Brynn Tannehill2013-05-22T18:34:53-04:00Brynn Tannehillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=brynn-tannehillCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Brynn TannehillGood old fashioned elbow grease.Why ENDA Matters to the Trans Communitytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32234192013-05-12T00:13:48-04:002013-05-13T13:27:40-04:00Brynn Tannehillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/
There has been some progress in the past decade for transgender people in the workplace. In 2002 only 5 percent of the companies that participated in the Human Rights Campaign's (HRC) Corporate Equality Index (CEI) had gender identity included in their corporate equal opportunity statement. By 2013 it has risen to 84 percent. Since 2002 a host of legal cases have begun to clearly establish that discriminating against transgender people falls under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act's prohibition against discrimination on the basis of sex. Smith v. City of Salem, Barnes v. City of Cincinnati, Schroerer v. Library of Congress and Macy v. Holder have more or less established this as the dominant narrative in case law. Glenn v. Brumby took it a step further, with the 11th Circuit ruling that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment also applies.
Those who oppose ENDA or oppose transgender inclusion in it for political purposes ask why we need it when it seems like the transgender community has all these things going for it as it is. The short answer is that we desperately need it because what we have in place is not preventing massive and widespread discrimination against transgender people.
When you look at the graphs above, something should jump out. Transgender people are more than twice as likely to hold advanced degrees as the general population. They're 50-percent more likely to hold an undergraduate degree. And they're also making far, far less money than the rest of the population. The same study also revealed that the transgender unemployment rate is twice the national average.
Better-educated but making much less? It is not supposed to work like that. Statistically, there is usually a strong correlation between education and income level, but not for transgender people. The system is broken, and Occam's razor tells us that the answer is likely what we would expect: Bias against transgender people prevents us from getting jobs, gets us laid off when we transition and keeps us from being paid our fair market value.
Anecdotes from friends tell the same story. One trans woman was a model employee and was described as being the best in her division in an evaluation just prior to coming out. A few months later she told management about her upcoming transition. Suddenly her evaluations turned negative, and she was written up for trivial infractions. Eventually she was fired. The only thing that saved her from abject poverty was taking the firing to arbitration and receiving a settlement to go away quietly, so as not to endanger the company's CEI rating with HRC.
Another trans woman described how she tried to transition as professionally as possible. She worked with HR, supervisors and management and meticulously helped them plan for it. Then, not long after she had established a transition plan, management announced a realignment of her division. She was the only person out of 14 who wasn't placed elsewhere within the company immediately. She applied for 50 other positions within the company, including one with Diversity and Inclusion (D&I). She was rejected for all of them. She was released this week and is considering pursuing legal action.
Yet another told how she was fired before the end of her first day at a new job because someone in the office recognized her as someone they knew from before she'd transitioned.
What all these individuals have in common is that their companies had equal opportunity policies that supposedly protect against discrimination on the basis of gender identity. It obviously wasn't enough.
The goal of ENDA legislation is not to generate more lawsuits, though. People can do that already. The goal is to prevent the discrimination that results in lawsuits.
If you have reached the point where an individual has been fired, and the matter is turning into litigation, it means that the situation has already become a lose-lose situation for everyone. The company has lost an employee whom they will have to replace at cost. They risk damaging their reputation as a fair employer. There will be expenses associated with defending themselves. They may incur further costs if the arbitration or the case goes against them. The employee has to go through the nightmare of pursuing legal action and dealing with the financial burden of unemployment and all the stress that comes with it. They also risk becoming unemployable, because there is a tort out there with their name on it.
Many managers, HR and D&I aren't aware of the ramifications of Macy v. Holder. They don't know what the case law precedent for transgender people in their local circuit court of appeals is. They may not know city or county ordinances. They just know that there is no law protecting transgender people overall.
When the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed, it had a remarkable effect on American corporate culture over time. Everyone now knows that you can't use a racial epithet at work or fire someone when you find out that they're Jewish. In order to help build a more equitable environment for transgender individuals, we must establish a similar mindset when it comes to gender identity. The only way to do so is by passing ENDA. We need to pass it not just because it is the right thing to do but that it is necessary to address the severe and ongoing problem of discrimination against transgender people in the workplace.]]>Responsibility and Libertytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31874932013-05-07T12:06:26-04:002013-05-07T12:06:29-04:00Brynn Tannehillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/
Recently I asked a number of transgender and cisgender friends the following: Given a situation in which a transgender person does something that gains negative attention, how would you view this? Would you apply the categorical imperative, which values an individual's right to determine what is right for oneself above all else, or would you apply a more utilitarian view that the ethical thing to do is the thing that maximizes the common good, even if the action is at the expense of self-interest? In other words, if someone does something that may reflect badly on the community, is their personal freedom of expression more important than expectations to conform at some level?
Both opinions are right.
Transgender people are viewed negatively by many people and organizations. The transgender community is demonized by religious organizations, by the military, by people on the left and right and even by other trans people. The local media even piled on recently by victim-blaming a murdered transgender woman. The last thing we need to do as a group is work even harder at tearing down our own. There are plenty of people outside the transgender community doing it already.
At the same time, we are losing ground in many red states. Legislation aimed at preventing transgender people from having legal recourse when they face discrimination in all facets of life is spreading through states like Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas and Louisiana. Whenever a transgender person gains attention in a bad way, the hole we're in as a group gets even deeper.
Having people in your community who make you wince is nothing new to any group. One lesbian friend of mine bemoaned the obnoxious behavior at many LGB events. "I think it makes us look like sex fiends who can't act right in public. I don't take my kids to pride events because of that. Most big-city prides are not family events at all. It is sad, like we gave up on the idea we could have a family."
Another gay friend cringed when describing the litany of public behaviors he has witnessed that personally embarrass him as a professional gay man: questionable taste in clothing that emphasizes sex, promoting drug abuse, not keeping sex lives private, being a "total queen" in public, attacking all religions and religious people with emotional arguments. The list went on and on.
Still, there is one crucial difference between the LGB and transgender communities when it comes to public exposure. Americans increasingly know more than one LGB person. Additionally, there are plenty of very well-liked LGB people in American popular culture. Ellen DeGeneres and George Takei come to mind. So when a member of the public sees or hears about an LGB person behaving badly, their perception of the entire LGB community will not be based on that one individual.
However, when a member of the public interacts with an openly transgender person, it is possible, if not probable, that this is the first time they have ever knowingly met one. Almost everything this member of the public will know about the transgender community going forward will come from this single interaction. With you. There aren't any Ellens or Georges for the transgender community to fall back on. John Q. Public doesn't have a transgender friend at work whom he has lunch with sometimes. You're it, the alpha and the omega of their transgender interactions and impressions.
You're the ambassador for all of us. If you blow it, this will be the impression that others carry forward until they have enough positive interactions with transgender people to overcome their negative first impression. Given our lack of visibility and our rarity, changing a negative opinion is unlikely. This adverse impression is also an experience that they will share with others.
A professor at the Naval War College once told me that according to information operations theory, word of negative interactions reaches roughly 12 times as many ears as news regarding positive interactions. This was in reference to our operations with the local populace in the Middle East, but the analogy holds true here as well. When one of us generates negative publicity with an audience that is already suspicious at best, word travels far and fast. It then becomes increasingly difficult to change the conventional wisdom.
This is the usual double standard. Women, people of color and LGB people have had to deal with having to be twice as good as the next person for generations. However, it does not change the reality that in this era of social and data interconnectivity, what one of us does has the potential to affect all of us.
So how do we as a community handle this paradox between, on the one hand, trying not to pile onto other people and respecting personal freedom and, on the other, avoiding negative attention? Two bits of classic leadership advice seem appropriate.
The first is an adaptation of Ronald Reagan's "Eleventh Commandment": Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow transgender person. Tearing each other to ribbons in public forums doesn't get us ahead.
The second is simple: Praise in public; criticize in private. This is not to say that you shouldn't try to stop someone from making a huge mistake. And by "huge mistake" I mean "stuff that will get you arrested." When mistakes are made, usually you do not need to tell the person what went wrong, because half the world seems to be pointing it out already. Only discuss behavior, not the person, with others and why it is damaging.
In the end we are all ambassadors, and as such, the burden of leadership and personal responsibility is spread across the community. We are our brother's and our sister's keepers, both in how we present ourselves and how we help lead others to do so as well.]]>Anger Management for a Movementtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30630542013-04-12T17:49:41-04:002013-04-12T17:49:48-04:00Brynn Tannehillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/productive conversations on transgender issues with a manager as I discussed why I am trying to work with the corporate Diversity and Inclusion office on benefits for transgender employees. There were faux pas I ignored and education to be had, but in the end I had convinced her to help me make my case with D&I. She confessed that she had deliberately steered away from reading about these issues in the past, though not from squeamishness but because "both sides just seem so angry all the time."
My first instinct was to protest, but I had to check myself. I wanted to say, "We're not angry. It's the other side that's angry." However, I know that when I feel defensive, it usually means that someone is challenging a belief that needs to be reexamined, and my own spouse had said exactly the same thing several years earlier.
Sure, every day, LGBT people are bombarded with wave after wave of vitriol and accusations of the most heinous atrocities against humanity by mouthpieces of the right-wing American Family Association, Family Research Council and Liberty Counsel. Many religious leaders use us as a dog whistle to appeal to their deep-red flocks and their even deeper pocketbooks.
The trans community has its own deep internal divisions, with some individuals working hard to marginalize anyone who doesn't express their "transness" in a way they approve of.
In short, we feel beset on all sides. Our instincts are to lash out, to rail at those who wish us harm. We want to mock and insult people and organizations who demonize us. It is natural. It is human.
And that is the wrong thing to do, in both a strategic and a tactical sense.
A friend who is a leader in the trans community recently summed up her feelings about expressing anger in relation to her evolution from an activist to a leader:
I'd much rather be out kicking them in the shins, myself, but I grudgingly admit there is a time for everything. I just have to confess that I often long for the days when I was just a bitch on the Net. It is much easier to be angry than it is to be assertive but not aggressive and fight for rights through the process than tearing down the existing before building the new.
There are many barn burners. There are several bridge builders. There are not enough barn builders.
Another told me that when she first started working in a leadership position, she wanted to get the truth out there to all the really angry people, to help them calm down and see reason. After a year of fruitless effort, she came to an important realization: The angry ones, on both sides, aren't the people who matter. It is people like my manager whom we need to be making our case to. But when we look and sound angry, that is a huge turn-off for the people who might otherwise be convinced.
The current tensions with North Korea are a good example of this concept. Pyongyang threatens, rails and generally acts like a 3-year-old (with nuclear weapons) who has been told "no." Our diplomatic response has essentially been an eye-roll and, "Yeah, OK, whatever. Let us know when you're done rolling around on the floor and screaming. Then we'll talk." As long as we stay calm, we are the ones regarded as the grownups in the room by the international community.
This extends to other civil rights battles as well. Once you get past making the public aware of an issue, the people with the calm, clear messages of tolerance, equality and compassion win out over time. Certainly there were angry people within different civil rights movements; many such voices were a driving force in their early days. However, history tends have the highest regard for the effectiveness of those whose messages were the most unifying. Those leaders realized that the key wasn't merely appeals to their base but winning over those who are winnable.
Being loud, angry and scary, using hyperbole, calling names and fudging the facts only keeps your base on board. It doesn't win many converts. And it is not a winning strategy in the long run.
None of this is to say that we shouldn't point out when homophobic and transphobic individuals and groups resort to outlandish scare tactics. It is entirely possible to point out when they are saying ridiculous and foolish things without appearing angry or vitriolic ourselves. People will figure out who the grownup in the room is on their own. However, when we go tit for tat with hateful people, it reminds me of old adage by George Bernard Shaw: "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."
It is still sound advice a hundred years later. It behooves us to always be mindful of how we make our cases while rebutting the hysterics of those who regard us with what Justice Anthony Kennedy referred to as "naked animus."]]>Why Arizona's Bathroom Bill Is Unconstitutionaltag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29709362013-03-28T12:56:03-04:002013-03-28T12:56:07-04:00Brynn Tannehillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/the notorious "Bathroom Bill." SB1045 makes it against state law for local governments to pass laws or regulations which ensure access to public access to "privacy areas" based on "gender identity or expression." It nullifies existing laws that do, and states that business owners can't be held accountable if they deny access to an individual if the individual's gender expression doesn't meet the business owner's approval.
Almost as appalling was the designation of this bill as an emergency measure. The last time I checked, Governor Brewer never had to call out the National Guard to put down mobs of rampaging transsexuals in bathrooms.
Adding to the ludicrous nature of the bill is the fact that it creates a very soft definition of who can be discriminated against:
(a) An individual's self identification as male, female or something in between and includes an individual's appearance, mannerisms or other characteristics only insofar as they relate to gender with or without regard to the individual's designated sex at birth.
This means that the bill makes it perfectly legal to tell non-transgender women and men they can't use the bathroom if they do not meet some arbitrary standard for femininity or masculinity. Butch lesbian? Take a hike. Have polycystic ovarian syndrome or acromegaly? No loo for you. Teen boy who wears his hair long? Go use the women's and hope your friends don't ever find out you were forced to. Wearing sweat pants and a hoodie instead of a house dress? Beat it before I call the cops.
It isn't hard to see how this bill has potential for extreme abuse.
Of course, most sane people would ask how this could be constitutional. They would be right. It probably isn't.
Just as Phoenix recently passed a measure protecting transgender people recently, in the early 1990's the cities of Aspen and Boulder enacted ordinances that banned discrimination (including public accommodations) on the basis of sexual orientation. Voters in the state of Colorado passed Amendment 2 to the state constitution in response. Amendment 2 repealed these ordinances to the extent they prohibit discrimination on the basis of "homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships." It also prohibited all legislative, executive or judicial action at any level of state or local government designed to protect the LGB people.
This became the basis for the landmark legal case Evans v. Romer. The Supreme Court struck down Amendment 2, reasoning:
[I]f a law neither burdens a fundamental right nor targets a suspect class, we will uphold the legislative classification so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate end. Amendment 2 fails, indeed defies, even this conventional inquiry... First, the amendment has the peculiar property of imposing a broad and undifferentiated disability on a single named group. A second and related point is that laws of the kind now before us raise the inevitable inference that the disadvantage imposed is born of animosity toward the class of persons affected... Amendment 2 violates the Equal Protection Clause...
It is easy to see how a clear analogy between Amendment 2 and SB1045 can be made. Given the lack of incidents where gender non-conforming people have caused harm in public spaces and the evident animus of the bill in attempting to single out a group, SB1045 seems to fail both constitutional tests miserably.
The landmark case of Glenn v. Brumby in the 11th circuit has also established that the Equal Protection Clause applies to transgender people. Additionally, many other cases have established that as a class, transgender people are subject to "intermediate scrutiny." Intermediate scrutiny is just a fancy legal way of saying that if something affects transgender people as a group, it has to serve an important state interest. Given Tucson had public accommodations protections for well over a decade without incident, such a reason is very hard to discern.
Another pertinent case is Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse. Ann Hopkins was denied promotion repeatedly because she did not act enough like a stereotypical woman, even though metrics measuring her performance showed her to be one of the best earners. The Supreme Court ruled against Price Waterhouse because it reasoned you cannot discriminate against people because they do not meet a stereotype for gender. While this ruling applies to interpreting Title VII (employment law) of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and not specifically to Title II (public accommodations), imagine the a case where a non-transgender woman is denied bathroom entry because she has a medical condition, wears her hair short, or doesn't wear feminine enough clothing.
Title II doesn't include "sex" as a protected class with regards to public accommodations. Any government action based on sex, however, must pass the test of intermediate scrutiny. Keeping women who dress differently, wear their hair differently, have a medical condition, who are too tall, have too narrow hips, or too broad of shoulders out of bathrooms clearly does not meet the requirement of serving an "important state interest." SB1045 violates the intent of Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse: you are holding people to a gender stereotype, there will be injury, and it doesn't meet the intermediate scrutiny test.
You wouldn't think people with law degrees would pass legislation that is so blatantly unconstitutional.
Yet, here we are.
The LGB community is rightly looking forward to victories in the Supreme Court this summer. For transgender people, as well as anyone who is gender non-conforming in any way for any reason, we are facing legislative Armageddon. This bathroom bill is a trial balloon. If it is not vigorously and immediately challenged legally, conservative states all over the country will follow suit with bills that are potentially even more regressive. Hopefully, progressive legal organizations have the will to rally us as strongly as they did the LGB community with Proposition 8 and DOMA.
And maybe, just maybe, the transgender community will have a Romer v. Evans to call their own.]]>The Unexpected Power of Coming Outtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28851842013-03-15T15:58:20-04:002013-05-15T05:12:01-04:00Brynn Tannehillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/
This is especially true when the underpinnings of resistance are deeply rooted in religious and cultural tradition. The complexity and difficulty of winning hearts and minds is further increased by conducting information operations in an environment where your adversary isn't bound by a need to tell the truth. The opposition also had the luxury of being unscrupulous enough to apply horrific pressure on the local population to comply... or else.
The fight for LGBT equality, and particularly marriage equality, has a lot in common with COIN. We're dealing with religion, culture, demonization, and constantly battling lies designed to whip people into a frenzy against us. In Iraq, insurgents spread false rumors of us defiling Mosques, contaminating food, and desecrating Korans. Here, today, we are fighting myths that gay men are preying on children and transgender people are lurking in bathrooms. In theater, very bad things happened to suspected sympathizers. Back home Republican politicians who support the LGBT community rarely make it past the primaries.
I was thus dumbstruck when I heard my Senator, Robert Portman (R-OH), had changed his mind on marriage equality. Robert Portman, who was one of the original sponsors of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996. Robert Portman, who in 2009 fought against same-sex couples from adopting children, now supports marriage equality. He had all the hallmarks of a true believer, one of the hearts and minds that supposedly wasn't "winnable." What on Earth could bring about such a reversal? When Generals Petraeus and Odierno won over some of the Sunni Sheiks in Iraq, it was hailed as a military miracle.
It only took one person to change Portman's heart and mind, though. Not a surge of five combat brigades and the best military minds of our generation.
It was his son, who came out to him two years ago.
At an individual level, it is not terrifically surprising that Senator Portman could change his mind after finding out his son is gay. Multiple studies have shown that one of the best predictors of individuals' reactions to LGBT people is if that person already knows LGBT people. Polling data shows that the vast majority of Americans know someone who is LGBT, and the number continues to rise.
Conventional wisdom also says it is very hard to hate someone when you know their story. It is much harder still when they are your child, regardless of what religious authorities tell you. I have seen my father bend the rules of his church almost to the point of breaking just to avoid losing all contact with me. As a parent, I want a relationship with my own children regardless of where life takes them.
While this is just one man changing his opinion, the circumstances around Senator Portman allow the effects of his change of heart to ripple outwards in so many directions. Senator Portman is the first serving Republican senator to support marriage equality. He was on Mitt Romney's short list for Vice President. He joins President Clinton as one of the key players in passing DOMA who now feels differently, and expressing it on the eve of oral arguments before the Supreme Court.
Additionally, Ohio is perhaps second only to Florida as a battle ground state in presidential elections. Both Ohio senators now support marriage equality. The other is Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who has been a long time ally of the community. Ohio is also likely to have a ballot initiative on marriage equality during the 2013 off-year elections.
How will this influence that vote? I see this as being a positive, particularly if Senator Portman is willing to embrace the issue and speak out for it now. What happens if Ohio unexpectedly delivers marriage equality? We can only speculate, but given marriage equality was the signature issue in the win-or-lose state in the 2004 presidential election, it is a safe bet this changes the mental calculations of virtually every Republican politician, pundit and pollster in 2016.
When Senator Portman's son came out, it became a living, breathing example of the butterfly effect. When we tell the truth about ourselves and our lives, it doesn't just affect us and those we tell. It ripples outward, and contributes to the tsunami of social change we are witnessing. We can change hearts and minds more effectively than any COIN campaign the military could dream of. All it requires is living authentically and openly.]]>The Need for Diversity Applies Everywheretag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28395892013-03-11T17:40:44-04:002013-05-11T05:12:01-04:00Brynn Tannehillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/
Well, no, not really. Nearly a quarter of LGBT people vote Republican. So, where are these folks? I would be hard-pressed to name five LGBT friends on my social media platforms, out of hundreds, who voted for Romney.
This sort of invisibility and insularity within a community is nothing new though. In 1972, New York Times film critic Paula Kael famously remarked, "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are, I don't know. They're outside my ken." This perception came, despite Nixon winning in one of the biggest landslides in U.S. electoral history.
This self-imposed orthodoxy, and resultant silence, is not limited just who we vote for, but on issues unrelated to being LGBT. Gun control. Deficit reduction. Global warming forecasts. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). I constantly find myself holding back thoughts and questions about these issues that might indicate a bias, whether or not one may actually exist.
Can we successfully keep illegal weapons out of the hands of bad people any more than we have tried with illegal drugs? If Medicare and Medicaid are the largest and fastest growing part of the budget, and we're running huge deficits, shouldn't reforming those programs be a priority? Are the CBO estimates of the ACA's costs accurate? Why have some measurements shown a leveling off in global temperatures in the past 10 years? Who actually listens to dubstep? I generally don't dare pose these questions in public forums because I worry that I will alienate people by asking them. People often forget, though, that you can ask someone hard questions while ultimately agreeing with them, just as Chief Justice John Roberts did during the Affordable Care Act oral arguments.
There is a price to be paid for having a narrow trade space for ideas. When we get used to seeing and hearing only one side of things, it numbs us to the fact there are a lot of perspectives out there which are very much different from our own. This lesson was hammered home several weeks ago when a friend of mine in the military (who happens to be a person of color) was assaulted for being transgender.
I woke up one morning to find a self portrait of him posted online with the caption, "This is what it means to be trans." He was bruised and bloodied; a black-eye swelled hideously, and a gash ran across his face from the bridge of his nose, across his cheekbone, and onto his cheek. A wave of emotions hit me when I saw it: disgust, anger, and sadness washed over me.
He lives in a large large city in a solidly blue state. He and a friend had been clubbing in the "gay district", and were headed home after it closed. While they were waiting for their food at an all night eatery he was accosted by two people who demanded to know if he was a man or a woman. When he told them it was none of their business, they attacked him.
He refused to fight back. His attackers were women, and he did not believe it was right to hit them. The picture he sent me was the result.
He also refused to report the incident for fear of being outed and losing his job. This highlighted yet another reason why the services' exclusion policy hurts people who just want to serve their country and do their job. However, it also made me think about how there are different kinds of silence. I came to the unpleasant realization that if I did not tell his story, no one would hear it. This is in no small part due to the lack of visibility transgender people of color, and those in the trans-masculine spectrum, have.
There is silence due to peer pressure not to express ideas outside the expected political norm. There is the silence of too few LGBT people of color finding media outlets that cross demographic boundaries. Trans men are also underrepresented in discussions on transgender issues. Other times, we see the marginalization of people in the LGBT community because they would look out of place on the cover of Vogue or GQ. There are copious ways to exclude people for being different, even within our own community.
Diversity isn't just something that should be strived for in American culture as a whole; it is something that must be actively encouraged within the LGBT community itself. We do not make ourselves stronger when the marketplace of ideas and perspectives is self-limited. It falls upon those of us who do have voices within the community to encourage diversity. Whether it is encouraging civility and rational discussion, promoting bloggers whose demographics fall outside your own, or bringing in voices with different perspectives to organizations you belong to; it is our duty to ensure that everyone ultimately has a seat at the table. The worst thing we can become is a colony of Sneetches.]]>Why 'LGB' and 'T' Belong Togethertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27466162013-02-25T10:52:39-05:002013-04-27T05:12:01-04:00Brynn Tannehillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/
Unfortunately, some transgender leaders keep trying to revive old grievances, like 18-year-old articles from The New York Times. However, people like Jim Fouratt haven't been relevant in decades. Janice Raymond and her ilk are a poorly regarded footnote in the annals of second-wave lesbian feminism. Things cited as proof that LGB leadership has it in for the transgender community may or may not have actually been said. Barney Frank has retired. So has Joe Solmonese. The historical reasons typically cited for the division between the LGB and T have become just that: history.
While many pundits have piled onto the Republicans for failing to recognize the effects of a generational shift in attitudes, leadership in the LGB and T communities also need to recognize the same. Millennials will soon, if not already, constitute the majority of the people represented by LGBT organizations. To the younger folks these divisions look like a Monty Python sketch about the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea "bickering and arguing about who killed who."
I certainly do not speak for everyone, but from the perspective of millennials who are educated, diverse, and looking for the "BLUF" (Bottom Line Up Front), LGB and T have more experiences, goals and obstacles in common than not.
We all violate gender norms. LGB people break one of the most fundamental stereotypes and expectations of gender, namely women should fall in love with men, and vice versa. Transgender people violate other gender stereotypes, sometimes including who we are supposed to fall in love with and marry. At some point in their lives, many transgender people will either be seen as LGB by others, or see themselves as LGB.
Sociologists categorize all of us as sexual minorities. One of the consequences of this is a phenomenon known as minority stress, which affects the LGB and T communities. Minority stress includes both external (rejection, prejudice, and discrimination) and internal (concealment of one's minority identity, vigilance and anxiety about prejudice) stressors which lead to a lower quality of life along multiple axes.
Familial rejection is a common theme, and the number of trans foster kids in Dayton PFLAG is a stark testament to it. LGBT youth constitute 40 percent of America's homeless teens. The same reasons that underlie LGB kids being homeless are the same ones making trans kids homeless.
As part of coming to a point of self acceptance, LGB and T people usually go through similar processes of denial, awakening, and eventually, hopefully, self acceptance.
Coming out is a rite of passage for virtually everyone within the communities. We all experience fear, the pain, the isolation, the good and bad surprises along the way. These are stories that we share and empathize with. When I described coming out to my wife to a gay man, it affected him deeply, because he has done the same thing with his wife several years earlier. In the end, most of us lose people along the way, and carry those scars as a mutual burden.
We're still locked in a struggle with the psychiatric community. While DSM-5 is a step in the right direction for the transgender community, and the LGB community fought a lot of these battles 40 years ago, the truth is we're still fighting. NARTH is still out there. There are still people advocating reparative therapy, including some who are on the board at the American Psychiatric Association.
Marriage equality is an issue that belongs to all of us. The laws pertaining to the legality of transgender marriages are still an incoherent hodge-podge that leaves many trans people subject to having their marriages nullified with no warning. The only way past this is with marriage equality and ending DOMA.
We still face discrimination and lack of protection at work. While recent court cases help provide greater protections for transgender people at work, very few enjoy legislative protections or inclusive corporate EO policies. LGB people, while having more favorable EO policies, enjoy very little legal protection in the form of case law. In the end, we still have a long way to go, and a comprehensive ENDA is the only way to solve both problems at once.
Millennials, even those who identify as LGB, are much more comfortable with the idea of gender fluidity, and a "big tent" with LGBTTQQIA.
We must all hang together, or we shall assuredly hang separately. The religious groups spreading hate towards us don't discriminate between LGB and T. We are all on the wrong side of God in their eyes. When a trans man friend of mine was assaulted last weekend, the people doing it didn't really care whether he was technically classified as a lesbian or a trans man. Morally we all have an obligation to oppose oppression, regardless of labels.
We are on the leading edge of a cultural shift. The demographics and values of the Millennial Generation is the driving force behind it. Leaders, of all stripes, need to recognize that this generation will be their base for a very long time. The old mental calculus that trans inclusion is divisive does not hold true any longer for the 30-and-under crowd. Indeed, creating a wedge where there was none is counter-productive. It slows the pace of progress, and dilutes the message of inclusion and acceptance. Most of all, it risks losing the very people you need to represent going forward.]]>Religion: Benefit, Hazard or Both When It Comes to LGBT People?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25783502013-01-31T19:09:29-05:002013-04-02T05:12:01-04:00Brynn Tannehillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/Blade Runner, and it sums up how I tend to evaluate things from a moral standpoint: "They're either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit, it's not my problem." While the character of Deckard applies this to machines, I have found that it applies to how I feel about religion. I am not religious, but I see religious faiths as being both hazardous and beneficial. However, in times like these, when headlines tell us that yet another gay teen was bullied to death and religiously motivated individuals proclaim that what these kids suffer is both just and for their own good, I have a harder time seeing the benefit of religion.
The same study also shows that anti-LGBT views are a minority opinion among non-evangelical Christians. Groups like the Metropolitan Community Church, the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church actively try to create a safe space for LGBT people.
LGBT people often find comfort and strength in their faith. Other times, religion allows straight people to find compassion for LGBT people. Such was the case with my mother-in-law. With guidance from her pastor, she came to believe that there is a purpose for everyone. In my transition she saw a potential for teaching lessons in love and tolerance and a chance to help others in a similar situation.
Even within conservative religious organizations there is disagreement between members regarding how LGBT people should be treated. Kathy Baldock, a friend of mine who is an evangelical Christian, has made it her mission to be like Nixon going to China by trying to convince other evangelicals around the country to embrace the LGBT community. At the OutServe-SLDN Leadership Conference in October of last year, I was surprised to meet a Pentecostal chaplain who was trying to reach out.
Nevertheless, conservative religious organizations continue to alienate even their own straight members with their treatment of LGBT people. At a recent PFLAG meeting I attended, I was told a harrowing story by the parents of a 14-year-old girl. Their daughter had come out as lesbian, and the church had given the family two options: put her in a reparative therapy program or be stripped of all their positions in the church. They chose to leave the church that they'd grown up in.
This begs the question of why conservative religious organizations and individuals continue to preach a doctrine of intolerance. One obvious reason is that it is very lucrative. Anti-LGBT religious groups are frighteningly well-funded. Apocalyptic scare tactics cater to an aging population fearful of societal changes that they aren't comfortable with. These resources have facilitated their success in drowning out more numerous moderate religious voices in our cultural conversation.
One result of this expensive campaign is that it is driving younger people away from religion altogether. Almost a third of people between 18 and 29 have no specific religion, according to a recent study by Pew. Most still have religious beliefs, and the vast majority of them hold tolerant views of LGBT people and their issues, but when it comes to fighting back against the intolerance of the religious right, many are content to simply sit back and let Father Time take care of things.
LGBT teens need help and a more tolerant society. Affirming religious organizations provide a framework to promote both. These LGBT-friendly groups need new people, though, and not enough are available. Religious conservatives have poisoned the well from which they both drink.
Most LGBT youth are left to grapple with their sexual orientation or gender identity in isolation because of conservative religious dogma. When I struggled with my gender identity as a teen, I rejected all religion in an act of self-preservation. I also went into deep denial. As a result, 20 years later, a stunned wife and three children were left with the mess that intolerant religious beliefs helped create.
After I transitioned, I met a deeply religious LGBT leader who has an extensive theological education. I asked her how she reconciled being who she is with her Christian beliefs. She had concluded that we LGBT people were never broken; we are exactly as we were meant to be and don't need fixing. Unfortunately, most LGBT youth don't have the theological resources of an adult in a graduate-level theology program.
My friend's observation highlighted that every day we as a society simply wait for the problem to go away, we break children who weren't broken before.
There are a lot of people working hard and spending a lot of money to make religion a hazard to LGBT people. Many other people of faith may deeply disagree with that treatment. However, when people of faith stand idly by, faith will continue to be a more of a hazard than a benefit.
What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Depart in peace, be warmed and filled," but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:14-17, NKV)
]]>Improving Conversations About Transgender Issuestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25085542013-01-22T14:59:00-05:002013-03-24T05:12:02-04:00Brynn Tannehillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/intentionally offensive-as-possible rebuttal. In the end the second article was retracted, Moore left Twitter (then returned), battle lines were drawn and everyone was left angry and out of breath. The sad irony of it all was that Suzanne Moore has written supportive things about the transgender community in the past. After the vitriolic exchanges by both sides, that probably won't be happening again anytime soon. An opportunity to educate became a debacle.
This incident sums up one of the great catch-22s that the transgender community faces. In order to make any headway on transgender issues, first we have to convince others on the need, feasibility and rightness of our cause. Unfortunately, we exist in a culture that demonizes transgender people to the point where many trans women often inspire visceral reactions of disgust, and where many trans men all too often feel safer just staying invisible. This situation leaves our community disinclined to talk about our experiences. It isn't comfortable feeling like a lab rat or a sideshow attraction. Given the barrage of negative stereotypes in America about trans people, the subject can be very raw.
As a result, the trans community is often distant, even to potential allies. John Aravosis at Americablog summed up how he feels:
One of my pet peeves of working on civil rights issues is that it's awfully hard to learn about other communities, because if you ask questions, and they're not phrased the right way, boy, get ready to get an earful. And as far as I'm concerned, if someone's heart is in the right place, and they want to learn, they can ask me whatever they want about gay issues, and I'm happy to be their guide.
When LGB and straight people inquire about our experiences as transgender people, they often feel like they are stepping into a mine field: What words should I use? What questions are off-limits? What in the past is ok to ask about? So they pull back and don't engage, and as a result, they walk away hanging on to whatever preconceived notions they had before.
Frequently, though, telling our stories just plain hurts. It exposes us to ridicule and gawping and risks opening old wounds. However, the thing that is killing us, sometimes literally, is the lack of exposure to and education on transgender issues among our would-be allies, and the resultant lack of acceptance of us as people. We are left with our own no-win scenario.
Don't ask us, and we won't be offended.
Don't tell them, and we won't get hurt.
Don't ask and don't tell, and nothing changes for the better.
When I began coming out at work, it was the most mortifying thing I had ever done. I had no idea what stereotypes these people had, what they were going to do or how it would change how they saw me. I had zero control, and if they chose to use what I told them to hurt or humiliate me, I had little recourse. As I told more and more of my supervisors, my HR manager observed that I seemed more comfortable telling people.
"It's never comfortable," I replied, "but it is necessary."
Just as telling my co-workers that I am transgender was necessary to making progress in my transition, opening better dialogue with would-be allies is necessary to making progress on transgender issues. Bridging the gap requires both sides to adjust how they do things.
Non-trans people, please do a quick Google search on transgender etiquette. Take cues about willingness to talk. Keep questions above the belt. Don't ask about bedroom stuff. Really, it's gauche. Don't be defensive if someone politely corrects you on a word or phrase. Remember that at the end of the day, all that transgender people want is basic human dignity.
Members of the trans community, if you think you can, please open up. Politely let people know when they make a mistake or accidentally commit a faux pas. Try to understand that for most people, crossing gender boundaries in almost unimaginable. It is the seemingly exceptional things we do with our lives that are also the most interesting to others.
And everyone, please remember that forgiveness is divine. Mistakes will be made. How missteps should be dealt with reminds me of a quotation I had to learn as a plebe: "[He or she] should be quick and unfailing to distinguish error from malice, thoughtfulness from incompetency, and well-meant shortcomings from heedless or stupid blunder." An unfunny joke that bombs would fall under "error," whereas an article that uses every transgender slur possible can only be seen as malice.
An LGB colleague at OutServe Magazine recently sent me an email that summed up the real value of taking the time to have thoughtful dialogue, even when working with someone who doesn't agree with you at the start:
I will say that because of you, your community earned an advocate in me. I was very much not in favor of tackling trans equality back when we launched our first trans article, but in working with you, I learned so much. It is exactly as they say: once you take the veil off the unknown, it all looks pretty normal.
Along the way, both of us stepped in it a couple of times, but we treated these as teachable moments. As a result, both of us gained a mutual respect that made us mutual allies. We realized that we are all just people trying to live our lives and do right by our families, striving to love and be loved, taking out the trash and picking up the dry cleaning.]]>Transition Deconstructedtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24605142013-01-12T10:36:23-05:002013-03-14T05:12:01-04:00Brynn Tannehillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/transitioned after getting married, and the other is her former spouse. Many of the themes were very familiar to me because of my own recent history. Married for almost 13 years. Three children. Feelings of hurt, anger and betrayal. Almost everyone who knew me was shocked when I came out, because of the extremely masculine persona I had carefully cultivated since I joined the Navy in 1993.
The comments section below the HuffPost piece about Chiristine Benvenuto is very long, with more than 750 comments. A number of themes in the comments section kept jumping out at me, over and over again. Many people observed that each piece only represented one side of the story, and that it was difficult to discern what really happened. As someone who has remained married through transition, I saw an opportunity for us to give a more unified perspective. After I drafted this article, Janis, my spouse, edited and added to what I wrote. She made sure it reflected her viewpoint accurately when answering the most frequent themes, questions and opinions expressed in the comments.
"Does the spouse/partner have a right to be angry?"
Yes. She is grieving for all the dreams of a future she once had. She is grieving for a person who no longer exists, or perhaps never did at all. She is grieving for the loss of a marriage, of a husband, of a father, and all the possibilities that went with it. Simple things are lost, too. Holding hands in public went from being a harmless sign of affection to an act of societal defiance. All this is a normal part of the grieving process, as are bargaining, denial and, hopefully in the end, acceptance.
Janis admitted that her two initial feelings when I came out were, "You lied to me, you bastard," and, "How could I be so stupid that I didn't see this?" She is still working through the process of grieving. In the end we're both in a position where we are better off with each other, though. We worked hard to build a life together, and we were not going to give up on it.
"Transitioning is selfish."
Transition is an inherently selfish process. It only directly benefits the one who is transitioning. Others who benefit from it in some way do so as a secondary effect. For instance, transitioning allowed me to be a more empathetic and involved parent. This has benefited my children, but it was not the point of my transition.
Still, it must be noted that transitioning has the potential to be better for all parties involved than not transitioning. A miserable spouse, a divorce, single parenthood and diminished quality of life for all concerned were the likely outcomes if I failed to transition.
"It was selfish to wait X years before telling your spouse/partner."
Imagine growing up with terrible secret. Imagine growing up Mormon and expecting your parents to send you to a reparative therapy camp or cast you into the streets if you told them. Imagine that if you held on to the secret, you would have a chance at a career you always wanted, a spouse you always dreamed of and children you both hoped for. Now imagine that giving up this secret would likely cost you everything: career, family, children, even your own dignity as a human being.
In the 1990s, during the Monica Lewinski scandal, many people were willing to excuse President Clinton for lying about an affair, because they understood that it was an embarrassing secret. Then why is it so hard to understand lying to yourself, and to others, about a secret that is far more terrifying?
Put simply, coming out as transgender can feel like playing Russian roulette with five chambers loaded and only one empty. Is it any wonder that we don't want to pull the trigger?
As it happened, coming out to my spouse was wrenching for both of us, and it took the better part of six months for each of us to convince the other that we didn't want to leave. We were going to give it our best shot, whatever came. Still, neither of us has ever seen a statistic on how often spouses stay together through transition, but we know the number isn't high.
"How is a spouse/partner supposed to react?"
The short answer is that both the trans person and their partner need to give each other time and space to explore what they are feeling. There is no right and wrong, although feelings associated with the grieving process seem to be normal.
It is unreasonable to expect most marriages to survive such an upheaval. Many transgender people seem to have unrealistic expectations of how much their partner can accept, and how quickly. Many partners have a similarly unrealistic expectation that a trans person can just bottle it up and pretend that the dysphoria is not there indefinitely.
In the end the right thing to do for both parties is to communicate effectively and work together to minimize harm to each other and the children. Often the best place to do this is in the presence of a therapist. However, there aren't any manuals on how to get through this, and we usually felt like we were picking a direction and hoping for the best.
"Why would a spouse/partner stick around?"
There are a lot of reasons that we are still together. Most of them revolve around Janis' ability to frame the issue in a way that she could understand as a person with a background in biology and psychology. It helped her to learn about the issue based on current scientific thinking, and to frame it as a medical issue rather than a psychiatric or moral one, the same way the APA and the AMA do. When she approached it from this perspective, as most of the medical and psychiatric community does, she was able to see it as helping a family member through a medical problem. Though gender dysphoria wasn't part of the bargain when we got married, "in sickness and in health" was.
Neither of us is particularly religious, so it helped that we were not predisposed to seeing this in terms of theology or dogma.
She also looked at it from a practical standpoint. Leaving me would not improve the situation for anyone, including the kids. It also didn't seem "right" to bail out on me just when I was getting my act together as a human being.
Still, having a spouse who approaches the issue this way is unusual. I cannot say that the reason that we are still together has much to do with anything I did; it is much more a result of Janis' ability to break down problems in a rational way.
"Couldn't you have waited until the children grew up?"
Who can forget Zach Wahls telling the Iowa House of Representatives about growing up with two moms? He turned out well in a nontraditional family. Jennifer Boylan transitioned when her boys were younger, and they have become exemplary young men, as well. I have also personally met the children of people who transitioned when their children were younger, and these children were not having adjustment issues. However, when I was working with my wife and my therapist, trying to figure out the right thing to do, I couldn't forget other articles written by adults whose parents transitioned later in life. It seemed like these adults were having a very hard time adapting to their parent's transition.
In the end we all agreed that waiting would only make it harder on the children in the long run. The more time they spent getting used to me as a male, the worse it would be when I shifted. However, growing up in a family that appeared to be lesbian would be less traumatic, especially for the younger ones, who would remember very little (if any) about the time prior to transition.
"What about the children? Didn't you think of them?"
This is hard. We did think of the kids constantly. We have three, and they were 9, 6 and 2 when I transitioned. They were always a huge part of the equation. There were no cut and dried answers. No how-to books. No perfect solutions. This was a difficult situation no matter how you looked at it. What we could do, as adults, as parents who love our kids, was work together to find a path that minimized harm. Both Janis and I do think about the things our children have lost: about not having a father to walk our daughters down the aisle, about the loss of a male role model (however poor he was), about the loss of being perceived as living in a "normal" house.
Still, while we now form a nontraditional family, the girls are thriving. Our middle child is the kind of kid every teacher dreams about, and our oldest is coping with the changes in a thoughtful, earnest manner. Though some might see transition in a completely negative light where the children are concerned, we can't help but see it having some value as a life lesson in love, diversity, tolerance and the importance of being yourself.
"Didn't you think of what this would do to your partner/spouse and children?"
Of all the guilt and angst I felt about being trans, one of the hardest things for me to deal with was all the unknowns of how my spouse and children would suffer as a result of what I did because of factors beyond all our control. Would people pull their girls out of Janis' Girl Scout troops? Would teachers discriminate against our two oldest children? Would Janis' hard-won friends in the community still want anything to do with her? Would she still be allowed to participate in the community? Would the kids be treated the way they should be at school and in their activities?
We didn't know the answers to any of these things, and we went as far as to make some contingency plans to pull up stakes and move down the road to a very liberal community about 10 miles away if things went badly.
Thankfully, libertarian Midwestern values won out. The Girl Scout troops are growing. Janis' friends have stuck with her. She was asked to be treasurer of the local PTO. The girls' teachers have treated them, and our nontraditional little family, with dignity and respect. Our middle child is almost a prodigy and is flourishing in school.
Still, prior to transition, this was something I worried about constantly, but Janis and I came to realize that we could not control the actions of others.
"Why did you rush into it?"
It seems like a rush to everyone on the outside looking in. Coming out as transgender catches most people very much off guard when you lead a very masculine life up until that point. It leads people to ask whether we have thought this through, whether we have considered the consequences. To others it seems like a whim rather than something we wrestled with for decades.
What people didn't see behind the scenes was the years of therapy, the agonizing conversations and confessions with Janis and the constant lurching from one desperate gamble to the next as we tried to navigate our way through one of the most difficult situations imaginable for a couple. Every step was a risk that I dithered over, worrying relentlessly what the result would be.
A friend once told me that when you transition, everyone else transitions with you. When possible, I tried to give people time to adjust. Unfortunately, this past spring, I simply ran out of time and had to make things happen more quickly that I had intended. Despite the seeming suddenness of it all, there were a number of times Janis confessed that she wished I would just hurry up and get it all over with. Still, most of our friends and family have stuck with us through everything.
"Couldn't you have just kept doing what you were doing?"
By the time most trans people come out, they have been hanging on by their fingernails for years. When they come out to their spouses as trans, they have reached the end of their rope. Whatever coping mechanisms they had in the past are no longer working. In my case these coping methods were leading me down the path toward divorce. If there was another way, we would have found it.
The perception that there is a certain amount of "gleefulness" as people begin transition has some truth to it. Imagine being in prison for a couple of decades and suddenly dealing with the seemingly endless possibilities of being on the outside. The highly regimented life at the Naval Academy is a good analogy, too. After years of living in a highly regimented atmosphere, after graduation I saw a lot of people around me reveling in their newfound freedom. Sometimes that revelry wasn't particularly constructive or well thought-out, but it was natural and understandable.
"Seriously, you're going out wearing that?"
A lesbian friend once joked with me, "Everything I know about fashion I learned from my adopted gay family. My people aren't exactly known for their fashion sense."
"No worries," I replied. "Neither are mine."
There's more than a grain of truth to the latter part. Trans people have to find their style, and themselves, to some degree, much later in life. We never had a time in our lives when experimentation was possible or mistakes could be made without some sort of permanent harm being done to our images. Think of it this way: Who out there doesn't have a picture of themselves when they were 14 that they don't hate? Big hair, big '80s glasses, wearing way too much black during an emo or goth stage, too much flannel during the early '90s or skinny jeans that would make Olivia Newton-John wince?
Trans folk don't have the luxury of being 14 years old when they make their fashion mistakes. While it is natural that they make them, the piece of advice I would give (and was given) is that trans people should learn to dress and present themselves appropriately from non-trans people of a similar age and profession, not from each other. Unfortunately, most trans people make rookie mistakes as they learn, but at this stage in their lives, the stakes are a lot higher than just an old picture that they would rather never saw the light of day. Or Facebook.
"Couldn't you just take antidepressants and be happy being a [birth-assigned gender]?
If antidepressants cured gender dysphoria, don't you think most trans people would happily take the blue pill? No electrolysis, no surgery, no hormones, no social stigma, just... normalcy? If it worked that way the APA, the AMA, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) and other organizations would certainly make antidepressants the standard course of treatment, because it would be the path of least harm.
Simply put, just like being gay, there is no "cure" that will "fix" a transgender person. Reparative therapies don't work, and the only thing that seems to treat it effectively is working to align people's physical selves with their own mental self-image.
It isn't for lack of trying. Every kind of behavioral, aversive, therapeutic and pharmacological treatment you can imagine has been tried in the past as a cure for gender dysphoria. In the end none of them worked.
"Couldn't you just buy a sports car like everyone else having a midlife crisis?"
A midlife crisis is something that springs up quickly out of nowhere, something that wasn't there 10 years ago, much less two or three. Being trans isn't a midlife crisis; it is something we have been dealing with in quiet desperation for decades.
Plus, buying a car won't help. I had the muscle car in my college days. No cure there.
"You'll never really be a woman/man."
In the sense that I have XY chromosomes, broad shoulders and narrow hips, and in the sense that I never had and never will have a uterus and ovaries, I am not physically female.
But in the sense that I always saw myself as a woman and always had to fight to hide traits that would generally be considered more feminine than masculine, I am female. Therein lies the difference between sex and gender. One is defined by anatomy; the other is based on what's between your ears.
Almost everyone gets the concept of "woman's brain in a man's body." Those who do not understand seem to fall back on the mental disorder argument, which is not supported by experts in the field. Some people argue that being trans is a choice. This isn't supported, either, given the fact that there isn't a reparative therapy cure for gender dysphoria.
Still, am I female if I am seen as such by myself, others and the law? Would you treat someone differently if you learned they are transgender? Is that fair?
If all else fails, I would urge people to remember the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. How much effort does it take to treat people as the gender they wish to be treated as, when you would ask the same in return?
