I’m happy to report that the same judge who, one month earlier, ordered a stay on Oregon’s domestic partnership bill has reversed his own ruling! Now gays and lesbians here in Oregon can get legal benefits almost but not quite exactly like straight couples. It’s not called “marriage” though, because gay marriage was voted down a couple years ago. To be honest, I’m perfectly fine with that. Marriage is a religious institution anyway and has no business being muddled with by the government.

But when has the government taken the separation of church and state seriously lately? Oh well. Go and get yourselves happily domestically partnered all you lovely Oregon queers out there! Yayness all around!

elle jo

A while ago, I drew a little comic for Lambda Legal’s “Life Without Fair Courts” contest. The gist of the contest was to depict a world in which some Supreme Court civil rights case had been ruled against. I wracked my brain for days trying to come up with a civil rights case that might, in some small way, apply to me. Eventually I chose to depict the (practically unknown) case of Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins (1989) in which Ann Hopkins, an employee for Price Waterhouse, was denied promotion because her bosses deemed her “too masculine” in her attire and demeanor. Well, she sued their asses off and the case made it all the way to the Supreme Court where it was ultimately ruled in favor of Ms. Hopkins on the grounds that she was being discriminated against because of her sex.

Now I would argue that this wasn’t merely sex discrimination, but it was gender discrimination as well. The (presumably make) bosses denied Ms. Hopkins a promotion because they believed her to be “too masculine,” as if to say that women are only allowed to be “feminine” in the cutthroat world of … um … accounting. And this wasn’t a one-time deal at Price Waterhouse. This quote from the Opinion of the Court piece by Justice Brennan says:

In previous years, other female candidates for partnership also had been evaluated in sex-based terms. As a general matter, Judge Gesell concluded, “[c]andidates were viewed favorably if partners believed they maintained their femin[in]ity while becoming effective professional managers”; in this environment, “[t]o be identified as a ‘women’s lib[b]er’ was regarded as [a] negative comment.”

from the Supreme Court Collection at Cornell University

These were decisions based not solely on sex, but on gender as well. That is, the expected gender performance for a given sex: masculine for men and feminine for women. This kind of thing has been going on for ages, and it’s not limited to big corporations.

There is a bill siting in Congress as I blog called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) which will extend protections on the basis of sexual orientation and (if all goes well) gender identity as well. Unfortunately democrats in Congress are feeling a little twitchy about including gender identity in ENDA. They feel there will not be enough votes to pass legislation with trans protections attached.

Transgender folk have been on the sidelines of LGB culture ever since Christine Jorgenson got off the boat in New York. We’ve been treated as novelties, curiosities of science, or sideshow freaks who don’t belong anywhere but the sideshow or Jerry Springer. I know I’ve never felt completely at home in the queer resource center here on the UO campus even though I identify as a lesbian. The whole ‘trans’ thing fucks everything up. Now the same kind of sidelining is going on with ENDA. Dems apparently are too uptight to extend protections to a class of people that most still consider to be sideshow freaks.

But let me tell you, offering protections on the basis of gender identity will include more than just transsexuals. When we have legislation in place that states there shall be no expectation by employers that their employees behave exclusively masculine for men or feminine for women, it will be a shining day for people of all sexes, genders, and orientations. The mousy straight guy in the pink sweater won’t lose his job because his homophobic boss thinks he’s gay. The dominatrix of the boardroom in the black pinstripe suit will know that that promotion is hers, without an additional review. The trans-dyke illustrator can submit portfolios to any potential employer knowing full well that she’ll get hired (or not) based on her merits and not what’s between her legs.

So Congress, do not drop gender identity protection from ENDA. It could extend protections to so many more folk than just transsexuals. It would ensure that anyone who deviates from the archaic 1950s view of men and women could get a job and keep a job.

ellejohara

I’m happy to hear that the Matthew Shepard Act managed to pass the cloture vote (just barely) 60-39 (with John-Boy McCain not voting). This bill is attached to a defense spending bill (clever), so if Bush vetoes, he doesn’t get money for his war. Dubya hasn’t said anything about vetoing a defense spending bill, just a hate crimes bill.

So that was happy news to hear. (Even though hearing the word ‘cloture’ means the Republicans must have threatened another filibuster. Fuckers.)

And in the world of the stupid: Democrats are freaking out over T. Specifically the T in LBGT, meaning ‘transgender.’ Apparently the Jesus freaks are convincing the Dems that passing ENDA with trans-inclusion would mean, well, let me just point you to this graphic over at Pam’s House Blend:

If this is what the fundies are freaking out about, they have some serious growing up to do. What’s particularly annoying is that transfolk have been snubbed for a long time in queer circles. Back in the day, thanks to tomes like Janice Raymond’s “The Transsexual Empire,” transfolk, specifically MTFs, were seen as a threat to the second wave feminism of the 1970s. Thankfully things have changed since then and the queer community is considerably more open to transfolk, although there are still a few second wave feminist holdouts (such as at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival), and recent books like J. Michael Bailey’s “The Man Who Would Be Queen” certainly aren’t helping.

It’s tough enough to be fighting an uphill battle in Congress, but it will be even more frustrating if transfolk get booted from ENDA in the same way we get booted from the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. We’re prepared to go that extra mile if we have to, because as human beings, we are deserving of the same rights as those white Christian fuckers that get to take them so much for granted.

elle jo

Ahh, labels. How do we as individuals identify ourselves? If you’re like me, you’ll probably drop categories onto yourself such as your job, your school, or your temple, synagogue, church, henge or what-have-you. Sometimes one noun or adjective isn’t enough and we decide to choose several for ourselves. My first AstroGirlX2 comic is a brilliant example of taking this to an extreme. (As is my Discordian Holy Title, which I won’t trouble you with here.)

As convenient as labels can be to help us define ourselves, they aren’t completely accurate unless you want to have several hundred labels for yourself. And another inconvenience about labels is that they often have a tendency to change over time. Sometimes you’ll outgrow the definition of your label and other times your label’s definition will outgrow you. One example of this is something I noticed this morning on AmericaBlog: the use of the term homosexual. John Aravosis hits the nail on the head with his comments on how the term gay has come to replace the previous, and derisively clinical term of homosexual.

The fundies out there in Jesusland are very well aware of how demeaning the term homosexual is to gays and lesbians. Folks like Fred Phelps use it’s insulting connotation on a regular basis. It’s an icky word used by guys in lab coats back in the day to describe so-called “deviant sexual behavior.” That connotation has never gone away and it’s not likely to go away anytime soon.

Anytime the word sex creeps into a label for a particular group, bad things usually come out of it. It’s apparent in the clinical nature of homosexual and just as clear in a label a little bit closer to home: transsexual. Once again, the term transsexual was something coined by a guy in a lab coat to explain why a man would want to become a woman, or a woman to become a man. (But then, it was the 1950s and sexual expression was deep, deep in the closet. And sexual freedom? What’s that?!)

Now I don’t have the luxury of having an alternative label for myself when it comes to someone with “a strong and persistent gross-gender identification, [with] the desire to be … the other sex” (DSM IV). Like it or not, I’m stuck with the icky term transsexual. I suppose I could shorten it to trans, but that just means across. Across what? Trans itself is just a preposition (or an adverb) and is meaningless without a noun or an adjective to modify. (But that’s just my nitpicky linguistic fussiness talking.)

One term that I’ve been gravitating toward in recent years is queer. However, queer is not without it’s own controversy. Like dyke or fag, queer was one of the many insults people would use on the gay community. At one university, the LGBT center used to be called the Queer Resource Center. But they decided to change the name because they felt the word queer to be too much of a hot button. But if fags and dykes everywhere can reclaim what were once slurs, why couldn’t queers (like myself) do the same?

I like queer because it’s kind of a catch-all category. See, I’m not exactly male anymore, but I’m not exactly female either. I’m attracted to all manner of folk (with a particular fondness for greaser dykes in A-shirts), but I find androgyny to be incredibly sexy. So if I’m neither gay nor straight, neither male nor female, neither femme nor butch, then just what the hell am I?

I’m queer. (For now.)

Fcy. Lady Miss Good Satan Astrid Lydia Saint Hot Rock Johannsen KSC DiM Esq. High Priestess of La Isla Terceira Cabal (in exile)