Contemporary Sexuality - November 2008 - (Page 5) Transgender civil rights timeline In 2006, the University of Minnesota Press published Transgender Rights, a book focusing on analysis of the “achievements, challenges and opportunities for future action” of the transgender civil rights movement. Paisely Currah, Richard M. Juang and Shannon Price Minter edited the book. The timeline published here is adapted from an interview with the editors of Transgender Rights. The interview is here: www.upress.umn.edu/ excerpts/currahqanda.html 1953 Christine Jorgensen makes international news as one of the first people to undergo sex-reassignment surgery. 1960 Transgender pioneer Virginia Prince publishes first issue of Transvestia, one of the first transgender magazines. 1966 Drag queens fight back against police harassment at Compton’s Cafeteria in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. 1966 Dr. Harry Benjamin publishes the Transsexual Phenomenon, one of the first medical texts to recognize the existence of people who are transsexual. 1969 Drag queens, lesbians, and gay and bisexual people fight back against police harassment at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. 1975 Minneapolis passes first local anti-discrimination law protecting people who are transgendered. 1984 The International Foundation for Gender Education is founded and begins publishing Tapestry (now Transgender Tapestry Journal). 1986 FTM International, an organization for the femaleto-male community, is founded. 1991 Transgender attorney Phyllis Randolph Frye founds the International Conference on Transgender Law & Employment Policy (ICTLEP), one of the first legal organizations for transgender people in the world. 1991 ICTLEP adopts the International Bill of Gender Rights. 1991 Minnesota passes the first statewide law prohibiting discrimination against transgender people. 1991 Brandon Teena, a female-bodied person living as a man, is raped and murdered by two men in Falls City, Nebraska. 1993 Cheryl Chase founds Intersex Society of North America. 1994 The San Francisco Human Rights Commission conducts historic public hearing on discrimination against transgender people in employment, housing, health care, education and public accommodations. 1999 Brandon’s life and death are depicted in the Academy-award winning film Boys Don’t Cry. 2000 The Transgender Law and Policy Institute is formed. 2001 San Francisco becomes first municipality to provide equal health benefits to transgender city employees. 2002 The brutal murder of transgender teenager Gwen Araujo in California galvanizes national attention on the problem of hate violence against transgender people. 2002 The Transgender Law Center, the first statewide legal organization for transgender people, opens its doors in San Francisco. 2002 The Sylvia Rivera Law Project, another legal organization for transgender people, is founded in New York City. 2003 The National Center for Transgender Equality is founded in Washington, D.C. 2005 California enacts first statewide law prohibiting discrimination against transgender people by insurance companies and health care service plans. I just want to clarify something that was said. It wasn’t that there weren’t enough votes to pass the bill. We thought there were enough votes to pass it. However, some people didn’t think there were enough votes to withstand a particular type of parliamentary maneuver called a “motion to recommit” [the bill to committee]. Congressman Frank’s decision to do what he did — he would tell you — was entirely about votes. He just believed that if the bill ran as written, there would be a motion to recommit. So the thought was that there were 10, 20, 30, 40 — nobody knew — supporters of the underlying bill who would flee if it were a trans-only recommit vote. Nobody knows for sure what would have happened. It’s been framed that our position was to kill the bill. Our position was, “Why are we running this bill if we’re not sure what’s going to happen with Congress?” We know the White House is going to veto this bill so why rush it this way? Why not drop back and regroup? I think there was a thought that if it passed [with no protections for trans people] gay people would think, “Wow, this was a big gay victory. Sorry about the trans people.” It turned out the LGBT community was not, you know, unanimous by any means, but was fairly united that they didn’t want anybody left behind. So what happened was that HRC stayed with the ENDA bill that did not include gender identity and you guys and others pulled away from it. Yes. Do you think that was a defining moment in the civil rights movement for transgender people? It absolutely was. It showed that now there is an LGBT movement. One organization made a decision that its connections in Congress were more important than using its connections in Congress to get anything useful done. They were willing to accept scraps. Remember, nobody believed the bill would get signed into law [because President Bush would veto it]. It was just a symbolic win in the House of Representatives. It was never going to become law. That the Human Rights Campaign would agree to accept that just so they could say they had a victory, I think that speaks volumes. Do you think they’ve learned their lesson? I don’t think it’s a question of learning a lesson. It’s a question of integrity. I don’t want them to learn a lesson. I want people to have a backbone. As recently as a couple of months ago, during the HRC dinner in San Francisco, some gay/lesbian activists formed a protest and tried to get people not to go to the HRC dinner. I know that also happened here in Minneapolis. A spokesman for HRC, Brad Luna, told the San continued on page 6 “One organization made a decision that its connections in Congress were more important than using its connections in Congress to get anything useful done.” — Mara Keisling November 2008 Vol. 42, No. 11 | www.aasect.org Contemporary Sexuality 5 http://www.upress.umn.edu/excerpts/currahqanda.html http://www.aasect.org
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.