Gender identity and expression refer to the way people self-identify and present their masculinity and/or femininity to the world. Transgender is an umbrella term used to designate a community of people who regularly present in a gender different from the sex assigned to them at birth and who live a significant part of their lives in that gender. This includes people who have undergone medical procedures to change their sex and those who have not.
Even if it was not always recognized as such by some in the lesbian and gay community, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have always been connected in our fight for equality and justice. In 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, where history views the modern gay rights movement as having been launched, transgender people were an integral part of the spontaneous protests that occurred when police raided the bar.
For some years now, there has been growing awareness across America and New York of transgender people and the discrimination they face in almost every aspect of their lives. Lesbian and gay people themselves have also increasingly recognized that the same gender stereotyping and boundary-breaking that gives rise to sexual orientation discrimination also causes transgender discrimination. From the viewpoint of the discriminator, there is often no difference between LGB and T. Any person who “breaks the rules” in terms of how a man or woman is supposed to act, whether it be in matters of hair or dress or in expressing affection for someone of the same gender, are typically viewed as one and the same and subject to discrimination or harassment.
Because of the inseparability of this discrimination and the fact that many transgender people are also lesbian or gay, traditional gay identity politics has expanded in recent years to become today's LGBT movement. The Empire State Pride Agenda has been working on transgender issues since 1998 and since 2003 has included "transgender" in our mission statement.
In recent years, there have been significant advances in combating transgender discrimination across America and New York. Today, 96 cities and counties, and 13 states and the District of Columbia provide non-discrimination protections for transgender people. About three-quarters of these jurisdictions have enacted their laws since the beginning of 2000. Before 2000, less than 5% of the nation's population was covered by transgender non-discrimination laws. Today 38%, or 105.8 million Americans, are covered by these laws.
In New York, the gains have been similarly dramatic. Before 2000, no New Yorkers were covered by transgender non-discrimination laws. The first legal protections for transgender people in New York did not happen until Ithaca passed a transgender-inclusive hate crimes law in 2000, an effort in which the Pride Agenda played an active part. Since then, localities across New York including Albany, Buffalo, Ithaca, New York City, Rochester, Suffolk County and Tompkins County have passed non-discrimination laws covering transgender people in areas of everyday life that include employment, housing, and public accommodation. Today, 53%, or more than 10 million New Yorkers, are covered.
The Pride Agenda is committed to securing measures that explicitly prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and expression in employment, housing, public accommodations and the extension of credit. This means the passage of a statewide transgender non-discrimination law. Another priority is the passage of safe schools legislation that will require New York's public schools to address all types of bias-based violence, including bullying and harassment due to gender identity and expression.
Click here for a copy of our Equality & Justice for Transgender New Yorkers brochure.