The Republic of T.

I haven't commented yet, at least not on this blog, about the House vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) yesterday, or the controversy over the fact that version of the bill passed by the House did not include gender identity and thus does not — as previous versions of the bill did — protect transgender persons from employment discrimination.

The House on Wednesday approved a bill granting broad protections against discrimination in the workplace for gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, a measure that supporters praised as the most important civil rights legislation since the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 but that opponents said would result in unnecessary lawsuits.

The bill, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, is the latest version of legislation that Democrats have pursued since 1974. Representatives Edward I. Koch and Bella Abzug of New York then sought to protect gay men and lesbians with a measure they introduced on the fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, the brawl between gay men and police officers at a bar in Greenwich Village that is widely viewed as the start of the American gay rights movement.

"On this proud day of the 110th Congress, we will chart a new direction for civil rights," said Representative Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat and a gay rights advocate, in a speech before the vote. "On this proud day, the Congress will act to ensure that all Americans are granted equal rights in the work place."

I remember, and blogged about the last time a house of Congress voted on ENDA, a moment that was at once historic and disappointing, just as this moment is. For slightly different reasons, though.

(more…)

In the last post I made the statement that workplace discrimination is often a matter of life and death for some transgender persons. When I wrote that statement, I was thinking about some of the cases I’ve researched and written-up for The LGBT Hate Crimes Project, like the murders of Bella Evangelista, Emonie Spaulding, Erica Keel, and Nireah Johnson, just to name a few.

What all of these women have in common is that they were transgender, they were murdered, and were murdered by men who discovered they were transgender. What they also have in common is that each of them turned to sex work at least part time in order to support themselves, because of difficulty getting legal employment, a direct result of discrimination on the basis of gender identity or gender presentation. In the wake of the murders of three transgender women — including Evangelista and Spaulding — transgender activist spoke out about how gender identity discrimination places transgender women in danger.

(more…)

But one thing Ol’ Cap’n. I am released of you. …No more shoutin’ “Hallelujah” every time you sneeze, nor jumpin’ jackass every time you whistle “Dixie.” We gonna love you if you let us and laugh as we leave if you don’t. We want our cut of the Constitution and we want it now! And not with no teaspoon, white folks. Throw it at us with a shovel!

~ Purlie, Purlie Victorius: A Comedy in Three Acts

The quote above is from a play I saw ages ago when I was in high school. That line has occurred to me more than once in the last couple of weeks, as I’ve listened to earnest activists extoll the virtues of accepting teaspoons of justice, as a remedy to shovelfuls of injustice.

In the previous post I posed a question, without realizing I’d already written an answer to that question.

Its one thing to be an incrementalist and at least be honest about that last sentence. It’s quite another to declare that it is the right thing to do to ask others to continue to suffer injustice without remedy is the right thing to do, that they ought to be glad to do it, and that they are wrong for objecting to it.

…And for movements that are supposed to be about progress and equality, it’s a matter of of a certain degree of concession to the opposite of both.

…Power concedes nothing without demand, indeed. But what do we concede?

What we concede on some level known. It’s the a concession that might — in the form of a presumed majority of American voters — makes right.
(more…)