Q: Who Would Want to Build a Career With a Trans Job?

A: Some of the best and the brightest, that's who.

As many of you know, NCTE just completed an exhaustive search for a policy analyst to add to our staff. When we began the search I was hopeful that we would get 50-60 applicants to choose from. I assumed we would get plenty of transgender-identified people who wanted to join us, and I expected that we would get many lesbian, gay, and bisexual applicants who are not transgender but who embrace the full LGBT movement.

What I didn’t expect was the sheer volume of applicants, their varied backgrounds, and the large number of people who have no direct connection to transgender rights. We received over 200 applications for this one position. We heard from academics, lawyers, researchers, social workers, and activists of all stripes. There were human rights activists, civil rights activists, and social justice junkies. We heard from longtime workers, career-switchers and newly-minted college grads looking to jump-start their careers.

I’m sure that some of this has to do with the current state of the economy. But that alone can’t account for this unprecedented level of interest. For some of the applicants, they were moved to action after watching family or friends transition and then struggle with inequality. But many people simply consider transgender rights to be the forefront of the civil rights movement. Today, a job working for transgender equality is seen as a career builder and that is a great position for all of us to be in.

TSA in the news....

MSNBC has an article about the Transportation Security Agency’s (TSA) new program called Secure Flight. The article can be found here.

This new program requires all airline passengers to submit their full legal name, date of birth, and (of all things) gender to TSA before they are issued a boarding pass. TSA will then take this information and check it against their federal No-Fly list to make sure that you, the passenger, aren’t a terrorist.

It is just a passing mention, but the author of this MSNBC article writes “(I wonder what transgender travelers will be asked to do.)” This particularly piqued my interest because this issue is exactly the issue that I have been working on for the last week. What does TSA expect transgender travelers to do? If the passenger has an old gender marker on their documentation, are they going to be stopped? If a passenger has different gender markers on various forms of identification, will they face trouble at security checkpoints?

I’ve been talking to some TSA officials about this for the last week or so. Apparently the answer is no; transgender travelers should face no new travel barriers as a result of Secure Flight. Security protocols do not change, and it seems that neither TSA nor airline personnel are even expected to verify that the date of birth and gender you submit when booking flights is consistent with what your identification says. Why, then, do they make us provide this information?

I’m not convinced that this process will move forward without flaws, and I’m not convinced that gender is even necessary to maintaining security on our flights. I’m going to keep working on this and update you when I have better answers. I just thought this was an interesting mention of an issue that we’re working on, so I wanted to share with you all. Keep your eye out on our website for resources on how TSA’s new flight security procedures affect transgender people and how to avoid delays at the airport.

Patrick

Gender matters

On CNN's website coverage of Sonia Sotomayor, under the heading Controversial statements, they quote her saying, "Our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging." I've heard over and over again discussions in the media today about whether gender matters in judicial decisions.

We know, of course, that gender does matter. In fact, it is pretty baffling to me that some people argue that it doesn't. Or that this is a "controversial statement" as opposed to a simple statement of fact. Anyhow, an interesting day of gender in the news.

Being Allies

Last night, a progressive ally was asking me about NCTE's role in working for a transgender-inclusive ENDA this year and why LGBT organizations were so involved in this when this is "our" issue. I think her concern was that allies not speak for transgender people, rather than letting us speak for ourselves.

It is easy to get swept up in the publicity and fervor about why we should have a trans-inclusive bill and all of the politicking about trans people, but it's important to remember that inclusive means that it will address both sexual orientation AND gender identity. The passage of an inclusive hate crimes bill and an inclusive ENDA also mark major victories for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.

ENDA is a major priority in all of the work NCTE is doing this year. We'll continue to do everything we can as we work with folks across the country to educate our lawmakers about why transgender people need protection against job discrimination. And our lesbian, gay and bisexual allies are giving that same message, which is so important. As trans people, we also need to be committed to protections for all the folks whose jobs are at risk because of their sexual orientation. Discrimination is wrong, period.

Okay, off of my soap box and back to work.

Whole Body Imaging at Airports

Today, NCTE signed on to a letter, with other organizations concerned with privacy, to the Department of Homeland Security calling for the suspension of a policy that would utilize Whole Body Imaging as the primary screening technique at airports. Additional time is needed to evaluate privacy and security concerns.

The technology allows TSA personnel to view what is under a person's clothing; in other words, a naked body. This raises major questions about privacy, of course. NCTE is concerned about sensitivity to transgender bodies which appear on the screen as well as the fact that this policy could essentially require travelers to reveal their unclothed bodies to government employees in order to board an airplane.

The machines are currently in use in 19 airports and the primary screening method in 6 of those.

You can read about whole body imaging on the TSA website.

CNN also has a lead story about this today, with a poll (about having way down on the right side) asking, "Would you be willing to be subjected to "whole-body imaging," which critics say performs 'a virtual strip search'?"

A little perspective helps a lot

One of the things I'm working on is updating our website. We've got so many issues in progress that it requires a lot more time to try to keep current on everything, not to mention the fact that it just plain needs maintenance. After all, I learned web design because the NCTE website got handed to me one day a few years ago and I knew nothing at that point. It means that all of my mistakes as I was learning are coded right into it; it is kind of a record of my own learning curve as I got a certificate in web design and learned a whole lot more.

But beyond the personal, our website is also a record of transgender progress. I was working on the news pages, moving things to archives and it gave me a chance to reflect on how monumental some of those early victories really were. I also revisited those days when our news seemed pretty bleak--a series of bad regulations that made things worse for trans people and there didn't seem to be much change on the horizon. What a cool thing to be moving those stories out of the way to make more space for us to report positive events. It's not all smooth sailing now, of course, but we are moving forward.

The website updates are more functional fixes than glamorous changes right now, but that pretty much suits our organization, too.