Tomorrow, March 4th, the Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on House Bill 1722 — an incredibly important piece of legislation which would add gender identity and expression to our state non-discrimination and hate crimes laws.
Transgender people in Massachusetts face discrimination every day — in employment, housing, credit, education, and public accomodations — yet there are currently no laws to protect them.
It’s time we change that.
Take a moment and contact your legislators today to ask them to support H1722. It’s easy to do: just click here to use MassEquality’s Contact Your Legislator tool, and we’ll do the work of looking up your legislators and their contact info for you.
You can also go here to learn more about H1722.
Your voice can make a real difference. Opponents of equality have put the word out on the rightwing radio stations and conservative networks, and they’re flooding the State House with calls opposing equal rights for transgender citizens.
We know legislators are closely monitoring the calls and emails they receive from constituents — and we can’t let the other side dominate the debate.
Please take a moment to contact your legislators in support of equality today!
this bill does more than protect transgender people from discrimination. it protects all bay staters from discrimination based on gender non-conformity.
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p>i think that it is vital to remember that gender and gender conformity are completely in the eye of the beholder. when it comes to the basics like going to the bathroom, the truth of one’s gender become irrelevant to judgmental busibodies. it is other peoples perception of your gender that becomes paramount. the women who routinely accost me as i try to enter public womens bathrooms don’t act out based on my real gender, they act on their mistaken perceptions*. so, gender discrimination can and does happen to anyone, transgender or not. it is in all our interests to pass this bill.
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p>*i am a born female with very obvious physical contours. however, because i have short hair and am usually dressed in my work clothes (think construction worker attire), people accuse me of being a man. welcome to the 19th century…
Buuuurn the man! He turned me into a newt!
i don’t understand your comment.
as to the connotations of being accused of being a man rather than mistaken for one.
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p>But it’s ok, I’m sure I’m the only one of the two of us who weigh the same as a duck.
Or maybe it’s Twelfth Night.
HOW’D IT GET BURNED!?!? HOW’D IT GET BURNED HOW’D IT GET BURNED HOW’d IT GET BURNED?!!?!?!?!
… am I really so old that such a culturally iconic movie as Monty Python and the Holy Grail has passed into cultural obscurity? Is this mandatory viewing material anymore? How are we going to create culture drones if we don’t enforce the mandatory material? So go the classics I guess. Then again: “We are all individuals!” (“I’m not”).
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p>/snark đŸ˜‰
… that is, Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail!
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p>also home to one of the best discussions about the origin of executive authority. (“Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!”)
I was leaving the State House as advocates for H1722 were beginning to come into the hearing room in small groups – looking nervous but confident.
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p>I only had time to register my support with a couple of committee members — who were looking equally nervous and not at all confident.
Pam over at Pam’s Hose Blend has a timely diary up. Remember the recent hubub about a man in traditionall women’s clothing walking into a women’s health club locker room? It was a scam organized by Theresa Rickman of anti-LGBT Citizens For A Responsible Government, an ostensibly christian organization (when will the stop giving christianity a bad name?).
CHeck out all the links at Pam’s
OK, so this event was staged by some assholes, but this is not a non-issue.
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p>Just above, you indicated that a man who “identifies” as a woman can stroll right on into the women’s locker room or lavatory.
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p>I doubt that many women,liberal though they may be, changing in their gym locker room are going to be super-thrilled when a man strolls on in, but no one can stop him because he is in drag. Indeed, I suspect that their justifiable reaction would be to treat that man as an intruder and a threat.
that there have been no legitimate reports of women being assaulted, etc. in bathrooms and locker rooms. the only report thus far was this one – a fake “incident” staged by a hate group.
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p>i raise this here because the main
scare tacticissue the people opposing the bill raise is that women and children will be raped if the bill passes. but there is NO evidence of this happening in other states and jurisdictions where similar lasw have already been passed. except, that is, when “christian” orgs stage a fake incident.Recent story here.
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p>Sure, the guy didn’t gain access by pretending to identify as a woman, but that is beside the point. The useful status quo is that a gentleman–or one so equipped– who purposefully gains access to a womens’ locker room or lavatory can be reasonably assumed to be up to no good, and that gentleman can expect people to react accordingly.
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p>Trying to force people, when they are attending to their toilet or changing in a locker room, to distinguish between a legitimate self-identifying female with male genitalia and a predator is simply too much of a burden on those people. You are legally required to make a snap judgment: guess wrong and become a crime victim at worst, or a discrimination defendant at best. And, unless you know the person, you can’t really improve your odds of guessing right to better than 50-50.
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p>I’m not necessarily opposed to the bill, but it sounds like it hasn’t been thought through. In any event, the issue rasied are more than mere scare tactics, even if raised by that Rickman woman, and should be addressed as such.
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that women must remain covered and segregated from non-family males unless minded by a family male because otherwise, all hell will break loose from men’s britches. we know by the very example of our culture (and by the example of people of that culture living here) that that is a false alarm.
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p>there are 13 states that already allow trans and gender non-conforming people to use the facilities that they feel appropriate. my current home state, washington, is one of them. there is NO evidence that your fearful forebodings have come to pass here or in those other places. just like with the advent of marriage equality in MA, the sky has not fallen. it hasn’t even started to sprinkle.
I don’t believe it.
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p>I think that there is an obvious qualitative difference between, say, providing sex-specific showers at the local Boston Sports Club, on the one hand, and treating women like chattels, on the other.
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p>Furthermore, I think there is an awful lot of spade work on this issue that remains undone.
According to testimony today,
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p>CMD, I think you are right that we need better education on the bathroom scare tactic. We simply need to let people know that it is a scare tactic,a dn back up that assertion with the stats: in states and other jurisdictions that already protect transgender and gender non-compliant people from discrimination, there has been no resultant crime wave. not even a crime ripple.
Like CentralMassDad did, they assume that this would be the angle that might concern normal people, so they make this argument. But it’s not really their concern, I don’t think. Their concern is more general, that it will be bad to people if we say that gender is not physical, or meaningful, or that it is changeable. But it’s hard to make such a general argument against such an unheard-of postgendered future, so they pick something they think Nancy Grace viewers would get outraged about instead.
Good find.
I read your link and it is, sadly, another sexual assault on a woman in a bathroom. Sexual assaults on college campuses are more common than you imagine.
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p>Since this assault happened absent any change in current law, on a women-only floor at BU, how exactly does it prove your point that the extension of protected class status to transgendered would cause sexual assaults on women in bathrooms? How did a traditional women-only bathroom protect this young woman from sexual assault? Sexual predators clearly don’t need the cover of transgender protection to commit sexual assault, they don’t even need the cover of mixed gender floors (where one would reason they would blend in easily) to commit sexual assault. In your parlance, gentlemen who are up to no good, usually find a sneaky way to to accomplish their evil intent, regardless of protected class legislation.
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p>Without meaning to be disrespectful to you, I suspect that the your concerns about male genitalia in a women’s room are not based on actual assault data but in discomfort – your discomfort as a man with this idea, and your discomfort as a man for the potential discomfort or fear that women might feel…? I am a woman and I have toileted and bathed in both single gender and mixed gender bathrooms and lockerrooms without incident for decades. Like many women, I was an assault statistic as a young woman, and I wasn’t in a bathroom but in a public thoroughfare when I joined that vast sisterhood. I suspect, however, that you would not agree to restricting all men from access to any public space to protect women from the potential harm that could be caused by male genitalia.
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p>I do appreciate your concern for the safety of all women, and your desire to increase our odds to protect ourselves from sexual predators, but I believe that your fears as related to transgender protection are misplaced.
that this is a physical location where people are already vulnerable. Same thing for changing rooms and locker rooms. In order to enforce the proposal, anyone who “identifies” as a woman (How is this decided on the spot? I guess we have to take his/her word for it.) is allowed to come on in, and no one can object. That is going to make people pretty damn uncomfortable, and, irrespective of statistics, I just don’t see that this reaction is unjustified.
I think what you are saying is that,”irrespective of statistics” an extension of protected class status to transgendered citizens is “going to make people pretty damn uncomfortable” in public bathrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms, and you “just don’t see that this reaction is unjustified.” Fair enough.
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p>I guess fear-based or discomfort-based decision-making makes me wary because I am old enough to see the remember Jim Crow and anti-miscegenation laws. I remember that people discussed discomfort a lot then too, particularly in places that some white people felt made them particularly vulnerable like public bathrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms. I am not suggested for one nano second that you hold or held these views about the end to legal racial segregation, but I ask that you consider why I am troubled with your argument that unproven fear-based “discomfort” is a justifiable reason to continue legal discrimination in housing, employment, etc for the transgendered. I ask that you look at why you weight the discomfort of some citizens (the uncomfortable non-transgendered) more than the legal discrimination of others (transgendered).
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p>Are you aware that currently, no legal protections are offered to an transgendered woman who may be required by her boss to use men’s facilities? Wouldn’t this lawful employment directive by the boss also cause “discomfort” among other users? And what about the employee’s right to avoid the risk of verbal and physical harassment or assault by men who don’t want her in “their” locker room? Should a qualified employee really be fired or disciplined simply because of the bathroom they prefer to use? As a boss, I could force an transgendered female employee to use the men’s room or face termination, and legally be within my rights to do so; I couldn’t force you to use the women’s room, I’d be the one rightly fired.
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p>If you say that your questions about transgender protected class status arises from your personal discomfort and worry about bathrooms and lockers issues, how reasonable is it that the State choose your personal standards of discomfort over the right of another citizen of this Commonwealth to hold a job or rent an apartment or buy a home or go to school without capricious discrimination based on their transgendered status? I absolutely agree that you have a right to your personal standards of discomfort, I just question whether this should be the legal basis to deny others protection from discrimination in employment, housing, education, etc.
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p>As I see it, legally, I as an employer could actually compel a guy to use the women’s restroom, so long as in doing so he was committing no tort or crime. And if he refused, then I could fire him, all without legal reprecussions.
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p>Also, under either of the scenarios you posit above, you, as the employer, could be fired. Again with no legal reprecussions by the fired employee.
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p>No?
that if I, as a supervisor, singled out one male employee, and required him to walk past a male only bathroom that was used by all other male employees, to use the women only bathroom used by all female employees for no justifiable work-related reason, but solely for the purpose of his public humiliation and ridicule or for any non-work related purpose excepting tort or crime, I and my employer would be free from any risk whatsoever of litigation? This is your legal advice?
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p>Your second paragraph was unclear, please explain. You seem to be suggesting, conversely, that I, as the supervisor, can be fired for doing just that?
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p>Thanks.
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p>That sounds about right. Of course anyone can sue anyone for anything, but in your example if the employee sued the employer, what would the complain say? He hurt my feelings and I’m owed money? He’s a jerk and I’m owed money?
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p>What’s the complaint? Sexual harrassment? no. A tort? There may be one but I can’t think of one. Being an ass? Sure, but not actionable.
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p>
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p>No. I’m not your lawyer unless you pay me money.
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p>Sure. You can be fired for good reason, bad reason or no reason.
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This is, sigh, typically where the rubber meets the road. Some lawyers assume that things happen in a vacuum, and the old termination for “…bad reason or no reason” actually works or works cleanly. It doesn’t necessarily work well even if the overt facts appear to support your decision, and you term for cause.
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p>Perhaps our work experience is different here, I’ve had to personally terminate or advise in the termination of a number of employees as a consequence of my profession, and unlike my predecessors who followed your legal advice “… bad reason, no reason”, I never ended up in arbitration or in court. I never forfeited endless work or personal hours entangled in an MCAD or EEOC or tort case or in depositions or hearings or in meetings with legal teams, at enormous cost to my employer, and at the loss of productivity. There is a reason for this. I was never careless, I was never smug, I never assumed I knew all teh facts, I never tolerated bullying behavior by management or staff, I was seen as reasonable and fair and I worked hard to get there.
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p>You rightly point out that your legal advice is worth the money I’ve paid for it (though my mother gave me a penny she found the other day for my “good efforts” and I am happy to send it to you for yours) and that people can sue for anything. There are plenty of stupid lawyers whom I’ve sat across the table from who are perfectly willing to take a clients money and waste my time and their’s in some useless exercise. Why would any employer in his or her right mind allow a supervisor to risk behavior that a reasonable person would find objectionable (even if you believe the law is on your side – the asshole defense or the good, bad, no cause defense, and a judge warns the jury) Since I’ve seen cases that had absolutely no apparent (to our big firm overpaid sharpies like you Gary, and to me) protected class merit go forward, and actually win before a jury, with high punitive damages, I am not so sanguine as you are about how absolute the theoretical law works in the practical human world. That’s why lawyers are advocates – the employee has his too.
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p>But always enjoy your thinking, even as we always seem to disagree.
Why would any employer in his or her right mind allow a supervisor to risk behavior that a reasonable person would find objectionable
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p>So if it’s up to reasonable people, is this why a trans rights law is needed, because reasonable people are likely to find for the employer in a trans case?
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p>Why doesn’t the legislature make ALL people part of the non-discrimination and hate crimes laws?
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p>Wouldn’t that be the true definition of equity and fairness?
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p>They can then classify any crime against any person as a “hate crime.”