The Nastiness of SPL(it)ENDA

Well, I was hoping that when Barack Obama took office and made a commitment to a gender identity-inclusive Employment Non Discrimination Act (ENDA), that he was going to do it. But Barney Frank has another idea, limiting protections to those who have had SRS and appear female in their day to day gender presentations. He claims not to want discrimination against transsexual people but I cannot think of anything to refer to this watering down of ENDA other than discrimination. This is not fighting for equality, it’s “sacrificing the freaks” to save the bill so that it can protect all gay people and only some transsexual people. It is the same shit that HRC tried to do to us before the election of President Obama, just a different asshole doing it to us. This proves quite clearly that Barney Frank is not our friend, he is not our ally, he is only serving the gay and lesbian communities with this bill, once again trying to take the T out of LGBT. This is not real ENDA, this is a Split ENDA, a SPLENDA if you will.

Some people might look at this and not see the issue – thinking that no transsexual protection has been sacrificed but I would have to fundamentally disagree. You see, this would require sex reassignment surgery of every transsexual woman and man in order to be even close to being equal – but then it still would be underserving a large part of our population. There are non-op transsexuals who have no desire to have sex reassignment surgery or cannot have it due to medical issues which would make having that surgery dangerous. There are people who do not identify as strongly as transsexual but identify somewhere on the genderqueer spectrum and under the transgender umbrella. This also does not protect the transwomen that are still deciding whether or not they want to take the final step and have SRS. This may also cause a rush to get SRS and cause a lot more people who regret their decision down the line because they had SRS before they were able to make a firm decision. This bill does a grave disservice to our community and discriminates against non-op transsexual women and anyone who identifies as some form of gender queer.

Furthermore, no one – not even cissexual people – looks totally male or female and by what standards would we judge how male or how female someone looks? Would men who look like old lesbians not have protection while using the men’s restroom because some redneck asshole decides to beat on them because they think they are gay? How about cissexual women who have very masculine features – would they have to use the men’s restroom because they did not completely look female? These revisions come with so many flaws and they compromise any sort of benefit that a transsexual woman might be able to extract from this bill, by leaving us out of the protections for employment discrimination. This is discrimination, Barney Frank, whether you wish to admit it or not – and this is another example of why I hate heteronormative gay men like you, who would rather remove the T from LGBT. But let me tell you something, this is my community and I am not going anywhere. Neither are my sisters.

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Tags: Barney Frank, cissexism, cissexist, disgusting, ENDA, evil, inequality, injustice, LGBT, SPLENDA