As a society and as an LGBT community, I don’t think we communicate clearly enough about transgender issues… even at the most basic level.
I think it’s even tough for those who one would assume know how to handle and discuss the topic the best.
In fact, The Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) only Transgender board member, Donna Rose, resigned from her post last year over the language the organization chose to use with respect to its stance on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. There is certainly continuing dialogue on this issue between HRC and the transgender community (as Rich pointed out yesterday) but that’s not the focus of this blog post.
Having said that, I was up late one night several weeks ago and stumbled upon an interesting documentary on TV about transgender men and women. After watching the program, it really got me thinking about just how complex the transgender issue is. A number of the transgender men and women in the documentary had blue collar jobs. I thought to myself, "You know, I work in a white collar atmosphere that is rather liberal compared to many industries and even we don’t often discuss transgender issues." This aspect of the documentary inspired me to do some research into how corporations attempt to communicate with employees who are transgender.
Having remembered that Ms. Rose had relinquished her board membership at HRC, I began my search on HRC.org. I wanted to see what types of resources are offered by the largest LGBT organization. I imagine HRC would be the first stop for most corporations who want to learn more about transgender issues.
I discovered that HRC.org maintains a particularly robust section dedicated to transgender issues in the workplace. The page is entitled "Resources for Transgender Employees."
The language describing this section of the HRC Web site reads:
"Transgender employees can present unique workplace challenges. Transitioning employees – those who are moving outside the socially accepted standards of dress, physiology and/or behavior of their birth gender – often cannot avoid challenging community standards about what is gender-appropriate self-identification, appearance or expression. Furthermore, little legal protection exists for workplace gender non-conformity."
There is even a video series, specifically developed for corporate leaders, that features Donna Rose discussing transgender issues. It’s great to see that her innovative work is still being promoted at heralded by HRC even though she decided to remove herself from the board. The introduction to the video series features Joe Solmonese, President of HRC, as well as Bob Berman, Chief Human Resources Officer and Senior Vice President at Eastman Kodak. The video featured on HRC.org was actually captured at Donna’s presentation to staff at Eastman Kodak.
You can watch the introduction to the video series by clicking here or visit this page on HRC.org to watch all of the video installments.
I highly recommend watching these videos if you want to learn more about transgender issues from an employee and workplace perspective. I learned a lot from watching them.
The transgender community needs the support of its LGB brothers and sisters. We owe it to the transgender community to understand and care about their challenges. They may be a minority within the LGBT community but the essence of our collective struggle for understanding is embedded within the complexity of their particular challenge, in my opinion.
The truth is that no one in the LGBT community will ever truly achieve equality until the day that gender identity, sexual orientation, and every combination of the two is respected by society at large.
At the end of the day, sexual orientation and gender identity may not be the exact same issue.
However, it’s important to remember that our LGBT minority status is ultimately based on the fact that our individual sexual identities don’t fit into the "norm" as determined by society.
Some LGB members of our community may believe that gender identity has nothing to do with sexual orientation:
"I know what my sex is and I know what my sexual orientation is. What does gender identity have to do with me?"
I think that view is too simplistic.
In reality, gender identity and sexual orientation are, in my view, inextricably woven together from a cultural and communications perspective.
That’s why stereotypes exist, right?
"All gay men act effeminate and all lesbians act butch."
Those stereotypes exist because of our society’s long held views on gender identity (what is male and what is female) as it relates to sexual orientation.
Therefore, it seems logical to me that learning how to communicate effectively about transgender issues is a necessary and important step in our entire community’s struggle for equality. We have to appreciate and tackle both intertwined issues — gender identity and sexual orientation — if we all hope to advance.
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