Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
politics, both trans & otherwise
QUESTION: “But on AIG, why did you wait — why did you wait days to come out and express that outrage? It seems like the action is coming out of New York and the attorney general’s office. It took you days to come public with Secretary Geithner and say, “Look, we’re outraged.” Why did it take so long?”
OBAMA: “It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.”
= the best bit of Obama’s press conference tonight.
Okay, so I’m going to say it: I love Barack Obama. There are days I come home & worry about the uncertainty of my own life for the next couple of years, & then I see him and his rapidly-graying hair, & it consoles me to know that what I’ve got to deal with is nothing in comparison.
He’s a truly remarkable man. His talk tonight in CA was so reassuring. It amazes me that he has room to be funny while he’s dealing with all this bullshit we’re neck-deep in.
Pam’s House Blend reports that Mara Keisling is one of the many women who have been invited to participate in an announcement ceremony.
Mara Keisling, for those of you who don’t know, is a lesbian-identified trans woman who is also the executive director of NCTE.
(Toldja he was trans-inclusive.)
(Thanks to Pam & Diana in CT.)
Today the opposing sides face off in California State Supreme Court about Prop 8. In their corner, the detestable Ken Starr; in ours, the inimitable Shannon Minter.
My friend Megan has already sussgested the headline: Minter Blows Starr Away.
I have absolute confidence in Shannon Minter.
The NAACP has been one of our strongest allies in the fight against Proposition 8 in California. The national NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund (LDF) and the California branch of the NAACP joined other civil rights groups in filing a major brief before the California Supreme Court in support of equality, and LDF recently urged the California legislature to enact resolutions calling for the invalidation of Prop 8.
The NAACP is getting some push-back for these efforts. Now is the time for us to support them and show that coalition politics goes both ways. Please join me in expressing your support for their statement of equality to your local NAACP branch:
We are not alone in this fight. Let’s show that we know how to step up to the plate when others step up for us.
Barnard College is hosting a conference on reproductive technologies on Saturday, February 28th; I wish I were there, but I’m not. Hopefully someone will go & report back!
All the info below the break.
Every day I wake up & read the news & every day I smile:
Obama Pledges Restoration of US Funding for UNFPA
President Obama Signs Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
Senate Approves SCHIP Expansion Bill.
It’s like a dream, really. These things that caused so much sadness and chagrin in past years, just fixed, just like that.
I don’t think I can watch footage of Obama talking to young volunteeers without getting weepy. The teenaged girls especially crack me up, though, and I have to say I suspect I’d be just as goofy if I got to meet the man in person, too. The awe you can see in people’s eyes is so exciting.
Tomorrow I’m just going to cry through the inaugural, I just know it. We all expect it to kick ass, & I have no doubt it will. He’s walking around today like a man who’s got a good piece written.
It really is true that us Gen Xers finally understand the Kennedy thing the Boomers have been going on about our entire lives. We never had this kind of president before, someone who is really an inspiration, and young and strong and sexy, with a beautiful wife to boot.
From National Stonewall Democrats:
Washington, DC – Today, the Stonewall Democrats congratulated Laura Calvo upon her election as Treasurer of the Democratic Party of Oregon. Calvo, a seasoned Democratic operative, becomes the first openly-transgender officer of a state Democratic party. A member of the Board of Directors for National Stonewall Democrats, Calvo also serves as Chair of the Oregon Stonewall Democrats and as Treasurer of the Multnomah County Democrats. Multnomah County, which includes the city of Portland, is the largest county in the state of Oregon.
Allyson Robinson posted this message about Equality Florida’s fight for a gender-inclusive non-discrimination law in Gainesville, Florida on our message boards, & I thought it deserved a larger audience:
Many of you are aware of the fight brewing in Gainesville, Florida over their trans-inclusive non-discrimination law, passed by the city council last year. Gainesville’s non-discrimination ordinance had covered sexual orientation for years, but when gender identity was added last year, opposition was activated. The opposition group collected a huge number of signatures–over 10% of the projected voting population–to get the anti-discrimination ordinance placed on the ballot in a special election. That’s tremendous for this kind of municipal issue; more people signed the petition against these protections than voted for the mayor or any sitting city council member in recent elections.
Though the charter amendment the opposition group is pushing would eliminate protections for the whole LGBT community, their messaging is focusing on transgender people–the “bathroom diversion.” Their flyers state, in letters a inch tall, “KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S RESTROOMS.” As we’ve seen all over the country, and writ large in California last fall, this kind of fear-based messaging is very, very difficult to dislodge from voters’ minds. The special election is scheduled for March 24.
This fight has national significance. The “bathroom diversion” is quickly becoming our opposition’s weapon of choice. They used it successfully in Hamtramck, Michigan, it might have succeeded in Montgomery County, Maryland had the courts not intervened, it’s getting drug out in Kalamazoo, Michigan and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it’s already being raised at the state level in places like Connecticut that are considering inclusive non-discrimination bills this year. We must show both our opponents and our supporters that we can consistently defeat this tactic. If we don’t, municipalities or states considering trans-inclusive non-discrimination laws may become gun-shy, preferring not to deal with costly ballot initiatives in response to pro-equality laws.