Trans Air - Flying the Not Necessarily Friendly Skies

Over the holidays, with the prospect of lots of travel including airlines, there's been a lot of hullabaloo over the TSA(Transportation Security Administration)'s new security screening procedures for air passengers, requiring either a revealing electronic body scan or a manual full body pat down.

As is so often the case, certain groups of people will have a more difficult time with these procedures. Again, as is so often the case, these are folks who have additional struggles to begin with. With regard to the new TSA procedures, I'm specifically referring to trans folks.

Trans folks have the double-disadvantage in that they may have prosthetics (padded, underwire bras and breast forms, genital prosthetics), which may cause concern to airport screeners, and that they may be red-flagged if the screener notes a discrepancy with the gender they present, either subjectively or due to a difference between the gender markers on their ID.

The point is, the marginalized community, that already has it harder, gets to have it harder still. And of course, the TSA does not require nor necessarily provide training for its officers regarding sensitivity to the LGBT community.

Fortunately, the National Center For Transgender Equality (NCTE) has come out with a resource for trans folks and "What Travelers Need to Know," as well as a useful PDF on "Whole Body Imaging."

There's a lot of just good general information for all folks, like:

• First, it is important that you KNOW YOUR RIGHTS. Even if TSA personnel are not always familiar with travelers' rights, such as the right to decline a full-body scan, you should know them. You may need to politely inform the officer of your rights and choices.
  
  
• Second, calmly and clearly expressing your choices is very important. This makes it easier for the TSA agents to understand what your needs are and may help you get through the checkpoint more quickly.

... as well as some trans-specific facts:

• You have the right to have manual search procedures performed by an officer who is of the same gender as the gender you are currently presenting yourself as. This does not depend on the gender listed on your ID, or on any other factor. If TSA officials are unsure who should pat you down, ask to speak to a supervisor and calmly insist on the appropriate officer.
  
  
• You should not be subjected to additional screening or inquiry because of any discrepancy between a gender marker on an ID and your appearance. As long as your ID has a recognizable picture of you on it, with your legal name and birth date, it should not cause any problem.

During the holidays, the best way to ensure that all of us and our family and friends have safe and uneventful travels is to have the best information on travel policies that affect you.

Until we have full equality and inclusion, we simply deal with what we've got with as much grace and equanimity as possible. Travel safely!

Not National HIV Testing Day

Today is not National HIV Testing Day.

National HIV Testing Day (NHTD) is June 27 each year, so it was just over a month ago. The point, however, is to raise awareness and promote early diagnosis of HIV/AIDS. It's not meant to limit testing to a single day but instead make people realize how important it is to do regularly, which is why it's being mentioned here more than a month later.

NHTD was founded by the National Association of People with AIDS in 1995. The LGBT community is still disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS, so it's more important to emphasize getting tested early and often.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that one in five of the 1.1 million people in the United States estimated to be living with HIV are not aware of their status. In the new cases of HIV, over half are attributed to people who do not know their HIV status.

The latest CDC data shows a large increase in new diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM) and African Americans. HIV disproportionately affects MSM, blacks folks, and Hispanics/Latinos, but MSM are the only risk group with increasing annual numbers of new HIV infections.

“Take the Test, Take Control” was this year's theme for NHTD. Being aware of your HIV/AIDS status puts you in control of your health and reduces the risk to others. Just the idea of getting tested may be scary and difficult, but fear of the results should never outweigh the importance of knowing.

HIV is not immediately detectable, so regular testing is essential. It can take from three weeks to three months for HIV antibodies to be detectable by the most common rapid tests. This period may be as long as six months. A newly infected person could still spread HIV, though, so regular testing and safe sex practices are vital to HIV prevention.

For the CDC's FAQ on HIV/AIDS and getting tested, go here.

To find an HIV testing location near you, visit hivtest.org.

National LGBT Health Awareness Week

This week, March 28-April 3, is the 8th Annual National LGBT Health Awareness Week.

This year's theme for LGBT Health Awareness Week is "Closing the Gap." The LGBT community has, on average, worse health outcomes and less access to the care than the straight community.

We need to educate ourselves and our health care providers about our unique health needs as well as our health risks in order to close the gap - everyone deserves good health!

It can be hard to talk about intimate life with anyone. To make sure the LGBT community stays healthy, we need to help our health care providers help us by talking openly and honestly about our lives and who we are.

Coming out is crucial. We need to come out to our providers about our sexual orientation or gender identity. We need to let them know when we are fighting depression, challenging substance use, and trying to manage our sexual health.

You'll find a selection of fact sheets and resources on LGBT-specific health issues here. Topics include:

• Access to Healthcare
• Aging
• Cancer
• Hepatitis
• Intimate Partner Violence
• Mental Health
• Sexual Health
• Smoking
• Substance Abuse
• Transmen's Health
• Transwomen's Health
• Youth Policy

As a bonus, in honor of this week, here is the upshot of the recently passed healthcare reform legislature ... from a gay perspective.

Once implemented, more than 95 percent of the country will have health insurance coverage, including 32 million who are currently uninsured. This matters to the LGBT community because:

• Gay folks are disproportionately poor and/or homeless due to pervasive discrimination, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. Extending health care coverage to economically disadvantaged people will help a critically vulnerable segment of our community gain access to basic medical care.
• Under the new law, adult children under the age of 27 will be able to remain on their families’ insurance policies, even after they leave home and/or graduate from college. Between 1 million and 9 million children are being raised by LGBT parents in the United States today, and poverty rates for children of same-sex couples are twice as high as poverty rates for children of different-sex married couples.
• A 2006 survey of national data by the Williams Institute showed that 20 percent of people in same-sex couples were uninsured, compared with only 11.5 percent of married individuals.
• Data from the CDC's National Health Interview Survey found that women in same-sex couples were statistically significantly less likely to have health insurance than women in different-sex relationships.

Other positive aspects include:

• Increased general data collection, which will help identify disparities in LGBT healthcare (though increased LGBT-specific data collection did not make the final cut).
• Emphasis on disease prevention and public health.
• The end of gender ratings, which means insurance companies will no longer be able to charge women more than men for the exact same policies.
• Access to coverage despite preexisting conditions. This provision will be a tremendous benefit to transgender people, people with HIV, and groups of LGBT folks who are disproportionately affected by certain illnesses, e.g., lesbians with a greater incidence of breast cancer.

Unfortunately, the reform also has some negatives:

• It continues the five-year ban on legal immigrants’ Medicaid eligibility and a ban on undocumented residents’ access to health insurance, which will affect gay communities in these groups.
• There are restrictions on reproductive freedom, which is an adjunct issue affecting LGBT folks.
• There are none of the proposed specific anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people or measures specifically addressing the needs of people with HIV.
• The final package lacks an earlier provision that would have eliminated the tax paid on domestic partner health benefits offered by employers.
• It provides funding to abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, which have been proven not only ineffective but also harmful to LGBT youth and youth from LGBT families

Read more about healthcare reform at the White House's site on the topic.

DADT-ism

The federal 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy, which prohibits LGBT folks from serving openly and honestly in the nation's military, is filled with bigotry and prejudice.

I don't mean it's homophobic, which is obvious and the policy's entire point. Instead, I'm referring to it's presumably unintended consequences of racism and sexism.

The Service Women's Action Network (SWAN), an organization dedicated to helping women servicemembers and vets, has produced a great fact sheet (PDF) on these discriminatory effects of DADT.

SWAN has publicly opposed DADT since its inception, arguing that not only is it discriminatory, but it also plays into the hands of racists, misogynists, and homo/transpobes. They also argue that it can be used as a blackmail tool by sexual predators in the military who threaten to use it to blackmail servicefolks.

According to their fact sheet:

DADT disproportionately affects women. Although women made up 15% of the armed forces in 2008, 34% of service members discharged were women. The impact of DADT on women varies according to service branch. For example, women comprised only 20% of the Air Force yet made up 62% of Air Force discharges. Racial minorities are also disproportionately affected by Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Non-white active duty service members represent 29.4% of the total military population, but comprise 45% of all DADT discharges in 2008. Service Branch/Percent Women Discharged Under DADT/Percent Women Serving in Branch:

• Army 36% 14%
• Navy 23% 15%
• Marine Corps 18% 6%
• Air Force 62% 20%

Race/Ethnic Group Percent discharged under DADT:

• White (non-Hispanic) 55%
• Black 20%
• Hispanic 9%
• Asian/Pacific Islander 8%
• American Indian 3%
• Other/Unknown 5%

Note the huge disproportions between the representative populations and the discharge percentages. Obviously women and racial minorities are being targeted under this policy, either expressly or subliminally.

SWAN also notes:

In addition to being formally excluded from the military, LGBT service members also endure informal discriminatory treatment from their peers and superiors in the military. Service members suspected of homosexuality are frequently harassed, mocked, and generally experience hostile treatment based on their real or perceived sexual orientation.

Women are especially vulnerable to so-called lesbian baiting, defined as “the practice of pressuring women for sex and sexually harassing women by using the threat of calling them lesbians as a means of intimidation.” Women in the military who do not conform to gender stereotypes or refuse to engage in sexual activity with men are at risk of being labeled a lesbian. Some of the increased scrutiny of service women’s sexuality is undoubtedly the result of women’s hyper-visibility in the military, along with the attitude that women do not belong in service.

Transgender individuals also endure many forms of exclusion in the military. In the first place, individuals who have undergone genital surgery in order to change their gender may be denied the opportunity to serve in the military at all. Furthermore, individuals diagnosed with “gender identity disorder” are barred from serving in the military, which effectively excludes most open transgender individuals. They are subject to harassment, hostile treatment, and are generally unwelcome in the military. Also, even though transgender servicememers are not necessarily gay, lesbian, or bisexual, they may be assumed to be and thus targeted under DADT.

A new poll commissioned by The Vet Voice Foundation and conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters finds that most veterans are “comfortable around gay and lesbian people, believe that being gay or lesbian has no bearing on a service member’s ability to perform their duties, and would find it acceptable if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military."

Obviously it's time - past time! - the United States ditches the failed DADT policy, which not only prevents LGBT servicemembers from serving honestly with honor and dignity, but also fosters other bigotries and stereotypes.

Our servicefolks deserve better, and so does our country.

Let's Hear It For The Boys (and Girls)! Honoring Our LGBT - and Straight Ally - Veterans

This Veterans Day, we're honoring and celebrating our LGBT veterans (and our straight allies), who have served and protected our country. This is especially noteworthy since the armed services have a history of discrimination against gay troops, culminating in the current decade-and-a-half old "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy.

In 1993, President Clinton suspended the existing Department of Defense policy which banned gay personnel from military service. However, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and influential members of Congress vehemently opposed the President’s attempt to permanently lift the ban. This led to six months of intense Congressional and Administration discussions and hearings on the issue. The end result was the infamous "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" law.

Under DADT, the military would not inquire about the sexual orientation of current and future service members. The law also said that gay men and women would be allowed to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces unless they declared they are gay, attempted to marry a person of the same sex, or engaged in homosexual conduct. Service members who were discovered to be homosexual would be subject to dismissal.

DADT policy has failed to live up to its intended goal of serving the best interests of the military while respecting the privacy and dignity of its gay servicemembers. Approximately 13,000 gay, lesbian, bisexual, and straight servicemembers have been abruptly fired from their jobs with the U.S. military as a result of the policy. DADT has been consistently misunderstood, misapplied, and grossly abused, and the policy now functions in a state of arbitrary enforcement that is inconsistent with the needs of the military and with the principles of sound public policy.

Servicemembers United has released new data showing that racial and ethnic minorities constituted an unusually large percentage of discharges under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) law in Fiscal Year (FY) 2008. The full press release can be found here.

There is, however, great hope of change coming:

• Military Panel Recommends Repeal of Sodomy Statute, ServiceMembers United, 10/22/09
  
  
• Survey raises doubts on ‘don’t ask’ policy, Boston Globe, 11/10/09
  
  
• AMA votes to seek repeal of 'don't ask,don't-tell', Associate Press, 11/10/09
  
  
• PBS releases 'Ask Not' documentary and accompanying interactive website
  

DADT is a wasteful, discriminatory policy rooted in bigotry and ignorance, but we can - and will - end it. In the meantime, take this day to honor your LGBT servicemembers.

(GLAAD has a media kid of Veterans Day ideas and resources. HRC and Servicemembers United are sponsoring the Voices of Honor tour.)

Connecting the Dots

I had the opportunity earlier this month to co-present a workshop on sexual and reproductive rights at the Choice USA (www.choiceusa.org) Reproductive Justice Leadership Institute in Chapel Hill.

Choice USA celebrates its 16th anniversary this year, and exists to mobilize, support and train young pro-choice leaders. They do a fantastic job of it, too! (That’s my obligatory shout-out as an Institute alumnus.)

Beyond the training aspect, what really stands out about Choice USA to me is their interest in “connect the dots” between sexual and reproductive rights issues. Some organizations, like Choice USA, are now using the term “reproductive justice” rather than “reproductive rights” to encompass a wider range of issues—including LGBT rights.

I worked with the super Lonna Hays from Ipas on the workshop, using a nifty mapping tool that Ipas, SisterSong, and the Task Force collaboratively created that tracks the status of reproductive justice across the US.

The joint project is called Mapping our Rights and can be found here: http://www.mappingourrights.org/. (It’s in the process of being updated, but still provides hours of click-and-learn fun.)

As they put it, “Mapping Our Rights illustrates how different state policies affect who we can marry, when or whether we can have children, and if we have access to health care or social security benefits.”

Obviously, there is a great deal of issue overlap between LGBT and the pro-choice movement — and the map shows that beautifully. Advocating for comprehensive sexuality education is typically on the agenda of groups from both camps, as is legislation that protects sexual autonomy and that which increases access to non-judgmental health care.

We have similar roots in the eyes of judges, too, as the decisions of Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas both boil down to a right to privacy. And perhaps because of these roots, we’re also hated by all the same people! Check out the agenda of any anti-LGBT group and you’ll find a heaping portion of woman-hate and anti-choice rhetoric mixed in there, as well.

In addition to sharing issues, we also share humans! Just follow the trail of people who have worked for LGBT rights and reproductive rights to see the overlap. Joe Solmonese of HRC used to head up EMILY’s List, which works to elect pro-choice Democratic women. NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina recently gained Sean Kosofsky — formerly of the Triangle Foundation in Michigan — as its executive director. Our own Ian serves on the NARAL board of directors, and I come from a background reproductive rights work.

I’ve really enjoyed seeing the reproductive rights movement grow toward an overarching goal of reproductive justice. And it’s great to know that wherever I happen to be — at a rally with Planned Parenthood, at a PRIDE meeting or at the Choice USA training — I’m in great company.

-- Rebecca Mann, Community Organizer