The '60s are over, but the fight for civil rights continues. One group scored a major victory last week: not African Americans or women, but transgender Americans, a group so discriminated against that our nation has only just begun to acknowledge its existence.
On Tuesday, Sept. 8, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a transgender protection law passed in Montgomery County, Md., in November 2007. According to the county's Web site, the law - Bill 23-07 - is an act to "prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, public accommodations, cable television service and taxicab service on the basis of gender identity."
The law immediately caused controversy, and the interest group Maryland Citizens for a Responsible Government launched a petition that would've forced the law to a referendum on the November ballot. However, interest groups in favor of the transgender protection law, principally a group called Equality Maryland, disputed the ballot initiative in court. This week's ruling was in favor of Equality Maryland and for transgender people.
Our nation doesn't seem to understand transgender people. We know the facts - that transgender people decide to switch from male to female, or from female to male - but that is where our knowledge stops and our prejudice begins.
Allow me to enlighten you with the facts.
Every person biologically has certain reproductive organs that determine their sex (male or female). Gender is typically associated with sex - male for men and female for women - but where sex is biologically determined, gender is a social construct.
In the U.S., we only allow for two genders - male and female; if a person doesn't fit neatly into those two categories, society forces that person into them. This goes not only for gender construction but also for psychology.
People are different psychologically. Some people are happy and some people are sad. Some people are feminine and some people are masculine. A transgender person happens to be feminine in a man's body or masculine in a woman's body, and they want their physical appearance to match the gender they identify with.
They decide to change to look like the sex that society associates with their gender identity, or, even more accurately, the gender they identify with, even if society disagrees. Some transgender people get sex change operations (transsexuals), while others do not.
But all members of the transgender community dress, walk, talk, sit, stand and act like the gender they feel they are rather than the sex they were born to be. Transgender people want to feel like themselves.
Not everyone has to understand transgender people, but everyone should respect them. Not because of anything they do or don't do but simply because they are human beings.
The Court of Appeals understood that when they ruled that 23-07 should take effect, giving transgender people the rights they should've had all along.
Transgender people should have the right to have a decent job, rent a decent home and even go to the bathroom of the gender they identify with (or a gender-neutral one). But opponents of 23-07, and of equality for transgender people everywhere, are trying to scare people into thinking that transgender people will corrupt their children.
Children "will be put in the hands of cross dressers, transvestites and any other variation covered by the 'gender identity' umbrella who will be only too happy to exhibit and explain their way of life to kids since schools (and day care centers) now have to hire them," a document titled "Just the Facts" about 23-07 on the Maryland Citizens for a Responsible Government Web site says. "This entry into our schools - religious, parochial and public - lets the proselytizing begin."
In reality, most transgender people are ordinary, law-abiding citizens who are just as capable of being wonderful teachers and child care workers as anyone else, despite what the Maryland Citizens for a 'Responsible' Government says. Their statements are factually irresponsible and propagate negative stereotypes.
Calling a transgender person a cross-dresser or a transvestite is factually incorrect and puts images of hookers and street-walkers in a person's mind. A transgender person breaks societally mandated gender roles and claims an identity separate than their reproductive organs, while a transvestite wears the clothing typically representative of the opposite gender.
Proselytizing is a fancy way to say 'converting people to a way of thinking' and to say that just because a person is transgender they are going to attempt to convert people to think that their ideas are correct is ludicrous! It insinuates that anyone who differs from the 'norm' is a threat to society. Maybe we should start thinking that the people who challenge the status quo aren't abnormal, they're progressive. And progress is something we could use more of in our society.
Unfortunately for the Maryland Citizens for a Responsible Government, their children are going to be allowed to experience yet another form of diversity and to love yet another group of people. Fortunately for the rest of us, the Maryland Court of Appeals doesn't listen to the cries of those who are afraid of what they don't understand.
Sarah Melecki is a junior political science and philosophy major. Reach her at sarahmelecki@dailynebraskan.com
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