One of the sad outcomes of Election Day is the repeal of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), a city ordinance that stops discrimination on the basis of 15 different characteristics including sex, sexual orientation, race, and gender identity. In a recent piece on HuffPost Gay Voices, LGBT program director of Media Matters feels that there’s one person responsible for this not passing, and her name is Beyonce:
Beyoncé has repeatedly refused the opportunity to speak out against the legalization of discrimination against LGBT people in her hometown. And as hard as it is to say this, her refusal should raise serious questions about her support for her gay, bisexual and transgender fans. … Being an artist doesn’t require someone to also be a social justice warrior, and Beyoncé is entitled to avoid political disputes in the name of protecting her public brand. … HERO is gone, now. And for her queer fans who watched and waited while Beyoncé decided it wasn’t in her brand’s interests to speak out in defense of her hometown’s non-discrimination law, all there’s left to do is ask “why not?”
While it is incredibly disappointing HERO has been repealed, it is ludicrous to hold someone who has never been a crusader for a cause as the reason for why something fails.
Team Blackness also discussed why four boys are in solitary confinement in South Carolina, the man who is responsible for the bomb that went off at a Colorado Springs NAACP gets 5 years of prison time, and the story of the Illinois cop whose shooting sparked national outrage actually killed himself.
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srv
I blame Corner Stone.
rikyrah
Instead of boots on the ground…
and putting forth ads debunking the lies of the ones supporting this…..
they blame Beyonce, who never had anything to do with it in the first place.
yep.
ok.
whatever.
piratedan7
just shows that while we believe (here at Balloon Juice) that taking responsibility is a key element in improving the process, not everyone has mastered or accepted that as a valid mechanism and that our side could certainly do a better job at improving the message and combating the lies.
KG
There are a lot of people that want celebrities (particularly celebrities of color) to stand up on issues like this. The comment isn’t particularly very different than those recently made by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar about Michael Jordan. I don’t blame famous people of not being politically active (even as someone who is very intrigued by politics, has a BA in political science and a law degree, I can admit that politics sucks ass). But there are people out there who believe that those whom society has given a voice should use it for things more important than the bottom line. Though, in reality, I’m not sure how much a celebrity will move the dial on issues like this.
Roger Moore
They couldn’t possibly blame themselves for running a bad “For” campaign, so they need to find a convenient scapegoat. Nothing more to see here.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: Everyone knows that if Beyonce told the residents of Houston to jump off a cliff, they’d all be dead within 4 hours tops.
A guy
It certainly is not some dumb singers fault that the people of Houston sent strong message to the LGBT folk. Over 6 in 10 said no thanks. Wow
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore:
And they did indeed run an extremely poor “For” campaign. As someone who was actively looking for information on this issue I can say that the overwhelming majority of interviews and other media was spent on refuting bathroom pervertism fetishists.
The “Anti” side did a good job of picking an easily identifiable horror story (if unfounded in reality, natch) and kept beating the HERO people over the head with it. The Anti’s played to fear and hatred, as usual, and the For’s let them drive the narrative and spent 90% of their time talking down the one negative talking point. I’ll bet that even a majority of those who would usually be inclined to support the underlying initiative could not tell you any solid details.
John Revolta
Beyonce could have gotten us single-payer. She Didn’t. Even. Try.
benw
Houston, you’ve got 99 problems, but Bey ain’t one.
rikyrah
With his ‘Black suspect’…he could have gotten an innocent person killed. Thank goodness there were no Black people around to be swept up in his lies and deceit.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Roger Moore:
Shades of “No on 8.” I wanted to ask for my money back after that fiasco.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@rikyrah:
They would have had to go over to Waukegan to find some.
Keith G
@Corner Stone: You are right in that the campaign was poorly managed. And I understand where the beef w/ Beyonce (BeyBoef) comes from. The performer is a legend in the AA community here (more or less her home town). I understand it, but am not co-signing it.
The vote in AA precincts overwhelmingly sided with the hate mongers. Maybe some spokes-folks more sympathetic to the AA community other than a white lesbian associated with gentrification would have been helpful.
Once again moderates and liberals seemed unprepared for the tooth and nail fight against rationality. The hate mongers were serving up some bilious BS and the AA community, among others, gratefully swallowed.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Keith G:
I realize I’m screaming into the wind, but telling ciswomen that they need to man up and stop worrying about creeps lurking around the women’s bathroom is counterproductive when the police keep arresting creeps who lurk around the women’s bathroom so they can plant cameras in there. Better to emphasize bathroom safety for everyone regardless of gender.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
This is all anyone knows about HERO. This is the only talking point that got any play.
ETA, the fearful bathroom angle
Linnaeus
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
The problem, though, is when trans people get singled out as somehow especially prone to committing sexual assaults, in much the same way as gay and lesbian people are portrayed as predators.
bmcchgo
The mostly White leadership of the Human Rights Campaign was wasting their money preaching to the White LGBT community in Houston and ignoring the Black and Brown people, straight and gay. No wonder they got their ass kicked.
glory b
@Keith G: I understand that there was a transgender AA female who was trying to tell them for some time that they were doing it wrong, but got ignored.
Maybe next time.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): @Mnemosyne (iPhone): You think those issues have not been addressed? You think that there are not reams of data from the 17 states and the over 200 municipalities who have already done this about what the true vectors of danger for ciswomen are?
Your are not screaming into the wind, you are pissing into a bracing gale by repeating avenues of attack used by bigots everywhere. The data does not assert the (obvious) fabrication you that voicing.
We could go down the list and repeat generalized myths about Blacks, Hispanics (pick your poison) ….stories about what ifs based on isolated real events.
That’s what Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick did.
Keith G
@bmcchgo: Go to their website. Your assertion (re Houston Hero) is not a true one. They reached out. They underestimated the willingness to be hateful and believe bullshit.
medrawt
@Keith G:
I don’t think you understood what Mnemosyme was saying. The existence of the data doesn’t mean anything if it isn’t persuasively communicated to the people you’re trying to reach.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Linnaeus:
Don’t get me wrong, it’s creepy straight guys who are the problem. If they ever found a transwoman who was filming people in the women’s bathroom, I’d be astounded.
But the assumption is not that transwomen are perverts, but that perverts will pretend to be women to get their jollies. I think it was Mike Huckabee who made that stupid joke about how he totally would have worn a dress in high school if it meant he could get into the girls locker room, but a lot of straight guys make jokes like that, and some of them aren’t joking.
You could say it’s transphobia because people are assuming that transwomen act and think the same way as straight men, but that doesn’t really solve the underlying problem of women not feeling safe, and telling ciswomen to just get over it isn’t going to move the issue forward. That’s why I think it would be better to tackle it from another angle.
(Also, discussing this with my husband last night, he pointed out that women have a much higher expectation of bathroom privacy than men do because of urinals, so that may be a factor here of activists not getting it as well.)
Keith G
@Keith G:
A line of hate that Trump is using is,
“Of course there are good Mexicans who can eventually become citizens, but right now we can not tell the good ones from the rapists so we have to deport and build a wall to keep them all out so our women and children will not be sexually assaulted.”
Sounds so familiar.
Sad_Dem
Fear of men in the women’s room sank the ERA too. Why yes, I’m old.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Keith G:
So this guy at a North Austin Honda dealership is a figment of my imagination?
http://kxan.com/2015/06/09/honda-dealership-employee-suspected-of-videotaping-women-using-bathroom/
These ARE NOT isolated events. They happen every goddamned day. I personally know people who discovered peepers while they were in the bathroom.
But, hey, go ahead and ignore the fact that I said THE PROBLEM IS NOT CAUSED BY TRANSWOMEN, IT’S CAUSED BY STRAIGHT MEN.
Ignore the fact that there’s actually an opportunity to forge an alliance between ciswomen and transwomen over the issue of bathroom safety and just keep blaming ciswomen for being whiners.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Keith G:
Hey, if you’d rather pride yourself on being on the losing side than figure out a way to put ciswomen and transwomen on the same side by recasting the argument as being about safety for everyone regardless of gender, be my guest.
Linnaeus
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
To me, this is a distinction without a difference. This assumption stems from an underlying suspicion of trans people as somehow not “really” the gender they identify as, and since we can’t really know for sure who’s trans and who’s just being a pervert, we should just assume as a precautionary measure that a trans person is unsafe to be around. This strikes me as a cynical use of the very serious problem of violence against women to marginalize perceived inferiors, much like conservatives become feminists when there’s a Middle Eastern country that they want to invade or bomb.
As for men pretending to be women to get into women’s spaces, I’m sure there is a nonzero number of men who would do that, but I’d question how many would, given the strong cultural taboos against such a self-portrayal. In any event, how does trans access to bathrooms change this? Couldn’t men intent on doing something like this do it now?
None of this is to say that women’s concerns about safety shouldn’t be taken seriously. But there’s a fine line between doing that and reinforcing harmful stereotypes about trans people. There’s a real need to be careful about going that route.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): You are creating (or agreeing to) a barrier to entry that is just too high, especially for the expression of a basic right. There will always be predators (and the vast majority of them are family and friends – not stranger danger – as you and the Duggars know). If the threat of something (which is an inevitability) is allowed reasonable acceptance as a veto, Trans citizens will always be on the outside and marginalized.
And that is what is happening. Fear mongers are using fear (How do you know he is a safe Mexican?…How do you know she in a real trans woman — and by the way aren’t transsexuals all a little creepy anyway?) to drive wedge between citizens and their basic rights.
So what is the Mnemosyne five point plan?
Darkrose
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/how-houston-was-lost-prop_b_8471528.htm
Sounds like they made all of the same mistakes that No on 8 made.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Linnaeus:
That’s why I keep saying the message needs to be about bathroom safety for everyone regardless of gender identification so you can remove the automatic “but boys will be in the girls’ bathroom!” Transwomen don’t want to be filmed or peeped at on the toilet any more than ciswomen do.
But, hey, apparently I’m just as bigoted as Donald Trump for even mentioning that maybe there’s a better way to frame the argument so it acknowledges ciswomen’s lived experiences without discounting transwomen’s safety, so fuck it, I’m done.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
What the fuck? You pull this shit so often it is your trademark.
Pride?
You can’t read my fucking mind so do not presume that you can just so you derail an exchange or score some pissant nonexistent rhetorical point.
I am typing ‘fuck’ a lot today. I blame Tommy.
Linnaeus
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Hold on – I’m not accusing you of being bigoted and, as I said in my prior comment, I don’t think safety should be treated lightly. If I appeared to be doing so, I’m sorry.
What I am saying is that messages about safety, if they’re going to be employed as part of a broader strategy, they need to be done carefully and in as positive a manner as is possible.
Darkrose
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): The issue isn’t that ciswomen are being whiners. It’s that the people raising the issue with regards to transwomen are disingenuous liars. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think most ciswomen spend a lot of time worrying about who’s in the bathroom with them. I know that when I go to the bathroom, my goal is to do what I need to do and get the hell out. I try to minimize eye contact because it’s always awkward. I’m certainly not scoping anyone out, despite being mostly lesbian. The idea that anti-discrimination laws mean that men will suddenly pretend to be female in order to assault women is a completely separate thing from general bathroom safety, and needs to be called out as the derailing tactic it is.
The fact that the people pushing the “OMG BATHROOMS!” line include Mama Duggar should tell you everything you need to know about how much it has to do with actual safety for actual women, cis or trans.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Linnaeus:
It’s not you, it’s Keith G. I should know better by now.
Last comment: yes, the safety argument would have to walk a fine line, but I’m picturing it being a mix of stories from both transwomen and ciswomen to emphasize that it’s about safety for everyone and that transwomen need safety, too, something that I suspect a lot of the knee-jerk “no” folks don’t think about but might be willing to consider if they have a face and a story for a transwoman. Right now, the argument ends up being safety vs a place to pee, which isn’t as compelling as it should be, because even well-meaning people will say, “Well, go pee somewhere else!” without thinking it through that maybe it’s unsafe for a transwoman to have to wander around to find someplace to use the bathroom.
Keith G
@medrawt: The points about unsafe bathrooms were refuted. They were. I heard and read the copy. As always, the Christo-sharians were able to generate more smoke and noise (hence the Beyonce thing above) than the good guys. And the false claims of exaggerated danger will always get a head start in the press (death panels, anyone?). That is a problem faced from the Oval Office all the way down to the smallest school board.
At some point I guess the good guys just have to make their best case and hope that folks will leave the sweet embrace of fear and bigotry and walk out into the clear light of rational thought.
A guy
If I’m a landlord and I refuse to rent to a couple dudes because they have no job and they sue me claiming they are gay and that I’ve discriminated against them can I ask them to go down on eachother in a deposition to make them prove their claim?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Darkrose:
Right, but because the safety argument is so visceral, you need to have a visceral (or at least emotional) counterargument. Facts and figures aren’t going to work when you’re dealing with an emotion. That’s why I think it would work better to say that ciswomen and transwomen both deserve to be safe than to make arguments that make ciswomen feel like their safety is not being taken seriously.
And you don’t need to win over the Mama Duggars, just the 15 percent or so who were on the fence but got pushed over to the other side by the emotionalism of the safety argument.
medrawt
@Keith G: Which is to say, they were not refuted in a way that persuaded the people who needed to be persuaded. So either the refutations were not correctly presented for their target audience, or they had no hope of succeeding over the time frame in question. So, either/or: we have to find ways of presenting the argument which are more persuasive to those who were frightened by the bathroom scenario; we need to keep chipping away with refutations until the bathroom scenario is seen as ridiculous when deployed as an argument against equal protection for trans individuals.
Keith G
Oh and although I shouldn’t have to add this….When I typed:
I was not implying that Mnemosyne was in that embrace. My contention all along was not about the bigotry of anyone who has posted above, but that statements made were noticeably similar to argument made by hatemongers.
Sometimes, very evil people can fashion an argument in a way that hides the true target. The greater public, none the wiser, can pick up that argument and run with it – all the while doing the work of those with ill-intent.
gussie
A discussion of the rights of transfolks that centers on bathroom assault is like a discussion of the rights of gay men that centers on pedophilia.
Keith G
@medrawt: Yup.
That’s why I mentioned death panels. One makes a rational argument, “This is what is and is not true”. At some point one then has to let it go and hope that rational thought wins.
In 2009, irrational fear in the form of death panels won. That was a choice, it seems, made by the willfully ignorant.
In 2015, irrational fear in the form of pant suit wearing, male public restroom stalkers won. That also was a choice….
Darkrose
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): My idea for a counter-ad would be to say, “People would have you believe that passing HERO would make it legal for men to harrass women in the bathroom. This is a lie.” Then have an actual transwoman talk about why the law is important. I think that focusing on bathroom safety in general is kind of like “All Lives Matter”. The bathroom issue is a derailing issue, and pivoting to a focus on it in the context of this particular fight is less important, I think, than calling out the fact that the trans bathroom panic in particular is bullshit.
gussie
@Darkrose: Actually, a good counter-ad would be for *Beyonce* to say that.
Keith G
@gussie: And we have a wrap.
kc
Can you please point me to the portion of the article where the dude says that Beyonce is the one person responsible for the outcome. Thanks.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Darkrose:
We may be talking past each other a bit, because that’s pretty much the kind of ad I’m arguing for. It acknowledges that ciswomen are concerned about their safety and explains why they don’t need to be (ie the law isn’t going to make it legal for someone to harass or spy on you).
My main argument is that the ads need to at least acknowledge that women may have valid safety concerns and address those concerns directly instead of dismissing those concerns out of hand as bigotry or transphobia.
Patricia Kayden
Disappointment that Beyonce said nothing shouldn’t translate into blaming her for the repeal. I’m pretty sure she’s not the only famous Houstonian who kept quiet.
Keith G
BTW There was very uneven fund raising for the campaign. The citiy and it’s allies (without Bey) could not match the money sucking power of the christo-conservatives. And the city cannot write checks to campaign for issues.
Here is an ad that conservative money bought.
Keith G
@Patricia Kayden:
She is the apex
The owner of our pro football team gave money to help buy ads like the totally despicable one linked above.
Darkrose
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I think we differ in that I don’t think the safety issue needs to be addressed except to say that the trans panic argument is a lie. The issue of bathroom safety is a distraction, and until it’s come up as a transphobic argument, I don’t believe it’s been a huge issue for cis women. Yes, there have been some isolated instances, but do you actually worry about creepers when you go to the bathroom? My worry is that there’s not going to be any toilet paper, or that the closest bathroom at my old job literally smelled like raw sewage, or why the fuck people don’t wipe their hair out of the sink.
The real point is that people who shriek about predators using anti-discrimination laws to their advantage ARE LYING, and they need to be called out for their lies. Diverting the conversation to a completely different issue only plays into their hands.
Darkrose
@gussie: No, because part of the point is to make actual transwomen part of the face of the campaign so that people see them as women, and not “men pretending to be women”.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Mnemosyne, there is no need to “forge an alliance”. There are two kinds of ciswomen: the kind who accept reality and know that people, mostly straight, cis males, are already peeping in bathrooms and there are laws against that; and the nutsos who hate trans people for the usual reasons and run up paranoia blue streaks about the bathroom because, deep down, trans people are icky to them.
I have done lobbying on this issue; there is no “deeply concerned about bathrooms but gay friendly” contingent. If they are open to trans women they ALREADY KNOW TRANS WOMEN ARE AT HIGH RISK OF VIOLENCE IN THE MEN’S BATHROOM. Also, they are quite happy NOT to have trans MEN in their bathroom. I mean–hello! Transmen over here. Yoohoo.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): yes yes yes you are stating exactly what transwomen activists are saying
hello, this is what they are already telling people, duh….
not sure why you think trans people would not be saying these things (and their allies)–they are and do
Another Holocene Human
@Darkrose: I think activists should stand outside the bathroom doors demanding to see ID before letting the good folk of Houston in.
OldPunk
Straight white dude here, need some patient souls to help me work through this whole transgender issue. I think my issues with it are probably pretty common, and present a major problem for liberal politicians and liberal policies, such as HERO.
In virtually every way, I’m your typical liberal. Totally supportive of gay rights – makes absolute sense to me. Yet when it comes to transgender issues, and I suppose is the correct liberal stance, I’m just mystified. The crux of the issue seems to be that I am expected to accept a person who is male, but truly wishes he was female (or vice-versa), as a member of the opposite sex, and they aren’t. They plainly, demonstratively, literally aren’t.
Now, there’s lots of caveats to that – I don’t think they should be denied basic civil rights, and I think that the bathroom issue is really a nothingburger, but I can’t escape the feeling that what transgender activists, and many other liberals, expect is for me to call a male who is transgender “she,” and treat him as “her,” and it’s the Orwellianness of that which makes me balk. It’s as if I can be pro-civil rights, pro-gay marriage, pro-women’s rights, and pro-immigrant, but if I refuse to treat a person as if they were the gender they want to be, rather than the gender that they literally are, I am a bigot.
Here is a thought experiment I’ve been churning around in my head: If you believe that a person born a man should be treated as a woman because he identifies as such, do you believe that Rachel Dolezal should be treated as a black woman, even though she was born and raised white, because she identifies as such? If so, aren’t you denying that black Americans face challenges in America that whites do not in such a way as to contribute to a distinct identity through common experiences? If not, what is the difference?
I am willing to admit that I am probably missing important points, and invite you to response in this thread. Yes, I’ve seen the Last Week Tonight segment. I am willing to bet that many, many other Americans share my views, and that if the Democratic Party does not find a way to explain this to people like me, without calling me a bigot, it will be in trouble eventually.
AxelFoley
@Roger Moore:
Like they blamed black folks for Prop 8 in CA back in 2008.
Keith G
@OldPunk:
It seems like you are.
The bolding is mine.
I need to get to work, but in short: Gender dysphoria (look it up) is a real medical diagnosis. It is not about “wishing” as in, “I truly wish I were 20 lbs lighter”. In is about being psychologically unable to integrate one’s physical gender with one’s emotional self. (and I apologize for the rough generality of this description)
Please take a few and look this up. I am an old guy who was a gay rights activist in the 70’s. Years back, it took me a bit of time to get over an initial uneasiness about this at a time when info was much harder to access. There was so much misinformation.
But your statement does show how votes such as the one this week can be problematic.
Keith G
A fleeting thought: Is the use of the term ‘ciswoman’ inadvertently promoting bias?
It is almost as if one were saying “real woman”.
Can that type of separation lead facilitate equality?
Paul in KY
@John Revolta: Beyoncé!!!! (shaking fist in Northeast direction)
Paul in KY
@Keith G: Hakeem Olajuwon would have been a good spokesman. He is beloved in Houston.
OldPunk
Keith G,
That seems like a lot of head-shaking to me, without really addressing the substance of my concern.
So, yes: we agree that transsexuals are genuine in their belief that they do not identify as the gender of their physical bodies. My question is, to what extent do the rest of us have to accommodate that, and is it bigotry to say that as much as that person may identify as a member off the opposite sex, the fact is that they simply are not?
Keith G
@OldPunk: You pose what would be a very interesting topic for a thread here.
To your ending point, it seems to me one would have to address that based much importance or believe one puts into the concept that gender and sex are two different concepts but both are equally important to the formation of who a person is.
If one believes that one’s sex is simply the physical characteristics (plumbing) that one is born with, but gender is the entire personality complex that one develops would it matter what the plumbing is. Since our bodies are not who we are. Who we are is a function of the emotional and intellectual behaviour created in our mind.
Anyway, that’s just a bit o idle speculation tossed out while I’m waiting for lunch to arrive.