Texas A+M Lecture ‘Gender Identity Issues and Workplace Discrimination: The Transgender Experience’

A&M-Central Texas Lecture Highlights Gender Identity Issues and Workplace Discrimination

By tamuct

Department of Marketing and Public Relations
1901 S. Clear Creek Road, Killeen, Texas 76549
Alison Rex, Communications Specialist
254-519-5790 rex@tarleton.edu

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 1, 2010

A&M-Central Texas Lecture Highlights Gender Identity Issues and Workplace Discrimination

Killeen, TEXAS—Texas A&M University-Central Texas Assistant Professor of Sociology, Dr. Michelle Dietert, will conduct her presentation of ‘Gender Identity Issues and Workplace Discrimination: The Transgender Experience’ on April 8, 2010 from 6­­–7:30p.m. in Warrior Hall.

Dr. Dietert will share her presentation and research with A&M-Central Texas before it becomes published in the Journal of Workplace Rights. The lecture will include an introduction to the social issue, the literature, methods, data (actual words collected from some of the participants), and a question answer session with the audience.

The focus of Dr. Dietert’s abstract is how mainstream social constructions of gender tend to demand conformity by adhering to only two choices of gender identity, male and female. Transgender individuals transgress this binary conception of gender by deviating from societal gender norms associated with assigned sex at birth. Using a combination of face-to-face and phone interviews to collect data, twenty-six interviews were conducted with male-identified transgender individuals aged 18 to 57 from throughout the United States. All participants were born female-bodied but eventually expressed gender traits that align with male identity rather than female identity. Participants were recruited using purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Our findings reveal the workplace experiences of a sample of female to male (FTM) individuals and provide accounts of how male-identified transgender individuals negotiate their gender identities within the workplace and deal with issues that arise as a result.

Dr. Dietert states, “I think the TAMU-CT faculty, students, staff, and community can learn a great deal about a social group that is not often talked about, namely transgender female-to-male individuals.” She continues, “This population faces a great deal of discrimination in all areas of their lives, including in the workplace. They often cannot find employment or are fired from their current jobs for being transgender.”

The presentation will take place at A&M-Central Texas North Campus in Warrior Hall (701 Whitlow Drive Killeen, TX 76541). For more information please contact Dr. Michelle Dietert at DIETERT@tarleton.edu

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A&M-Central Texas Lecture Highlights Gender Identity Issues and Workplace Discrimination

Transfolk just want to 'Give Peeps a Chance'

There is a inane urgency expressed by Gay and hetero Cisgender people to hang a new moniker on transfolks that's more writer friendly, cuter than the longer and more difficult to use respectful adjective "Transgender" .
Whether we like it or not!
Some of our preferred titles shortened from transgender such as 'Transmen' and 'Transwoman' remain unused, languishing in mainstream media and gay bloggers keyboards.

WE have and will continue to demand respect and loudly reject the misogynistic pejorative 'Tranny' as a accepted term in media and society despite cisgender gay peoples insistence we should 'own this' reviled defamatory slur.

Then call us 'Tranpeeps'! This word is universally accepted within the trans community and is commonly used as an endearment usually in times of heightened passions or turmoil. Additionally transpeeps are strong, intelligent sensitive and insoluble in acetone, water, sulfuric acid, and sodium hydroxide! And we are now available year round!

If cisgender folks must use a name other than 'transgender' you may call us transpeeps. It's clearly not misrepresentational since transpeeps does not conjure a mental vision of transgender people being 'fierce hot' or violent over the top parodies of femininity bent on inflicting vigilante justice.

wiki 'People' "The concept of personhood (who is a person within a society) is the fundamental component of any selective concept of people. A distinction is maintained in philosophy and law between the notions "human being", or "man", and "person". The former refers to the species, while the latter refers to a rational agent (see, for example, John Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding II 27 and Immanuel Kant's Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals)."

"Central issues of interest to people are the understanding of the human condition and the meaning of life, and survival. Religion, philosophy, and science show or represent modes and aspects of inquiry which attempt to investigate and understand the nature, behavior, and purpose of people. Sociology, economics, and politics represent modes by which people investigate how to maximize a collective survival strategy."

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Man Charged in murder of Baltimore Transgender Woman Dee Green

Baltimore Sun Larry Douglas, 20, of Baltimore has been charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing of _____ Dee Green__, 25, of the first block of N. Woodington Road in Southwest Baltimore.

A counselor said she knew Green as "Dee," and that Green identified as a woman.

In November, Green was recognized at a vigil at City Hall commemorating International Transgender Day of Remembrance, according to an item on Baltimore Brew, a local news Web site. One who attended the event, Cydne Kimbrough, founder and director of the Gender Learning Advocacy and Support System, said in an e-mail to The Baltimore Sun that Green had been a client.

"We were helping her start the process of going to school and [the] name-change process," Kimbrough said. "She was very interested in a better quality of life for herself."

Dee Green is listed on the Transgender Day of Remembrance Memorializing 2009

Unidentified person [Dee Green] dressed in woman’s clothes
Location: Baltimore, Maryland
Cause of Death: Stabbed
Date of Death: October 25, 2009
Police found her lying unconscious and bleeding in the street.
They took her to the hospital where she died a half hour later.
Original Source: Baltimore Sun


The first Day of Remembrance was held in San Francisco in 1999 as a vigil for Rita Hester, murdered in that city on November 28, 1998. Since then, Day of Remembrance ceremonies have spread to over 150 cities, from Minsk to Tel Aviv to Yogyakarta, Indonesia—anywhere that transgendered people live, die and are not too afraid to speak out in public against the violence, discrimination and prejudice they confront daily.

“We have to fight every day just to maintain a sense of self,” said Falina Laron, a peer educator and trans outreach worker at AIDS Action Baltimore.

2nd Annual International Transgender Day of Visibility March 31st

The Dallas Transgender Advocates and Allies are celebrating our lives with the second annual International Transgender Day of Visibility!

Being out today is the cornerstone of our lives for many of us. We have been blessed to spend at least a part of our lives living in our true gender.

As we may celebrate living out and proud we may also pause a moment in recognition of our transgender sisters and brothers still living in seclusion, unable to live in true freedom.

Come join in the celibrations at the Dallas Transgender Advocates and Feministing!

City of Houston Texas ENDA Passed

Cross posted from Transgender Foundation of America "The TG Center is very pleased to report that Mayor Annise Parker signed Executive Order 1-8 (Revised) and 1-20 (Revised) barring workplace sexual orientation and gender identity/expression discrimination for City of Houston employees. Order 1-8 will prohibit discrimination and/or retaliation on the basis of sexual orientation and/or gender identity at every level of municipal government, including in hiring, contracting and/or access to City facilities and program/activities. The order goes on to explicitly state: “It is further the City’s policy to provide each City employee a work environment free of discrimination and harassment based on either sexual orientation and/or gender identity.”

Section 3.1.3 addresses access to bathroom facilities, stating that the GLBT community will not experience harassment and/or discrimination concerning “availability of City facilities” in all “City interactions with the public.”

Section 9.2 of the Executive Order goes further stating, “It shall be a violation of this Executive Order for an employee to fail or refuse to recommend and contract or purchase for award based upon any contractor’s or vendor’s sexual orientation and/or gender identity; or to fail to make available to any member of the public or employee use of a City facility or receipt of a City service, if that person otherwise would be entitled to such use or receipt, based upon a person’s sexual orientation and/or gender identity; or to impede access by any employee or member of the public to a City restroom facility that is consistent with and appropriate to that person’s expression of gender identity…”

Full article at TG Center News: City of Houston ENDA Passed

Transgender Advocates respond to promised changes to 'Ticked off trannies with knives' trailer.

For immediate Release
Contact

kelli Busey
Email
Activist Organizer
Dallas Transgender Advocates and Allies
Dallastaa.ning.com

Darlie Brewster
Email
Film Maker

Constance Macintosh-Mascherin
conniemacintosh@hotmail.com
activist/coordinator

Melissa Sklarz
New York Trans Rights Organization (NYTRO)
melis0213@aol.com

In response to a outcry from the transgender community condeming the movie trailer linking a murdered transgender woman, Angie Zapata, with 'Ticked off trannies with knives' movie director Israel Luna has agreed to produce a trailer so that Angie Zapata's name no longer appears.

email sent to Kelli Busey from Israel Luna March 29, 2010

"Kelli...

My initial thought of placing both Angie Zapata and Jorge Mercado's names was to give a disturbing reality to my film about transgender violence. Something horrible and disturbing does happen to my characters in the first half of the film.

After listening to many of the voices in the trans-community I've realized that the association between the names at the beginning of the trailer and the content of the film in it's entirety has been difficult to connect.

I've had time to think about it, and have decided to take their names off the beginning of the trailer. I'll begin working on this later today and have it posted this week. I’m not sure if you noticed, but the trailer on the Tribeca site has never included the reference.

Thank you for your email and I wish you the best as well.

Israel"

We are immensely relieved that Angie Zapata's horrific bludgeoning death by Allen Andrade will not be associated directly with this comedy.

However, we are still at odds with any inadvertent associations that this movie may produce with transgender people in real life.

We therefore ask Israel Luna in his amended trailer to place instead a acknowledgement that that this movie is meant for entertainment purposes only and the fictional personalities therein should not be confused as a portrayal of how transgender people interact socially.

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#Transgender Advocates respond to promised changes to 'Ticked off trannies with knives' Trailer http://bit.ly/ctXJgZ #LGBT #TTWK PLS RT