Transgender Rights

editorial
New York Times
29 August 2000

People who have had sex-change surgery, cross-dressers and others whose gender identity does not conform to societal norms are often targets of violence and bias that force them to live in fear for their safety or the loss of their jobs and shelter. A bill now before the New York City Council would give this marginalized population basic protection against discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations.

The city’s human rights law has long barred discrimination based on gender. Since the 1980’s, the law has also prohibited discrimination based on ”sexual orientation.” But that provision focuses on issues of heterosexuality, homosexuality or bisexuality. It does not protect those who identify themselves as transgender. The new legislation, which has 28 sponsors in the City Council, would broaden the definition of ”gender” to include not only a person’s sex, but also a person’s expression of gender identity, self-image and appearance.

Similar anti-bias laws have been enacted in nearly two dozen cities, including Atlanta, San Francisco and Minneapolis. The proposed measure has strong support from civil rights groups and political leaders, including Public Advocate Mark Green and City Comptroller Alan Hevesi. Council Speaker Peter Vallone, however, has not taken a position on the measure. Mr. Vallone should move swiftly to get the bill passed, and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani should sign the measure.

This was the first editorial published by the New York Times endorsing transgender-specific legislation — in this case, Int. No. 24, the transgender rights law ultimately enacted by the New York City Council in April 2002; the editorial originally appeared in the 29 August 2000 issue of the New York Times.

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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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If you ever wondered why the New York Post is reviled by progressives and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists in New York City, the Rupert Murdoch footprint daily demonstrated why in April 2005, when the tabloid printed an op-ed by Nicole Gelinas of the right-wing Manhattan Institute.

In the op-ed, Gelinas inaccurately claims that the guidelines for implementation of the 2002 New York City transgender rights law (adopted by the City Commission on Human Rights in December 2004) say that “people can pick whichever gender they want to be.” Not true. The guidelines recognized that transgendered people face pervasive discrimination and violence in this city, even after enactment of that landmark law. These sensible and practical regulations were intended to enhance public safety at minimal cost, including the safety of transgendered women who, if forced to use the men’s room, would be vulnerable to humiliation as well as harassment and assault.

But truth and the Murdoch press have been long estranged, and so the transphobic op-ed from Nicole Gelinas — complete with offensive headline — came as no surprise to any of the transgender activists that I know.

Tranny Time
By Nicole Gelinas
New York Post
18 April 2005

Human rights are self-evident and sacred: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But Gotham has gone one further: New York’s Commission on Human Rights has determined that everyone in the city has the inalienable right to . . . dress up in women’s clothing and use the women’s restroom?

Last year, Pauline Park, who is biologically male but views herself as a woman and dresses as one, used the women’s public restroom at the Manhattan Mall. After she used the same restroom again, five security guards from Advantage Security stopped her. Park told The New York Times: “The female security guard demanded to know, ‘Are you a man or a woman?’ I said to her that I identify as a woman. And she said, ‘One of my colleagues thought you were a man.’ ”

The same thing happened to Justine Nicholas, who, like Park, is biologically male but identifies as a woman: Park was stopped by Advantage guards after using a women’s restroom at a different location.

Enlightened people would view the above incidents as awkward situations — but Mayor Bloomberg has turned them into human-rights violations. Bloomberg outlawed “gender-identity” discrimination in 2002 — and last December, the Human-Rights Commission released guidelines to enforce the new law.

The law covers people whose “gender identity and/or gender expression does not match society’s expectations of how an individual who was assigned a particular sex at birth should behave in relation to their gender.” It covers, but is not limited to, pre-operative transsexuals and, as the commission notes, “drag queens or kings.”

Sounds complicated — and it is. It’s also expensive. Violations carry fines up to $250,000.

The law is a waste of taxpayer money — the Human Rights Commission’s budget could go toward keeping libraries open late.

Worse: The law will compromise public safety and punish employers. The law covers “challenging an individual’s gender” — so Park and Nicholas filed complaints. Under a settlement reached two weeks ago — one of the first — Advantage will fork over $2,500 apiece to each woman. (Park, as a co-chairman of New York’s Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, had lobbied for the law in the first place.)

Five grand won’t put Advantage out of business — but it’s a humiliating result for a company that did nothing wrong. Security guards are supposed to look out for unusual activity — and a man in women’s clothes in public restrooms is an unusual occurrence, and a possible security risk.

Worse, Advantage has now agreed to allow people to use bathrooms at locations it polices around the city, “consistent with their gender identity” (apparently to be unchallenged on sight). This forces guards to put gender politics above common sense, comfort and safety.

The law will also cause headaches and cost more money. It covers “housing institutions” — so what happens when a man who identifies as a woman shows up as the roommate of a female student at NYU?

The law also recommends that employers and retail stores label single-stall restrooms as “gender-neutral” — and construct private spaces in locker rooms and changing rooms. The implication: If companies don’t do these things, they could be seen as promoting an environment ripe for discrimination — and bullied into paying a fine if an awkward incident occurs.

And the law recommends that employers educate their workers, so that they don’t face hefty fines for crimes like not addressing customers “with names, titles, pronouns and other terms appropriate to their gender identity.”

Finally: The guidelines are just plain nonsensical. They note that “Nothing in the Human Rights Law prohibits restrooms from being designated by gender.” But people can pick whichever gender they want to be — which makes any attempt at gender segregation at public facilities futile.

If Park or Nicholas were ever threatened or assaulted because of her gender identity, officials would, and should, prosecute the perpetrators. But mind-boggling new regulations over “he vs. she” is the last thing New York’s businesses, and its tolerant citizens, need.

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