It seems the queer community focuses more on assimilating white, gay, cisgender men into mainstream culture instead of fighting for their still oppressed brothers and sisters.
This is ridiculous.
As a group practically begging for equality in American society, gay men have been ignoring the plight of transgender and gender non-conformists since the beginning of the gay rights movement. Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, two of the leading women who fought against the police during the infamous 1969 Stonewall riots, were transgender women whose actions were ignored by gay rights organizations for decades.
Although the treatment of transgender individuals has always been bleak, things are looking up here on the LSU campus. In March of last year, Spectrum, a student organization for LGBTQ students and their allies, successfully lobbied the University Faculty Senate to include gender identity and expression in the University’s non-discrimination policy.
Not only is gender identity now included in the school’s policy, the option of changing one’s name on Moodle is incredibly helpful to those who go by different names. Instead of a professor calling out “Ann’s” name, he or she can refer to Andrew by the preferred name the student put up on Moodle.
However, the rest of the nation doesn’t seem to be following suit.
Year after year, transgender women are victims of nearly half of all LGBT-related hate crimes.
Highly offensive racial and gender-related insults were shouted at CeCe McDonald, a black transgender woman, and her friends before they were violently attacked on a summer night in 2011.
After attempting to flee the scene, McDonald fatally stabbed one of the aggressors with a pair of scissors, which led to her arrest.
While we can debate the legality and morality of self-defense for days — see George Zimmerman — McDonald’s rights were ignored the moment she was tried and jailed as a man, rather than what she identifies as: a woman.
The judge of her case even denied evidence the defense planned to present that would display the assailant’s swastika tattoo and lengthy arrest report.
After serving 19 months in a men’s prison for second-degree manslaughter, McDonald was released Monday.
Unfortunately, there are only 17 states that prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression. New Orleans is the only jurisdiction in Louisiana that abides by any such non-discriminatory law regarding those who are transgender.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, amid his recent controversy with Bridgegate, found time to veto a bill that would simplify the process for transgender individuals to edit their birth certificate.
The erasure of transgender people in discussions of LGBT rights is a method of disregarding the history and existence of trans people who have been fighting for their rights alongside the rest of the queer community for years.
In the past few years, gay rights have focused mainly on the right to marriage and the debate on whether openly gay individuals should be able to serve in the military. While these are no doubt important topics when discussing basic rights for gay and lesbian Americans, I can’t even think of one debate about transgender individuals that was as popular as “gay marriage.”
McDonald, unfortunately, is just one of the many transgender women who have been the victim of a violent transphobic hate crime. Where was the LGBT community when she was placed in solitary confinement, thrown into a men’s prison despite her identity as a woman, and denied the hormones she was prescribed prior to her incarceration?
Transgender people are humans just like the rest of us, and they deserve equal treatment by their peers — even if that means gay people have to step out of the spotlight to allow the many issues transgender people face to come to the surface.
SidneyRose Reynen is an 18-year-old film and art history freshman from New Orleans.