Mara Keisling is the founding Executive Director of NCTE (National Center for Transgender Equality). A Pennsylvania native, Mara came to Washington after co-chairing the Pennsylvania Gender Rights Coalition. Mara is a transgender-identified woman who also identifies as a parent and a Pennsylvanian. She is a graduate of Penn State University and did her graduate work at Harvard University in American Government. She has served on the board of Directors of Common Roads, an LGBTQ Youth Group, and on the steering committee of the Statewide Pennsylvania Rights Coalition. Mara has almost twenty-five years of professional experience in social marketing and opinion research.
1) How much do you think your personality and sense of humor have to do with your success as a lobbyist? What personality? What humor?
I’m not yet ready to claim personal lobbying success, though I know we definitely are having an impact and NCTE was integral to getting the first ever piece of positive trans legislation introduced in Congress this year. I do know though that my sense of humor is a vital part of my personality and helps keep me strong. “They†say that keeping one’s sense of humor is important to weathering bad situations and I certainly believe that. And I have always been lucky enough to be able to amuse myself. Hopefully sometimes others are amused as well.
The work we do educating policymakers, though, is deadly serious and I do treat it that way. That doesn’t mean I do not inject humor as appropriate though. I think it humanizes us and me and makes our stories somewhat more accessible to those who may be trepidatious at first.
By the way, kind of as a hobby, I have begun to do a little bit of standup comedy again and may be coming to a town near you, or at least a trans conference near you.
2) What is the most important legislative issue concerning trans folks right now? What will be in the next five years? Ten?
There is so much going on in Washington, DC now that is affecting trans people, and all people really, that I hesitate to pick one. So I won’t –I’ll pick several. First, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). This is really the Holy Grail of pro-transgender legislation because it would a) help protect transgender jobs, b) create an important educational moment for the public to understand the need to be fair and respectful to transgender people and 3) empower trans people to stand up for themselves with their employers and hang onto their jobs during and after transition.
Since ENDA is not likely to pass in the current Congressional environment that is pretty hostile to all LGBT issues and people, I’d highlight privacy and identification documentation issues as bearing significant attention from NCTE and all trans people. We are currently working very hard with numerous allies to mitigate the impact of the Real ID Act on transgender and other people. [See www.NCTEquality.org for more information on the Real ID Act.] But there is so much privacy/documentation and immigration policy being considered in DC that will hurt trans people and others if we are not all on top of it.
Health policy and HIV/AIDS in particular also very much need to be on the radar. And there are some great people working on access to Medicaid and reform of the criminal justice system which too often targets transgender people, especially those who are lower income, people of color or youth.
These will all remain priorities for the next five or so years until more reasonable and humane minds and hearts regain footing in Washington and many state capitols.
As a side note, we should not forget that the policies that really impact transgender people are often those that impact everyone: pensions, healthcare access, the war in Iraq, and even voting access laws. All of these are not going well in Washington these days to say the least and we should be working vigorously in collaboration with allies to make things better.
3) Tell me a little about NCTE, its founding, and its board. What are the principles you had in mind when you formed NCTE?
The National Center for Transgender Equality was founded in 2003 by a group of activists who felt the urgent need to have a consistent, professional presence in the nation’s capital. Our purpose is simply to effectively educate and advocate on behalf of all transgender people and our allies. We want to be a transgender voice in DC, not the voice.
We work in a social justice context meaning that, while we are working on trans-specific education and policy, we believe that we have an obligation to also work concurrently to make the world a better place in terms of other broader justice issues such as anti-racism, anti-poverty, access to healthcare and other important areas. We believe that our collective work will be for naught if we work hard for trans-equality and get there only to learn that we have equality in an increasingly unfair society. The bottom line is that the discrimination, violence and disrespect faced everyday by transgender people is not only caused by lack of understanding of trans people; it is also caused by an underlying society in which it is commonplace to discriminate, attack or disrespect people because you do not understand them. We must fix society at both levels or win a very shallow, fragile victory.
The NCTE board is comprised of an amazing group of individuals (including Betty of course) who represent a range of transgender and allied communities. One of the aspects of the board of which I know we are most proud is that the board is currently just shy of fifty percent people of color and as we expand we are committed to target 50/50 as an important goal for person of color participation. The board has recognized that we simply cannot meet our mission of representing all trans people if only one type of person serves on the governing Board.
This diversity commitment, by the way, extends beyond who we are, to what we do. We never pursue any program or policy that sells out one part of our community for the sake of another: youth, elders, transsexuals, crossdressers, SOFFAs, allies, immigrants, sex workers. No one is left out or sold out. Period. Too many of our lives have been so destroyed because people have targeted trans people as the “them†to their “usâ€â€”I believe it is simply immoral for us to “us and them†anyone, and it won’t make anyone life any better. If we are not in this together—all of us—we will simply not make our lives better.
This gives you an idea of some of the principles on which NCTE was founded, but here are several more and I think these make NCTE a very unique organization that I hope all trans people and our allies can be proud of.
Collaboration. Almost everything we do, we do in collaboration with allied organizations and individuals. This allows us to leverage our relatively meager resources to accomplish much more, but it also allows our allies to become accustomed to doing ever-improving work that helps trans people.
Optimism. Optimism. Optimism. We are winning. And if we believe that there is anyone who we cannot educate and win over, we will not and cannot win. And if we believe anyone is beyond redemption for their past transgressions against us, we are not worthy of the respect we insist on.
Empowerment. The advances we are making these days are not due to NCTE or me or a handful of people somewhere. There are due to the thousands of trans people and allies around the country and world who are coming out, educating their families, schools, communities, co-workers about their lives. NCTE’s role in this is to find ways to further empower trans people to do this important work.
4) What important precedents had already happened before you came to do this work? That is, which shoulders of which giants are you standing on?
There are so many precedents and amazing people that I wouldn’t know where to start—a million well-known people like Christine Jorgenson, Billy Tipton and Jan Morris and zillion lesser known, just living their lives, shining like candles to inspire so many others. I know that, in general, trans people are so absolutely extraordinary and I have been so lucky to have met and worked with so many.
It is important to appreciate that we are still at an historical moment in our movement in which everyone working today is still a pioneer. When our rightful place in our society is finally reclaimed, there will be little historical distinction between someone who cleared the fields in the 60s or 2010.
Without meaning to be preachy, I would like to mention a deep-set negative precedent that I think we have set ourselves, one that has very pernicious implications for all our policy work. That is, the societal focus on the quest for surgery as the master narrative of transgender lives. In the real world, very few trans people—even very few transsexuals—ever have genital surgery. Yet we all talk about it as if it is a firm qualification for transdom. The negative impacts of this range from 1) feelings of inadequacy for people who cannot access surgery for economic or health reasons, 2) an assumption among policymakers that surgery is a legitimate defining criteria for who should have rights to bathrooms, and even employment and housing, and 3) almost singular focus by the media, and therefore the public, on surgery at the expense of even more educational and frankly interesting aspects of our lives. I am not at all saying that surgery is not a worthwhile goal and/or treatment for many transsexuals, I simply wish we would collectively put it in better perspective as something some transgender people may want and something anyone who wants should be able to access. Let’s stop referring to ourselves as “pre-op†or “post-op†as if we were definable by our genitals. I happen to believe that everybody deserves their dignity, the right to work, to live, to use safe public facilities regardless of whether they can or even want to have genital surgery.
5) You’re kind of infamous for being everywhere at once; I almost assume when I see an event that you’ll be the Guest Speaker. How do you do it?
GERITOL.
Seriously I’m not sure how I do it. It didn’t seem so bad until you mentioned it, even though, as I write this, I am on a plane heading for a town hall meeting in St. Paul, MN where it is something like minus twelve million degrees. I do know why though. NCTE has a principle we call the Accountability Imperative. We believe that since we are effectively the only engaged organizational voice for transgender people in DC, we have a moral obligation to hear from and speak to as many trans communities around the country as possible. So we get around.
We do that not just by traveling and attending meetings and conferences, though, but also through representation on our Board of Directors and Board of Advisors. We need to know what people are thinking, needing, wanting or we just plain cannot do our jobs in a responsible or useful way.
In March, 2006, we will be publishing the first NCTE Transgender Community Yearbook so even more folks can see what we are doing and, just as importantly, see what other folks around the country are doing.
The NCTE staff and Boards see our jobs as a responsibility and an essential part of that is to diligently hear what trans people and allies think we should be doing.
* Bonus Question: What’s your favorite color?
Blue.
You can also read MK’s answers to some of the MHB Board Members’ questions about NCTE policy and the like on a thread we did a while back on the subject, on our boards.