Activists Arrested At Dick Durbin’s Office During Sit In

05/21/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
Andrea Crain, Kevin Connaghan, Lindsey Dietzler, Roger Fraser, Judy Heithmar, Brent Holman-Gomez, Nik Maciejewski, Rachael McIntosh, Corrine Mina, Michael Oboza, Samantha Pajor, Sherry Wolf, Danelle Wylder. Those were the activists arrested in Senator Dick Dubin’s office today. In part, the push for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA has been rocky. Many in Congress are less than thrilled about the bill, and some are balking at protections for gender identity and gender expression. Largely, they are afraid of the “man in a dress” argument used by people such as Bill O’Reilly to attack the idea of anyone who is of a different gender than is accepted in this gender binary society. Never mind that a true transperson will not rape a woman in the bathroom. Indeed, in all the years that people have transitioned from one sex to another, not a single report has occurred where a transperson raped a woman in a bathroom. Nor are there any immediately discoverable cases of a man wearing a dress to rape a woman in a women’s public restroom.

Lindsey Dietzler of LGBT Change stated “I am here because we can no longer sit around and wait for our rights to be handed to us by politicians, we must demand our rights from them. We have to be here to fight for those who are forced to remain invisible and deny who they are just to make a living. I want Senator Durbin to know that until there is full federal equality for every queer citizen, no one in this country is free.”

Andrea Crain of Join the Impact Chicago stated about this as well “The LGBTQ community has stepped up to the plate and done our part. We gave votes, money, and countless hours of volunteer work to elect a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress and put a Democrat in the White House. We have lobbied our representatives and educated the public. We were told to wait until after the health care bill passed, and it has passed. We did our work, now Senator Durbin must do his!”

Congressman Barney Frank has pledged to make sure that the transgender protections are left in ENDA despite wariness from other politicians. Unfortunately, rather than trying to get them to understand what transsexuality is like, Representative Frank has been busy pushing protections which would endanger the lives of many transpeople who have yet to have genital surgery by trying to make it so that people would have to use the appropriate bathroom for their genitalia and not for their gender.

Some Republicans will only support ENDA if those protections are removed. According to Rep John Campbell of California, “If you include transgender rights, I think that just pushes the envelope too far. It is seen by the populace as a very extreme procedure.” It is an extreme procedure because it is an extreme condition full of confusion, pain, and discomfort. Many transpeople commit suicide or mutilate themselves. Others go into prostitution and pornography because they have no other ways of raising the money in order to have the surgeries. Some cannot have the full surgeries and spend a long time in therapy trying, not always successfully, to assuage that pain. Unfortunately, what Rep. Campbell does not understand is that the people out there do not see transpeople as having a medically necessary procedure. Instead, they see a person who is a pervert created by people like Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Springer.

Video can be found here: