Queer Korea Festival speech & Seoul Pride Parade 2015 (6.28.15)
(퀴어문화축제 & 퍼레이드)

I’m Pauline Park and I’m honored to have been invited to speak to you today. I would like to thank the march organizers for the invitation and especially Kahye and Candy from the Queer Korea Festival and I would like to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to address you as the LGBT community in Korea marks an important milestone — not merely the celebration of LGBT pride but also the victory over those reactionary forces that tried to prevent this event from taking place at all.

But movements are like that: one step backward, two steps forward. I speak from personal experience, having been involved with LGBT activism for 21 years now. If I had had a child the year I first became involved with LGBT activism, he/she would be old enough to legally drink in New York state. And speaking of which, sadly, our campaign for a transgender rights law in New York state is still stalled in the New York State Senate 13 years after it was first introduced.

But the good news is that we have made tremendous progress in the United States since I first became involved with activism back in 1994, including enactment of the transgender rights law by the New York City Council in 2002 after a successful campaign that I led through the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA).

Our most spectacular victory came earlier this week, when the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality, guaranteeing same-sex marriage rights in all 50 states. It is my sincerest hope that the next time I return to Korea that all of my Korean brothers and sisters will enjoy the same right to marriage.

But of course, both here as well as in the US, there are so many other items on the community’s agenda that deserve just as much attention as marriage. Youth and elders, police and criminal justice system reform, bullying and bias-based harassment in school, health care access, immigration, etc., etc. There is so much more work to be done, but we’re making progress in the US just as here in Korea. And it thrills me to see the LGBT community come of age in the country of my birth. And what a truly great honor it is to address you on the occasion of my first return to Korea since I left here at the age of seven months.

Even if I had had an memories from back then, I would not be able to recognize the city of my birth after half a century of dramatic change. When I left here, it wasn’t long after the popular uprising that overthrew Rhee Syngman and it’s even possible that my birth father participated in that revolution. So perhaps I was born to make revolution.

Less than a month after I left Korea, Park Chung-hee came to power in a coup d’etat. I ronic that I return for the first time in 54 years only to find his daughter living in the Blue House. So maybe there’s another agenda item for change to consider. We need fewer princesses and more queens in power. We also need someone more willing to support the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people and less willing to be complicit in the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. And the LGBT movement — which is becoming more global by the day — needs to embrace a global agenda of social justice for all rather than confining itself to a limited agenda of legal rights for some.

And Koreans need to embrace their LGBT brothers and sisters to make Korea truly a national family and home for all. So my message to the people beating drums out there to protest this event is that they should be beating drums for freedom and not for oppression for acceptance and not prejudice. They worship a God I don’t recognize — a judgmental, homophobic and transgenderphobic God who is the opposite of the Gold of love I know. Their hate may be strong, but our love is stronger, and love will ultimately vanquish hate. I t is my hope that the next time I come to this event, the ajima in hanboks waving their Bibles at us and beating their drums will be joining us to celebrate LGBT pride. And it is my hope that on my next visit to Korea, the  Seould city government and the National Assembly will have enacted LGBT rights legislation protecting everyone from discrimination. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has said, the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. Thank you. Kamsamnida.

Pauline Park is chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA).

You can watch a video of this speech on YouTube as well as Cory May’s video of the speech and the festival and pride parade.

Korean translation by Joanne Lee:

콜린 박입니다.

이자리에 서게 되어 영광입니다 기획단 여러분께 감사인사를 드리며 특히 캔디와 가혜님께 감사드립니다

제가 여기서 발언하게되어서 기쁘고 이 축제는 한국의 LGBT 여러분에게 중요한 이정표입니다

LGBT 자부심 뿐만 아니라 반대하는 사람들에 대한 승리라고 봅니다

하지만 운동은 그렇습니다 한걸음 뒤로 가면 두발자국 앞으로 가는 것입니다

제 경험을 토대로 말씀드리면 LGBT운동에 21년간 몸담고 있습니다

제가 처음 LGBT 단체에 몸 담았을 때 아이가 있었다면 그 아이는 뉴욕주에서  합법적으로 술을 마실 수 있는 나이가 되었을 것입니다

하지만 슬프게도 뉴욕주의 트렌스젠더 인권법은 여전히 13년 전 트렌스젠더 인권법이 소개됐을 때부터 지금까지 제자리입니다. 하지만 좋은 소식은 제가 처음 활동에 몸담기 시작한 1993에 비해 엄청난 진전이 있다는 겁니다.

가장 놀라운 성과는 이번 주에 일어났죠. 바로 미국연방대법원이 동성결혼에 합헌이라는 역사적 결정을 내린 것입니다.

제가 다시 한국에 돌아오게 되면 꼭 한국의 모든 분들도 같은 권리를 누릴 수 있었으면 좋겠습니다.

하지만 동성결혼만큼 주목 받아야 할 사회적 이슈가 아직 많이 있습니다.

우리의 청소년들과 형사정의체제개혁, 학원폭력, 편견과 차별, 의료법 이민자 문제 등이 그 예입니다.

한국과 같이 미국도 앞으로 나아가고 있고 제가 태어난 이곳에서의 LGBT커뮤니티 진전을 보게 되어 기쁩니다.

제가 이곳을 떠났을 때는 이승만 정권이 끝났을 때였고, 아마 저의 친구도 이승만 정권에 저항하기 위해서 싸웠을 겁니다.

그래서 제게도 그런 저항의 피가 흐르고 있는지도 모릅니다.

그 후에 박정희 전 대통령이 쿠데타를 일으켜 정권을 장악하였고, 아이러니하게도 54년이 흐른 후 한국에 돌아왔더니 그의 딸 박근혜가 정권을 이끌고 있었습니다.

지금 이 사회는 공주님들보다 리더십 있는 여왕들이 더 필요합니다.

또한 팔레스타인 이슈에서 많은 관심이 필요합니다. 팔레스타인 땅에 이스라엘이 점령하고 있는 것에 더 많은 사람들의 비판의 목소리를 해야한다고 생각합니다

LGBT운동 또한 단순히 어떤 하나의  아젠데에 묶여있는 것이 아닌 동성혼 합법화와 같은 다양한 이슈에 집중할 필요가 있다고 생각합니다.

여기 계신 모든 분들도 다같이 앞장섰으면 좋겠습니다.

지금 저 멀리서 북을 두드리며 이 행사에 반대의 목소리를 내고 있는 사람들을 보십시오.

그들은 내가 알지 못하는 신을 추앙하며 포비아적이고 혐오로 가득 찬 메세지가 하나님의 메세지라고 외치고 있습니다.

저들의 메세지는 강렬하지만 저희의 사랑이 훨씬 위대하고 강력합니다

그리고 결국 저들의 혐오는 우리의 사랑으로 정복되고 말 것입니다.

제가 다음에 이 행사를 다시 찾게 되면 지금 한복을 입고 북을 두드리는 저분들이 LGBT를 응원하고 있으면 좋겠습니다.

한국 정부가 LGBT 인권을 보장한 법안을 발의했으면 좋겠습니다.

예전 마틴 루터 킹이 연설했듯이 역사는 길지 모르지만 그 혼은 정의의 방향으로 굽어있다고 했습니다.

감사합니다.

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The author, Pauline Park, at the gap in the separation wall at Al-Wallaja east of the Israeli frontier. (Photo courtesy Park)

Pinkwashing & Israeli occupation – not so complicated
By Pauline Park
Washington Blade
January 6, 2014

“The concept of ‘pinkwashing’ emerged as a hot topic throughout the week,” Kevin Naff wrote of his participation as part of “a delegation of nine LGBT leaders from the United States” to Israel in November (“Israel as ‘gay heaven’? It’s complicated,” Times of Israel, Nov. 10). The delegation tour was sponsored by Project Interchange, a program of the American Jewish Committee, which is aggressive in its defense of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Naff quotes a speaker who addressed the group, Gal Uchovsky, as telling the delegates “that we had arrived in ‘gay heaven’” and that Israel is “the best LGBT country in the world” whose “LGBT residents face no serious problems that he could identify.” My Israeli friends would certainly contest Uchovsky’s absurd claim that LGBT Israelis “face no serious problems.” Fortuntely, Naff was able to recognize Uchovsky’s propaganda for what it was.

One would get a very different impression speaking primarily or exclusively with wealthy gay Jewish Israeli men in North Tel Aviv — as Naff and his fellow delegates seem to have done — than if one spoke with LGBT Israelis from more marginalized communities, including lesbians and bisexuals, who often feel marginalized by gay men in Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel; transgendered women, who face police harassment and brutality in Tel Aviv and other cities in Israel just as they do in New York and other U.S. cities; Israelis who face discrimination because of their of Mizrahi (Sephardic) Jewish ethnic origins; or refugees from Africa and elsewhere who may be LGBT (though not necessarily openly so) but who have no right to remain in Israel, because the state of Israel does not recognize non-Jewish economic refugees or those fleeing political persecution — regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

And that’s not even to mention the pervasive discrimination that Palestinians with Israeli citizenship face. As Prof. David Lloyd argued persuasively in a December 2013 analysis for the Electronic Intifada, the crucial distinction between “citizenship” (ezrahut) and “nationality” (le’um) in Israeli law privileges Jewish Israelis over Palestinians living in Israel because “citizenship” is in effect a second-class citizenship without nationality status.

“Some critics claim the country’s embrace of LGBT rights is merely a propaganda effort to claim the mantle of modernity and establish a stark contrast to homophobic regimes in the West Bank, Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East,” Naff writes. In doing so, Naff is in fact rearticulating the very discourse in which Uchovsky was engaging in when describing Israel as a gay paradise — the attempt to use Israel’s record on gay rights (supposedly better than that of its Arab and Muslim neighbors) as a justification for an Israeli occupation that is illegal under international law, or at the very least as a means to distract attention from it.

Naff’s delegation appears to have met with only one Palestinian — “a scholar and Fatah and PLO adviser,” Abu Zayyad. But meeting with a single official with the Palestinian Authority — widely viewed by many West Bank Palestinians as little more than a tool of the Israeli occupation — hardly constitutes balance when the rest of the tour was devoted to meeting with LGBT Israelis and Israeli officials.

“The focus of the visit — LGBT issues — was often overshadowed by the frustrating stalemate of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Why can’t the two sides come to an agreement on a two-state solution? It’s complicated,” Naff writes. And yet, is the issue of the Israeli occupation of Palestine really that complicated? For all of the complications and complexities of the situation, it is at root quite simple: the indigenous people who have lived in Palestine for centuries are being systematically dispossessed of their land and their rights by a foreign military occupation that is illegal under international law and that even the United States does not recognize as legitimate. And that occupation makes no exception for Palestinians who might be LGBT/queer, who face the same restrictions and daily humiliations living under Israeli occupation as non-LGBT Palestinians. And contrary to propaganda in circulation, Israel is not and cannot be a haven or a refuge for LGBT Palestinians because there is no such thing as refugee status for non-Jews in Israel, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Rather than hearing pinkwashing propaganda from the likes of Gal Uchovsky, Naff and his colleagues would have learned far more if they had met with Palestinian villagers and farmers under siege from Israeli settlers and the Israeli military in the West Bank, as I have. I participated in the first U.S. LGBTQ delegation tour of Palestine in January 2012 and met with many Palestinians — both LGBT and non-LGBT — throughout the West Bank, from Nablus in the north to Hebron in the south and Ramallah in between. Staying two nights with a Palestinian family in Dheishe in Bethelem, one of the largest refugee camps in the West Bank, I had the opportunity to speak at length with Palestinians about conditions in the occupied territories.

Naff expresses his disappointment with the decision of alQaws and Aswat to decline the invitation to meet with his delegation. AlQaws and Aswat, two of the leading Palestinian LGBT groups, are doing vital work on behalf of queer Palestinians under extremely difficult circumstances that no U.S.-based LGBT organization has to face. The 16 members of my delegation met with members of both alQaws and Aswat for extensive discussions about the impact of the occupation on LGBT Palestinians, and those discussions were productive and enlightening. It seems to me that Naff’s group of relatively privileged LGBT Americans should have recognized how problematic it was to demand that LGBT/queer Palestinians either facing pervasive discrimination within Israel or living under a crushing foreign military occupation in the West Bank engage them in dialogue, which is the privilege of the powerful. True dialogue is simply not possible when one party is holding a gun to the other’s head, which is what “dialogue” with a people living under a brutal and illegal military occupation represents.

I might add that members of Naff’s delegation could have found opportunities to engage with LGBT/queer Palestinians even before leaving the U.S. and could do so now that they are back from their tour; they can also feel free to engage members of New York City Queers Against Israeli Apartheid if they wish to hear our views on Palestinians and the Israeli occupation.

The conclusion I have come to is that pinkwashing does nothing for queer Palestinians and arguably makes things worse by generating more support for Israel and the occupation in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. The liberation of queer Palestinians is inseparable from that of Palestinian society as a whole; whatever privileges wealthy gay Jewish Israeli men may enjoy in the affluent districts of North Tel Aviv do nothing for queer Palestinians being crushed by a brutal and illegal foreign military occupation that is daily dispossessing more and more Palestinians of their lands and their homes.

Given the intransigence of the government of Binyamin Netanyahu — the most right-wing prime minister in Israeli history — and his determination to move forward with the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem and the de facto annexation of the West Bank, it seems to me that only boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against apartheid Israel will advance the cause of the peaceful resolution of the impasse that the Israeli government itself has created with its endless occupation of Palestine and construction of an apartheid regime.

Pauline Park is a member of New York City Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, founded in 2011. She was a member of the first U.S. LGBTQ delegation to Palestine in January 2012.

(Kevin Naff responds: After members of our LGBT delegation expressed concerns that we were not given access to more of the Palestinian perspective, Project Interchange arranged a follow-up conference call in November with Dr. Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy & Survey Research. I shared Pauline Park’s concerns over pinkwashing, but Project Interchange worked hard to present a balanced itinerary, which included visits to the West Bank, Ramallah and the edge of the Gaza Strip. I welcome Park’s invitation to learn more about NYCQAIA and will follow up with her.)

This op-ed was published by the Washington Blade and appeared in the 6 January 2014 issue of the paper.

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Christine Quinn would have been the first woman and the first member of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community elected mayor of New York City had she won the 2013 mayoral race. The fact that Quinn started the campaign as the clear frontrunner, with polls showing her at somewhere near 40%, but finished a distant third with a mere 15.5% of the vote on September 10, has fueled charges of sexism and homophobia.

“Her sexual orientation and her domestic arrangement may have hurt her,” blogged Lisa Miller (“Christine Quinn Got A Raw Deal—Because She’s a Woman,” New York, 9.13.13), putting her “squarely in society’s most reviled demographic category: middle-aged women without children — the jealous queens and kidnappers of Disney movies. Quinn’s devastating loss stands as proof that in the privacy of the voting booth we are even less post-chauvinist than we are post-racial in our preferences.” How then would Miller explain Letitia James – another middle-aged woman without children – winning first place in the public advocate’s race with 36%?

“Did Christine Quinn Lose the New York Mayoral Race Because of Sexism?,”  asks (New Republic, 9.15.13). “I suppose it’s somehow less hurtful to accuse hundreds of thousands of people of sexism than it is to pick on a specific person,” he writes, pointing out that Miller lacks a ‘coherent argument,’ her case resting on a questionable analogy to the 2008 Obama/Clinton race, which Miller asserts that Obama won purely because of sexist attacks on Hillary. “Next time she indicts a large chunk of the country’s biggest city,” Chotiner concludes of Miller’s assertion, “she should have better evidence than a 2008 presidential campaign—which was utterly unrelated to Quinn’s candidacy—and a handful of adjectives in a New York Times article” referencing polls in which voters described Quinn with terms often used to denigrate women in power. But the mayoral candidate with the highest unfavorable rating was Anthony Weiner (around 55%); Quinn had only the second highest negatives (around 45%).

In fact, Quinn’s status as the only woman and the only LGBT candidate in the mayoral race were arguably two of her biggest assets. Edison Research exit polls showed that primary voters were disproportionately female (54%), which should have helped the only female in the mayoral primary.

“Women don’t support women to the extent they should,” openly lesbian Assembly Member Deborah Glick opined on primary night (“Frontrunner Status Evaporated, Quinn Runs Well Behind de Blasio, Thompson,” Paul Schindler, Gay City News, 9.11.13). But Ruth Messinger won the 1997 Democratic mayoral primary outright with 40% and had none of the problems generating support from other women that Quinn did. “There was a lot of misogyny coming out of the Anyone But Quinn movement,” Glick asserted. But ABQ was co-founded by one woman (Wendy Neu) and another woman (Allie Feldman) was one of its lead organizers.

ABQ was substantially funded by NYCLASS – a 501(c)4 non-profit animal advocacy organization – in response to the Speaker’s having blocked the entire legislative agenda of the city’s animal rights activists, including Donny Moss, a gay constituent of Quinn’s, who played a leading role in the ABQ campaign. But it was not only the Speaker’s role as Cruella de Quinn – enemy of our hoofed friends in Central Park and our furry friends in all five boroughs – that fueled the movement against her, unprecedented in recent mayoral campaign history. In “Roots of Betrayal: The Ethics of Christine Quinn,” gay Queens-based activist Louis Flores documented a host of ethical and legal infractions, including the celebrated slush fund scandal that prompted the Speaker to push the term limit extension bill through the Council, allowing Bloomberg – and Quinn herself – to run for a third term. Quinn’s biggest strategic error was her inability to craft an effective or even a coherent response to the palpable voter anger over her instrumental role in enacting legislation that overturned two successive public referenda limiting the terms of the mayor and Council Members.

Quinn started out the primary campaign season as the prohibitive frontrunner with at least the tacit support of billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the active support of a host of wealthy donors, including some of the city’s biggest developers. In contrast, stuck in fourth place around 14% in the polls only a few months before the primary, Bill de Blasio was written off by many.

The first openly gay Council Speaker also had the entire gay political establishment behind her, including the Empire State Pride Agenda, the Stonewall Democratic Club, Lambda Independent Democrats (LID), Gay & Lesbian Democrats (GLID), the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), along with women’s organizations such as Emily’s Fund and the National Organization for Women-NYC. Quinn was also endorsed by Gay City News, the only LGBT weekly newspaper in New York, along with the New York Times, the New York Daily News and the New York Post.

Quinn also had the support of a dozen labor unions, including two of the biggest unions in the city: 32BJ and the Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union (RWDSU). She had the backing of the Queens County Democratic Party organization, the most powerful of the city’s political machines, which put her in the Speaker’s chair back in 2005; and over 50 elected officials as well as a host of celebrities and activists (http://www.quinnfornewyork.com).

But despite the backing of the city’s powerful elites, come Sept. 10, Quinn placed a distant third, with a paltry 15.5% of the vote, losing every Democratic Party constituency. Quinn got only 16% of women vs. 39% for Bill de Blasio and 26% for Bill Thompson (“New York City Primary Results,” New York Times, 9.10.13). As Sam Roberts noted (“Identity Politics in a Brand-New Form,” New York Times 9.15.13), “de Blasio carried white women 36 to 26% and black women by a crushing 47 to 6%.” And just as women rejected Quinn by a two-to-one margin, a majority of LGBT voters also rejected her candidacy. Edison found Quinn winning just a third (34%) of self-identified LGBT voters, well behind de Blasio, who won half (47%) of the LGBT vote.

Did 74% of white & 94% of black female Democratic mayoral primary voters follow the lead of some phantom misogynist bogeyman?  Did a wave of homophobia sweep the first openly lesbian mayoral candidate into the dustbin of political history? There simply is no evidence that misogny or homophobia played a role in influencing the primary electorate, which put three new openly gay Council Members in office: Carlos Menchaca in Brooklyn (the 38th Council district), Ritchie Torres in the Bronx (the 15th) and Corey Johnson in Quinn’s own 3rd Council district (“From Three Boroughs, New Gay Councilmen,” by Paul Schindler, Gay City News, 9.10.13). And on that same day that the only female mayoral candidate went down to a crushing defeat, women won primaries for borough president in both boroughs where a woman competed – Gale Brewer in Manhattan and Melinda Katz in Queens.

“I don’t know that the LGBT community is always strategic in their thinking,” Glick added to her entirely non-empirical assessment of Quinn’s defeat. But how ‘strategic’ is to support candidates based purely on their sexual orientation or gender identity, without reference to issues of race, ethnicity, class, economic policy, position on policing issues, or any of the important issues facing this city? As a transgendered Asian American woman, did I have an obligation to vote for Chris Quinn as the only female candidate in the race? Or an obligation to support John Liu as the only Asian American running for mayor? And if those were competing claims, which should have carried more weight? In the end, I voted for the candidate I thought would make the best mayor, Bill de Blasio.

As I see it, a crude identity politics such as Deborah Glick, Lisa Miller and others espouse can do nothing but impoverish public discourse in this city – the most diverse in the United States – and distract us from the pursuit of progressive policy change. Fortunately, on Sept. 10, women and LGBT voters rejected the crude appeal of such a simplistic identity politics; in fact, Quinn even lost her own Council district to de Blasio, a stunning indicator of the complete collapse of her campaign.

The real explanation for the catastrophic collapse of Quinn’s campaign was neither misogyny nor homophobia but the fact that she was a bad candidate who ran an awful campaign and that Democratic primary voters were sick and tired of 12 years of Bloomberg and the mayoral candidate most closely associated with him. Quinn’s Rose Garden strategy was premised on creating the expectation that her nomination was inevitable – and in that regard at least was analogous to Hillary’s failed strategy in 2008. Quinn, like Thompson, ran a general election campaign in the primary, attempting to appeal to moderates and independents whom they believed they would need to attract once they won the nomination; but de Blasio understood that the primary would be won by the candidate who could best appeal to a progressive primary electorate.

Quinn’s failure to distance herself from the mayor meant that she was widely perceived as his tacit choice among the Democrats. Between the Scylla of Quinn’s ties to Bloomberg – including to wealthy donors many of whom were his cronies, and the pro-Bloomberg Democrats who were a significant minority of the primary electorate – and the Charybdis of the more progressive primary voters who were fed up after 12 years of Bloomberg, Quinn was left without a winning campaign theme. Quinn’s claim that she was the only candidate who had ‘delivered for New Yorkers’ rang hollow, an empty slogan reminiscent of the 1988 Dukakis campaign that was all about ‘competence.’ What Quinn had effectively ‘delivered,’ primary voters knew, was a third term for Bloomberg, and that was the real albatross around her neck. In a change election, Quinn was tied inescapably to the Bloomberg administration in which she was de facto deputy mayor, and as de Blasio’s campaign took off in the last few crucial weeks of the campaign by promising regime change, the big dead bird around Quinn’s neck dragged her down and sunk her.

Pauline Park is a transgender activist who participated in the Anybody But Quinn campaign but is not a spokesperson for it; she did her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Illinois.

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Trans-Form the Occupation

Pauline Park

at

Occupy Wall Street

13 November 2011

Thank you for the opportunity to speak here. I’m Pauline Park, chair of NYAGRA, the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, and president of the board of directors of Queens Pride House, an LGBT community center in the borough of Queens.

I’m honored by the invitation to speak here at Occupy Wall Street, which I think is one of the most exciting recent developments in American politics. People are finally standing up to corporate greed and the powers that be. And that includes transgendered people. I’m a transgendered woman who was born in Korea. I’ve lived in New York since 1995 and I’d like to talk about the people who make up my community.

1) The diversity of the transgender community.

We need to recognize the full diversity of the transgender community. There are as many different ways of being transgendered as there are transgendered people. Do not assume that sex reassignment is the end point for every transgender transition; most transgendered people do not want sex reassignment surgery, and most people who do never get it.

2) ‘Transgender’ as an umbrella term.

There are literally hundreds of descriptors and self-descriptors that people use to identify or self-identify. But don’t confuse the label with the person. ‘Transgender’ is an ‘umbrella’ term that is widely used to bring together a wide variety of different subgroups within the community, including transsexuals, crossdressers and genderqueers. The term ‘transgender’ can be used in three different ways: as a term of self-identification, as an analytic term, or as a political term. There are many people who don’t identify with the term ‘transgender,’ including a lot of immigrants and transgendered people of color.

3) Sexual orientation vs. gender identity.

It’s important to understand the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity. Sexual orientation refers to who you’re attracted to; gender identity refers to how you identify and express your gender. Sexual orientation has nothing to do with gender identity per se. There are transgendered people who identify as heterosexual as well as those who identify as lesbian, gay and bisexual. Don’t assume someone’s sexual orientation from their gender identity or presentation. What do you know about someone’s sexual orientation if you know that they’re transgendered? Nothing~!

4) Discrimination.

In this society, transgendered and gender-variant people face pervasive discrimination, harassment, abuse & violence. Even with a transgender rights law in place since 2002, transgendered people regularly report discrimination in this city. Fortunately, the transgender rights law enacted by the New York City Council in 2002 prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and expression in employment, housing, public accommodations, education and credit. If you experience discrimination, contact NYAGRA through nyagra.com or the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund through the TLDEF website at transgenderlegal.org.

5) Bullying, harassment & violence.

Transgendered and gender-variant youth face pervasive bullying and bias-based harassment in our public schools; and the rate of teen suicide among trans and genderqueer youth is astronomically high. Many trans and genderqueer youth drop out of school because of such bullying; and without even a high school diploma, the chances of finding a well-paying job are very slim. Last year, the New York state legislature enacted the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA), which prohibits bullying and bias-based harassment in public schools throughout the state.

6) Housing & homelessness; health care.

Many transgendered people find themselves homeless because of discrimination and abuse, including domestic and intimate partner violence. Many are forced into sex work, with heightened risk of HIV infection, police brutality, and street violence. Many transgendered people lack health insurance and even access to basic health care.

7) GID.

Many transgendered people access hormones and surgery through the diagnosis of gender identity disorder (GID). But the GID diagnosis pathologizes everyone who is gender-variant as a gender deviant. As I like to say, I do not have a gender identity disorder; it is society that has a gender identity disorder. We need to eliminate the pathologizing of transgender and gender variance.

We need to create a society in which no one is denied employment or housing or health care because of their gender identity or expression. We need to recognize the multiple oppressions that face transgendered people of color, including immigrants of color. We need to recognize that the root of our oppression as transgendered and gender-variant people is the sex/gender binary — the policing of rigid gender norms by the police and public authorities, corporations and other employers, and conventionally gendered people in our society. We need to bring feminist consciousness to the project of challenging, deconstructing and dismantling the sex/gender binary.

We need to create a society characterized by social and economic justice, not governed by rigid gender norms and corporate profits. And as a step towards that goal, we need to make sure that this space is safe for everyone, including our transgendered brothers and sisters. As the Mahatma Gandhi said, we need to be the change that we want to see in the world.

Thank you.

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Queens Pride House condemns gubernatorial candidate Paladino for homophobic statements

For more info., contact:
Pauline Park
Daniel Castellanos
Queens Pride House
76-11 37th Ave, Suite 206
Jackson Heights, NY 11372
(718) 429-5309
(718) 424-4003

12 October 2010, Jackson Heights, NY — Queens Pride House — the only center for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community of Queens — has issued a statement condemning Carl Paladino for statements he made denigrating members of the LGBT community.

“Carl Paladino’s outrageous invective against members of the LGBT community demonstrate clearly his homophobic bias and his complete disregard for common decency,” said Pauline Park, president of the board of directors of Queens Pride House. “We call on all responsible elected officials and community leaders in Queens to condemn Paladino’s bigoted and reprehensible statements,” she added.

“I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don’t want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option — it isn’t,” Paladino declared at a press conference in Brooklyn on October 10.

“Queens Pride House is a 501(c)(3) organization, and we do not endorse candidates for elective office,” noted Daniel Castellanos, executive director of the not-for-profit based in Jackson Heights. “But we believe that as the only LGBT community center in Queens, we have not only a right but an obligation to speak out against homophobia and bigotry in the public arena,” Castellanos said in condemning the candidate for governor of New York who is running on both the Republican and Conservative Party lines. “Paladino’s homophobic comments would be unacceptable at any time, but coming as they do after news of horrific hate crimes against LGBT youth in the Bronx and the suicides of several gay teens just in the last week, they are as incredibly insensitive as they are obviously bigoted,” added Castellanos.

“Paladino’s defense that he is speaking from Catholic faith is as outrageous and indefensible as the orignal comments themselves,” declared Charles J. Ober, treasurer of the the Queens Pride House board of directors. “There are many Catholics and other people of faith who strongly support full inclusion of LGBT people in their communities of faith as well as full equality under law — including marriage equality,” added Ober, a practicing Roman Catholic and a member of Dignity, the organization for LGBT Roman Catholics; Ober once served on the board of directors of its New York City chapter.

“It is statements just like these from elected officials and candidates for office that create an environment of hostility for LGBT people, including LGBT youth many of whom are just coming out,” said Park, who negotiated full inclusion of gender identity in the Dignity for All Students Act, a safe schools statute enacted by the New York state legislature in June and signed into law by Gov. David A. Paterson on September 8. “And Paladino’s ridicule of LGBT pride parades also shows his ignorance of the empowering impact that attendance at and participation in such events,” added Park, who in 2005 became the first openly transgendered grand marshal of the New York City Pride March — the nation’s oldest and largest.

Queens Pride House is a non-profit organization based in the borough of Queens. Founded in 1997, QPH serves the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans communities in Queens by increasing access to LGBT-friendly health and social resources, heightening political awareness, building community, and advocating for more comprehensive services. Operating as an LGBT community center, Pride House provides many services. QPH runs a health referral hotline and drop-in center which links participants to resources within their own communities, allows participants to access resources for themselves by offering free computer and internet services, and provides safe spaces for LGBT-identified people to gather.

QPH facilitates several support groups that decrease social isolation and increase education about health-related issues, resulting in increased overall general health of the population served. The monthly workshops offered by QPH address LGBT-related health issues, develop the skills and leadership of participants, and promote collaboration among participants and other community-based organizations. QPH also offers monthly social events and movie nights, which give questioning, curious, or closeted people a non-threatening way to access the community center and services, thereby decreasing some of the barriers to wellness that LGBT people face. Queens Pride House is a member of the National Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Centers. QPH is also a member of the LGBT Health and Human Services Network of New York State, through which it advocates for funding for LGBT programs and services in Queens.

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More than 2,000 people rallied for equal rights in front of the capitol building in Albany.

New Yorkers Lobby Albany for Equality and Justice Day in Record Numbers
Constituents urge lawmakers to pass three key bills this session
By Kat Long
New York Blade
5.1.2009

Riding the momentum of recent victories for gay equality in Iowa, Vermont, Washington D.C. and other states, Empire State Pride Agenda sponsored its annual Equality and Justice Day in Albany on April 28. Pride Agenda, the statewide LGBT civil rights advocacy group, organized the daylong series of meetings with state legislators as well as a noontime rally at the foot of the capitol building. More than 2,000 New Yorkers from all corners of the state took part—the largest turnout in the event’s history. The number presented a huge increase from the first E&J Day, when 400 people participated.

“We were very strategic in identifying the districts where we wanted to make sure we had a good attendance, and we had conference calls prior to E&J Day with the individuals who had signed up to come, so we could talk to them about just how important their stories were going to be,” said Alan Van Capelle, Pride Agenda’s executive director. “Those districts included places on Long Island and in the North Country and western and central New York, so that [support] literally came from around the state.”

The day’s program was focused on having small groups of constituents meet with their elected Senators and Assemblymembers to tell their personal stories, with an emphasis on the difference pro-gay laws could make in their lives.

Three major pieces of legislation of concern to LGBT New Yorkers have a chance of passage in this legislative session, which ends June 22: the marriage equality bill re-introduced by Gov. David Paterson last month; the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA); and the Dignity for All Students Act. (See related articles in this issue for analyses of each bill).

“Anytime we’ve won something from Albany it’s because we’ve told our stories to legislators,” Van Capelle said. “The biggest goal we had to was to get as many people together to tell their stories to our elected officials.”

The groups of amateur lobbyists included heads of major labor unions, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and everyone in between, Van Capelle said, which showed a depth and breadth of participation that hadn’t been seen in previous years.

For some E&J Day participants, it was their first chance to meet face-to-face with their elected representatives and make a personal investment in the democratic process. For others, this year offered a chance to lobby with the wind at their backs.

Pauline Park, chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), told the Blade this was her eleventh year of lobbying in the capitol. She personally met with legislative directors for Senators Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn), Joseph Addabbo, Jr. (D-Queens) and Hiram Monserrate (D-Queens), the latter from her own district.

“I felt it was especially important, as the chair of a statewide transgender advocacy organization, to meet with centrist Democrats who have not yet taken a clear position on legislation important to our community,” Park said. “It is precisely with Addabbo, Kruger and a few other moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans that we will find the votes to bring marriage, GENDA, and Dignity bills to the floor of the Senate and get them passed.”

Based on her meetings, Park felt that the Dignity for All Students Act would be the easiest of the three to pass, “as it is difficult for even the most homophobic or transgenderphobic politician to argue that kids should be subject to bullying in school.” She also had high hopes for GENDA based on polls that suggested most New Yorkers support laws banning discrimination, but felt marriage equality could be the biggest hurdle, based on feedback from legislators.

Van Capelle said that while we as voters have no control over which bills come up for votes first, it’s our responsibility to work the legislation we want to see made into law.

“This is a unique moment in our movement that did not happen by accident. We’ve worked for this moment, and we saw the fruits of it on Tuesday.”

He added, however, that E&J Day 2009 was the “starting point, not the finish line.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Blade on 1 May 2009; the Blade is now defunct.

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In 2009, Sen. Hiram Monserrate was convicted on a misdemeanor charge of assaulting his girlfriend, Karla Giraldo.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Pauline Park
OutPOCPAC co-president
paulinepark@earthlink.net
Doug Robinson
OutPOCPAC co-president
doug@outpocpac.org
New York, NY, January 21, 2010 – The Out People of Color Political Action Club (OutPOCPAC) today endorsed the unanimous report of the New York State Senate’s Special Committee of Inquiry on Sen. Hiram Monserrate (chaired by Sen. Eric T.Schneiderman, D-Manhattan) recommending expulsion for the senator convicted last year of a misdemeanor charge of assaulting his girlfriend. A New York City-based non-partisan political club for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people of color, OutPOCPAC joins the National Organization for Women-New York State (NOW-NYS) and a host of other civil rights and social justice organizations in calling on members of the New York State Senate to vote for the expulsion of Senator Monserrate (D-Queens).

“Hiram Monserrate’s conviction for domestic violence, his leading role in thecoup that upended the State Senate last June, and his vote against the marriage equality bill in December are each in themselves sufficient reason for OutPOCPACto repudiate him,” said Doug Robinson, co-president of OutPOCPAC. “Taken together, these constitute a compelling reason for members of the Senate toexpel him from that body.”Monserrate was elected in November 2008 to represent the 13th Senate district in western Queens and took office in January 2009; in June, he joined Sen. Pedro Espada of the Bronx in fomenting a ‘coup’ that effectively suspended action inthe Senate for 30 days, preventing votes on legislation that would recognizesame-sex marriage as well as on the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) and the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA) — the LGBT community of New York’s three top legislative priorities. GENDA is a state transgender non-discrimination bill currently pending in the Senate and DASA is a safe schools bill also pending in the Senate; both have been approved by the Assemblybut have yet to get a vote in the Senate.

“I would like to see the 13th Senate district represented by a Senator who embodies integrity and respect for women,” said Pauline Park, OutPOCPAC co-president and a resident of the 13th district. “Hiram Monserrate is guilty of violence against the woman who is his partner and consorted with the most corrupt member of the state Senate to undermine the elected leadership of that body,” Park added. “And in voting against the marriage equality bill in December, he betrayed his stated commitment to support full equality for LGBT New Yorkers as well as his own record on LGBT rights as a City Council member.”

The Coalition for Morality’s poster calling on members to thank Hiram Monserrate for voting against the marriage equality bill.

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Patrick Cheng‘s mother reads a statement in Chinese in support of her son and the LGBT/queer API community at the QAPI press conference in Chinatown on Jan. 30.  At left: lead organizers Irene Tung & Aries Liao.

NYAGRA statement on the participation of LGBT/queer APIs in the 2010 Chinese lunar new year parade in Chinatown
Pauline Park, chair
30 January 2010

On February 21, a contingent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) or ‘queer’ Asians and Pacific Islanders (APIs) will participate in the annual Chinese lunar new year parade in New York’s Chinatown for the first time. The New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) — a transgender advocacy organization founded in 1998 — is proud to join Q-Wave, the Gay Asian & Pacific Islander Men of New York (GAPIMNY), Barangay, and a host of organizations in co-sponsoring the LGBT contingent in the parade. On behalf of our members, as chair of NYAGRA, I would especially like to acknowledge and thank Aries Liao and Irene Tung of Q-Wave for spearheading this historic initiative.

I would also like to suggest that it is important for us as LGBT/queer APIs to address the biggest misconception in API communities — namely, that we are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered because we’ve been hanging around white people too much. The implicit assumption behind that misconception is one of a viral model of gender identity and sexual orientation. The slogan of Queer Nation was “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” When it comes to homosexuality and transgender, the truth is that we have been here — in China and in every other Asian or Pacific Island society — since time immemorial.

China has homoerotic and proto-transgenderal traditions going back centuries. The ‘passion of the cut sleeve‘ (duan xiu) — the love of the Han dynasty Emperor Ai (27 BC-1 AD) — for his male favorite, Dong Xian — is the source of the Chinese euphemism for homosexuality (‘cut sleeve’). The other popular Chinese euphemism for homosexuality — the ‘half-eaten peach‘ — goes back even further, to the Zhou dynasty Duke Ling of Wei (534-403 BC) and his male lover, Mixi Zia. While it is true that contemporary LGBT identities are of recent vintage, it is equally true that there were people in every pre-modern Asian or Pacific Islander society who were like us in important respects and whom we would call lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered.

So when we join the Chinese lunar new year parade in Chinatown on Feb. 21 as the first LGBT contingent in that parade, we are simply reclaiming our rightful place in our communities of origin and reinscribing ourselves in the dominant narratives of Asian and Asian American cultures. My message for non-LGBT participants in the parade who are shocked or confused by our presence is this: we are you and you are us. We have been here (all along), we have been queer, and you have been used to it, you just forgot.

Pauline Park reads a statement on behalf of NYAGRA at the QAPI press conference.

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The Stonewall Honors 40 event at the Highline Ballroom on 3 December 2009…

The Stonewall Honors 40 event on Thursday could hardly have been better attended: more than 500 people crowded into the Highline Ballroom to honor 40 women as part of the Stonewall Community Foundation‘s commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. I was honored to be among the 40 women honored on December 3.

Beth Greenfield & Pauline Park

Among the honorees were Beth Greenfield, the editor of the gay and lesbian section of Time Out New York (a.k.a., TONY), which noted that Kelli O’Donnell, me and Beth herself were to be honored at the event.  Also honored was my friend and activist colleague Kim Ford, who co-founded African Ancestral Lesbians united for Social Change (AALUSC) and who currently chairs the board of directors of the Audre Lorde Project.

Kim Ford, Pauline Park & Rosie Mendez

The most prominent honoree was City Council Member Rosie Mendez, the ‘out’ lesbian who represents the 2nd Council district (which includes the Lower East Side); Rosie was there with her charming girlfriend, whom I met for the first time.

Sabrina Shulman & Rosemary Collucio with (the very tall) Leo Preziosi, Jr.

In addition to being honored, I had the pleasure of seeing friends and colleagues from throughout the LGBT community, including Terry Boggis, Eliza Byard, Paula Ettelbrick, and Cynthia Rothschild, among others. And I also was delighted to see Sabrina Shulman and Rosemary Coluccio — whom I first met when they were on staff at the Empire State Pride Agenda — and Leo Preziosi, Jr., the executive director of Live Out Loud. Sabrina is now political director of NARAL Pro-Choice New York as well as a member of the Live Out Loud board of directors.

Karla Saavedra, Yetta Kurland, Pauline Park & Rosie Mendez

Also in attendance was Yetta Kurland, a civil rights lawyer whom I endorsed for City Council when she challenged Christine Quinn in the Democratic primary in September.

Sabrina Shulman, Rosie Mendez & Karla Saavedra.

Thanks to the Stonewall Foundation staff (Bill Mattle, Bill McDermott, Thai Pham) and the organizing committee (ably led by Dana DeVille and Jennifer Hatch) for putting together a wonderful event~!

Sabrina Shulman & Rosemary Collucio

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Pauline Park, Bill Thompson & Bernie Tarver at the LGBT for Thompson fundraiser (October 14)

There are two reasons to vote for Bill Thompson for mayor of New York in November 2009: first, because he’s been a good comptroller of the City of New York; second, because he’s not Mike Bloomberg.

“Bloomberg’s legacy has been most tarnished by the blatantly undemocratic maneuver he pulled on term limits,” declared El Diario/La Prensa in endorsing Thompson for mayor. “Twice, New Yorkers had voted to limit the service of local elected officials to two terms. Instead of respecting that, Bloomberg and his associates peddled the idea of overturning term limits to the editorial boards of local newspapers; pressured the heads of nonprofit organizations that rely on private donors and city funding to speak before the City Council in support of undoing term limits; and contrived to run out the clock on a referendum.

“All of this is not simply slick scheming—it is a gross abuse of power. Even Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez conducted a plebiscite on his extended stay in power. New Yorkers were not even given that chance.

“With city government already tipped to favor the executive branch, Bloomberg’s power grab delivers a clear message: the ability of constituents to challenge power and shape decisions at the top is seriously in danger. The prospect of a mayor with an emperor-esque approach to New Yorkers bodes poorly for our city.

“Bloomberg had his eight years. It is now time for the city to move forward with new leadership. On November 3, we strongly urge New Yorkers to cast their ballots for Bill Thompson.”

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Christine Quinn’s record on LGBT issues as Speaker of the New York City Council
25 June 2009

–– As Speaker of the New York City Council, Christine Quinn declined to take the administration to court over the New York City Department of Education’s refusal to fully implement the Dignity in All Schools Act (DASA), enacted over Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s veto in 2004; instead, Quinn collaborated with the mayor’s office and the Department of Education on Respect for All, which has proven completely ineffective in addressing the epidemic of bullying and bias-based harassment in NYC public schools.

–– The Speaker has failed to hold the Department of Education to account for its failure to effectively implement the chancellor’s regulation (A-832) that is supposed to address bullying and bias harassment in lieu of DoE’s refusal to fully implement DASA.

–– The Speaker has collaborated with the mayor’s office in blocking the Human Rights GOAL bill (Int. No. 731), which could have a potentially significant impact in addressing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression faced by members of the LGBT community in New York City as well as discrimination faced by women, people of color, people with disabilities and others.

–– The Speaker has done nothing to address the under-funded, understaffed and ineffective NYC Commission on Human Rights, which is ostensibly responsible for implementing and enforcing NYC human rights law – including the transgender rights ordinance which is an amendment to it.

–– The Speaker has done little to address the problem of police harassment and the false arrests of gay men, other than a limited one-time intervention, and then only after significant media attention threatened to embarrass her office.

–– The Speaker has done nothing effective or comprehensive to address the far more pervasive police harassment and false arrests of transgendered women (especially transgendered women of color) in New York City.

–– Despite her stated commitment to institutional reform upon coming into office, the Speaker has run the Council in the same autocratic style as her two predecessors, with individual Council members and even committee chairs still subject to the same command-and-control authoritarian regime of Peter Vallone and Gifford Miller; regardless of whatever direct personal role she may have played, the Speaker must bear institutional responsibility for the slush fund scandal, which happened because she continued the corrupt practices of her predecessors.

–– Last but not least, the Speaker pushed through a term limits extension bill that will help Bloomberg win a third term, after two terms in which he’s vetoed every LGBT-specific and LGBT-inclusive bill that’s come to his desk (the Equal Benefits Bill and DASA above all), except for the transgender rights bill (which he had no real choice but to sign, since it passed by a veto-proof margin of 45-5). In pushing through Bloomberg’s term limits extension bill, Quinn must accept responsibility for Bloomberg’s third term, including the record that he will accrue on LGBT issues in his third term, should he be re-elected.

Pauline Park
Chair
New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)

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The meeting was hosted by the Diversity Center of Queens, which houses Queens Pride House (a center for the LGBT communities of Queens), as well as The Humanist Center of Queens and Andolan – Organizing South Asian Workers.

The Queens meeting was the fifth and last in a series of LGBT platform meetings that took place at the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan as well as in Harlem, the Bronx and Brooklyn. The 15 of us who gathered at the Diversity Center of Queens decided to take the platform recommendations that the group that met at the Center in Manhattan as the starting point for our discussion.

After much deliberation, we decided to add a number of provisions to those in the Manhattan document, including a recommendation that the platform commit the new president to issuing an executive order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in federal regulations concerning adoption. We also added a provision committing the party to supporting an amendment that would add sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to the 1964 Civil Rights Act as well as the 1994 Violence Against Women Act — the latter to add transgendered partners and partners in same-sex relationships to a landmark law intended to combat domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault.

We came up with a number of other recommendations as well, and these — along with the recommendations from the previous four meetings in New York City — will be forwarded to the Democratic National Committee, as will the recommendations of similar meetings from throughout the country of members of the LGBT community and other communities. These are all recommendations only, and it will be the DNC platform committee that will work out the final draft of the party’s 2008 platform. But I find it heartening that the Democratic Party and its presidential nominee are for the first time actively seeking input from Obama supporters in the LGBT community as well as from communities of color and other communities that together go to make up this vast and vastly diverse society.

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