Montgomery County Human Rights Commission

[Guest ThePhoenix]

I'm going up before the Montgomery County, Maryland Human Rights Commission on November 17 at the request of their director. The objective is to convince them of the need to schedule training on trans* issues, particularly cultural competency and ways to handle some of the common issues that arise with the trans* community, e.g., how to handle trans* people being allowed into locker rooms where people might see one another nude.

It would be helpful to have some stories about how interactions with the EEOC, state civil rights commissions, and other agencies have gone awry. If anyone has such stories and would be willing to share, I'd be very thankful if they would send me a PM.

Thank you.

[Guest ThePhoenix]

Today's conversation went very well. It was a tough room, not surprisingly. This was the first time anyone has ever presented to this body about the needs of the trans* community and they had many questions and were somewhat skeptical that there could be such a downtrodden group of people without them knowing about it. But here is the outcome:

I've been charged with developing a plan to provide relief and improve the status of the County's trans* community. This plan is to provide for specific actions to be taken by the Office of Human Rights and the Human Rights Commission.

This is a pretty amazing result to come from a talk about cultural competency. I believe that such a plan needs to be developed by more than just me, so I plan to organize a community organizing meeting to discuss and develop it.

Look for another post in the next day or so as I wrap my mind around exactly what I need to organize.

[Carolyn Marie]

Today's conversation went very well. It was a tough room, not surprisingly. This was the first time anyone has ever presented to this body about the needs of the trans* community and they had many questions and were somewhat skeptical that there could be such a downtrodden group of people without them knowing about it..

That they profess to not know about it is shocking, given all the hoopla surrounding the Maryland TG rights bill, the recent murder of a transwoman in Baltimore, and the beating of the transwoman at the Baltimore McDonald's a couple of years ago. For folks professing to care about human rights, they should be ashamed. You have a lot of work to do, hon.

Carolyn Marie

[Guest ThePhoenix]

Today's conversation went very well. It was a tough room, not surprisingly. This was the first time anyone has ever presented to this body about the needs of the trans* community and they had many questions and were somewhat skeptical that there could be such a downtrodden group of people without them knowing about it..

That they profess to not know about it is shocking, given all the hoopla surrounding the Maryland TG rights bill, the recent murder of a transwoman in Baltimore, and the beating of the transwoman at the Baltimore McDonald's a couple of years ago. For folks professing to care about human rights, they should be ashamed. You have a lot of work to do, hon.

Carolyn Marie

Sadly, this sort of thing is pretty normal. The human rights commission is drawn from the general public. It's level of knowledge reflects the level of knowledge among the general public. And the general public does not know squat about trans* people.