are
drug users driven to it, in part, because by living with the constant,
unrelenting stigma we feel. It’s almost palpable.

I went to the street alone at 14 because I thought it was the only
place for someone like me. I became a commercial sex worker because I
believed it was the only occupation available to me. I looked around
and saw that no one was going to give me a job.

Though I lived as a woman and looked like one, when I was arrested for
solicitation, I was sent to the men’s prison. After one arrest for
prostitution, I was thrown in the wing with the felons. When I
inevitably contracted HIV, the doctors I sought continually called me
by my birth name. When you have HIV, you want medical personnel who
understand that your entire life changes the instant you get that
diagnosis. Not someone who doesn’t bother to look in your eyes and see
the very basics of who you are.

To be fair, these events happened to me 20 years ago. Back then, we
didn’t have the word “transgender” and I was considered an effeminate
gay boy. Things are different now but believing that there is
significantly less discrimination because some people allow their sons
to wear dresses is like thinking that because we have a black
President, racism in America is gone.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/09/13/discrimination-again...