Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance, and the genesis of this period of reflection came about in reaction to the murder of Rita Hester in 1998, a Black transgender woman living in Boston. Her case was reopened by the Boston Police 2006, but the case is still unsolved.
In 2008 in my hometown of Syracuse, Lateisha Green, a Black transgender woman, was murdered by a shotgun blast to her chest by a man who shouted, “Get the f**k out of here, f**king f*gg*ts.” Everybody in Syracuse knows who that man is. But he is walking free today after a convoluted legal process that finally ended with his acquittal by a jury earlier this year.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights states that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” and that “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” As we consider what happened to Rita Hester, Lateisha Green, and too many others, as well as the violence that transgender people face every day in every aspect of their lives, we have to recognize that transgender people are fellow human beings and declare that transgender rights are human rights.
In the course of my campaign I have spoken out against violence toward transgender women, and in particular against Black transgender women who are disproportionately victims of this violence. Today I want to reiterate that those who who commit violence and murder against transgender people should be prosecuted and charged with hate crimes.
Economic violence, as well, needs to be confronted. We must push for the enactment of the Equality Act, which would extend the protections of the Civil Rights Act to sexual orientation and gender identity. The Equality Act passed the House earlier this year. We must push the Senate to pass it as well.
Under my proposal for a community-controlled National Health Service, supportive therapies to help people work through gender dysphoria would be covered. After thorough evaluations by experienced professionals, including psychologists and psychiatrists, gender-confirming surgery would be covered, as would hormone replacement therapy. As stated in the Hawkins Healthcare Plan, “the system will respect patients’ individual autonomy, allow medical choice and protect informed consent.” Overall, more research and studies are necessary to shed light on these issues.
So what can we do to spread acceptance of transgender rights as human rights? I suggest the following:
- Explain that gender is not a fixed binary, and that every person has the right to live in whatever gender identification they choose.
- Always stand with the oppressed. Stand with transgender people, or people who are questioning where they fit on the gender spectrum, and unwaveringly defend them against discrimination, whether in the workplace, on the street, or in public policy.
- Support a better environment of dialog without deplatforming people with initially conservative attitudes about gender. We can do a better job of changing people’s ideas through education and dialog. The rapid transformation of public attitudes toward marriage equality shows that this approach works.
The ruling class benefits from division within the working class, and speaking out in favor of the human rights of one group should never be to the exclusion of another. We can’t have working-class unity without eliminating all forms of discrimination and oppression within our ranks. Fighting transphobia is part of building working-class solidarity.
This is a good statement!
Very strong statement here! More can be said and explored about the political tensions between certain feminist and trans activists around issues of inclusion in women’s sports, access to domestic violence shelters and other intimate spaces. Despite that this statement strikes the right tone to initiate such a discussion. Trans day of Remembrance is also a good time to amplify the call for the freedom of Chelsea Manning. this is particularly the case as Trump this past Friday extended Presidential pardons to soldiers charged with war crimes like those that Chelsea sought to expose. This is the first time in US history that a President has pardoned someone convicted of war crimes by a US military court. Chelsea was stationed in Syracuse at Fort Drum, and I believe participated in anti-war demonstrations at an enlisted person there. Her original military lawyer I believe today lives in Syracuse. Leslie Feinberg is another key fighter for social justice and important figure in the Transgender movement who lived in Syracuse as well. I am very proud of Howie for following in these footsteps trail blazed by so many others. This campaign is sounding a crucial call for justice.
You apparently don’t realize that the current craze for transgenderism is being pushed by the bloody ruling class itself. The not so hidden hands transferring the money to academia, the medical profession, & the media are multi billionaires with an agenda, as well as Big Medicine & Big Pharma, who stand to make hundreds of billions from trapping dysphoric people into a lifetime of expensive hormone treatments and plastic surgeries, plus other medical procedures & drugs to correct the physical & mental problems that ensue from this drastic alteration of nature. Another fact of which you must be unaware is that a large percentage of MtF transsexuals pose a threat to women in vulnerable situations, such as jails, where murderers, rapists, & woman beaters pose as, or claim to be women in order to take advantage of the relatively less stressful conditions within the women’s section and to have access to female flesh. You are against privilege, but do you endorse male athletes, claiming to be women, being allowed to compete against female athletes, & surprise, surprise, winning & claiming the trophies & prize money that should have rightfully belonged to the women & girls? Murdering individuals because of their gender dysphoria is a bad thing, but such crimes constitute only a tiny percentage of the murders nationwide, most of the victims of which are black males. And they’re decreasing, not increasing. Most of the trans MtF that were killed were prostitutes, but the number of genuine female prostitutes murdered is greater by several orders of magnitude. The powers that be are creating a lot of noise around the issue of transgenderism and there is social contagion going on among teenagers to an extent that shocked me when I recently found out about it. Girls & boys mutilating their bodies & making themselves permanently sterile. Little children in grave danger from a predatory & greedy medical profession & non protective parents. It’s nice that you are against deplatforming of dissenting views, INITIALLY, but what if your efforts at “educating ” such people fail? Do you then send them to coventry? This issue is much more complex than you realize and there is a large contingent of feminists & their male supporters who find much to criticize, not in the person who suffers from gender dysphoria, but in the movement and it’s attempts & agenda of female erasure. To understand this go to the website terfisaslur.
Howie has said very clearly that one oppression should not supplant another. The issue of violence against women is serious, and that it was not covered in this statement does not mean that we disregard it.
It doesn’t matter who you believe is “pushing transgenderism,” the fact remains that there is an oppressed social minority that is being specifically targeted for their identities, both physically and economically.
We should stand with ALL the oppressed, and in the spirit of avoiding deplatforming, we’ve allowed this very divisive comment.
It is not divisive to recognize that men are using transgender issues not just to deplatform feminists, but also to attack feminism and women’s rights. There are people trying to get women fired from their jobs because they hold a contrary view of men who want to use transgenderism to invade women’s spaces. Who also use the transgender ideology to remove women from women’s equality policy. It is not just the threat of violence but the ideology that sets the basis for the violence. Transgender people exist and are an oppressed group but identifying as a woman is not the same as actually being a woman. Indeed, the basis of transgender oppression is women’s oppression. It is your campaign and the misogynist currents among transgender men that are being divisive. It constitutes an attack against women. No amount of phrase mongering obviates that.