Over on TPMCafe E.J. Graff offers the best argument for an all-encompassing ENDA amendment that I've seen yet:
This is a topic that's been debated ferociously within the community for fifteen years. The conclusion: lesbians and gay men won't be protected unless the bill also includes gender identity. That's the reason LGBT groups can't knuckle under and accept the mini-bill.
Here's the idea. When there is discrimination against, or recoil from, lesbians and gay men, it's not just because we fall in love with others of the same sex. It's because we don't neatly fit our gender identities; we're often "genderqueer" as well. Our girls tend to be boyish; our boys tend to be girly. Not always, and not all of us. But gay men and lesbians who "pass"— who are "straight-acting," in the terminology, who more closely fit sex stereotypes (like me, despite my short hair)—run into the least trouble on the job. It's the fey men (and, depending on the situation, the butch women) who run into trouble. And that's the ground on which they need the most protection: gender identity.
An expanded ENDA without gender identity included doesn't really mean anything, since so much of the discrimination directed at the gay community is based not on actual knowledge that someone identifies as homo- or bisexual, or seeing direct evidence thereof, but on the suspicion that one might be. And that suspicion often comes from assumptions about how a man or woman should speak, interact with others, groom themselves, or dress -- all of which falls solidly in the gender identity realm.
Voting on ENDA was scheduled for this week, but it was taken off the agenda. The stated reason is that representatives were too busy, but it's really about the split between those who support including gender identity in the protections and those who are content with the truncated version. The apprehension about including gender identity is based around the idea that legislators are on board with protecting the LGB portion of the acronym, but they don't really "get" transgender -- if we include transgender, they argue, the amendment might lose supporters. This is why Graff's argument is spot on. To be effective, the amendment should be about protecting gender identity and expression, which would include women who don't wear makeup or heels and men who do, along with people who actually identify as transgender. Framing it this way might help legislators "get" why the T is imperative.
--Kate Sheppard
