by Cathryn Platine
Posted on Pam's House Blend
It's over in the House but potential disaster still is possible in the
Senate on ENDA for women's rights. That's right, women's rights not
trans rights. I wrote here before about an almost unnoticed (except by
the right) judicial principle called "legislative intent" that carries
as much weight in court decisions as precedence does. If a judge
decides that the legislative action that led to enactment of a law was
not intended to include certain aspects, he is then free to ignore
prior decisions. Our federal court system is now packed with right
wing judges thanks to almost seven years of Bush and company.
The
landmark case that finally gave teeth to Title VII regarding women's
employment rights was Price v Waterhouse. Sex being added to Title VII
was almost a last minute afterthought and for years proving sex
discrimination in employment was an uphill battle until this decision.
In Price v Waterhouse a woman employee constantly passed over for
promotion sued because the reasons given were her "masculine" manner of
dress and personality and failure to comply with being a good doormat.
While this case eventually opened the door to limited employment rights
for transsexuals, it also blew open the door for all women who reject
the Donna Reed model of womanhood. On the off chance that ENDA
survives the Senate and doesn't get veto'ed by the worst president in
American history, had the Baldwin amendment been voted on and defeated
that would have set a legislative intent of not covering the very
issues Price v Waterhouse addressed and thus set back women's rights
ten years. While our liberals continually overlook this consideration,
the right does not.
I am an ardent and unapologetic feminist.
While I also did my time as a trans-activist, I see those issues tied
to women's rights issues and thus put my own efforts towards that end.
Today I am disabled as a direct result of on the job transphobia I had
no legal right to fight but the trans-activist community was never very
comfortable with my feminism and still isn't so I feel quite
disconnected to any alleged "trans community" but the ENDA debate was a
feminist issue not a trans one despite all the rhetoric thrown around
the past couple of months.
HRC's actions the past two months
were just as misogynistic as they were transphobic just as many gay men
are both as we have seen demonstrated by the Chris Cranes and
company.
These two are often joined at the hip. Barney Frank is further a
deliberate liar and transphobe who knows full well that never in the
history of any civil rights legislation has a group voluntarily left
behind part of their community; that incrementalism refers to the whole
group accepting less than full progress in order to make it up later
and NOT splitting your community into fragments seeking rights for only
part. The explosion of gay men trying to justify what was out and
out betrayal of all who do not conform "gender stereotypes" includes
every butch lesbian and nelly queen gay man, not just transgendered and
transsexuals reminds me of the gay men who actually turned in those
taking part in Stonewall to prove they were among the "good ones".
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