Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
(I have just sent this to my district's Member of Parliament, Sukh Dhaliwal. I encourage all my fellow Canadians to do the same with their local MP's. As Mercedes on Pam's said, you can find the contact info for your local MP by typing in your Postal Code here.)
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As a member of your constituency here in Surrey, a voter, and a member of the trans community, I implore you to vote to pass Bill C-389. This bill, despite the lies and fearmongering that members of the religious right are engaging in, is not going to let "men put on dresses so they can rape women in bathrooms and claim they're really trans women". That is utterly reprehensible fearmongering invented by religious bigots who distort faith to justify inequality. What it will do is provide protection and dignity to a very beleaguered class. As you are a person of color, I KNOW you understand how bigotry for something you cannot change, in your case race, feels when the ignorant paint you with assumptions and broadstrokes. Trans women cannot change who they are. They do not go into bathrooms to harass women. We go into bathrooms to use the bathroom, same as everyone else. And Crossdressers are NOT trans women and do not use opposite sex bathrooms. Predators who would harm women tend to be very sexist insecure men, and are EXTREMELY unlikely to sacrifice their masculinity by dressing as women just to access women's spaces.
I was arrested and spent a night in jail this past January in PoCo because a security guard decided I didn't look womanly enough, called me a perverted faggot, and called the police. I was violently raped in juvey as a teenager and the entire night in jail I was wracked by flashbacks. The incident, despite being sorted out the next day when I showed the judge the F on my BCID, left me traumatized and afraid to so much as pee when out in public for months. I gave myself a goddamned kidney stone from holding my bladder til I got home rather than just use a restroom. The passage of Bill C-389 would ensure that women like me who are guilty of absolutely nothing except being born with our brains wired differently, (and yes, science HAS proven that MTF Transsexuals do in fact have the biological brain construction of a natal female), from having to risk this kind of humiliation at the hansds of bullies and bigots who mock and ridicule us just for having the courage to be ourselves.
Last weekend was the Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual day to remember trans women murdered the world over every year. Google Angie Zapata for an example of what women like me risk happening to us every single time we leave the house because we aren't protected under the law.
Imagine if your son or daughter came to you and told you this was who they really were, knowing the danger they will face just by being honest about that. And then remember that all of us, every trans woman, we too are someone's child. And like you, your family, like everyone else, we have the right to be protected by law, and to live with dignity, and to be free from bigotry and harassment just for being who we are.
I am asking you, not as a voter, or a trans woman, but simply as a human being.
Do the right thing. Ignore the fearmongering of religious bigots who bastardize their own faith to make excuses for hatred.
Vote yes on Bill C-389.
Thank you.
Penny Sautereau-Fife, Surrey BC.
Showing posts with label discrimination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label discrimination. Show all posts
10/06/2010
Women Like Me
Crossposted on Pam's House Blend
Women like me are called “it” on the radio, on television, in the news, and by politician wanting to undermine our rights. Just ask Sally Kern's supporters.
We are murdered at a staggering rate. 1 in 8 will be murdered, according to a Harvey Milk institute study. And chances are, 9 times out of 10, no one will cover it except angry trans/is bloggers like me.
Raping us is not yet a crime. Oh sure rape is still technically illegal, but if the victim is a woman like me? Most courts, if it ever even gets to court, dismiss the plaintiffs as deviants who left themselves vulnerable, therefore it's our own fault.
Murdering us is considered justifiable. The victory in Angie Zapata's murder trial was a rupugnantly rare exception where we got justice. The rule is generally "Oh she was a dude? I understand, you're freev to go sir." And that's if it ever reaches trial. Police don't genewrally put much manpower into hunting down some guy who killed another tranny, she was probably a prostitute anyway amirite?
Also generally considered to be perfectly acceptable by society in general are spontaneous public beatings, often by police. Especially in New York where there are at least 3 publicized incidents in the last 10 years of cops standing with a crowd watching and laughing and doing nothing as a transwoman got beaten.
Police often rape us, prior to fabricating charges of soliciting. They know in a their word against ours situation, not even gay and lesbian advocates will believe us over police. Because all trannies are hookers, everyone knows that. We must be, it's not like anyone will give us a real job.
We are openly taunted and demeaned in the media using the most hateful language. If you don't believe me, just Google "Memphis Trans Murders" and see how the media portrays us when we're murdered.
So called “LGBT” activists lie to us to take our meager dollars at fundraisers, then abandon us as beneath them when we need their voices to stand up for us. HRC is a frequent offender, and Joe Solmonese couldn't give a rat's ass about actually including Tran folk. He actively tried to push a trans-exclusive ENDA because he knew them there Gay Fellers would get approval easier if they threw us under the bus. AFTER taking donations from us and promising they'd fight for us of course. LGBT newspapers like Bay Windows and the Washington Blade call for our exclusion from basic rights legislation.
Our unemployment rate is staggeringly high. Even where our kind are supposedly protected from job discrimination, there's always a reason why we're "not right for the job". No employer has to actually say he isn't hiring us because we're trannies, he just has to make up any flimsy excuse and he'll get away with it. I've been passed over because 120 words per minute was "too speedy for office needs".
Because we are often incarcerated in male prisons with exaggerated sentences. I was in juvey for punching a group home worker for calling me a little faggot. I was gang-raped in a shower. The guards denied me medical attention and their reply to my story was "yeah yeah sure queer, back to your cell". That is a verbatim quote as they dragged me back to my cell while my ass was STILL BLEEDING.
Because it is still considered OK to deny us basic medical care, and to excoriate us in the media for seeking it. Just ask the trans woman who in August went to emergency with her wife and daughter because she was coughing up blood and was sniggered at by staff who ignored her id, then had her sanity questioned instead of treated for her illness, then ultimately refused treatment because of her "condition". Not her actual medical condition mind you. They meant her being a "transvestite".
Or as Tyra Hunter found out, to be tortured with naltrexone injections in the last moments of her life, while being taunted for who she was as she lay dying on the pavement, because the EMT found a penis in her panties and refused to touch her afterward. As far as I can find on Google searches, he was never punished.
“Feminists” still call for our exclusion from basic human dignities and protections, such as restrooms and DV shelters, because we're just "men trying to infiltrate female dynamics". (Google "The Transsexual Empire" by Janice Raymond for reference to this crock mentality).
We are effectively barred from attending womens colleges, as well as many women only venues. I personally received 14 death threats by e-mail after I said on my old now-defunct LiveJournal account that I planned to attend the Vancouver Dyke March 6 years ago and speak onstage about tg issues. I was afraid to attend though, as they were so descriptive and specific in their threats. The police of course did nothing.
And finally, because all too many women will ignore this post “because it doesn’t affect them,” or because of their own issues with women like me.
Women like me are standing up and telling the rest of you; We exist. You will not ignore us. You will not pretend we aren't there. You will address us as we live, not by our genitals. You will respect our identities. You will not shrug if someone murders us. You will nott exclude us from equality legislation for the sake of expediance swearing you'll "come back for us, honest".
Women like me, ARE women.
Get used to it. We will not quietly go away, and every new generation of us gets louder and louder.
Women like me are called “it” on the radio, on television, in the news, and by politician wanting to undermine our rights. Just ask Sally Kern's supporters.
We are murdered at a staggering rate. 1 in 8 will be murdered, according to a Harvey Milk institute study. And chances are, 9 times out of 10, no one will cover it except angry trans/is bloggers like me.
Raping us is not yet a crime. Oh sure rape is still technically illegal, but if the victim is a woman like me? Most courts, if it ever even gets to court, dismiss the plaintiffs as deviants who left themselves vulnerable, therefore it's our own fault.
Murdering us is considered justifiable. The victory in Angie Zapata's murder trial was a rupugnantly rare exception where we got justice. The rule is generally "Oh she was a dude? I understand, you're freev to go sir." And that's if it ever reaches trial. Police don't genewrally put much manpower into hunting down some guy who killed another tranny, she was probably a prostitute anyway amirite?
Also generally considered to be perfectly acceptable by society in general are spontaneous public beatings, often by police. Especially in New York where there are at least 3 publicized incidents in the last 10 years of cops standing with a crowd watching and laughing and doing nothing as a transwoman got beaten.
Police often rape us, prior to fabricating charges of soliciting. They know in a their word against ours situation, not even gay and lesbian advocates will believe us over police. Because all trannies are hookers, everyone knows that. We must be, it's not like anyone will give us a real job.
We are openly taunted and demeaned in the media using the most hateful language. If you don't believe me, just Google "Memphis Trans Murders" and see how the media portrays us when we're murdered.
So called “LGBT” activists lie to us to take our meager dollars at fundraisers, then abandon us as beneath them when we need their voices to stand up for us. HRC is a frequent offender, and Joe Solmonese couldn't give a rat's ass about actually including Tran folk. He actively tried to push a trans-exclusive ENDA because he knew them there Gay Fellers would get approval easier if they threw us under the bus. AFTER taking donations from us and promising they'd fight for us of course. LGBT newspapers like Bay Windows and the Washington Blade call for our exclusion from basic rights legislation.
Our unemployment rate is staggeringly high. Even where our kind are supposedly protected from job discrimination, there's always a reason why we're "not right for the job". No employer has to actually say he isn't hiring us because we're trannies, he just has to make up any flimsy excuse and he'll get away with it. I've been passed over because 120 words per minute was "too speedy for office needs".
Because we are often incarcerated in male prisons with exaggerated sentences. I was in juvey for punching a group home worker for calling me a little faggot. I was gang-raped in a shower. The guards denied me medical attention and their reply to my story was "yeah yeah sure queer, back to your cell". That is a verbatim quote as they dragged me back to my cell while my ass was STILL BLEEDING.
Because it is still considered OK to deny us basic medical care, and to excoriate us in the media for seeking it. Just ask the trans woman who in August went to emergency with her wife and daughter because she was coughing up blood and was sniggered at by staff who ignored her id, then had her sanity questioned instead of treated for her illness, then ultimately refused treatment because of her "condition". Not her actual medical condition mind you. They meant her being a "transvestite".
Or as Tyra Hunter found out, to be tortured with naltrexone injections in the last moments of her life, while being taunted for who she was as she lay dying on the pavement, because the EMT found a penis in her panties and refused to touch her afterward. As far as I can find on Google searches, he was never punished.
“Feminists” still call for our exclusion from basic human dignities and protections, such as restrooms and DV shelters, because we're just "men trying to infiltrate female dynamics". (Google "The Transsexual Empire" by Janice Raymond for reference to this crock mentality).
We are effectively barred from attending womens colleges, as well as many women only venues. I personally received 14 death threats by e-mail after I said on my old now-defunct LiveJournal account that I planned to attend the Vancouver Dyke March 6 years ago and speak onstage about tg issues. I was afraid to attend though, as they were so descriptive and specific in their threats. The police of course did nothing.
And finally, because all too many women will ignore this post “because it doesn’t affect them,” or because of their own issues with women like me.
Women like me are standing up and telling the rest of you; We exist. You will not ignore us. You will not pretend we aren't there. You will address us as we live, not by our genitals. You will respect our identities. You will not shrug if someone murders us. You will nott exclude us from equality legislation for the sake of expediance swearing you'll "come back for us, honest".
Women like me, ARE women.
Get used to it. We will not quietly go away, and every new generation of us gets louder and louder.
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