Transgender Rights are not bargaining chips. We have needs. Like Food, Shelter, and public facilities. Needs that still can be legally denied us because our rights are used as negotiation points.
Would Barney Frank tell Rosa Parks she can sit in the middle of the bus instead of the front because we can negotiate for the front of the bus later?
Frank said he has seen important advances in the support for transgender rights in Congress and several states, including Massachusetts, which just passed a transgender non-discrimination bill that includes protections in employment, housing, credit and adds transgender protections to the state’s hate crimes law.
But Frank noted that the bill passed after transgender leaders and their supporters in the legislature agreed to a compromise that eliminated public accommodations protections from the bill. Lawmakers supportive of the bill said they would add public accommodations protections to the law as soon they can line up the votes in the legislature needed to do so.
Frank dismissed as “ridiculous” the attacks by some LGBT activists who called the compromise unacceptable and an outrage against the transgender community.
“That is an example of their political stupidity,” he said, noting that the compromise bill provides employment and housing protections that otherwise would not have passed if advocates held out for an all-or-nothing bill.
Does Barney Frank think that Chrissy Lee Polis should be okay with this beating for trying to use a public facility?
Or does Barney Frank think she is politically stupid?
Enough!
I'm still ranting.
He thinks it is okay when I've been run out of restaurants?
Refused motel rooms?
I think I found the root of the problem:
A little while later, I found Barney without a group of people around him, so I once again engaged him in conversation.
"So," I said, "does your support of transgender inclusion in the VAWA mean that you might be changing your mind about inclusion of gender-variant people in ENDA?"
An innocent enough question, but you would have thought that I was threatening him with a loaded weapon. He got red in the face and started shouting,
"Never."
His problem was that until we could answer the question of
"people with penises in [women's] showers,"
there is no way that he would support it. The conversation got rather heated to say the least. And with Barney speaking very loudly and repeatedly about
"penises in showers,"
we attracted a lot of attention in the restaurant.
So if he is so concerned about genitalia in the showers why doesn't he support medical coverage for our surgeries?
It will cost me $10,000 just to get my chest fixed in the states. My doctor told me to check in Canada and Mexico. I'm looking at Thailand for doctors because it might be cheaper there. But still prohibitively expensive for someone with an income that doesn't break $9,000 a year. The average income for a Transgender person is $11,000 according to the latest statistics. Yet he doesn't want to give us rights like public accommodations because we can't afford surgeries.