Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance (INTRAA) » Vault

Whose Feminism Is It Anyway: An Article Reading and Discussion – 2/20

admin — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 06:02:26 +0000

We all have genders. We all have races. And we all have ways that we go about thinking about those things. Emi Koyama’s piece “Whose feminism is it anyway? The unspoken racism of the trans inclusion debate” addresses the specific issues of race and racism in the transgender community and transgender activism. This piece will bring a new perspective on both gender and race to the table.

This event is a discussion of the article, available on Emi Koyama’s personal website.

Refreshments will be provided.

Vagina Monologues – 2/15 and 2/16

admin — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 08:01:08 +0000

UUI’s Social Justice Committee presents “The Vagina Monologues” on Feb. 15 and 16 at 7pm, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Indianapolis, 615 W. 43rd Street.

Tickets are $15 each, and $10 for students/seniors (on sale at UUI on Feb. 3rd and 10th from 10am-12:30pm, and at the door OR emailjennilewhite@yahoo.com for reservations).

Proceeds will benefit Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance (INTRAA) to end violence against transwomen. Partially underwritten by The Beacon Fund of UUI.

Starring: Diana Asberry-Ferber, Robin Chestek, Lucy Fields, Aimee Hill, Cindy Jackson, Colleen Kelly, Lesley Meier, Jessica Miller, Tina Nehrling, Angel Robertsson, Stacy Robinson, Anita Saunders, Jill Whelan, Becca White, Jenni White, Estelle Wilson and Marsha Wilson.

V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. Furher information can be found at www.vday.org.

New Jersey Passes Gender Identity/Expression Hate Crime and School Anti-Bullying Law

admin — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:01:54 +0000

On January 7, 2008, the New Jersey General Assembly passed A4591/S2975 by a large majority of 65-10. This follows action last week in the state Senate where the bill passed unanimously 35-0. The law that passed will now go to Governor Corzine’s desk for his expected signature. The bill adds gender identity and expression to the state’s hate crime law and gives teeth to New Jersey’s safe school, anti-bullying laws. According to Garden State Equality specifically, “the new law does the following: 1. Adds ‘gender identity or expression’ as a protected class to the state hate crimes law. 2. Updates other parts of the hate crimes law by adding ‘national origin’ as a protected category, which thus far has been included in the law by interpreting ‘ethnicity’ to include such; and substitutes the more sensitive term ‘disability’ for ‘handicap.’ 3. Specifies that a ‘mistake of fact’ by a defendant committing a hate crime is not a defense. 4. Requires two hours of hate-crimes sensitivity training for all new police officers. 5. Specifies suggested sentencing options to which judges can sentence defendants, such as anti-hate sensitivity training. 6. Creates a study Commission on Bullying in Schools, which has nine months to investigate the problem and make recommendations to the Governor and legislature for further legislation. 7. Requires schools post their anti-bullying policies on their websites, and to distribute their anti-bullying policies, within 120 days after enactment of the law.”

NCTE’s New “SSA Gender No-Match Letters” Guide

admin — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 04:01:46 +0000

NCTE has released a new guide for transgender individuals who have received a letter under the Social Security Administration’s unfair gender "no-match" employment letter policy. Social Security Gender No-Match Letters and Transgender Employees – Information for Employees explains what Social Security no-match letters are and what transgender employees can do if the subject of one of these letters. Anyone who has been confused, curious, or concerned about Social Security gender no-match letters will find this information clarifying. More information about No-Match Letters and Transgender Employees can be found on NCTE’s website.

Blog Post by INTRAA President Picked Up by Washington Blade

admin — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 06:12:21 +0000

Our work includes many outreach activities and writings. In one such activity, our current president, Vivian Benge, wrote a blog post for , an LGBT blog, about change in the Department of Homeland Security’s “no match” policy. This post has been picked up by the Washington Blade. See the post on the Washington Blade website in the right-hand column. Read the post over at Bilerico.com.

Indiana BMV Stops Practice of Using Gender to Invalidate Driver Licenses

admin — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 07:11:40 +0000

December 1, 2007

Information Alert From INTRAA and the National Center for Transgender Equality

The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) has agreed to immediately discontinue using gender mismatches solely as a reason for invalidating driver licenses. Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance (INTRAA) and the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) successfully worked with officials at the Indiana BMV to bring about this policy change. On November 6th, the Indiana BMV began issuing warning letters to people in the BMV database whose information did not match Social Security Administration’s (SSA) records. Information compared between the two databases included name, Social Security number, date of birth, and gender. Letters instructed recipients to resolve discrepancies within 30 days or risk losing their driving privileges.

INTRAA and NCTE brought to the Indiana BMV’s attention that Social Security uses a different standard for changing gender markers than what the BMV uses. Because of these differing standards, some transgender people legitimately have an Indiana driver license or identification card with one gender marker and SSA records with a different gender marker. Through the work of INTRAA and NCTE, Indiana BMV Commissioner Ron Stiver realized the difficulties surrounding gender marker verification and issued an immediate policy change. The newest policy is that gender mismatches will be ignored by the BMV.

Indiana driver license and identification card holders who have other SSA mismatches besides gender, such as name or date of birth, will still need to resolve those discrepancies. Those with mismatches besides gender, and who fail to get their SSA and BMV records to match, will be sent a second letter. This second letter will advise them that unless the mismatch is resolved their driving license will become invalid, effective 30 days from the date of the second letter. The Indiana BMV does not plan to issue “disregard” notices to people who received letters for gender-only mismatches. However, people who had gender only as a mismatch will not be issued a second letter.

In the future people who have gender and a second type of information mismatch (for instance, name) will be sent letters that mention only the non-gender mismatches. INTRAA and NCTE applaud the Indiana BMV for its quick response and for resolving a problem that affected a sizable proportion of transgender people in Indiana.

If you have received one of these letters and are looking for information or assistance, please contact us at info@intraa.org or jotto@nctequality.org.

DHS Drops New “No Match” Enforcement Procedures

admin — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 05:11:33 +0000

November 20, 2007

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has dropped its attempt at enforcing their new “No Match” enforcement procedures, issued in mid-August. The enforcement procedures encountered obstacles from the beginning with a lawsuit by labor and immigration groups blocking the rule’s progress only a couple weeks after their issuance. During the rule’s open-comment period, many organizations, including NCTE, filed comments opposing adoption of the rules, arguing that the procedures would unfairly jeopardize workers’ jobs.

The DHS rules would have required employers to either fire employees or face stiff penalties when employee records do not match information in the Social Security Administration (SSA) database, such as name, Social Security number, or gender. Transgender employees who are listed as one gender in SSA records, but who live and work in another gender, would have been one of the groups at greater risk of losing their jobs as a result of the DHS enforcement procedures.

Last month, on October 10th, the enforcement procedures were dealt a severe blow when the presiding judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the rules, finding that the rules would cause irreparable harm to both innocent workers and employers. DHS signaled its abandonment of these rules on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, by requesting that a judge put the lawsuit on hold until March 2008. DHS plans to introduce new, replacement enforcement procedures, which DHS believes will have a better chance of standing up to legal scrutiny, in December 2007.

Though the DHS enforcement procedures have been pulled, SSA will continue to compare their database against employer-submitted information, as it has for years before the issuance of the DHS rules. SSA has stricter standards for changing gender markers than many departments of motor vehicles, which has lead to employers of some transgender workers receiving notification of gender no-matches. For many of those transgender workers, this notification has effectively unwillingly revealed them as transgender in their workplace.

NCTE provided expertise on No-Matches to the groups who brought the lawsuit blocking the DHS procedures. NCTE will continue to monitor the situation and is working to stop “gender” as a category for data comparison in SSA records.

The National Center for Transgender Equality is a national social justice organization devoted to ending discrimination and violence against transgender people through education and advocacy on national issues of importance to transgender people. The National Center for Transgender Equality is a 501(c)3 organization. For more information, please visit www.nctequality.org.

White House releases statement advising Presidential veto of ENDA

admin — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 03:10:59 +0000

The White House has released a statement describing reasoning for supporting a Presidential veto of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act HR 3685. Issues discussed include religious exemptions, effects on the Defense of Marriage Act, and the theoretical difficulties in enforcement of the bill. Contact the President directly regarding ENDA to share your thoughts: 202-456-1111 or comments@whitehouse.gov See the text of their reasoning below.

Floor statement on ENDA from Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY)

admin — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 05:10:37 +0000

GENDER-IDENTITY INCLUSIVENESS IN ENDA — (House of Representatives – October 23, 2007) — Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, later on this week or perhaps early next week, this House will embark on the latest chapter in our Nation’s history of extending the civil rights that all Americans should be entitled to to one other group. We will be considering the Employment Nondiscrimination Act. It is an effort to make sure that people are not discriminated against in their workplace because of their sexual orientation, because of their gender identity. It is something that is intuitive to so many Americans, and, frankly, the overwhelming number of Americans. And it is an example of how sometimes we in this House lead on civil rights issues and sometimes we follow. In this case, it is a little bit of each. Under ENDA, we will be following to a large degree. Hundreds of companies, including virtually all of the Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies, already recognized fundamentally that it is good business to judge people by the quality of their work, their intellect, their drive, by what they bring to the business, not what their sexual orientation or gender identity is. Overwhelming numbers of companies, and not just companies that you would describe as being progressive, but companies from all across the political spectrum, financial services groups like American Express and J.P. Morgan and Lehman. You have companies like Clear Channel Communication, Coca-Cola, Nationwide Insurance, Nike, Microsoft. These are all companies that, when they write the contracts for their other workers, it is fundamental to them that there will be no discrimination based on someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. For these companies and for the 90 percent or so of American people that responded to a Gallup poll in 2007, employment nondiscrimination based on gender identity and based on sexual orientation is obvious; it is not even an innovation. But we are going to be leading in some important ways. There are still about 30 percent of people who respond to polls who are members of the lesbian, bisexual and transgender community who say that they experience discrimination at the workplace regularly. Some of them, 25 percent, say they experience it on a regular basis. Why should that be? Is that an American value? Is it an American value to say we should discriminate on someone based on the sense of who they love or how they express it? Of course not. So, for those men and women throughout all 50 States, we will be leading later on this week when we pass the Employment Nondiscrimination Act. But it is very important that we also realize that we are leading on another element to this discussion. There is an active discussion going on in this Chamber and elsewhere whether or not to include gender identity in the same category we include sexual orientation. I say unequivocally the answer is yes. There are people who every day experience discrimination because of their gender identity. Susan Stanton spent 14 years as the Largo, Florida city manager; 14 years, obviously doing a good job, rehired, reappointed. Susan was once Steve Stanton. When he started hormone therapy and planned to become a woman, was fired. Diane Schroer, 25 years of distinguished service in the Army as David. Recorded 450 parachute jumps, received the Defense Superior Service Medal, hand picked to lead a classified national security operation. Retired and was offered a job with a private homeland security consulting firm. The offer was rescinded when Schroer explained he was transgender and wanted to begin the job as a woman. But the question has come up: If we can’t include gender identity in this bill, should we do anything at all? Should we take half a loaf. My colleagues, I think the answer is no. I think we cannot toss this element of an important civil rights coalition to the side. We have to make sure, particularly in the context of us doing what is largely symbolic, there is no sense that the Senate is going to act on this, and certainly no sense that the President of the United States and this administration is going to. Maybe what we should say is we are in this together. If we are going to make a symbolic stand, the symbolic stand should be let’s pass a one House bill with only part of the protections. Let’s let the symbolic message be that we are sticking together, that when we say “GLBT,” we mean it. And we should do something else. We should also make it very clear to those watching this discussion that we are not going to negotiate against ourselves. We are not going to say if we toss this element or that element off to the side, maybe we will be able to get what we need. There are some things that are immutable, some civil rights that are immutable. This is one of them. We are going to stick together and pass an inclusive ENDA, or we are going to come back again and do it right.

ACTION ALERT UPDATE: Houses passes non-trans-inclusive ENDA

admin — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 05:10:12 +0000

The House has voted on and passed the non-trans-inclusive ENDA. You all did amazing work putting in contacts to your representatives, and should be proud of the fuss we caused. Keep up the good work, making yourselves heard on Capitol Hill. Read more about the bill and its effect on the trans community at UnitedENDA.