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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On Nov. 4, nearly a hundred people crowded into the William Bennett Gallery to help me celebrate my 50th birthday and to support the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy(NYAGRA) and the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF).

Michael Silverman, the executive director of Transgender Legal, and Therese Rodriguez, executive director of the Asian/Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS (APICHA) gave speeches, as did I. Folks from APICHA brought sushi, water, soda and juice for the occasion, and we were surrounded by works of art by the great Salvador Dali.

Michael Silverman talks about the work of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF)

Among those present were Council Member Gale Brewer, who represents the Upper West Side in the New York City Council and who was a co-sponsor of the transgender rights law enacted by the Council in 2002; Paul Kobrak from the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene; Jarron Magallanes, Robert Murayama, Ding Parajon & Charlie Solidum of APICHA; Jarad Ringer of the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP); Audie Edwards, Charles Ober & John Petrozino of Queens Pride House; Yanira Arias, Juan David Gastolomendo, Daniel Ravelo & Jose Tineo of the Latino Commission on AIDS (LCOA); Weiben Wang of the Gay Asian & Pacific Islander Men of New York (GAPIMNY); Aries Liao, Kira Tzong & Un Jung Lim of Q-Wave; Vic Bach, Carlos Valldereuten &Warren Wyss of the Philosophy Forum; Terry Boggis of the LGBT Community Center; Justus Eisfeld of Global Advocates for Trans Equality (GATE); Alta Avoir, Nancy La Mar & Lucille Spencer of CrossDressers International (CDI); Rita Petite, TLDEF’s bookkeeper & organizer of the NYC Transgender Meet-Up Group; drag entertainer Lady Clover Honey; Veronica Vera of Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls; photographer Mariette Pathy Allen; journalist Andy Humm of Gay USA; and Michael Stafford, the newest member of the TLDEF board of directors.

Charlie Solidum, Jarron Magallanes, Therese Rodriguez & Robert Murayama represented APICHA at the event.
(photo by Dae Kim)

And we sold copies of my new compact disc of piano music, “Barricades Mysterieuses.” In fact, the event became the occasion for the release of the new CD. (For copies of the CD, use the contact page of this website.)

Yanira Arias & Juan David Gastolomendo from the Latino Commission on AIDS (LCOA) as well as Amanda Rosenblum & Stephanie Hsu helped me bring the CDs to the gallery, and Charlie Ober of Queens Pride House helped me bring the unsold CDs back to Queens afterwards.

Thanks to all who attended and to all who made this event possible~!

Therese gave a wonderful speech about APICHA and about my work with the organization over the years.
(photo by Dae Kim)

Cesar Faigal & photographer Dae Kim

Stephanie Hsu and Amanda Rosenblum handled all the CD sales and donations to NYAGRA and TLDEF.

Nancy, Cleopatra (in leopard skin fur), Alta, Lucille & several other members of Cross Dressers International (CDI) joined me for this special event.
(photo by Dae Kim)

Ed Kennelly & Arturo Reyes Rodriguez

guestbook greetings & birthday wishes

Lucille Spencer of CDI

Paul Kobrak, Juan David Gastolomendo & Jarad Ringer

Audie Edwards, secretary of the board of directors of Queens Pride House

Phil Velez, Richard Lozada & Andy Humm

The William Bennett Gallery was full of friends and supporters of NYAGRA & TLDEF.

A panoramic view of the gallery.

Another panoramic view of the gallery.

Therese Rodriguez talking about the work of APICHA & Pauline’s involvement with it.

Pauline standing with Therese Rodriguez as she talks about APICHA’s work.

_____________________

How often do you turn 50…? Only once (at least in my case). Back when I was born, Ike & Mamie were still in the White House; now Barack & Michelle live there. The times they are a-changing~!

So I’m throwing the birthday party of the century — well, at least the birthday party celebrating my first half century. The party will be at the beautiful William Bennett Gallery in Soho on Thursday, November 4 from 7-9 p.m.

Of that 50 years, at least 14 have been devoted to LGBT activism, including advocacy work through the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) and the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF). In lieu of birthday gifts, a contribution to help support the work of these two organizations that have been so much a part of my life for the last decade would be most appreciated. Donations can be made through the New York Charities Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s Office to either Transgender Legal or NYAGRA.

I hope you’ll make my birthday celebration complete by joining me on November 4~!

William Bennett Gallery
65 Greene Street
New York, NY 10012-4336

The post Cinquantenaire 50th birthday celebration (11.4.10) appeared first on Pauline Park.

As a transsexual, Justine Nicholas said she often feels like Nora in the last act of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House.” This sense of isolation was only compounded after a security guard in Midtown demanded that she prove her gender after she walked out of a women’s restroom.

“I was born as an insider,” Nicholas, 46, said. “I lived the first 43 years of my life as a white heterosexual male and while I wasn’t fabulously wealthy, nobody questioned what restroom I used when I walked in.”

Nicholas, a teacher at the City University of New York, was among more than 60 activists, officials and legal experts at a forum at New York University on Tuesday, April 19, that discussed the implementation of law that amended the city’s Human Rights Law to include gender identity and expression as a protected category. The New York City Council overwhelmingly passed Local Law 3, which protects transgendered New Yorkers from housing, employment and public accommodation discrimination, in April 2002; Mayor Michael Bloomberg quickly signed it into law. The city’s Commission on Human Rights adopted these guidelines in December.

Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, said these guidelines and amendments establish an important legal precedent. “There haven’t been many guidelines for gender identity and expression,” he said. “But when we added gender identity and expression to the city Human Rights Law, it was somewhat of a novelty under civil rights law.”

The TLDEF announced earlier this month that it had reached a settlement under the amended HRL after Nicholas and Pauline Park, co-chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, filed complaints with the CHR. They alleged security guards did not allow them to access public restrooms. The settlements (the first since Local Law 3 took effect) constitute an important success, Silverman said: “Having success in cases like those is pressing some hot buttons.”

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Lesbian & Gay Task Force, described the impact of Local Law 3 as “tremendous” and added that other municipalities across the country are looking at it as a model. “This is a monumental step forward,” Foreman said. “When you do something like this it affects 8 million people. And other cities look to New York and say, “If New York can do it then we can do it also.”

Councilmember Bill Perkins (D-Harlem), who sponsored the bill, said it was part of an ongoing civil rights struggle for the transgendered. “We are not talking just about human rights but a civil rights movement,” he said. “One of the most important things we have learned is that laws don’t change attitudes.”

Sen. Tom Duane (D-West Side) and Assemblymember Dick Gottfried (D-Hell’s Kitchen) have reintroduced a bill in Albany last week that seeks to extend legal protections to transgendered people statewide. NYAGRA, the Empire State Pride Agenda and a number of other gay advocacy groups have endorsed the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act. Gottfried said he hopes the bill will expand protections outlined in the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act. “The experience of transgender individuals and the discrimination they face is unique,” Gottfried said. “It should be specifically identified and unambiguously rejected in our state’s civil rights laws.”

Despite these ongoing legislative and legal efforts, CHR Deputy Commissioner Avery Mehlman said he is concerned that many transgendered New Yorkers are simply unaware that they are protected under the law. “When we speak with the transgender community we see discrimination everywhere,” he said. “But we don’t see the numbers coming down to the agency to file a complaint.”

But Nicholas said this was a first step: “The fact that such a law was passed caused people to realize that their own consciousness needs to be raised.”

This article originally appeared in the 22 April 2005 issue of the New York Blade News, which is now defunct.

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Jane Garra, a tall, leggy blues guitarist with hair flopping into her eyes, is often interrupted during performances at Brooklyn’s Buttermilk bar and the Ace Café in Manhattan, accosted by young women with a simple question not about her unusual instrument — a dobro guitar, which is used in Hawaiian music and is familiar enough to music aficionados at the CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree, a regular jam session held every month at Buttermilk.

No, Galla said, “The girls tell me, `We love the way you dress! How do you do it?'” I tell them every time: “If you want to look like this, go shop at Loehmann’s!”

For more than two years, Galla has been a regular at the 86-year-old discount clothing store on Seventh Ave. and 17th St. In fact, many of Loehmann’s employees know her well enough to ask where she has been when they don’t see her for a while.

Now, Loehmann’s employees also know Garra as a plaintiff.

That is because she was denied access to Loehmann’s public restrooms and fitting rooms on two occasions last year, leading her to file a complaint with the New York City Human Rights Commission.

Perhaps it was her height, her angular face, her gravelly voice that caused someone to suspect that Garra was born a boy. Garra may never know for certain. What is clear is that it was illegal for the store to order her out.

Last week, Garra and her lawyer, Michael Silverman of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, announced that the case had been settled. Loehmann’s agreed to train their employees to act with sensitivity toward transgender women and men, and to grant them full access to public facilities as required by New York City’s Human Rights Law, which was amended in March 2002 to “eliminate discrimination based on an individual’s actual or perceived gender.”

In the five years since that groundbreaking legislation was passed by the City Council, a steady stream of cases has come to the Commission’s attention, as more and more transgender women and men have felt free to speak up about what they are experiencing.

Many of the cases have involved public employees. Last summer, a 70-year-old Verizon worker won a landmark settlement against the Metropolitan Transit Authority after she was repeatedly arrested and cursed at by transit police for using restrooms at Grand Central Station, where she worked. Last fall, a handful of transgender teens were arrested in Port Authority for the same reason, and last month, a young transgender employee of Housing Works filed suit against the MTA, charging harassment by numerous workers she’d asked to help her.

The Loehmann’s case is in some ways typical of the harassment endured by transgender people, said advocates and the Human Rights Commission, as they applauded both Loehmann’s agreement to settle and Garra’s bravery in coming forward about the issue. They differed on whether the relatively small number of cases surfacing each year is a sign of progress, indifference or changes occurring haphazardly, just under the surface.

New York’s Human Rights Law, also known as Title 8 of the Administrative Code, has contained anti-discrimination provisions for many years. But it wasn’t until 2002, after years of hearings before overlapping committees, that “gender identity” was added to the statute, banning discrimination when an individual’s “gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to an individual at birth.”

It took nearly two years for the changes in the law to become translated into policies and recommendations for city agencies, during which time Michael Silverman, a longtime attorney with Lambda Legal Defense Fund with a 10-year history of working on behalf of LGBT civil rights, decided to found TLDEF, a legal advocacy group specifically for transgendered people.

TLDEF then advised the city on how to educate employees about transgender issues and helped them create new guidelines on employment, harassment and access to public facilities — like the restrooms and fitting rooms denied to Jane Garra.

Garra’s own personal journey has been rather rapid. A former English teacher in a Brooklyn public high school, she told Chelsea Now that it wasn’t until she left the Board of Education, about five years ago, that she came clear about what she’d only suspected: that she was a woman in a man’s body. A few years of deep work with therapists and doctors helped her settle into her new identity. Sometime in 2004, she began shopping at Loehmann’s, finding their clothes the perfect fit for her life as Jane.

“They have a fabulous selection of clothes,” Garra said, “and you can’t beat the prices.” She favors “Western wear,” as befits a country-western musician, and confesses, “I’m a clearance-rack girl.” She started going two to three times a month, she said, becoming such a regular patron that employees noticed when a week went by without her.

It was a shock, then, in spring 2006 when a young employee came up to her in the women’s room, saying nervously, “We got a report you were here…you have to go use the men’s room.” Garra was stunned but decided to let it go, since the woman wasn’t an employee she knew. But a few months later, when Garra was about to try on some casual wear in a private fitting room in the women’s department, a middle-aged store manager came up to her and told her, “Management says that you can’t be in this fitting room.”

“I said, `I’ve been using this particular facility for several years,'” said Garra with a deep chuckle. After that second incident, Galla called Silverman and TLDEF, and Galla v. Loehmann’s was born.

Silverman was already working with Helena Stone, the 70-year-old telephone technician who had been arrested three times for using the restroom at Grand Central during her breaks from working on the station’s phone system. One officer called her “a freak, a weirdo and the ugliest woman in the world,” according to Stone. In October, MTA settled with Stone, paying her legal fees and agreeing to mandatory staff train regarding their legal obligations toward the transgendered.

But just as Silverman was telling the press that the settlement was a “milestone,” Port Authority police were arresting three transgendered teenagers. Meanwhile, Tracy Bumpurs, an employee of the social service agency Housing Works, was still fighting to get MTA to simply apologize for her treatment in July 2006, when her request for help with her MetroCard was met, she said, with a homophobic tirade.

David Thorpe of Housing Works said that he and Bumpurs met repeatedly with MTA officials and were told that the employees involved would be subject to a disciplinary hearing, but there has been no word on her other requests. The suit, filed on Jan. 30, requests not just compliance but financial redress to compensate Bumpur’s sleepless nights and lost work since the incident.

Thorpe added that Housing Works, which runs a residential facility for homeless people with HIV, has a long and successful track record when it has pursued litigation against the city, and that “this was an employee of ours, as well as a civil rights issue. We had to do it.” And while the MTA has scheduled transgender sensitivity training for its employees, Thorpe and Bumpurs say they have yet to see tangible result.

TLDEF’s Michael Silverman said he is working with both the MTA and the Port Authority police on employee training, but many agree with Housing Works that the pace is painfully slow. Even the very city officials charged with enforcing and publicizing the human rights law admit that progress is painfully slow.

Avery Melman, of the New York City Human Rights Commission, who helped broker the Loehmann’s settlement, said that “the more publicity cases like this get, the more information people have about their rights under the human rights law.” He said that half the battle is getting the word out to people who may not realize they are being discriminated against.

“I’ve spoken at numerous forums regarding the rights of transgendered individuals under the human rights law,” said Melman, “and I’ve had relatively few people approach me in those five years.”

Melman pointed to the Guidelines on Gender Identity (available on his agency’s Website at http://nyc.gov/html/cchr/html/trans_guide.html developed with Silverman and other advocates, and said that there is now “ongoing training at all city agencies” based on the guidelines. He pointed to the relative handful of cases as a hopeful sign: Perhaps most people were getting the message.

Silverman respectfully disagrees with that assessment. “I think it remains more the case that people don’t know their rights,” he said. Even so, his office is subject to a stream of calls — more than his attorneys can take on. “We can only take on a small handful.” Public education is a growing, ongoing need, he said.

Pauline Park, director of the New York Association of Gender Rights Advocacy, pointed out that most of the materials printed by the Human Rights Commission are still sitting in that agency’s office, waiting to be distributed. “This law has been on the books since April 2002. To the extent people don’t know about it, I lay this at the feet of the Bloomberg administration,” she said.

If Loehmann’s failed to understand they were breaking the law by excluding Jane Garra from public accommodations, Park added, that is a clear indication that this mayoral administration is not doing its job.

“They should be educating employers, landlords,” said Park. “They don’t really take action until they’re pressured.”

None of the slow overall progress detracted from the sort of wary glee with which Garra last approached Loehmann’s recently, when she returned for the first time since the lawsuit began.

Garra had said earlier that her case was “just so important for people, for how they perceive us. New York’s a diverse place. We’re here, and we don’t want to be in the closet any more, so to speak.”

But last Wednesday, she just wanted to fill her own closet as she perused the latest circulars. “I can’t wait to cash in on the sales,” she grinned.

photo caption:

Michael Silverman, lawyer for the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, with his client Jane Galla outside Loehmann’s department store earlier this week.

photo by Jefferson Siegel

This article originally appeared in the 23 February -1 March 2007 issue (Volume One, Issue 23) of Chelsea Now.

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City Needs to Start Enforcing Transgender Rights Bill
By Pauline Park
Gay City News
29 April 2004

Two years ago this month, the New York City Council passed Int. No. 24, amending the city’s human rights law to add gender identity and expression, thereby extending protection from discrimination to transsexual, transgendered, and gender-variant people throughout the five boroughs.

I still remember vividly the euphoria we felt as we sat in the gallery of the City Council chambers on April 24 as the Council passed the bill by an overwhelming margin of 45-5.

After Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed the bill into law on April 30, the New York City Commission on Human Rights convened a working group––made up of members of its staff as well as transgender activists including me and my co-chair at the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), Moonhawk River Stone––to draft guidelines for implementing this civil rights statute.

By the time of our most recent meeting––in May 2003––we had reached consensus on broadly conceived yet meticulously detailed guidelines that could well be a model for other cities to emulate. But a year after completion of the draft, the Commission has yet to approve it.

I was reminded of the importance of implementing the law by a disturbing personal incident I suffered on April 19. That morning, I joined John Won, Jih-Fei Cheng, and Alain Dang from Gay Asian & Pacific Islander Men of New York and Riley Snorton from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in a meeting with Details magazine about the “Gay or Asian?” feature that caused a storm of public protest due to its insensitivity about race and sexuality. After the meeting, we lunched in the food court on the lower level of the Manhattan Mall on Sixth Avenue and 33rd Street. Before sitting down to lunch, I availed myself of the women’s room, without incident. But after eating, upon emerging from the women’s room a second time, I was stopped by a female security guard demanding to know, “Are you a woman or a man?” Advantage Security, a private firm hired by the mall, has an office only yards from both restrooms, and the security guards were apparently using the big glass window on the security station to engage in surveillance of the restrooms.

Startled by the question, I was alarmed as a pack of security guards––all powerfully built men towering over me––circled me in a physically threatening manner. What I found disturbing was their use of physical intimidation as part of their attempt to interrogate me about my gender identity, their menacing posture suggesting the potential for violence. From the lead security guard’s comments, I strongly suspected that this incident might have been part of a persistent pattern of harassment of gender-variant individuals using the restrooms at the mall.

It is important to recognize that bathrooms are not just an issue for transitioning and post-operative transsexuals; they are an issue for all transgendered and gender-variant people. There are women with butch haircuts who are challenged every time they go into the women’s room, and gender-queer folk who find it difficult to use either restroom without being hassled or harassed.

The only difference between me and any other transgendered person being harassed by this private security outfit was that I was well aware of my rights, having coordinated the campaign for the very transgender rights law that they very well may have violated. Despite the risk to my personal safety, I decided to challenge what appeared to be their discriminatory intent regarding access to a public accommodation. But neither the female security guard nor the head of security, whom I asked to see, seemed aware that this incident may have constituted a violation of city human rights law.

I was struck that the incident at the Manhattan Mall occurred only five days before the second anniversary of the passage of Int. No. 24, reinforcing what I already knew––that the law’s enactment would be a hollow victory for the transgender community unless the Commission began implementing it seriously and enforcing it rigorously.

The working group’s last meeting at the Commission took place nearly a full year ago, last May 12. Commission staff informed us that the Commissioner for Human Rights, Patricia Gatling, had “concerns” about the draft guidelines, but I cannot understand why, a full year after the working group completed them, she still has yet to schedule a meeting with us to discuss those concerns. Since last May, I have made repeated calls to the Commission inquiring about the status of the guidelines without having received any substantive response.

When I joined the working group two years ago, I assumed that the Commission was committed to implementation of the law; but the pattern of delay suggests that the Commission is not serious about implementing the transgender rights law. It may even be possible that Commissioner Gatling is deliberately delaying implementation so as to impede effective enforcement of the statute.

Meanwhile, there may well be countless incidents of discrimination occurring that might have been prevented had these guidelines been issued in a timely manner. As the incident at the Manhattan Mall clearly illustrates, employers, landlords, and other providers of public accommodations are woefully ignorant of the transgender rights law. Many may not even be aware that it is now illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender identity or expression, and I strongly suspect that most have no idea how to modify their own operations––through staff training and other initiatives––in order to comply with the law’s provisions.

It is now time –– well past time, in fact –– for the Commission to approve and adopt broadly conceived guidelines to implement the transgender rights law and to undertake an aggressive campaign to inform and educate New York City agencies as well as private employers, landlords, and others about the provisions of the statute.

I would encourage all those who support implementation of this legislation to demand action from the Commission. You can phone the Commissioner Gatling at 212 306 5070 or e-mail her via the web at http://nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mailchr.html.

To protest the gender-policing of restrooms and the harassment of transgendered and gender-variant people at the Manhattan Mall, call the management at 212 465 0500.

Transgendered and gender-variant people in this city continue to face pervasive discrimination, and those thrown out of jobs or apartments––or simply restrooms in shopping malls––do not have the luxury of time while waiting for implementation of this non-discrimination statute. Only the most rigorous enforcement of this law will help reduce such discrimination, but responsibility for such enforcement rests with the Commission, as does responsibility for the unconscionable delay in the law’s implementation.

Pauline Park is co-chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (nyagra.com). In her capacity as coordinator of the work group on gender-based discrimination that included the six City Councilmembers who took the lead on Int. No. 24, Park led the campaign for passage of the measure. She also serves on the board of directors of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (transgenderlegal.org).

This op-ed originally appeared in the 29 April 2004 issue of Gay City News. In December 2004, the New York City Commission on Human Rights adopted guidelines for implementation of the transgender rights law, with language drawn in part from the settlement of my discrimination case against Advantage Security.

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Birth Certificate Policy Must Reflect Reality of Trans Lives
By Pauline Park and Michael Silverman
Gay City News
16 November 2006

Most people don’t think about their birth certificates. But for transgendered people, changing the sex designation on their birth certificates from M to F or F to M can be a crucial step in getting a job, traveling, and even accessing public restrooms. When a transgendered person’s gender presentation differs from the legal sex designation (the gender marker of M or F) on his or her personal ID, that can result in job discrimination or the denial of social services or even access to public accommodations such as restrooms and government and corporate office buildings.

On October 30, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene held a public hearing on a proposal to allow transgendered people who meet certain stringent requirements to change the sex listed on their birth certificates. When we testified on behalf of our own organizations and the members of the Transgender Health Initiative of New York, we expressed support for the city’s efforts to allow transgendered people to change their birth certificates. But we also expressed our deep concern with certain aspects of the proposed policy.

Our primary concern is this: the proposed requirements for obtaining an amended birth certificate are so onerous and burdensome that most transgendered people will not qualify. The new policy requires a transgendered person to provide an affidavit from a doctor and a mental health professional. Each of these individuals must attest to the treatments that a transgendered person has undergone toward gender transition. While that may sound like a minor requirement, it is not.

Many people lack access to even basic health care, let alone the expensive medical and mental health treatments the policy would require. Poor people and people of color are far less likely to be able to access health care than middle-class white people. Transgendered people are overwhelmingly poor and unemployed or under-employed. Many are people of color. How will these transgendered people access the expensive medical and mental health
care required by the city’s proposed policy?

Middle-class white transgendered New Yorkers will benefit from the proposed policy, which is a good thing. But we believe that the policy should be changed so that all transgendered people will be able to benefit from an amended birth certificate, regardless of race or class.

We also find problematic the requirement that an applicant demonstrate that he or she has undergone medical treatment for gender transition. Throughout history-and before the development of hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery-there have been people we would call transgendered who lived in the gender opposite their birth sex. Many transgendered people live full and complete lives without any medical intervention whatsoever. Some choose not to have surgery or take hormones for personal reasons. For others, such medical treatments are medically contraindicated and would harm their health. By making medical intervention a requirement for an amended birth certificate, the city encourages medical treatment that individuals may not want or that may endanger their health.

The policy also requires that an applicant demonstrate that he or she has undergone psychological counseling. There’s no doubt that such counseling may be of benefit to some, but requiring it suggests that a transgendered person is unable to actualize his or her identity without mental health counseling, or that transgender identity itself is a mental illness. No gay person is required to demonstrate that he or she has undergone psychological counseling before coming out. No transgendered person should have to do so either.

We have sent three letters to the Department urgently requesting a meeting to discuss the proposed policy, but we have received no response. We urge the Department to meet with us in order to discuss its proposed policy and our recommendations. We stand ready to work with Department officials to draft a more inclusive policy that will help all transgendered New Yorkers obtain amended birth certificates if they need them to live full and productive lives.

Pauline Park is chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA). Michael Silverman is executive director and general counsel of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF).

This article originally appeared as an op-ed in the 16 November 2006 issue of Gay City News.

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I’d like to begin by thanking Eileen Novack and everyone else who helped put this event together, as well as the Rev. Paul Ratzlaff and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington for hosting the second Transgender Day of Remembrance here on Long Island. I’m honored to be asked to speak again as I was at last year’s event and I’m especially honored to be in such distinguished company, with Suffolk County Majority Leader Jon Cooper, with Donna Riley of Long Island Trans Experience (LITE) and with Juli Owens of the Long Island Transgender Advocacy Coalition (LITAC).

The work of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy is and has always been about collaborating with and supporting the great work of organizations such as LITE, LIFE, LITAC, and LIGALY. NYAGRA is also proud to work with supportive people of faith such as Pastor Paul and the members of the UU Fellowship of Huntington. NYAGRA’s legislative agenda includes advancing the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) and the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA) in the state legislature as well as working on implementation of the New York City Dignity in All Schools Act and the New York City transgender rights law (Int. No. 24, enacted as Local Law 3 of 2002). We’re also working with the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF) to try to persuade the New York City Department of Health to revise its proposed new regulation on change of legal sex designation on birth certificates for transsexual and transgendered people.

On a solemn occasion such as this, when we remember those we have lost to violence and hate, it is important to understand precisely what legislation and law can and cannot do. Non-discrimination laws can help protect us from discrimination, but they cannot eliminate discrimination. Hate crimes laws can help reduce hate crimes against transgendered people — at least those that include gender identity and expression, unlike the hate crimes law enacted by the New York state legislature in 2000 — but hate crimes laws cannot eliminate hate crimes.

We must recognize that law is an important but a weak tool of social change. To give you just one example that illustrates my point, let me mention the inclusion of sexual orientation to Ecuador’s constitution. When Ecuadorian activists were successful in getting sexual orientation added to their national constitution, it was a testament to their commitment to equality under law. But because there was no campaign to undergird that constitutional provision by educating the public on issues of sexual orientation, the addition of that provision did not substantially improve the lives of lesbian, gay and bisexual Ecuadorians, who still face pervasive discrimination and police brutality in Ecuador. Without public support, legal change — whether through legislation, litigation, or even constitutional amendment — cannot alone fundamentally alter the reality of our lives as LGBT people. It is only through a change of hearts and minds, as the catch-phrase goes, that we can substantially change the grim reality that greets many members of our community as they try to make their way in a still-hostile society.

But what law can do is to send a signal to those who would commit discrimination and hate crimes. In addition to providing legal recourse to the victim, law sends a signal to a potential perpetrator as to what society finds acceptable or unacceptable, and so enactment of transgender-inclusive statutes can powerful influence the governing discourse of social relations with regard to how to treat transgendered and gender-variant people.

NYAGRA’s philosophy is to view law as a tool to educate the public as well as a means of providing transgendered and gender-variant people with legal redress. Just as we must pursue legal change — such as the addition of gender identity and expression to Nassau County human rights law — to protect transgendered and gender-variant people from discrimination, we must use legislation and litigation to educate the public so that members of the public understand the pervasive discrimination and violence that transgendered and gender-variant people still face, even in those cities, counties and states with transgender-inclusive non-discrimination and hate crimes laws.

The challenge for us is not only a political challenge of getting legislation through city councils, county and state legislatures, and Congress; it is also the challenge of winning the hearts and minds of our family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and fellow citizens. And so our task must be viewed in spiritual terms. It is therefore especially appropriate that we commemorate the Transgender Day of Remembrance here. But just as spirituality cannot be contained within the walls of a church — even one as welcoming and wonderful as this one — our task is to take the spirit of remembrance from this sanctuary out to every city and town on Long Island and beyond. In remembrance of all those we have lost to violence and hate, let us join together in re-committing ourselves to that task. Thank you.

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

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Gov. David Paterson, Pauline Park of NYAGRA & Michael Silverman of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF)
(photo courtesy of Michael K. Lavers)

On Dec. 16, Gov. David Paterson signed an executive order (Executive Order No. 33) prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity or expression in state employment.

As the chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), I was invited to join the governor on the dais along with a number of other activists as well as elected officials. And I was invited to make a statement on behalf of NYAGRA that was included in the press release issued by the governor’s office announcing the executive order. The New York Times broke the story of the executive order the day before the signing ceremony. Several media outlets covered the event. Gay journalist and blogger Michael K. Lavers filed a report about the executive order for Edge Boston as well as on his own Boy in Bushwick site.

Gov. Paterson with Pauline Park
(photo courtesy of Laura Vogel)

Here is the text of the press release from the governor’s office quoting me:

Pauline Park, Chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), said: “Governor Paterson has taken an important step in helping members of the transgender community secure full legal equality under state law in New York, and we applaud him for this historic executive action. In extending protections from discrimination based on gender identity or expression in State employment, the Governor creates momentum for enactment of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA). We in NYAGRA call on the State Senate to follow the Governor’s lead and take action on GENDA now.

(NYAGRA is a co-founding member of the GENDA Coalition, which is coordinated by Ejay Carter, the transgender rights program organizer at the Empire State Pride Agenda.)

The governor with Pauline Park at the signing ceremony.
(photo courtesy of Michael K. Lavers)

Gov. Paterson should be commended for taking this important step.  It’s now up to the New York State Senate to pass GENDA so that all transgendered and gender-variant New Yorkers are protected from discrimination under state law.

8.13.25: update:  the former governor endorsed NewYork City Mayor Eric Adams for re-election, shattering the regard I once had for David Paterson; I can’t see any legitimate reason for him endorse the most incompetent and corrupt mayor in this city’s history but pride I once felt in meeting the former governor and participating in the event at which he announced the signing of his executive order has vanished; David Paterson is a shadow of his former self, which in all honesty wasn’t all that much to write home about; he was a mediocre governor at best & the small steps he took on behalf of LGBTQ rights were virtually his only achievements as governor (Kelly Mena, “Paterson backs Adams as Mamdani faces hostile reception on Staten Island,” NY1, 8.14.25).

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New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Board of Health
public hearing on proposed amendment to Article 207 of the New York City Health Code
testimony by
Pauline Park, Ph.D.
Chair, New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)
30 October 2006

My name is Pauline Park and I chair the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy. NYAGRA is the first statewide transgender advocacy organization in New York and we are perhaps best known for having led the campaign for enactment of the New York City transgender rights law (Int. No. 24, enacted as Local Law 3 of 2002).

On behalf of the board of directors and the members of NYAGRA, I would like to commend you for your efforts to make Article 207 of the New York City Health Code more transgenderfriendly. I would also urge you to reconsider the proposed amendment under discussion here because in many ways the language of the proposed amendment represents one step forward and one step back for the transgender community here in New York.

While we in NYAGRA welcome the removal of sex reassignment surgery (SRS) as a requirement for a change of legal sex designation on one’s birth certificate, and while we commend the change to allow a full change of legal sex designation from either ‘M’ to ‘F’ or ‘F’ to ‘M,’ we also would like to express our deep concern with other aspects of the proposed amendment that we view as misguided and even harmful to transgendered New Yorkers seeking a change of legal sex designation on their birth certificates.

To begin with, I would like to voice NYAGRA’s support for all of the points made in Michael Silverman’s presentation on behalf of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF) and the Transgender Health Initiative of New York (THINY), a joint project of TLDEF and NYAGRA. We in NYAGRA share TLDEF’s concern with the onerous and unnecessaryrequirements that applicants for a change of legal sex designation live in the gender with which they identify for two full years before obtaining the change in gender marker; in practice, it may be difficult if not impossible to produce a precise operational definition of ‘living full-time.’

We in NYAGRA also share TLDEF’s objection to the requirement that the applicant prove medical intervention; most transgendered people do not obtain sex reassignment surgery, because most do not want it, and most of those who do cannot afford it. Also, many transgendered people either do not want hormone replacement therapy (HRT); for medical reasons, HRT may be ‘contra-indicated’ for many others. One can live fully in one’s desired gender without either HRT or SRS, and many transgendered people do. We in NYAGRA also share TLDEF’s concern with the onerous burden represented by the requirement of an affadavit from a physician “practicing in the field of gender identity disorder or qualified through board certification” in one of a number of specialties; there is no such thing as board certification in transgender issues, and board certification in areas such as plastic surgery, family medicine, or internal medicine may or may not be directly relevant to the ability of a physician to effectively work with a transgendered patient. I shall return to the vexed issue of ‘gender identity disorder’ (GID) later in my testimony.

The requirement of a legal name change is particularly misguided, as many names are not clearly gendered. Why should someone with a name such as Dale or Dan, Gale or Jamie, Leslie or Lynn have to change his/her name as part of a change of legal sex designation? Also, female infants in contemporary American society are increasingly being given names that were traditionally considered men’s names, such as Ashley (any fan of “Gone With the Wind” will recognize it as the name of the two leading men in the novel and the film of that name) – which, according to the Social Security Administration (http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/babynames/) is now the tenth most popular girl’s name – as well as Brooke, Daryl, Hunter, Meredith, Morgan, and Shannon, just to name a few.

We in NYAGRA also share TLDEF’s concern with the open-ended nature of the discretion given to the Department of Health (DOH) to require “other information or evidence demonstrating the applicants transition to his or her acquired gender.” Such a provision could potentially allow an official at the DOH to delay action on an application indefinitely and for no apparent reason.

One final recommendation: we urge the Department of Health to allow for the continued possibility of a change from ‘M’ or ‘F’ to no legal sex designation for those who were born intersexed. It is crucially important that the new policy allow for newborn intersexed individuals to be issued birth certificates with no sex designation, in view of the widespread practice of intersex genital mutilation (IGM) imposed on such individuals in infancy or childhood by misguided surgeons and panicked parents who fear social ostracism for children whose external (and/or internal) genitalia do not appear to be fully male or female (see www.isna.org or www.bodieslikeours.org for more on intersex and IGM).

Our central concern with the proposed amendment to Article 207 is that it is rooted in a medical model of transsexuality that assumes that there is only one linear medical transition that all transsexual and transgendered people pursue. That medical model of transsexuality is a disease model based on the false diagnosis of ‘gender identity disorder’ (GID), which suggests that the mere fact of being transgendered – that is to say, the mere identification with the gender opposite one’s sex assigned at birth – constitutes prima facie evidence of a mental pathology. In fact, there is no empirical evidence whatsoever for the hypothesis that identification with the gender opposite one’s sex assigned at birth (in the absence of any other mental pathology) constitutes mental illness per se. In many if not most pre-modern non-Western societies (as well as in many pre-modern Western ones), there was a recognized ‘third sex/third gender’ subject position, an identity formation that accommodated those who identified with the gender opposite their birth sex. Only with the development of psychology and psychiatry in the late nineteenth century were terms and concepts such as ‘transvestism’ and transsexualism’ constructed by European sexologists such as Kraft-Ebbing as pathological. And only with the development of HRT and SRS in the twentieth century were technologies developed that could ‘re-sex’ the body both internally as well as externally.

In other words, the proposed amendment to Article 207 of the New York City Health Code – just like existing policy – is premised on the notion that transgender constitutes a mental illness. Because a change in legal sex designation on one’s birth certificate may be a crucial step in obtaining a change of legal sex designation (or ‘gender marker,’ as it is often called) on other important documents – such as a driver’s license, Social Security card, passport, etc. – the policy that DOH adopts will have implications for policy and procedures at the state and federal levels as well. And because a change of legal sex designation on all of these important identity documents represents a crucial step in the transitioning individual’s ability to obtain adequate education, employment, housing, credit, health care, and social services, the proposed DOH amendment will have a profound effect on the quality of life for transgendered New Yorkers. But the requirement for a diagnosis of gender identity disorder in effect represents a requirement that
a transgendered person have him/herself declared mentally ill in order to legally transition and obtain adequate education, employment, health care, etc. No such requirement exists for any other group in this city or this society.

It is important to recognize that the pathologizing of transgender and gender variance through the GID diagnosis is in fact controversial, just as the listing of homosexuality in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was. As you may know, homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1974 when the American Psychiatric Association (APA) published the fourth edition of the DSM. Unfortunately, DSM-IV introduced GID as a diagnosis, and that diagnosis has been used to pathologize gender variance in children and adolescents ever since then. There is an effort underway to remove GID from the DSM-V (currently under discussion) or at least to ‘reform’ the GID diagnosis (see www.GIDreform.org). It would be an irony indeed if the New York City Department of Health were to institutionalize the GID diagnosis in its policy regarding birth certificate change just at the very moment when the APA was debating removal or substantial revision of the GID diagnosis in the DSM.

It would also be ironic in light of the history of transgender law in New York City. In April 2002, the New York City Council passed Int. No. 24, the transgender rights bill signed into law by Mayor Michael Bloomberg later that month as Local Law 3 of 2002. That statute amended New York City human rights law by adding a definition of gender that included identity and expression (among other terms), thereby prohibiting discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, credit and education throughout the five boroughs. The guiding principle of that statute was one of self-determination in gender identity and expression, rooted in a conception of gender that recognizes transgender identities as no less ‘natural,’ no less ‘normal,’ and no less deserving of full equality under law as are conventional gender identities. In light of the enactment of that statute in 2002 and the adoption of guidelines for its implementation by the New York City Commission on Human Rights in 2004, adoption of the proposed new amendment to Article 207 of the New York City Health Code by the Department of Health would represent a setback to the positive and affirmative concept of transgender identities embodied in that statute and those guidelines.

We in NYAGRA therefore urge the Department of Health to revise the proposed amendment to make it consistent with the broad and holistic concept of gender identity embodied in Local Law 3 of 2002 and its implementation guidelines. Following from such a holistic and affirmative concept, a regulation amending Article 207 would require only affirmation by an applicant of his/her intention to live fully in the gender with which s/he identifies, along with either a letter from a physician documenting significant medical intervention or a letter from a psychologist, psychotherapist, or psychiatrist documenting his/her opinion verifying the self-declaration of gender identity. The treating mental health professional should be licensed, but there should be no specific requirement that s/he be recognized as having expertise in gender identity issues. The medical intervention mentioned above should allow either HRT, SRS, breast augmentation or breast removal as a sufficient condition for approval of the application for
a change of legal sex designation on the applicant’s birth certificate.

Officials at the Department of Health should understand that the decision to live in the gender different from the sex assigned to one at birth is not a decision entered into lightly but indicates a profound identification with that gender, but that there is no one way in which a transgendered individual actualizes that gender identity; instead, there is a great diversity of paths that transgendered people choose to realize their gender identities, and public policy must reflect and accommodate that reality.

The Department now has an opportunity to help further the advances represented by Local Law 3 of 2002 and the guidelines for its implementation. We in NYAGRA urge the Department of Health to substantially revise the proposed amendment to Article 207 along the lines recommended in my testimony, and we stand ready to work with Department officials in drafting language for that amendment in a manner consistent with the broad concept of gender identity and expression and the progressive ethos informing existing transgender law and regulations in New York City.

Thank you.

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