Thursday, February 27, 2014

Trans* Community Celebrates a Big Victory

60 Rally in Hillcrest Feb. 24 as Attempt to Repeal Trans* Students’ Rights Bill Fails

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

Copyright © 2014 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved

Respect Gender Pronouns

Jay and the Trans* Flag

Autumn Sandeen

Daniela

Putting Up the Trans* Flag

Lyn Gwidzak (center) with dog

Simon says …

Ezekiel Reis Burgin

Nemo

Group shot

Holly and Daniela

Overpass Light Brigade: “Trans* … ”

Overpass Light Brigade: “ … Power”

Trans* Children Deserve Love

Son of Fire

On February 24, the long wait for Transgender students in California and their allies ended. In 2013 the California state legislature had passed AB 1266, the School Success and Opportunity Act, which gives Trans* students in the state’s public schools the right to be treated as members of the gender they identify with, not the one into which they were born. Specifically, it allows Trans* students to use restrooms assigned to their gender of identification, and to compete in sports based on their perceived gender identity. But radical-rights groups like the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), which helped put California’s anti-marriage Proposition 8 on the ballot in 2008, mounted a referendum campaign to put the School Success and Opportunity Act before the state’s voters.
San Diego Trans* activists and their supporters, including SAME Alliance (formerly San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality), Canvass for a Cause (CFAC) and Black and Pink San Diego, sponsored no fewer than three rallies to call public attention to the issue. The first took place on November 22, when the California Secretary of State’s office was expected to announce whether the radical Right had collected enough signatures to put AB 1266 on the ballot. Based on a sampling of the submitted petitions, they hadn’t, but they came close enough to demand a count of every single petition form. Trans* activists called a second rally January 11, in hopes the count would be finished by then and they would know whether the basic rights of Trans* students would go before the state’s voters.
The Secretary of State’s office didn’t have the count completed by January 11, but they announced that they’d issue a final ruling February 24. So the same group of local activists called another rally for that date, held like the January event at Sixth and University in Hillcrest, either to celebrate the failure of the referendum effort or launch the campaign to persuade California voters to support Trans* students’ rights. As things turned out, the event was a celebration; less than half an hour before its 5:30 start time, the Secretary of State’s office announced that the referendum against the School Success and Opportunity Act had fallen 20,000 signatures short of making it to the ballot.
Daniela, the Trans* activist who had spoken especially movingly at the first rally in November, was chosen to MC. “I wrote this before I knew what the ruling was,” she said, “but the fact that the opposition even tried to have a petition against this law brought about a lot of much-needed awareness about our community to the people. Without the opposition realizing it, they were planting seeds in the people’s minds and hearts that our community exists. We are here and we’re not going anywhere.”
According to Daniela, the opposition’s primary argument against the bill — that non-Trans* male students would use it as an excuse to use the girls’ restrooms and peep at them — “hasn’t happened once in the 10 years this policy has been in effect in Los Angeles.” She advised the non-Trans* people at the rally “how to be an awesome ally of the Trans* community: first, use your Transgender friend’s preferred gender pronoun. And make sure when you’re allowed to use their preferred gender pronoun because not all Trans* people are out to everybody. Call out transphobic language when you hear it. Don’t be silent. It plants a seed in their heads and brings awareness.”
As at the previous two rallies, the organizers set up an open mike but asked that only Transgender people use it. The next speaker identified herself as Sahaila, and said, “So often we hear our opposition talking in the name of ‘love,’ and in the name of God, but we see all of these divisions set up in society to hinder our love and connection towards one another. That’s not right. Although we are here to stand up for Transgender students and Trans* rights, it’s important to realize that the issue we are up against right now isn’t necessarily transphobia. Transphobia isn’t necessarily the root of our suffering.  Racism, misogyny and sexism aren’t the root of our issues. The pervading issue, the main thing that’s wrong here, is ignorance, fear and bigotry. We need to destroy this tree of ignorance from the root cause, right now.”
“I’ll be honest: I came here tonight expecting to have to give a speech about how we would have to bounce back from defeat,” said the next speaker, Transgender therapist Ezekiel Reis Burgin. “But that’s not the case. … Every year, every day, we are moving towards justice, towards equality, towards a better world. Burgin cited two Transgender heroines as especially powerful examples of the growing acceptance and opportunities for Trans* people: author Janet Mock, whose book Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love and So Much More became a New York Times best-seller; and actress Laverne Cox, who plays a Transwoman in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black.
Burgin said he is currently writing two essays on Transgender issues for upcoming books. “One is a textbook on social issues and political practice,” he explained, “and my chapter is focused on Trans* communities — not the ‘LGBT’ [Queer] communities, Trans* communities. This is going to be taught to young social workers and therapists who are going to go out into the world. This is going to be one more brick in the wall against bigotry. They’re going to be learning that Trans* communities matter, that we’re real, that we’re not just the end of the ‘LGBT.’ We are actually here, different, vibrant, present and unique.”
The other book Burgin is contributing to, scheduled for publication in May, is Manning Up: Essays by Transsexual Men on Finding Brotherhood, Family and Themselves. “Again,” he said, “it’s just essay after essay of us telling our own stories and being the diverse, unique, vibrant people that we are. There’s not one Trans* narrative. You’ve seen that with Janet Mock, with Laverne Cox, with me, with everyone here. We’re all different. We’re all unique. We all have interests, not just Transness.” Burgin said that just by being out and about in the world, people like Mock, Cox and himself are advancing the cause of Trans* equality every day.
“I think we’re done with explaining ourselves and finding good places to go pee,” said Nemo, the final speaker — referencing the most basic human need addressed by the School Success and Opportunity Act. “We now have the option for a lot of Trans* youth to have that childhood a lot of us lacked: to be treated the way they want to be treated. Under our government, education is mandatory. For those of us who are studying history, we know how that’s been used. A big part of it has been assimilation and indoctrination. At the same time, as a Queer, education saved my life. It gave me a way of understanding things nobody around me was saying. It gave me a way of understanding that I’m a person, in a way nothing spiritual or social around me was saying.”
After about a half-hour’s worth of speechmaking, the local activists chanted various slogans upholding rights for Transgender people. At least one of the slogans — “Gender’s chosen, don’t you see? You can break the binary” — highlighted divisions within the Trans* movement between mostly older Transgender individuals who see themselves as men born in women’s bodies, or vice versa; and mostly younger people who are exploring gender identities that are between male and female. The “binary” — the idea that people are either male or female, and there is nothing in between — is taken for granted by most people, including many who identify as Transgender, but it’s increasingly under challenge by newer Trans* activists.

Thursday, February 06, 2014

SAME Alliance Statement on the Sochi Olympics and the Fight for Queer Justice

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • for SAME Alliance, www.samealliance.com, e-mail info@samealliance.com

We, SAME Alliance of San Diego County, strongly condemn the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s decision to hold the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, at a time when Russia’s government is mounting a massive campaign of repression not only against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people but against anyone who advocates for their rights or presents them in a positive way. We also condemn the IOC’s decision to hold the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when half the world’s reported hate murders of Transgender people occur in Brazil. We call on the IOC never again to hold an Olympics in a country that does not guarantee full equal rights, including marriage equality, for its Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people.

We question the sincerity of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pledge that no Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual people would be arrested or harassed during the Sochi Olympics. Already there has been at least one report of an Olympic security person harassing and detaining a spectator for holding a rainbow Pride flag. When both the Winter and Summer Olympics were held in Nazi Germany in 1936, Adolf Hitler made a similar pledge with regard to Jewish people participating in or witnessing the Games.

We call on all U.S. corporations involved in sponsoring the Sochi Olympics, including McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, to acknowledge the controversies surrounding the Games and stop advertising the Sochi Olympics as a worldwide celebration of sportsmanship and good will. We call on these companies to publicly oppose and condemn the harsh Russian laws targeting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people. We urge individuals to consider the unwillingness of such companies to consider the dark side of the Sochi Games when making their personal purchasing decisions.

We call on all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender athletes participating in the Games to make public gestures of support for equal rights similar to those made by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who publicly protested racial discrimination by raising their fists in the air during medal ceremonies in the 1968 Olympics.

We see the anti-LGBT legislation of the Russian government and the wanton murders of Transgender people in Brazil as just part of a worldwide campaign against the rights, and indeed against the very existence, of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people. In the U.S., Canada and most of Western Europe, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people are successfully struggling for expanded civil rights, including the right to marry. In the rest of the world — in Russia, Uganda, Nigeria, India and many other countries, including some with ostensibly democratic governments — Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people are fighting for their sheer survival against both government repression and the vengeance of private mobs. Even worse, many of these countries justify their legislative attacks on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people by saying they are defying the “loose” moral codes of the West — when in many cases it was Western powers, during the age of colonialism and outright imperialism, that imposed these laws on these countries in the first place. We pledge to support, in whatever ways we can, the struggles of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people in these countries against these laws.

Finally, we call on the IOC to allow Transgender athletes in future Olympics to compete in the gender with which they identify and be given the rights provided to California public school students by the recently passed AB 1266.

Submitted by Mark Gabrish Conlan • January 28, 2014

SAME Alliance is an open and democratically run grass-roots organization dedicated to Queer liberation and the struggle for social justice through activism, education and support for broader movements.

SAME Alliance Goals and Objectives include:

1) An end to all legal and extra-legal penalties for all sexual expression between consenting adults worldwide.

2) Extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to ban all discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

3) Full legal recognition of all marriages and intimate relationships between consenting adults without regard to their biological or self-perceived gender.

4) Comprehensive immigration reform in the U.S., including a path to citizenship for all immigrants and the right of U.S. citizens in relationships with foreign nationals to sponsor their partners for immigration purposes.

5) Full protection for all workers who wish to organize into unions and bargain collectively with their employers, including immediate recognition of any union once it has enrolled a majority of the workers in a workplace or bargaining unit.

6) Immediate freedom and full exoneration for Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, John Kiriakou, Lynne Stewart and all other political prisoners in the so-called “war on terror,” and an end to all use of torture, deliberate targeting of civilians and drone strikes against civilian populations in the so-called “war on terror.”

More information is available at www.samealliance.com.