More On Trans Issues
This post was submitted by TNG reader Darby.
D.C. resident Patti Shaw says she was forced to wait for a court date in a jail cell with men because police had no procedure for changing her gender identity in their records. Shaw claims she was sexually assaulted while waiting.
In response to last week’s “A Lesson on Trans Inclusiveness in Marketing” and the comments that followed, here is some information about an upcoming protest event and changes to DC municipal regulations that will affect transgender people in the city as well as an effort by the Human RightsThe DC Department of Corrections seems to think that running their jails with “safety, order and security” means compromising the safety and security of our community. We need to correct them! Join the DC Trans Coalition this Saturday from 1-3 p.m. to tell the Dept. of Corrections that they can't ignore our voices, our allies, and OUR need for safety and security within DC jails. Bring yourself, as many friends as you can, some righteous indignation and join the protest!
The Dept. of Corrections is located at 1923 Vermont Avenue NW (near 10th and U and the U Street Metro).
Want to help make signs this Thursday? Drop an e-mail to Max, meestertoth@gmail.com for directions to our sign-making party.
Also, the DCTC's campaign against the Department of Corrections was the focus of a very good article in the Metro Weekly that hit the newsstands this past Thursday.
As for the DC Human Rights
You can also check out these articles from Metro Weekly:
- Uncommon decency: Transgender women prepare to file lawsuit in response to treatment in D.C. jails
- Gender Confusion With few answers in gender mix-up case in D.C. jails, activists look for solutions
5 comments:
Can you explain what this supposed "effort by the Human Rights Campaign to roll back some very positive regulations" is all about? You mention HRC at the bottom but it's again unclear to what you are referring.
I think she meant the DC Human Rights Commission.
"The rulemaking also repeals the requirement of gender-neutral signage for single-occupancy rest rooms..." How exactly does having gender-specific single occupancy rest rooms benefit anyone? What a stupid and completely unnecessary rule change. The only point of this change would be to exclude people who don't conform to gender norms... it certainly doesn't benefit cys-gendered men or women standing in line!
As a side note, I can't count the number of times I've almost been thrown out of bars (like Tom Tom's) for using or trying to use the men's restroom. I say go gender-neutral for all of them, it's completely unfair when there's no line for the men's room and the women's line stretches all the way down the stairs.
Maybe if people stopped committing crimes this wouldn't be a problem.
If people stopped committing crimes, we wouldn't need the 4th, 5th and 8th amendments. If people stopped committing crimes, they wouldn't need to have their Miranda rights read to them. Mainstream American Society (Scalia and all) has agreed that people who are accused of crimes deserve a basic set of rights.
*Everyone's rights* should be protected while they are in custody, unable to make autonomous decisions or to stand up for themselves. These protections need to be stronger for transfolk than they would be for the general population, just like non-English speakers are provided translators.
In fact, protecting the rights of transfolk in custody is particularly important in a system that may, intentionally or not, have laws that consider the ways that they live their lives illegal. A pre-op transgender woman uses the women's restroom and is arrested for public exposure or indecency. She is then put into a cell with cisgender men because that's what the system considers her to be. Anonymous, exactly what crime should she have not been committing to get her into jail?
But what if she is breaking another law, one that has nothing to do with the fact that she is gender-queer? What if she steals a car or commits tax fraud or kills someone? Does she lose the rights that everyone else has to his or her dignity when arrested?
This is not a non-issue that you can blink away because "they are criminals". People who are accused and convicted of crimes have human rights.
Even, now, in Guantanamo.
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