Tweet
It’s an open thread! Pleeeeease feel free to chat, blogwhore, and link-share in the comment thread… 
So, this is what my cartoon sockpuppet Bookworm Bob have been looking at since our last This & That post.
• Bay Windows‘ Hong Kong judge: Transgender woman can’t marry man:
A transgender woman lost a legal challenge Tuesday, Oct. 5 against Hong Kong marriage rules that prevent her from marrying her boyfriend.The plaintiff underwent sex change surgery from man to woman in 2008 and obtained identification documents listing her new gender. But Hong Kong’s Marriage Registry only allows couples who were men and women at birth to wed.
The woman, who is in her 20s and can only be identified as “W” under court order, argued her rights to marry in the constitution and Bill of Rights were violated.
Hong Kong’s constitution says freedom of marriage of Hong Kong residents should be protected by law. The Bill of Rights says the right of men and women to marry should be recognized.
High Court Judge Andrew Cheung ruled that he saw no evidence to support “a shifted societal consensus in present day Hong Kong regarding marriage to encompass a postoperative transsexual.”
I know I say this over and over again: marriage equality is very much an issue for transgender people, transsexual people, and people who identify as both transgender and transsexual. The reasons why marriage equality is an issue for trans people are often very unalike from the reasons why marriage equality is an issue for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. But, the commonality of experience — where trans, lesbian, gay, and bisexual people don’t have the freedom to marry whomever they love — is why marriage equality is an issue for all of these minority populations.
“W”, mentioned in the Bay Windows article above, isn’t trying to enter a same sex marriage, but nonetheless the marriage she wants to enter into is being treated as a same-sex marriage by Hong Kong’s government. The situation, to me, is detestable.
• TBD.com‘s piece by Amanda Hess, entitled Starbucks gender-neutral restrooms: No plans to expand beyond D.C.:
Last week, Starbucks locations across the District of Columbia began the process of making their restrooms gender neutral. Fifty-two District coffee shops will be removing the “Men” and “Women” signs on their single-stall facilities this month in order to comply with gender identity protections in the D.C. Human Rights Act. Bonus: San Franciscans are already jealous of our coffee chain toilets!
“Should’ve happened here first,” declared SFist‘s Jay Barmann, before congratulating D.C. LGBT activists on the win. “[I]t’s a little surprising this didn’t happen in San Francisco first, given that we have one of the largest and most concentrated transgendered populations in the country.”
Not really: What San Francisco doesn’t have is a law mandating gender-neutral facilities in the city’s public accommodations, like coffee shops.
And that’s precisely why Starbucks is switching out 52 restroom signs in D.C. instead of San Francisco. “When we became aware that our bathroom signs did not comply with the District of Columbia law regarding gender-neutral restroom signage, we took immediate action to change them,” a Starbucks spokesperson told TBD. “We appreciate the Office of Human Rights’ willingness to work with us to make sure our stores are in compliance with the law and that all our customers feel welcome.”
And these bathrooms aren’t just for transgender people, but this kind of bathroom signage is also for disabled people with opposite sex assistants, and parents, guardians, and childcare givers with small children of the opposite sex.
Laws matter. Mandating the availability of gender neutral restrooms at businesses that have public restrooms seems to me to be — at least in most cases — a really good idea.
• A Times Daily letter to the editor, entitled Where’s empathy?:
I’ve been appalled by recent news of suicides among young people who have been bullied because they are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or because others perceive them to be.…All students deserve to attend safe and welcoming schools. Students cannot learn when they feel unsafe.
Our local school districts need to take immediate steps to protect all students and make sure they have a safe learning environment. I heard someone say, one child dying is a tragedy, more than four children in a month dying is an epidemic. If these kids were straight, would there even be a hesitation to do something? What if it were your brother, sister, your son or daughter? What has happened to empathy?
Empathy does seem pretty much lost to those who state they disapprove of “the homosexual lifestyle.”
• Dallas Morning News‘s North Dallas High School principal blocks transgender student’s bid for homecoming queen:
Andy Moreno says she wants to be homecoming queen, not king, at North Dallas High School.“It’s something I started thinking about last year, and my friends have encouraged me,” she said after school Thursday.
One problem: The school’s principal doesn’t want a male identifying as a female reigning as queen of the homecoming court.
“The principal said, ‘You are a male and males can run for king, not queen,’ ” said Jon Dahlander, a school district spokesman.
Dinnah Escanilla, the school’s first-year principal, was unavailable for comment. Sandra Guerrero, a DISD spokeswoman, said the district has no policy on gender requirements for homecoming royalty but supports the principal.
“Every principal has the discretion to make that decision, and it is a campus-based issue,” she said.
When just out of High School I was looking into Libertarian political thought, one of the concepts I was exposed to was the fill-in-the-thought query of “Should _______ be a function of government?” It’s a question related to keeping government out of areas where government should perhaps not have a role.
So, it seems wrongheaded to me in this case of North Dallas High School Principal Dinnah Escanilla using her taxpayer funded position to enforce societal sex and gender roles — specifically in deciding eligibility related to the sex and gender of homecoming king or homecoming queen candidates. The question that should be asked appears to me should be “Should enforcing sex and gender roles in student body elections for homecoming king and queen be a function of taxpayer funded school systems?”
In my mind, the answer should be “No”; what the principal did shouldn’t be a function of government. The principal’s action seems an overly intrusive reach by a government employee, specifically because the state really doesn’t seem to me to have a compelling justification for enforcing sex and gender norms in school elections.
• Our Wiener Story Of The Day: ABC2 News‘s PETA hands out ‘not’ dogs for lunch:
BALTIMORE – PETA says it’s time for Baltimore to ditch the ballpark staple hot dogs, for what it calls ‘not dogs.’
PETA says Charm City is one of the fattest cities in America. To shed some pounds, it wants more people to switch to a vegan diet.
To wet your taste buds, PETA’s Lettuce Ladies handed out free ‘not dogs’ to people walking along the streets today.
But as always, “The weenie tempts you!”
So anywho…It’s an open thread! What are you thinking about today, or what books or articles have you been reading the past few days? Wanna share?
And again, please feel free to chat, blogwhore, and link-share in the comment thread because…it’s an open thread! Woo-hoo! 
21 Comments
Equally detestable.Equally detestable is appropriating the true battle she fights to support same sex marriage. She is faced with systemic ungendering and same sex marriage does nothing to address that, period. Saying so is merely insult atop injury: continuing to deny her gender.
Lest anyone think otherwise, I’m hardly one of the separatist segments. Being a lesbian trans woman means issues like same sex marriage are material to my life. However, I will not tolerate the harm that occurs when trans concerns are intentionally, incorrectly redefined to be in support of another cause as it directly says that proper legal recognition of her gender isn’t important to any trans person, particularly not to the one directly harmed by it.
So school principals,those small-minded, afraid-of-their-own-shadows, time- serving, bureaucratic petty dictators, are more qualified to decide a person’s gender, that the person is herself? I really need to buy a keyboard protector.
Blogwhoring Tony CurtisWho can forget Tony Curtis in “Spartacus”? He died last week and my Huffington Post tribute to him in his greatest role is here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
If you’re a film buff, this blog is for you. Enjoy, and have a great weekend blogging, whoring, or whatever.
Well, we can disagree on this subject……but whatever our reasons for disagreeing on this issue, cultural appropriation of other minority populations’ experiences is just not happening here.
The perspective I’m taking as more of an LGBTQ community approach to marriage equality, in that the LGBTQ community is a community of subcommunities.
And people who are reading what I’m saying are filtering what I’m saying — believing same-sex marriage is a term that means the same thing as marriage equality. These terms are not interchangeable; marriage equality is a term related to freedom to marry, and incorporates the concept from Loving v. Virginia of marriage as a fundamental right:
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer people should have the freedom to marry whomever they may love. Transgender people, transsexual people, and people who identify as both transgender and transsexual should have the freedom to marry whomever they may love. There is a commonality between subcommunities of the LGBTQ community regarding marriage, in that is often a common inability to marry whomever they may love.
Within LGBTQ community, sometimes the reason why community members aren’t permitted to marry the ones that they love has to do with sexual orientation, sometimes the reason has to do with the state not recognizing the gender identity and expression community members — but 1.) sex and gender is involved in all of these LGBTQ marriage issues, and 2.) the end result is that people aren’t being allowed the fundamental right to marry the ones that they may love. Marriage equality is the LGBTQ community term that recognizes LGBTQ people are often not allowed to marry whomever they love — for whatever the reason that might be.
Again, same-sex marriage and marriage equality are separate terms that mean different things. To imply that I’m meaning same-sex marriage when I’m using the term marriage equality is an inaccurate interpretation of my viewpoints on marriage regarding LGBTQ community members.
Whatever I’m doing in making my argument regarding marriage equality, I’m certainly not arguing from a place of cultural appropriation. Those, such as you sinspiration, who are making that claim that my arguments on marriage equality involve cultural appropriation…well, reading up on what cultural appropriation actually involves is probably something you should do. And, that’s because what and how I’m arguing regarding marriage equality doesn’t involve any actual cultural appropriation.
Mr. Curtis dissed “Brokeback Mountain” with clearly anti-gay sentiment.
Uni RestroomsI knew it would happen eventually.
It means we have to let the guys in and they never put the seat down. Or they don’t bother to put it up.
Gender Neutral BathroomsI think these are a great idea! There are many smaller restaurants in NYC where the restrooms are gender-neutral, and they tend to be much cleaner and nicer than your typical men’s room. Rarely a long wait either. Just my 2 cents.
That’s not all it meansI worked my way through college at a gas station, and one of the duties I performed on my graveyard shift was cleaning the bathrooms. Every stereotype I had about how neat, clean and fastidious most women were went straight out the window. I found things in that women’s restroom that were disgusting – much worse than I ever found in the men’s restroom, and much of it deliberate. I’ll stick to the men’s room, where the worst I have to worry about is a few dribbles under the urinal, and some paper towels tossed on the floor.
Adding confusion not clarity
I really, really hate to do this (I’d much rather use an analogy using sourdough bread, yeast and turning the oven on), but here goes:
Sometimes my car doesn’t start because it’s out of gas, sometimes the reason has to do with me not being able to find my keys – but 1.) gas not getting to the cylinders and ignited is involved in both issues and 2.) the end result is that my car doesn’t start.
But if you want to solve the problem and get to work on time you must identify and then tease the two apart and distinguish which one is the cause today. Blending them together does not result in forward progress.
In a word, yes.They are the unquestionable rulers of their kingdom. Minor gods, really. Due to the oddities of being the temporary custodians of minors and various court decisions, the administrators have truly been enabled in building a world of their own. Within the boundaries of the campus they decide the gender, sex, sexuality, free will, aesthetics, neurology, biology, and as a result the social standing of each student.
In other words, in a very practical sense they have the final say in deciding the value and equality of each student and who qualifies as a human being. Yes, they can be threatened and sued into compliance with laws (if any) that happen to exist, but by that point in many ways they have already taken their prize from our children. A broken LGBT child is a victory and most often a loss in court hurts the district (& therefore all students within) not the individual.
GNSSB’s (Gender Neutral Single Stall Bathrooms)I applaud Starbucks for complying with the law in Washington D.C.
Question is, are they willing to do it chain wide? In other words, the small victory here was in the passing and enforcement of the rules in D.C., not that a notable business happened to choose to comply with a local law; the latter is often just ‘good business’.
Recently here in California we stopped at a highway rest stop. Despite the bevy of good trans laws on the books, when they put the finishing touches on the brand new single stall, opposite-sex parent & ADA-attendant admissible bathrooms…at each new site we found a little person wearing pants on one door and a little person in a dress on the other.
I know the gAyTM is closed, but this is still an important election
LA Times with a long story on Seth WalshSad reading but an important story.
http://www.latimes.com/news/lo…
Could not disagree more.I believe we create the opportunity for broader alliances by pointing out our commonalities of human experience. We have the opportunity to have groups of people with common issues and experience to work to solve common or related problems — even if it takes simultaneously working towards on multiple solutions to solve those common or related problems.
Marriage equality is the header that the LGBTQ community has for our community issues related to marriage. The solution to those common and related problems involve solutions that provide the results of the freedom to marry whomever one loves to all LGBTQ people, which includes the recognition of the gender identities of transgender people, transsexual people, and people who identify as both transgender and transsexual.
To me, recognizing that marriage equality is an issue with a number of causations that impact the entire LGBTQ community results in the community opportunity to approach the issue — with its with multiple causatum — with multiple solutions. And we can work on the multiple solutions to our common, LGBTQ community issue of marriage inequality simultaneously. We, as a community, can walk and chew gum at the same time.
And yes, I admit, I’m an optimist. Just because we have the LGBTQ community opportunity to get at the multiple roots of marriage inequality simultaneously, it doesn’t mean that our LGBTQ community actually will work towards solving the multiple roots of marriage inequality simultaneously. But, as always, I choose to have hope that the best of our LGBTQ community will shine through.
Not sure I get itSo, marriage Equality is a superset of same-sex marriage, yes?
But…right now trans people that are legally recognized as their proclaimed sex can marry the opposite sex. Ditto for anyone else, for that matter. That makes it not an equal marriage issue in that case but rather a trans one, that of being recognized for all purposes as one’s proclaimed sex. And those that are attracted to the same sex are covered by same sex marriage.
That does leaves examples such as two gender fluid / asexed (?) / intersex people and the question of marriage, but that can much more easily be taken care of via inclusion by widening the definition of same sex…ahhhh, now I get it. Interesting.
Still not convinced it is sorted through enough to be more convincing than confusing though.
Convince me.
“Convince me?” i’ll take a stab …
Erm … in what municipalities or states or countries is this codified by law? And widely understood and respected by police and government functionaries and courts? And where couples that don’t appear gender-normative are treated just the same as the ones that can pass? Where is this Utopia attained by trans people for the first time before it reached their LGB kindred?
I regularly read on PHB and elsewhere about couples where one or both are trans are disrespected, mocked, denied marriage licenses and other public services, and where they lose court battles for their basic civil rights. Sounds familiar.
I feel like I have a lot in common with the trans community on this point. I kinda like the concept/coinage of the term gender outlaws. To “normal” cis-gender heterosexual folks (who are bigots), we are all just different kinds of freaky. Marriage Equality makes ten kinds of sense to me over the silo cry for same-sex marriage.
She is New Face of Repub’sAlthough she is a babbling fruitcake, a step up from Angle who is able to say anything that has no connection with this earth, she has that American wholesome look the r’s need, desperately need.
She is going to be used to replace the gut disturbing face the Teh Fat One, the palid nothing of McConnell, the beachball head of Beck, the vacant look of Palin. This woman who has an excess of helium in the cranium is what they want.
She has been through years of on air performances perfecting how to look the part of someone with some concept of reality while at the same time trying to convince you that her version of reality is real.
So look for the R’s promoting her as the victim of librulsts
Marriage Equality makes sense. . .. . . if and only if you can prove that the mainstream LGB(T) orgs have any interest in actually pushing for marriage equality rather than just same-sex marriage. As far as I’m concerned, until that proof is provided marriage equality in the real world is nothing more than a catchphrase intended to trick trans people into continuing to pour their hard-earned resources into a movement which has no intention of ever lifting a finger for them in return.
blogwhoring adsI know that the ads bring in money, but do they HAVE to be RNC ads against the candidate I am for? moumble grumble
and now it is back to sleep and more painkillers, hip arthroscopy was no fun today :(
Not disagreeing with you.“in what municipalities or states or countries is this codified by law? And widely understood and respected by police and government functionaries and courts? And where couples that don’t appear gender-normative are treated just the same as the ones that can pass? Where is this Utopia attained by trans people for the first time before it reached their LGB kindred? ”
- Anywhere that it is also true for het-cis (appearing?) couples, assuming no laws specifically prohibiting it, if the trans people couple appears to fully assimilate into the very culture that is bigoted against them at this point.
- None.
- Nowhere.
- In my dreams only.
See, that’s my biggest problem with it, too.It feels like I’m begging for inclusion. Again. And I’m tired of doing that.