Broken but not out.

I've been in the employment industry for over 18 years.  During that time, our company has held the highest integrity by placing the best qualified candidate for a job.  It pains me as the skills market geta tighter and tighter and good people are hard to find. Employers are not willing to look at an employee who is transgender based on a superficial look at the outward appearance of the employee.  We need to have laws that protect employees so that the surprising number of unemployed trans people can find gainful employment and live quality and authentic lives.  The system is broken.  Trans people are cast aside often for fear of misunderstanding by the general employment of the company.  Trans people have skills and talents to bring to our marketplace and are one of the highest unemployed groups in the country.  This story is not about me but about the thousands of people who struggle through transition and employment to keep a roof over their head and food in their bellies.  As a nation, we have a critical mission to help all transgender employees and candidates find and retain gainful employment.  As business owners, we need their skills, expertise and technical knowledge.  By denying them the same federal protections as other workers in our marketplaces, we are not only doing a disservice to quality employees but we are putting them in harms way but having to find alternative means to earn a living.

If we don't act and write our congressmen and women, we are in essence responsible for the tragic murders that take place.  When are we going to stand up for our neighbors, children and friends and fight for those we love?

We need to write our congressmen and women and let them know that this is unacceptable and that action must be taken.  The cycle of hate crimes must be stopped and equality in the workplace is a huge step in fighting this issue.  When our federal government said they are going to enact equality, why isn't the rest of the country and our armed forces following suit?

Write to your congressperson today and let them know that the violence has to stop.

http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
http://www.hrc.org/resources/entry/your-elected-officials
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/State.shtml

Don't look away

The commercials beg us to to help abused and homeless animals for only $1.00 per day. The starving and shoe-less children around the world need adoption for less than the price of a cup coffee per day. While we need to have compassion for all people and animals, we find these images more disturbing and worth our time than helping our neighbors overcome prejudice and discrimination.

You don't have to donate money.  You don't need to adopt a person or four-legged creature.   You just need to not look away. This week I listened to Lana Wachowski's amazing award acceptance speech for the HRC Visibility Award in 2012. (If you haven't watched the video, I highly recommend watching it by clicking here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crHHycz7T_c  )  Lana is one of a kind and quirky but extremely funny and in her description of real life.  As she explains her thoughts of suicide and plan that was thwarted by an older gentleman with over-sized 70's glasses, you realize that each connection that we have is vital to our existence.  A sharply veiled insult can cause pain that we might never see because our connection is so brief.  It is also those brief connections that can make the difference between life and death.

Wachowski's story is fortunately and unfortunately not unique.  There are many people, who because of an act of kindness, are still with us today.  When there seemed no way out, a kind person or a smile gave the person hope even if only for one more day.  We can not deny that the reason behind the staggering suicide rate of non-gender conforming humans is because as we continue to judge versus accept. Perhaps because when we look closely, we see a little bit of our selves in him or her and that terrifies us.

Please smile and engage with people who might need that simple reassurance that they are seen. Today is the day that you can make a difference and not look away.

No happy ending...yet

Today my thinking was challenged.  I read the following short story written by Kristin Beck and immediately felt awful. Sadness quickly turned to outrage. The story didn't end as I had expected it to. Where is the heroine?  The happy ending?  

Unfortunately, in real life for many transwomen, there is no happy ending, beginning or in-between.  But while Kristin is writing about the unfortunate reality, there is hope. President Obama's recent trans rights policy is only one small step. Will you be part of solution or part of the problem? Read on and I dare you as a human to feel the pain in Kristin's words. Remember that at the core we are all human and deserve to not walk in fear.  We all deserve to be treated equal. 

Why Did You Kill Me?

by Kristin Beck

30JUNE2014

Four Transgender women were killed in the month of June this year in the United States.

I will say it again, FOUR transwomen were killed in the month of June.  Why does this happen? Why do these clashes occur and why end in violence and death?

June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) pride and celebrations occur all month in the U.S. and around the world.  Parties and parades abound and many of us are rejoicing in our freedom to live out of the proverbial closet. 

We all know the Gay and Lesbian fight for Equality has been a long and painful journey and it continues to this day.  Just in the last few years there have been great strides in the legal system offering protections in every facet of life including MARRIAGE Equality.  June is a month to celebrate the many victories that have occurred over the last century toward true human equality.  Celebrate just being truly free.  We celebrate this freedom and hard-fought equality.

When many of us are celebrating this openness there are people who are angered and actually afraid of our newfound liberty and freedom.  The fanatical religious right and the everyday bigot are cajoled into action which sometimes ends in violence.  Any other time the bigot rarely sees a gay or transgender person, but in June they are everywhere and celebrating in the streets and that is too much to handle.  Maybe "THEY" are forced into a "closet" to stay inside for the entire month and drink their beer in their own garage with their friends.   They have to hide their true identity as a prejudiced straight-religious-bigot.  This is not easy, but they do it for that month.   This type of person I will just for ease of this story refer to all of them as “Joe and Jim-Bob.”

In the LGBT community there are a few groups of people that come into focus and are sometimes at odds with each other.  The Gays at odds with the Lesbians who are at odds with the transgender who splinter off into the transwomen and the transmen who are still trying to figure out the Bi-sexuals. In other words the LGBT community isn’t always such a happy community and banded together as a group as anyone would think.  Sometimes these splinters within the LGBT community end in isolation of one or the other; and this isolation can become a vulnerability to individuals or the group.  There is infighting and divisions within, but we do agree on one thing, everyone should be treated with respect and equality when it comes to gender, sexual-orientation, age, color, religion, nation of origin or anything. We are all humans and thats that.  This is the “LGBT community” as a whole.

There are people within the LGBT community who can blend in with society and not draw attention to themselves.  This is called stealth and about 80% of the LGBT comity lives in stealth and hiding for most of the year in their job and every day life.  For a person to go stealth means they can live anywhere they want and have any job without fear of ridicule for being in the LGBT in the straight world. The people who can go stealth are Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and only a very small amount of transgender people. basically if you are gay or lesbian and wish to be unnoticed and stealth you make some minor adjustments and go about your life.  These minor adjustments are called “cover” techniques and many many people use cover every day to survive.   It is a shame that we have to cover, but it is still a fact of live and survival.

Transgender people have a very difficult time ever going stealth.  Cover is expensive for Transgender people and many times does not even work to society standards of beauty. Transmen are born female and transition to male and many times are able to go stealth and hide among the population. Once a transman starts testosterone he grows a beard and become a man for all intense of purposes.  On the other hand a transwoman, which is a man who becomes a woman, has a much more difficult time due to many factors most of which are obvious.  Society standards for women are based upon fashion magazines which are unattainable by most women, much less a transwoman.  

Transwomen are left out of the stealth world unless they are very lucky or very rich. Why lucky, some transwomen are born with features and a stature that resemble that of a naturally born woman and they pass as a woman just by wearing makeup and a dress. These are few and far between. Why “rich” is good for a transwoman?  The rich transwomen can go out and get facial surgery and other surgery to exactly mimic the women you see in magazines, and sometimes they end up in the magazine or on the cover. The rest of us are not lucky or rich and we continue to look like “men in dresses” to the outside world.   We yell out in despair that we are not men in dresses, we live our lives everyday as women and in our hearts we are women.  Unfortunately our outside appearance are not matching and we are ridiculed and are forced to hide.  Only a few of us dare to live every day as the women we are and we face the deluge of hate and prejudice.

Within the LGBT community you also have Drag queens and other people who are very flamboyant and live very open and happy lives and will never go or even want to be stealth as they enjoy who they are and live within their circle of friends.  They don’t give a dang what anyone else thinks.  This group however usually live in a very tight community to themselves and normally don’t venture into the mainstream or “Middle-America” especially mingling with Joe and Jim-Bob.

The last group of people are the moderate straight people who are not anti-LGBT nor do they support or parade for the LGBT community. They just quietly live their lives in their world.  I will clump them all into a family called the “Jones’s” just for this story.

What I see happening from my perspective in the month of June:

The Stealth LGBT community flies to another city like San Francisco to celebrate with the entire LGBT community.  The drag queens, Bears, leather guys, twinkies and queers who celebrate every weekend go out and buy huge super flamboyant costumes to really get their pride on.  The Transmen join the celebrations; the transwomen put on their beset outfits.  The transwomen who could never pass and normally only dress as “themselves” in their own home venture out into the celebrations.  The Jones family lives in the city and continue on their day to day lives and end up in the middle of the celebration.  Joe and Jim-Bob are out at the bar just to see whats going on and maybe get a few beers with their pizza.

All of these various groups are in San Francisco or a city nearby.  We are all drinking and talking and having fun; our guards are lowered and inhibitions are gone.  The groups mix up and most of the time it turns out ok.  Sometimes we start to feel like we can truly be free and equal and live in a world that accepts us for what we are.  … mostly just “humans” trying to live a happy life.  

A transwoman named Chris, who lives her life very quietly and usually alone because she is 6 foot 2 inches tall with very masculine features is having the time of her life this June.  Marriage equality has occurred in a few states. There was a beautiful woman, a transwoman, on the cover of Time Magazine. Transgender people are on talk shows and are being accepted and are “OUT.”  The pride celebrations are so wonderful; June is a great month. 

People are really accepting her for who she is and not making comments about her five o’clock shadow or her appearance.  She is actually getting compliments on her dress and how “pretty” she is from a lot of people.  Even that straight guy said she looked pretty.  She really can live as herself, live as a woman.  She has heard that woman who was on Time Magazine tell everyone to “BE PROUD OF WHO YOU ARE” and live your life in the open.  Maybe she can live free and be herself all year long?  Chris knows this is not about sex or fetish or anything else; she just wants to be herself and be happy.  Chris goes out alone a lot because she hasn’t really met any friends or people she can trust.

Chris ventures out a few more nights and is accepted so well in all of the gay bars and is having a wonderful time.  

Maybe Chris really is beautiful and can live as a woman just like that lady on Time magazine?  Maybe society really did change because the law was changed?  Maybe everyone will love us and treat us as equals?

She keeps going out and building confidence, life is grand.  She has a girlfriend that she wants to talk about all of this new found joy in life. The future is so hopeful. She is elated and wants to run home and talk this over.  This is the new “real” like that one lady said on the television isn’t it?   That is what the beautiful people keep telling her. 

(In her mind she is asking is it only the beautiful stealth transwomen who are telling her this?  ...no, never-mind.... she tells herself that society really has changed and we are all beautiful and we all have happiness and equality NOW.)

She is overjoyed and wants to live everyday this happy as herself with her girlfriend.  She is heading home.  Then she runs into Joe and Jim-Bob who are drunk; she smiles at them just being herself and being nice…but they don’t “SEE HER” they only see a dude in a dress who is flaunting some kind of fetish and probably wants sex with them.  Why else would she smile at them other than sex?  

They lash out in anger over all of these people running around with rainbows and weird outfits.  Joe yells “fag” and Jim-Bob throws a bottle that hits Chris in the head knocking her out cold. 

Joe and Jim Bob attack her and beat her until she stops crying out in pain.  

She ends up dead next to the dumpster in a dark alley.

© Kristin Beck 2014

Reprinted with permission 

@theladyvalor

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