"Pass, or Die"

[PaulaQ]

three groups that hate us right now:
- Southern Baptists

I don't hate any of you.

The Southern Baptist Convention throws transgender people under the bus.

Well, the SBC doesn't seem to think too highly of us, anyway!

As for last night - the three of us (me, T, and V) camped out in her condo, sleeping on the floor, as she'd moved out all of her furniture that afternoon. Nothing happened, which is wonderful. Maybe our friends across the parking lot finally got the hint.

@TeresaCD - the real danger is that a big chunk of the world simply doesn't view us TG folks as human beings. This is extremely dangerous, as the inhibition to violence against another person is usually MUCH higher than the inhibition to violence against an object. Since the message that we are not really people comes from so many different sources, people believe it because "everybody says it." Also, we make people really uncomfortable, for a variety of reasons that aren't very easily fixed. This really freaked me out for a while, but I'm getting used to it now. Some people are OK. Lots of people will act OK, but really aren't. Some number will be not OK to your face, and some will take action against you for being TG. It is what it is.

[Alice B]

That is an awful story and a truly close encounter with some truly stupid jerks. Once she has moved out she should contact the owners of the condos and let them know how their management handled the situation and why you moved out. This action will not come back to haunt her, but should result in some action by the owners to seek better management and alert them to some poor renter selection.

[PaulaQ]

@Alice - thanks, that's a good idea. We may also contact Lambda legal, although unfortunately, in Texas, transgender individuals basically have no rights. People are free to discriminate against us, with the exception of 2-3 municipalities.

The first hurdle is to get the complex to let her out of her lease without paying a cancellation fee of two months rent. I'm thinking about telling them that they should allow it - otherwise she'll stay, and we'll have a big ol' transgender pool party every nice Saturday, as is our right. This is liable to cause all sorts of problems with the other tenants, fights, property damage, etc. all instigated by others. Wouldn't it just be easier to let her leave where she's obviously not wanted?

[Stephanie Sometimes]

Hi Paula,

It’s a sad and demoralizing story you are telling of your friend V’s experience this week but I am glad that you have shared it with us here as we all need to be aware of the potential dangers of being out in public as transgender folks (and that’s both CD and TS girls). It’s all too easy to get a false sense of security and to forget that there are people around us that may hate us for just being who we are because it offends their concept of what is normal or acceptable and people who are just bullies and will direct violence at anyone they perceive as susceptible to public ridicule.

It’s great that you were able to help her safely move out of that place. The uplifting side of your story is how you have rallied to help your friend and provide moral and physical support for her. She is lucky to have you as her friend and you set a great example to all of us how we need to support our sisters when these situations arise.

I grew up in Texas and was glad to leave after 40 years for a lot of reasons, but it’s all too easy to blame the entire state, or any other particular place, and not to realize this kind of bigotry and the bullies that embrace it can exist almost anywhere. I notice that in at least one recent survey that Dallas and Austin rank in the top 20 most LGBT friendly cities nationwide. And just today I have read news reports of a 20 year old gay man being attacked and beaten in Detroit this week and last month a 28 year old lesbian was attacked nearby in Ann Arbor. We all know that some places or environments are more dangerous than others but Plano of all places. Amazing that even the police in Plano admit it’s a dangerous place for TG folks. Go figure how a middle to upscale class residential neighborhood like Plano on the North side of Dallas can evolve into a danger zone for certain categories of people.

Most of us know that in life we have to be careful and generally aware of ever-present risks (see my Helen Keller quote in my signature line) and we usually expect that we can evaluate the severity of risk by the environment around us but often the risk is not apparent (I practice situational awareness and no I don’t have a military background). But who would or should expect that kind of harassment in a nice apartment complex in Plano? I guess the haters are all around us but some localities may serve to enable them to action more that some other places.

As the LGBT movement has gained more acceptance in this country by the general public, it seems like the haters have become more aggressive and violent in their opposition to LGBT rights. As you mentioned, a major religious group has just voted to condemn gender assignment surgery and hormonal therapy. And a current candidate for the legislature in Oklahoma has publically stated that it would be right to execute gays by public stoning.

It is clear that the LGBT movement still has a long road to travel. But things change more rapidly in today’s world and if we stand proud and stay together and support our brothers and sisters, like you have Paula, then we can possibly someday achieve a higher level of equality. So thanks Paula for doing your part and sharing it with us here. Stay safe and give our support to your friend V.

Hugs,
Stephanie

[Michelle789]

Paula, if you have that party, I think you should enlist some of your former military TG friends, and arm them with shotguns. And yes, I believe you can legally invoke the stand your ground law against any of these predators.

[Rogina B]

LADIES... Incidents like the root story of this thread ARE the reason that local HRO's[Human Rights Ordinances] covering sexuality and gender expression are SO IMPORTANT! There would be no fear in reporting all of this to the Police,and the management company would have been OBLIGATED to help without judgement. Equality Texas has a real struggle on their hands and needs support on getting HRO's in place.It is truly worth the effort to support passage of gender inclusive HRO's wherever you are!

[flatlander_48]

There's a parallel here...

Some years ago, before I joined my current employer, there was a patent infringment case. Our security was very lax. Our building (engineering center) didn't even have restricted access at the back door. Anyone could walk in. The moral to this story is that is you have something to protect, legally it looks a lot better if there is evidence that you are trying to protect your intellectual property.

The parallel is this. It is important to make filings with the police. It documents what happened, it registers your fears of harm, establishes a pattern of behavior and officer's notes (assuming any sort of investigation) become part of the paper trail. With this chain of documents, it's much easier to show patterns of escalating behavior. It may seem pointless, but it can be very useful if worst comes to worst...

[Leelou]

Thanks for posting this PaulaQ. You're doing great in supporting your friend. I've read the whole thread, and I'm sorry but Texas sounds like a backward mess when it comes to the TS/TG community. The cop even says you're not safe, how f-ed up is that? We've read tons of stories from other members about their exploits out, and I've never heard one like this. I've always felt safe when out. My biggest fear has been being read and laughed at, which has never happened. I've been read, but never laughed at let alone attacked.

Thanks again for sharing. This was an eye opener. Best wishes to you and your friend--be safe.

[PaulaQ]

We moved all of V's furniture and most of her possessions out of her condo today. We'll get her work computer and printer from there after she finishes work tomorrow, and then she's gone. For tonight, she's safely ensconced at my Condo in the gayborhood, so we aren't on guard duty tonight. Hopefully we get the remainder of her stuff out of there tomorrow, with no further incident.

She was pretty sad tonight - what with being homeless and all. Without friends, she'd have no place to go. But she has friends. Still, she was pretty down about it all. All of the stuff she has in this world fits in a few boxes.

[jaleecd]

PaulaQ;
I have followed V's situation since you first shared it with us.The rightous anger and plots and plans to put the fear of God into these members of the shallow end of the gene pool just aches to be instigated. the problem is crawling into the scepic tank with them smears us with the same filth. the saner members are right in shining as much light on their stinking thinking as possible and hope that people will recognize that this is not a choice, any more than being red headed, freckled, left handed and cowboys fan.

[Jaymees22]

This is certainly a sad story but with you as her friend it will hopefully have a good ending. I'm afraid this type of incident could happen anywhere, we should always arm ourselves with common sense and a constant awareness of our surroundings. Good luck to both you and V. Hugs Jaymee

[Amy07]

Nice chat here. Really I don't believe it. I love the progressives here.

[PaulaQ]

We finished packing her up today, and moved her stuff to my place in the gayborhood. We didn't encounter the guys who chased her, but a woman who'd seen her en femme before muttered "faggot" as she passed us.

There's a bunch of good restaurants in her old neighborhood. I used to eat over there a lot in my old life. I'm thinking I'll dine elsewhere from now on...

Thanks again everyone for the support. We got V to safety.

[Michelle789]

Congrats Paula and V!!!! You will find new nice restaurants to eat in the gayborhood. In fact, even nicer places to eat, yay!!!!!!!

[PaulaQ]

There's a lot of restaurants in Dallas. Uptown is adjacent to the 'hood, and has a ton of good places. It's mostly straight folks there, but they are tolerant. I feel me and my girlfriends add local color to their dining experience. There's a couple of nice places in the 'hood, but mostly it's bars.

[Paula Siemen]

Itsunds by your descriptionthat the apartment building is a large comlex which tells me the manageent person your friend talkedto is nothing but an emloyee. Texas has some pretty strong laws against descrimination and harassment. I suggest that your friend contact the legal owners of the apartment comlex and pass along her explanation of the situation. Corporate owners of such properties really do not want the kind of problems your friend can bring them if she decided to persure legal action against both the individuals andtheapartmentcomlex forfailing toprovide a safe and secure residential property. The ownerscanbesued big time and they would likely have some verystrong words for their manament representative. Do not let this issue just go by unnoticed. I dont think the cityof Pano would like the negative and biggotted reputation that this could bring on their city.
Further, I think the city of Dallas TGBLT community has a legal organization (Legal Hospice) thatmay take some interest in your friends predicument.

[SusansWife]

I am so glad you got her out of there!! That is just horrible what happened to her. I don't understand people like that. They see anything non conforming to their prescribed "normal" as being less than human. But it is their behavior that proves who the less human ones are. Glad V is safe, and that she has a friend like you!

[flatlander_48]

Further, I think the city of Dallas TGBLT community has a legal organization (Legal Hospice) thatmay take some interest in your friends predicument.

This is a very important point and I touched on it earlier. Somewhere an incident like this MUST get recorded whether it is a public record of not. It is data that adds to the picture of what an area is like, what is really happening there and who is doing what. Sooner rather than later is best.

[trans0325]

What happened to her is unfortunately all too common in Plano or in almost any other part of Texas.

[sometimes_miss]

This all comes up under the topic of self preservation. If you're going to stay where people hate you, you will permanently put yourself at risking your life. The whole group of idiots here who recommend that she 'man up', whether that means fighting, getting a gun for protection, etc., have been watching too much action movies and TV, where the hero always comes out alive and safe. If someone really wants you dead, you're dead. While it's nice to assume that everyone will 'fair fight' you, the reality is that if you do defeat them in a fight, there's always the possibility that they will simply attack you from behind when you aren't ready, and then, well, you're dead (or worse, permanently disabled/blind/etc). It's really easy to kill people when you know how, and they aren't ready for it. This is not like being a soldier with your mates, aware that danger is all around you. It's a case where we simply don't have the situational awareness of possibly deadly danger 24 hours a day. At some point, you're going to be vulnerable. And that's when it happens.
You can talk about your rights all you want. And you'll be right. Dead right. And everyone will cry at your funeral, and life will go on.
The best advice is always the same. Remove yourself from danger first; fight the good fight from a safe distance, or you won't live to fight again. BTW, those who live on volcano hillsides are also idiots.

You can do the smart thing, or not. And live, or die, with the consequences. The local police advised correctly, they can't guarantee that they'll be there quick enough to help. At best, the victim will become a famous TG person who 'stood his ground', forever being out, in a community where it clearly isn't a good idea. If you enjoy confrontations, great, but remember, you rarely win an argument, you only get the other person pissed off at you more.

To my way of thinking, I place a lot of the blame at the feet of some of the more radical elements on various talk radio programs.

They're only voicing opinions that others have, but keep to themselves.

[PaulaQ]

@Lexi - truly no place is really safe for us. Some are better than others. Where I live now is relatively safe for Dallas for a transgender person. There is no "safe" though if you are transsexual.

As for talk show hosts and stuff - I don't agree with that. The unfortunate history of transsexualism is that there have been any number of extremely well educated and articulated individuals with quite a public following who've made very convincing arguments, based on their own prejudice, that help others dehumanize us, and rationalize their own fears and prejudices. The cruelty of some of these people is shocking - all the more so because they couch their arguments in terms that are meant to seem "merciful" to others who share their transphobia.

Even amongst people who accept us well enough to just leave us alone, there is very little sympathy for our plight.

And everyone will cry at your funeral, and life will go on.

Few enough outside of our community cry for one of us when we are slain. So very few care.

[flatlander_48]

They're only voicing opinions that others have, but keep to themselves.

Where the on air people get their opinions from, whether internal or external, is essentially irrelevant. The fact that they voice them is.

Case in point:

A while back, the news about doing SRS for transgender inmates had a lot of air play. Independent of the financial considerations, this is obviously a pretty serious matter for those people in that situation and possibly may have been a factor in the crime(s) for which they were convicted. I can't remember whose show it was as I just happened to hit it by accident as I was flipping through the stations, but I decided to listen for a while.

As you might imagine, there was no attempt to understand the specifics about the issue. Rather, it fueled a lot of negative comments and double entendres aimed at belittling those who are transgender in general and those who were in jail specifically. Simultaneously it puts people in the limelight and and in a bad light and that is just totally unnecessary.

There are Thoughts and there are Behaviors. We all have prejudices of one kind or another. And further, we can't really control thoughts of others, short of some sort of pharmaceutical intervention. However, it is behaviors that are significant. Demeaning, denigrating and discounting transgender people at every opportunity has the effect of lowering the bar for acceptable behavior.

Also, we have to remember that more often than not it isn't the intelligent end of the spectrum that will be involved in violence. The intelligent ones will get you fired, deny applications, etc. In short, they deal in the realm of plausible deniability. The others, even though they may have some degree of intelligence, they have difficulty in making appropriate decisions. This was clearly seen when after being told by the police to cease their threatening behavior, they continued. This is not rational behavior and speaks volumes about the people involved. You cannot deal with them in the same manner as people who are, in fact, rational.

[LillyAntayra]

I had read somewhere in the forums that Plano was not TG friendly, but I had no idea it would go to that extreme. This type of story makes my blood boil. I hope that this experience does not deter Miss V from continuing her transition, it sounds like she might be quite depressed. It's important to remind her that she has done nothing wrong.

[Paula_Femme]

Congrats Paula and V!!!!

I'll second Michelle, congratulations for getting V out of an intollerable situation, with your help I'm sure she can make a fresh start!

[flatlander_48]

Funny how the mind works. I had nearly forgotten about this on-air episode less than a month ago. Rochester, NY is about a 90 minute drive from my home.

At work, we are taught to not put anything in an E-mail or on social media that you wouldn't want your mother to see or would divulge sensitive corporate information. On-air personalities of this variety obviously have no Mom Test.

In my comments earlier about talk radio, I was referring to on-air personalities with a specific political bent. While I don't think the pair below had any particular political agenda, there was more than enough stupidity and insensitivity to go around...

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2014/05/r...alth-coverage/

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — A Rochester radio station’s morning show hosts have come under fire for a transphobic broadcast in which they mocked a new policy to provide transition-related health coverage to transgender city workers, and insulted a caller who dialed in to tell them they were being offensive.

Rochester officials announced Saturday that the will extend transition-related health coverage to transgender and gender non-conforming municipal employees.

On Tuesday, local radio hosts Kimberly Ray and Barry Beck of WBZA Radio 98.9 characterized the new city healthcare coverage with rants such as, “The dude can look like a lady and the city is going to pay for it!”

“Does that mean then if women want a boob job they’ll pay for a boob job because that’s only right,” asked Beck.

“The services that will be paid for under the new coverage – gender reassignment surgery, psychological counseling, because you’re probably a nut job to begin with!” adds Ray. “That’s my opinion.”

“When he steps up to the plate, doesn’t he have two bats?”

One female caller criticized the hosts, telling them they were “incredibly disrespectful towards transgender people” and that they shouldn’t spread misinformation, even as a joke, to which one of the male hosts (identified as Chris Konya) replied: “Thank you, sir” as the others laugh.


http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2014/05/22/rochester-ny-radio-hosts-fired-following-transphobic-rant

Following yesterday’s extraordinarily transphobic segment, Kimberly Ray and Barry Beck, hosts of The Breakfast Buzz on Rochester, N.Y., radio station 98.9 The Buzz, were fired by the station's parent company, Entercom Rochester.

"This morning Entercom fired Kimberly and Beck effective immediately," Entercom Rochester vice president and general manager Sue Munn said in a prepared statement. "Their hateful comments against the transgender community do not represent our station or our company. We deeply apologize to the transgender community, the community of Rochester, and anyone else who was offended by their comments. We are proud of our past work on behalf of the local LGBT community and we remain committed to that partnership."

The segment, which featured the hosts playing on a number of false and hateful antitransgender clichés, quickly drew the ire of local and national media outlets, along with many of the show’s listeners.

“It’s nonsense broadcasts like this that spreads harmful misinformation, encourages bullying, and shouldn’t be tolerated by radio stations nor its advertisers,” Andrea Raethka wrote in a Rochester Democrat & Chronicle editorial. “I plan on contacting the radio station to express my disgust as well as express my disappointment to their advertisers to let them know I’m not happy with them supporting such hateful, transphobic radio personalities.”

“Amid a stream of transphobic jokes, willful ignorance, and nasty slurs, Kimberly has the gall to suggest that she understands all the ‘sensitivities’ involved in transgender issues,” Slate’s J. Bryan Lowder wrote. “Of course, that’s only when she’s confronted by an impressively brave and eloquent caller who does their best to push back against the morass of prejudice with a little education — ‘[this is] incredibly disrespectful toward transgender people.’ Not that it does much good: Before kicking them off the air, another host, perceiving the caller to be female, says: ‘Thank you,sir.’”

LGBT media watchdog GLAAD was quick to address the issue, reaching out to the station, and posting a public statement.

“Transgender healthcare is not new or outlandish, and it isn't 'special' healthcare, as the sensationalized segment purports,” GLAAD media strategist Dani Heffernan wrote. “It's the same healthcare that non-trans people access everyday when they need it, but it is often denied to transgender people just because of who they are. The hosts should be held accountable for their irresponsible behavior, and at a minimum a formal apology should be issued. Furthermore, listeners of 'Breakfast Buzz' should be directed to resources that provide accurate, fair-minded information about transgender healthcare coverage.”

After initially tweeting, “Freedom of Speech includes the freedom to offend others. You aren’t granted a right to not be offended in this life #getoverit #ROC,” Ray deleted her personal Twitter account. Beck deleted his account soon after.

While the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects against the government taking legal action against anyone on the basis of their speech, it is not a license to say offensive things without consequences from individuals and employers.