DCTC Alarmed by Exclusion of Trans Communities in LGB Health Report

We recently discovered that the Mayor’s office released a report claiming to be about the health of the “GLBT community”, while failing to include trans people at all. Despite recognizing other differences such as race, age, ward and income, there is no data that breaks down the statistics by gender identity. Like the Mayor’s hate crimes report earlier this year, the report claims to include trans people but entirely ignores gay, lesbian and bisexual-identified trans folks, as well as trans people who are straight.

The continued invisiblization of our communities contributes to the widespread ignorance about trans people. Additionally, the lack of knowledge fuels existing health disparities revealed in other studies. If the city government is actually concerned about public health, it must prioritize the health needs of underserved trans communities in the District. In our letter to the Mayor (and copied to the Dept. of Health and the City Council), we state our belief that the government should firmly commit to including trans communities and allocate grant funding to help make a new trans needs assessment possible.

UPDATE: Check out this article over on MetroWeekly: “Missing Persons Report: Mayor’s Office of GLBT Affairs release first health report on gay residents, omits trans people.” We have been in touch with the Mayor’s office and the City Council. We will be submitting recommendations to improve data collection, but we have yet to hear a solid promise from the Mayor’s office that this will included in future surveys. See below for our full press release.

MORE UPDATES: Also follow the story at DCist and the CityPaper or click here to listen to the local NPR radio broadcast about the report.

The Sexist Blog Post: “D.C. Mayoral Candidates Support Transgender Rights, But Don’t Take Them Seriously”

Thanks to everyone from all over the Northeast and North America who came to our workshop at the Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference, and we can’t wait to see everyone at the many events we have coming up! There’s the screening of TransLatinas this Thursday, Trans Pride on Saturday, the Capital Pride Street Festival on Sunday and the Trans Day of Action in NYC next week. So much to do!

In the meantime, we wanted to share this article about trans rights in the District written on The Sexist blog. Each DC mayoral candidate was asked whether they would appoint a trans person to the human rights board. You can read a transcript or watch video footage of each candidate’s response, but as Amanda Hess, the author of the blog post, sums up:

So, we had one candidate voice his support for a transgender appointee, and then spend the rest of his time talking about achieving gay rights in the District. Then, we had the current mayor voice his support for a transgender appointee, then spend the rest of his time talking about completely unrelated shit, even though he is Mayor right now and apparently has not appointed a transgender person to the commission yet. Then, we had another candidate voice his support for a transgender appointee, and then spend the rest of his time talking about how he thinks gay rights should be subject to a popular vote.

This shows one of the major problems we face as trans organizers in DC: A lot of politicians appear to support our cause, but then clearly demonstrate that they know very little about our communities’ needs, are extremely disconnected from our day-to-day realities and fail to take any actual action on improving the lives of trans people in the District.  It seems like no matter who wins the election, our politicians are going to need to be educated about what a trans person even is, for starters.  But we’re very glad that the question was posed. It’s a beginning!

By the way, you can actually apply for a mayoral appointment to the Commission on Human Rights. Here’s how. And let us know if you do apply!