The Struggle for Gender Identity as a Human Right

The Struggle for Gender Identity as a Human Right

Connecticut chapter of the National Association of Social Worker January/February 2011 newsletter

By Diana L

Human Rights and equality are embedded in our history and culture, it is written in our Constitution and into our laws. However, the right to determine one’s gender is just taking hold in the U.S. and the world. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948 and at that time, gender identity and sexual orientation wasn’t even an issue. It was not until the early sixties, during the civil rights movement, that the idea of determining one’s gender as a Human Right began to crystallize.

Transgender rights organizations such as Erickson Educational Foundation started to form in the early sixties in the United States. In 1965, ten states passed laws that allowed trans-persons to change their birth certificates and in 1966, a New York State court ruling allowed birth certificates to be changed.

The first sit-in strike for gender rights took place at the Dewey’s Lunch Counter in Philadelphia in May 2, 1965. The strike was tailored after the civil rights movement and was the result of a police raid at the lunch counter on April 25. The police were checking the drag queens to see if they were wearing at least three items of male clothing, else they could be arrested for violating the decency laws.

The following year in San Francisco, there was a raid on the Compton Cafeteria in the Tenderloin district that resulted in an uprising at the cafeteria. The manager of the cafeteria was tired of the “street queens and street people” using the cafeteria as an after-hours hang-out and called the police. According to reports, a drag queen threw a cup of coffee at a police officer and all hell broke out. As a result of the uprising, the city of San Francisco established a police liaison officer and changed the way that the city viewed Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights.

Around the same time as the Compton Cafeteria uprising, Dr Harry Benjamin published The Transsexual Phenomenon that changed the paradigm in the way the medical and legal community dealt with transsexualism in the United States. In Europe, transsexualism was being treated with hormones and surgery, while in the United States it was still illegal to perform surgery on transsexuals.

In 1969, a new revolution began, the era of Gay Rights. Most people have heard of the Stonewall Uprising in New York City, but what most people haven’t heard was the details of the police raid. People think of Stonewall protesters as middle-class white gays and lesbians who rose up against police oppression. However, many of the resistors were poor gender-variant people of color who rebelled against New York City police.

The police raided the bar to arrest “Only people dressed in clothes of a different gender, people without IDs, and employees of the bar would be arrested. Everyone else would be released.” In an interview for the Worker’s World, Leslie Fienberg interviewed Sylvia Rivera, a trans-woman who said that the uprising began when “a dyke dressed in men’s clothing” resisted as the police put her into the paddy wagon. From the Stonewall Uprising the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was formed and one of the co-founders was Sylvia Rivera, who was later forced to leave because she did not fit the image that the GLF wanted to project.

The seventies and the eighties were basically the decades of assimilation, where our gay and lesbian brothers and sister in their struggle for Gay Rights, pushed the trans-community away. Their movement was only interested in LGBT individuals who could be assimilated into society. In 1974, Minneapolis passed a non-discrimination ordinance that only covered sexual orientation. However, the following year Minneapolis past a bill adding gender identity and expression to the law. It was opposed by Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights and Democratic State Legislator, Steve Endean, who later became one of the founders of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

Later in that decade, Janice Raymond a feminist-lesbian who had a deep-seated hatred of transsexuals publishes The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She/Male and much of what she wrote was and still is being used against the trans-community when gender inclusive anti-discrimination legislation is being debated.

In 1979, the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights was held and the trans-community was told that they were not welcome to march with them.

It was not until the mid-nineties that the trans-community developed a voice of their own. In 1995, a group of lawyers headed by Phyllis Frye, who would later become the first transgender judge in Texas, held The International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy in Houston Texas. The conference wrote The International Bill of Gender Rights (IBGR). The IBGR for the first time enumerated the following basic rights: the right to define gender identity, the right to free expression of gender identity, the right to secure and retain employment and to receive just compensation, along with seven other human rights. These were radical ideas and it was not until after the turn of the century that the rest of the world started to realizes the need for these basic human rights for the trans-community.

That changed in 2006 when there was a human right conference in Yogyakarta, Indonesia that met to develop a set of international human right principles for sexual orientation and gender identity. The conference was attended by human rights experts from around the world including judges, academics, and a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. When the conference ended they published the Yogyakarta Principles on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Then in December of 2008 at the United Nations, an initiative by France and the Netherlands, which was backed by the European Union, proposed a declaration on sexual orientation and gender identity. The declaration was signed by 66 nations; however, the United States was not a signatory, President Bush opposed the resolution. The opposition was lead by Middle East and African nations, who opposed the resolution on religious grounds and that it infringed upon the rights of their countries. When Obama became president, the United States did sign the declaration in March of 2009. However, a setback occurred in November of this year when African, Middle East and Caribbean nations were able to remove sexual orientation from a UN resolution condemning unjustified executions.

Here in Connecticut in 2000, the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) was asked if gender identity was covered under the existing statutes and they ruled that it was covered under sex discrimination.

In 2006, a loose coalition of organizations came together called the Anti-Discrimination Coalition (ADC) and they decided that the CHRO ruling should be codified into law since the administrative ruling could be overturned by a court. Therefore, legislation for equal rights for the trans-community was introduced that year and it passed the Judiciary Committee with a vote of 28 – 8. In 2007 the bill passed the Judiciary Committee (29 – 4), the Government Administration and Elections committee (10 – 1), the Higher Education committee (15 – 3) and the Education committee (27 – 1). The bill passed in the Senate (30 – 4), only to be tabled in the House after a three-hour debate.

The next year the bill made it through the Judiciary Committee and the following year, 2009, it never made it out of the Judiciary Committee because of the debate over marriage equality. In 2008, the Connecticut chapter of NASW joined the coalition. With the closing of Love Makes a Family in 2009, one of the coalitions main supporters, the coalition re-organized and re-branded itself and became ctEquality and hired a community organizer. They plan to introduce the bill again in the 2011 legislative session.

Reference:

CHRO, (2000, November 9). CHRO Declaratory Ruling on behalf of John/Jane Doe Retrieved April 21, 2007, from http://www.ct.gov/chro/cwp/view.asp?a=2526&Q=315942

Fienberg, L. (1998). 'I'm glad I was in the Stonewall riot'. Worker’s World. Retrieved August 1, 2009. From http://www.workers.org/ww/1998/sylvia0702.php

MacKenzie, G. (1994). Transgender Nation. Bowling Green OH. Popular Press

Meyerowitz, J. (2002). How Sex Changed. Boston, MA. Harvard Press

Stryker, S. (2008). Transgender History. Berkley CA. Seal Press.

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/publisher,CESCR,GENERAL,,4a60961f2,0.html

http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE6AG0BM20101117

http://www.yogyakartaprinciples.org/

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/12/11/un-general-assembly-address-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity

http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/transgender_activism.html

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