Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Trump and Transgender Students' Rights
Today, I came across this NYT article about Trump's desire to reverse anti-discrimination policies for transgender students, expected to come out as early as today. Reading this article reminded me of our discussion in class about Christine Jorgensen and how in the post-war period, American society was fascinated by the science of changing one's sex organs and in many ways was more accepting of transexual women than homosexual men. Yet, this is clearly not true today, as is evidenced by issues such as the "bathroom debate." While Trump claims to be "fine with" same-sex marriage legalization, he intends to leave trans-related policy to the states.
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Thank you for sharing this! Here is a Daily Show video I was watching that talks about the "bathroom debate" with Laverne Cox. She says "I am here, trans people are here, we've been here since the beginning of time, we have the right to exist in public space." This is a historic claim! This is the stuff our class talks about! That's amazing.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cc.com/video-clips/wnyxv2/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-laverne-cox---exploring-all-sides-of-justice-on--doubt----extended-interview
I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that they were more accepting of trans women than gay men in the post war period. Their fascination with one celebrity (young, pretty, "passing," having had surgery) doesn't automatically mean they had the same attitudes towards other trans women, or that they were in general more accepting of them. I don't think we've had enough information yet to come to a conclusion on that front.
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