Rights drive stalls: An anti-discrimination measure falters in the ladies

[nosmokes]

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GENDER IDENTITY

Rights drive stalls: An anti-discrimination measure falters in the ladies room

By Jeff Wright
The Register-Guard
Published: Saturday, October 15, 2005


The city's effort to expand its anti-discrimination law to protect transgendered people has been delayed for months - because transgendered residents themselves can't agree on what it should say.
The sticking point, ironically, is the same issue that bothered then-Mayor Jim Torrey and others back in 2002: whether males who say they identify as females should be allowed in women's public bathrooms, locker rooms and shower areas.
Earlier this year, a Gender Identity Work Group unanimously recommended that revisions to the city's human rights code include allowing people to enter whichever public bathroom, locker room or shower they regard as "most appropriate" for their gender identity.
But other residents - including former men who have undergone sex reassignment surgery - say it's reasonable to ask people claiming to be transgendered to provide a driver's license or other identification to prove they are legally the gender they say they are.
"We clearly need protection for gender identity, but we also clearly need to respect that everybody's safety is kept in mind," said Rebecca Taylor, who underwent reassignment surgery last year. "No reasonable human being wants to make society less safe for women."
The dispute comes at a time when Eugene is considering whether to join 79 other cities, counties and states across the country that already have added gender identity to the list of "classes" protected from discrimination in public employment, housing and accommodations.
The overwhelming majority of those jurisdictions' laws do not mention access to bathrooms or other sex-segregated public facilities, according to Lisa Mottet, legislative lawyer for the Transgender Civil Rights Project in Washington, D.C. Most of the laws have passed with little or no controversy, and with no reports of predatory behavior or other problems, Mottet said.
In Oregon, Multnomah County and the cities of Portland, Lake Oswego and Beaverton have gender identity laws that allow health clubs and other businesses with gender-specific public areas to require a person to document their gender. But similar laws in Bend and Benton County do not.
In Eugene, the initial proposal for gender identity protection did not address access to public areas. But after then-Mayor Torrey and others raised concerns about the use of public bathrooms, advocates felt they needed to address the issue head-on.
Ultimately, the City Council in 2002 approved a package of revisions to the human rights code but dropped language relating to transgendered rights in the face of Torrey's threatened veto. Advocates vowed to return to the council after completing an extensive public education campaign - and following the election of a new mayor and council deemed more sympathetic to their cause.
The original timetable called for the city Human Rights Commission to endorse and forward new language to the council last spring. But that's been pushed back several times in the face of disagreement among transgendered residents and others. The commission plans to take up the issue again Tuesday, and when the matter reaches the council is still anyone's guess.
The subject is complicated by the fact that Mayor Kitty Piercy, while receptive to the need for gender identity protection, has said she wants to see a unanimous recommendation from the human rights commission. Such unanimity is viewed as making it less likely that either the council or petition-wielding citizens would refer the matter to voters.
The public facilities issue is not limited to athletic clubs and gyms; the Christian-based Eugene Mission homeless shelter, for example, has separate lodges for men, women and mothers with children, and regards a person's gender identity as the person's actual gender at birth.
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[nosmokes]

1. related story::He becomes a she, and still the marriage endures

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i'm acquaintances with these folks, and i certainly admire their courage for coming out like this. i'm not so sure i agree with their choice to name their kids and i hope that doesn't cause them any more stress than they hafta deal with already, which thankfully has been far less than i would have expected.
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He becomes a she, and still the marriage endures

Published: Saturday, October 15, 2005


Russell and Marsha Taylor met at a party, fell in love, got married, had two children, grew a business and bought a big white house on a hill.
But then a funny thing happened on the way to living happily ever after: Russell became Rebecca.
Diagnosed with gender identity disorder, Rebecca Taylor last year flew to Thailand to see a doctor she regards as the best in the world for sexual reassignment surgeries. Taylor describes the day of the surgery, Feb. 12, 2004, as "my second birthday."
The difference between who she is now and who she was then, she says, "is the difference between being real and playing a role." In her view, gender identity disorder is no different than, say, having a cleft palate: "It's a medical condition that needs to be fixed."
The surgery culminated a two-year process in which Taylor presented herself in public as a woman, started therapist-approved hormone therapy and took the necessary steps to acquire a new driver's license identifying her as legally female.
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[kevinbgoode]

2. I really found the second story fascinating. . .

and then I wondered what the ramifications of some of the hateful constitutional amendments could be. . .this raises some questions in my mind. For example, if one partner changes their sex and they both remain together, are they no longer married? Can the wingnuts or the government paranoids void a marriage? And what about that ridiculous push for those gay adoption laws. . .can they use these to take the natural-born children away from someone?

I wish this couple well - they seem happy and fulfilled, although once again the extended family has been overly medicated by the social nastiness of the wingnuts who condemn this - yet they do seem secure that they have made the right decisions.

I'd love to right an op-ed about this couple. . .

[MuseRider]

3. These are all important

issues that we should be ready for, they will come up eventually.

The bathroom issue is interesting, I guess I have never given it a lot of thought. If a man feels that he is really a woman I would have no problem with him being in a woman's bathroom but how do you know? I mean, there is a risk for women that some men, not transgendered, would take advantage of this. Somehow I feel that this will turn against the transgendered once again. As I said before, we really should have these issues ready for when they gain momentum (not here yet) or perhaps by location they are already gaining momentum elsewhere.