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Art Of Politics

"Togetherness"

By Judy Osborne


Isn't it weird how useful it is to have an enemy?

Having somebody to hate just brings people together!

If you have an idea for a social movement like purifying a race, getting rid of the Bill of Rights, or making the US into a theocracy, you must have an enemy in order to get people to follow you down your chosen path. If an enemy isn't available, you've got to invent one. Hitler chose Jews, Joe McCarthy picked on Communists, Pat Robertson preaches a threat from gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transpeople.

In Washington state we're lucky that way. The religious right has been trying to pass laws for years to discriminate against us, teach that we're bad people, take away our kids. It's not hard to find an enemy. We don't have to invent one.

Our good fortune was illustrated this year when lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender leaders decided to launch a proactive fight for a state law to outlaw job discrimination against all of us. T-people came out to help collect enough signatures to place the issue on the ballot.

Some of us were surprised to find that many of the t-people in our little community didn't even know each other. Small wonder when you think about it, though. Our commonality is that we somehow blur the rigid boundaries of gender. Some of our differences are that we range from transsexual to occasional crossdresser; we're male/female, female/male or in between; recreational to intense; wealthy to homeless; somehow gay or straight depending on how one manages to keep track; politically involved to just out having fun; fully accepting of diversity or less than accepting.

What brought us together was the opportunity to do something positive after years of reacting to religious-right initiatives which were trying to bring us down. We had an enemy and a mission. By working together and joining with lots of other people, we eventually gathered the 229,000 signatures needed to force a popular vote on the job fairness issue.

Our melding was not smooth. Virtually all transpeople have been hurt enough in their lives to cause them to hold something back when encountering unfamiliar people, and we were no different. We circled each other warily for a while, united solely by our commitment to participate in the campaign for job equality. With considerable passion we disagreed about a lot of things, but we found ways to compromise. Before too long we had fought enough battles to burnish the rough edges off our prejudices. We discovered we had much in common.

Deciding that all this togetherness shouldn't go to waste, we began forming a loosely-structured, highly-democratic forum called T-People. No dues, no leader, no board -- just a mission statement that reads: "build community, fight oppression, have fun."

Transgender inclusion in the job protection initiative is controversial because the religious right is expected to exploit the cross-gender theme to shoot down job protection for everyone (on TV we'll soon be seeing fetish-dressed receptionists, guys in dresses teaching school, stuff like that). Because of the controversy, we began T-People's activities by telling gays, lesbians and bisexuals who we are and why we deserve fair treatment.

In a statement to Hands Off Washington coalitions statewide we explained why anti-gay, anti-trans forces are most effective when they can divide us. For instance, "In the early days of the women's liberation movement, lesbian baiting was used by the right wing to stall women's progress ... As long as the label 'lesbian' could be hurled against any woman to keep her in her place, women's liberation could not go forward ... The way to disarm the label was to fight for lesbian rights." Similarly, "The only way to confront gender baiting attacks is to defend transgender rights."

Our next mission was to create an event attracting t-people and others to focus our energy and give us visibility. Pride weekend was upon us, so that Friday evening we planned a rally complete with music, speeches, comedy and drag. More than 200 transpeople and others came and enjoyed the action. Seattle Gay News suggested that we were "adding another stripe to the Rainbow Flag."

In the meantime, gay drag-queen Dan Savage had been repeatedly attacking the Hands-Off initiative because transpeople were part of it, making his opinions known through mainstream radio and newspapers as well as in The Stranger, his normal venue. He argued that "people who support gay and lesbian civil rights could be talked out of voting for this particular initiative because the law would protect the 'right' of, say, a high school gym teacher to decide he's a girl on Tuesday...and a boy on Wednesday."

After remaining silent for a while, hoping Savage would go away, gay and trans-community leaders felt we had to respond. In a letter to the editor of Seattle Gay News, T-People wrote "Savage's argument about the gym teacher is similar to a technique the religious right used in their initiative campaigns. Videos ... featuring extreme and outrageous scenes filmed at gay public events, were shown in churches all over Washington during the 608/610 campaign (one of the previous efforts by the religious right to deny us rights) to convince voters of all the horrible things that would happen if gay-rights laws were not banned.

"The technique can be likened to a video presenting scenes of brothels, S&M dungeons, Mardi Gras and Tailhook parties to demonstrate heterosexuality. Savage's version pushes the imagined effect of I-677 to its most extreme case. The history of laws which protect transpeople against discrimination in Minnesota, Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Cedar Rapids, and Iowa City has revealed no such incidents."

We have gathered the 229,000 signatures we needed, so our initiative to outlaw job discrimination will be on November's ballot. Now we're engaged in a political campaign seeking the million or so votes necessary to make it law, and T-People are helping. After we win, we intend to go right on building community, fighting oppression and having fun!

Comments? E-mail Judy at heyjude@eskimo.com