By: Chuck Colbert/TRT Reporter
The message is as all-American as the Fourteenth Amendment.
“The country was built on equal opportunity,” a new multi-media public education campaign begins. “As transgender people we are asking for the opportunity to take care of our families and be free from discrimination.”
No big surprise: “I AM: Trans People Speak,” the nation’s first-ever public awareness initiative, springs from navy blue Massachusetts. But the brief personal stories – in video, audio, written essay, and photo format – hold the same message even for crimson red localities.
“We want to explain to people who we are, the issues we face from our own voices, not from a medical model,” said Gunner Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC).
At a recent launch party, held at a popular eatery in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, Scott said his “crazy idea” for the project came from National Public Radio when he heard about immigrants telling their stories through the “We Are America” multi-media program.
Scott floated his idea at a staff meeting this past summer. “No one said, ‘Gunner, are you absolutely out of your mind,’” he explained.
Voilà: MPTC fast tracked the project. The Coalition received a $35,000 grant from the State Equality Fund, assembled a team, and within three months were up and running with the project (www.TransPeopleSpeak.org <http://www.TransPeopleSpeak.org/>).
AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, The Fenway Institute, and The Network/La Red are co-sponsors, along with the State Street Corporation.
Scott said that another $20,000 would enable MTPC to place ads on MBTA subway trains and busses. “This is not the end, but the beginning,” he said.
Transgender people are widely misunderstood by the general public and the media, Scott and other transgender-rights advocates say.
“Much of the media is negative,” explained Jesse Begenyi. A documentary filmmaker, he serves as MTPC clerk, as well as on the trans speak team.
“We feel boxed in,” Begenyi said. “Trans people are so much more than their trans experience,” he
said, referring to the story told by Cohasset resident Michelle Figueiredo, whose video is one of eight posted on the “I AM: Trans People Speak” web site.“Her whole video is about how she ran a marathon; there’s nothing about being transgender,” said Begenyi, who is also a videographer for the project.
And yet Figueiredo’s experience transiting from male to female while on the job at State Street cuts to the heart of the public education efforts. During a short interview at the launch party, Figueiredo, a manager, spoke about the support she received from human resources and her boss.
“I went to an HR person who said, ‘Let’s explore how we do this. We support you,’” she said.
Figueiredo went on to praise her boss, a “guy’s guy,” she said, who told her point blank, “I don’t care what you look like as long as you do the great job you do,” she said. “Talk about a huge weight off my shoulders.”
“He actually went on the Internet to find out more information,” Figueiredo added. “He knew staff would ask questions.”
Her boss genuinely cared, she said. From time to time, “He asked me, ‘How are you feeling? How are the hormones treating you?’ I put him up for a diversity award and he won.”
Still, Figueiredo’s positive experience at one of the Greater Boston’s venerable financial institutions is not always the case.
Transgender people face not only employment discrimination, but also encounter discrimination in housing, credit, education, and public accommodations. Transgender persons are also victims of violent hate crimes. Unlike gay men and lesbians, transgender residents of Massachusetts do not enjoy basic civil-rights protections.
Twice, attempts to add “gender identity and “gender expression” to the state’s non-discrimination and hate crimes statues have fallen short.
Last year, the Transgender Civil Rights bill, with more than 100 co-sponsors last year, stalled on Beacon Hill largely because of the Massachusetts Family Institute’s hijacking the debate’s language, dubbing the proposed legislation a “bathroom bill,” an ugly smear transgender allies consider fear mongering and scare tactics all about imaginary trans bogeymen in restrooms and locker rooms.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker went so far as to say if he were elected he would veto the “bathroom bill” should it come to his desk. But even some Democratic lawmakers balked during the last term, fearing a vote on the measure would compromise their reelection campaigns.
The Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary never reported the bill out of committee. Neither House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo nor Senate President Therese Murray placed the measure among their top legislative goals.
While Governor Deval Patrick voiced support for the bill and said he would sign it into law, he never pushed Democratic leadership for it to come to a vote.
Sure enough, transgender activists intend to renew efforts to pass civil-rights protection on Beacon Hill next year.
Meanwhile, the power of personal story telling continues.
“It’s not just about us,” said Ty of Northampton, a transgender man who is the biological mother of two teenage sons, during his video clip. “It’s about our families.”
For Mick of Boston, a licensed clinical social worker, a feminist and queer transman, it’s all about being true to self, he said on video. “I can finally look in the mirror, and I finally know who I am.”
