Subj: [TSMenace_Intl] Laws prohibit 'transgender' discrimination - World
Net Daily article 3/4/00
Date: 03/05/2000 10:59:59 AM Eastern Standard Time
World Net Daily, March 4, 2000
P.O. Box 409 / Cave Junction, OR 97523
(Fax: 541-597-1700) (E-Mail: [log in to unmask] )
( http://www.worldnetdaily.com )
Laws prohibit 'transgender' discrimination
Alliance with 'gays' takes sexual politics to new frontier
By Frank York
A Boulder, Colorado law has just taken effect forbidding businesses, schools
and other organizations from discriminating against "gender variants," also
known as "transgenders" - even requiring that public facilities provide
separate bathrooms if necessary for these individuals.
A similar law just passed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, while Atlanta added
"gender identity" to its charter in January. And last summer, Louisville and
Lexington, Kentucky, both passed laws protecting transgenders from
"discrimination."
With little media coverage, the transgender movement is gaining momentum
throughout the U.S. According to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,
three counties, 20 cities and the state of Minnesota now prohibit
discrimination based on a person's gender identity.
Transgenders believe they are part of an international movement to free
individuals from "gender oppression" - which they define as society's
practice of dividing the human race into male and female. The term
"transgender" encompasses a wide range of sexual behaviors, including
cross-dressers, drag queens, transsexuals (those seeking sex change
operations), and even "she-males," hybrids who choose to go only halfway
through a sex change operation. They remain partially female and partially
male in their anatomy.
Many transgenders identify internally with the opposite sex, and try to
adjust their outward appearance to match what they believe is their real
gender. Thus, a male who believes he is a woman dresses like a woman; a
woman who believes she is really a man, dresses like a man.
Hollywood aids the transgender movement
Early in February, actress Hilary Swank was named as an Oscar nominee for
"best actress" for her performance in "Boys Don't Cry." As a result of her
nomination, the growing transgender movement gained worldwide publicity for
its cause.
"Boys Don't Cry" tells the true story of a seriously disturbed Nebraska
woman who pretended to be a man. The woman, who called herself Brandon
Teena, believed she was a man trapped in a woman's body. Teena posed as a
young man, dated girls and went cruising and drinking with a rough crowd in a
small town near Lincoln.
Brandon Teena's charade began to unravel when she was arrested on a check
forgery charge and police released her real name, Teena Brandon, to the local
newspaper.
Her drinking buddies were enraged to find out who she was. In a violent
act, they stripped her naked to reveal the truth. Then they took her to a
secluded location and raped her. The local police did not file charges
against her rapists - both convicted felons. Later, in revenge for Brandon's
having turned them in to the police, her rapists murder her.
"20/20 Downtown" devoted a segment on February 10 to another Brandon Teena
film called "The Brandon Teena Story," recently released on video.
The tragic murder of Teena Brandon, because of the natural sympathy it
evokes for the victim, is being used by transgender groups to promote their
political and social goals.
What is a transgender?
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV (DSM-IV) of the American
Psychiatric Association lists transvestism or transgenderism as a mental
disorder or a gender identity disorder. While the APA still considers
transgenderism to be a sexual dysfunction, this could change if transgender
activist groups are successful.
One of these transgender groups is the High Risk Project Society based in
Vancouver, British Columbia. The group has published "Gender, Transgender
and Transphobia," by Sandra Laframboise, to explain the movement and its
goals.
According to the High Risk Project Society, "Transgender people seek the
freedom to express themselves and to present themselves in a manner that is
consistent with their own identity, rather than with the gender identity
imposed on them from birth."
This includes transsexuals, who "internally experience a contradiction
between their identity and their anatomic sex, and usually shape themselves
physically to recreate a more healthy and harmonious balance between their
bodies and their internal world."
The term transgender also includes "intersexuals," or those more commonly
known as hermaphrodites.
"Intersexuals exist on the biological continuum between the poles of male
and female. ..." says Laframboise. "Intersexuals struggle against our rigid
two-sex system, for the right to physical ambiguity and the acknowledgment
that there are more than two sexes."
Cross-dressers are also transgendered persons. These are typically
heterosexual males who enjoy dressing up like women. Drag kings or queens
are also cross-dressers, but usually identify themselves as gays or lesbians.
Transgenderists are those who do not "identify with the gender identity
assigned to them at birth. ... Transgenderists generally perceive their
experience of conflict between their sex and their gender to be the result,
not of 'being in the wrong body' (as may be the case for transsexuals), but
rather of society's expectations that they assume a gender identity that is,
for them, inappropriate."
Transgender bill of rights
The primary goal is to have all forms of trangendered behavior normalized,
accepted and protected. In addition, criticism of transgenderism is to be
stigmatized as a mental illness or criminalized in hate crimes laws.
In 1993, an International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment
Policy passed an "International Bill of Gender Rights." This bill of rights
laid out a lengthy list of goals and "rights" demanded by transgenders.
The first of these is the individual's right to define his own gender
identity.
"The individual's sense of self is not determined by chromosomal sex,
genitalia, assigned birth sex, or initial gender role. ... It is fundamental
that individuals have the right to define, and to redefine as their lives
unfold, their own gender identity, without regard to chromosomal sex,
genitalia, assigned birth sex, or initial gender role," said the document.
The "bill of rights" also demands that transgenders be free from psychiatric
diagnosis or treatment based on their chosen gender identities, and it calls
for the right of transgenders to marry and to adopt children.
Nancy Nangeroni, a transgender activist and founder of the International
Foundation for Gender Education, says that Western culture is "sick" because
it "pathologizes" anyone who wishes to go through a sex change or live as a
member of the opposite sex. Society, notes Nangeroni, forces individuals
into two molds: male or female.
"This is the pathology of a sick society," she says. "The sickness rests
not in the individuals who sense discord between themselves and the mold, but
rather the system that produces the molds. ... Let us end the unconscious
manipulation that traps us in a system of fear and prejudice."
Nangeroni's views are echoed by Martine Rothblatt, a transgender who
authored "The Apartheid of Sex: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender."
According to Rothblatt, Western culture's insistence on categorizing people
from the moment of birth as either male or female is as evil as racial
apartheid. Rothblatt believes traditional concepts of male and female gender
roles are socially constructed and come from ancient, oppressive patriarchal
cultures. In reality, says Rothblatt, there are multiple sexes and
expressions of sexuality. Maleness and femaleness are on opposite ends of a
continuum, with gradations of sexual orientations in between.
While Nangeroni characterizes societal disapproval of transgenderism as
pathological, the High Risk Project Society says individual disapproval of
transgendered behavior is "transphobia," akin to "homophobia," the term
sometimes employed to stigmatize those who oppose the "gay rights" movement.
Transphobia, says Laframboise is "the fear, hatred, disgust and
discrimination of transgendered people because of their non-conforming gender
status."
Gaining protected class status
Minnesota is the only state thus far to legislate protected class status for
transgenders, which has already caused a stir among parents of public school
children. The law, passed in 1993 as part of the state's Human Rights Act,
says employers cannot fire an employee for presenting an "identity not
traditionally associated with [their] biological maleness or femaleness."
Early in 1999, Sandy Crosby became outraged when she learned that the school
district had hired a transgendered music teacher to teach in her daughters'
middle school. She said she did not want her daughters to consider a man who
dressed in pantyhose to be a role model. Nor did she want her daughters to
have to share a restroom with a man who thinks he's a woman, she said.
Crosby and other mothers teamed up with some conservative groups in an
attempt to have the term "transgender" removed from the Human Rights Act.
They have not succeeded. However, in February 1999 the transgendered teacher
resigned, claiming he/she was being harassed.
Parents in Antelope, California also went ballistic in 1998 when teacher
David Warfield informed his students that he would be returning in the fall
as a woman named Dana Rivers. Parents were informed by their children that
Warfield had described to the students his upcoming sex change operation and
his molestation as a child.
The Pacific Justice Institute, a Christian legal group in Sacramento, filed
suit against Warfield for violating the rights of both the children and their
parents. PJI claimed Warfield had engaged in unprofessional conduct by
having sexually explicit discussions with his students - without parental
knowledge or consent. After coming back to school as Dana Rivers, Warfield
eventually was put on administrative leave and, to avoid a trial, agreed to
leave the high school with a $150,000 severance package.
Allied with 'gay rights' movement
According to the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual lobbying group in
Washington, D.C., a transgender is a "broad term that encompasses
cross-dressers, intersexed people, transsexuals, and people who live
substantial portions of their lives as other than their birth gender."
Shannon Minter, a transgendered lawyer and member of the Female-to-Male
International group, works with the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San
Francisco. According to Minter, HRC first began meeting with transgender
rights groups in 1995, and in 1996 invited GenderPac, a transgender group, to
join the Hate Crimes Coalition, which was lobbying for federal hate crimes
laws.
In April 1997, HRC invited Minter to a luncheon to discuss discrimination
against transgendered and transsexual youth. Representatives from the
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, National Organization for Women, and
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays attended.
According to Minter, "Although much remains to be done before trans people
are fully accepted and included in the gay rights movement, trans activists
have done an extraordinary job of propelling transgendered issues into the
forefront of lesbian and gay policy discussions and political debate."
In September 1998, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays voted
overwhelmingly to amend its bylaws to include transgendered people in its
mission statement. PFLAG now has a Transgender Special Outreach Network,
which includes coordinators in more than 170 chapters. It has also published
and distributed more than 12,000 copies of the booklet, "Our Trans Children."
According to PFLAG's materials, "There is no known cure or course of
treatment which reverses the transgendered person's manifestation of the
characteristics and behaviors of another gender."
The goal of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays is to promote
tolerance and understanding of the transgender, not attempt to "cure" him of
his or her condition.
'Worst day of my life'
Jerry Leach is a former transgender. With his wife, Charlene, he operates a
pastoral counseling ministry in Lexington, Kentucky, and has worked with more
than 1,200 men and women who have suffered from a gender identity disorder.
Leach says he began fantasizing about being a girl when he was three or four
years old. He played with girls' toys, wore girls' clothing - with his
mother's approval - and became aware early on that his mother had wanted a
girl instead of a boy.
"I can remember my first day of school, with my mom sitting with me on the
edge of my bed, letting me know I couldn't wear a dress to school. That was
a vivid memory for me and the worst day of my life," recalls Leach.
He cross-dressed at home - both his parents knew about it. He left for the
Navy when he was 17, hoping the service could straighten him out. But after
visiting a Navy psychiatrist, the doctor told him he couldn't find help in
the Navy, and Leach had been discharged within a couple of weeks.
He met and married Charlene when he was barely out of his teens, confessing
his cross-dressing problem to his bride-to-be and telling her he was healed.
"During our first year of marriage," said Leach, "she came home and found me
fully cross-dressed. I had hoped she would love me enough to accept it in
the privacy of our home. But of course, she was very strongly opposed to
it."
Leach entered public ministry and spent the next 20 years working as a
pastor, assistant pastor or youth leader in a variety of churches. He would
control his urges to cross-dress for long periods of time, but then would
fall. His wife kept his secret for two decades, until she could bear it no
longer. They eventually separated for nearly a year, while he sought serious
help.
The turning point for Leach came when he and Charlene met a couple at church
who were willing to spend time counseling them. Eventually, he and Charlene
became associated with Exodus International, a ministry to ex-homosexuals.
They operated CrossOver Ministries in Lexington for a decade, and are now
counselors to transgenders and the sexually addicted.
Molestation, rejection, fantasy
Childhood molestation appears to be a major factor causing a person to
believe he should be the opposite sex.
"Eighty percent of the people we have worked with over the last 10 years
have been molested," said Leach. "I was. I grew up feeling like I hated men
and didn't want anything to do with them."
Another cause of transgender desires, says Leach, "is a sense of being
rejected or being unwanted as a boy." Leach experienced this as a child when
his mother repeatedly expressed the wish that he had been a girl. As a
result, he grew up with a feeling of self-hatred for being a male.
"Every time a person cross-dresses, he feels like he's escaping the reality
of being a man," notes Leach. "It's an illusory world, it's a form of
addiction, escaping reality into a fantasy world."
Leach says that after repeatedly fantasizing about being a woman, the man
disassociates from himself and decides he just wants to stay in the fantasy
world of being a woman.
Sex-change operations only mask the person's sexual identity disorder, he
said.
"The majority of men I've dealt with who have had sex-change operations
realize they've done the wrong thing, but they don't know how to change it,"
says Leach. He is currently working with a transgender male who has lived as
a woman, but who now wants to live as a man. Once the change is made, it is
a difficult and painful ordeal to switch back to the male gender. Many just
give up.
Leach quotes Dr. Rene Richards, one of the nation's first male-to-female
transgenders. Richards gave an interview in the March, 1999 issue of Tennis
magazine, offering this advice to those considering a sex-change operation:
"I wish there could have been an alternative way back in 1975. If there was
a drug that I could have taken that would have reduced the pressure, I would
have been better off staying the way I was, as a totally intact person. I
know deep down that I am a second-class woman. I get a lot of inquiries from
would-be transsexuals, but I don't want anyone to hold me out as an example
to follow. Today, there are better choices, including medication, for
dealing with the compulsion to cross-dress."
"In five years, if not sooner, transgenderism will be legislated into being
as an alternative lifestyle," says Leach. "And if you dare say anything
against it, you'll be cited for committing a hate crime."
Leach does take consolation, however, in the increasing number of calls he's
been getting from transgenders who want help in overcoming their gender
identity problems, and will soon launch a website, RealityResources.com, to
help provide more help for those struggling with gender identity disorders
and other sexual addictions.
. Frank York is a contributing reporter for WorldNetDaily.
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World Net Daily, March 4, 2000
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