UUCA Middle Hour Robin Gilmore & Rev. Christina Leone Tracy Transgender 101 UUCA Middle Hour Robin Gilmore & Rev. Christina Leone Tracy

Sex vs Gender “Sex refers to a person’s biological status and is typically categorized as male, female, or intersex.” “Gender refers to the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex.” -American Psychological Association Sex is a combination of factors including chromosomes, hormones, gonads, and appearance of genitals. Intersex people are still also often assigned male or female at birth. Gender is a social construct consisting of presentation, identity, social norms, roles, and other cultural ideas of gender. “Everyone has a gender identity. And, everyone expresses their gender identity. We all make choices about how to cut or not cut the hair on our head, the hair on our legs, what clothes to wear, whether or not and what type of make-up to wear, what body parts to accentuate or not, etc, etc. We all make hundreds of conscious decisions every day about how we are going to express our gender.”

TRANSGENDER (adj.) denoting or relating to a person whose gender identity or presentation does not match societal expectations or the gender assigned at birth (also “trans”)

CISGENDER (adj.) denoting or relating to a person whose gender identity matches the gender assigned at birth (also “cis”)

Justice Issues Bathrooms Nothing else Just bathrooms "There has never been a verifiable reported instance of a trans person harassing a cisgender person, nor have there been any confirmed reports of male predators 'pretending' to be transgender to gain access to women's spaces and commit crimes against them." http://mic.com/articles/114066/statistics-show-exactly-how-many-times-trans-people-have-attacked-you-in-bathrooms "roughly 70% of trans people have reported being denied entrance, assaulted or harassed while trying to use a restroom."

Justice issues Violence Unemployment Workplace discrimination Police harassment Sexual assault Homelessness Do not “out” transgender people! Transgender people experience unemployment at twice the rate of the general population, with rates for trans people of color up to four times the national unemployment rate. In 32 states you can be fired for being trans. Trans people still cannot serve in the military. 90% of transgender people report experiencing harassment, mistreatment or discrimination on the job. 22% of respondents who have interacted with police reported harassment by police, with much higher rates reported by people of color. Almost half of the respondents (46%) reported being uncomfortable seeking police assistance. 64% of transgender people have experienced sexual assault. One in five transgender individuals have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. Family rejection and discrimination and violence have contributed to a large number of transgender and other LGBQ-identified youth who are homeless in the United States – an estimated 20-40% of the more than 1.6 million homeless youth. http://www.glaad.org/transgender/transfaq http://www.vocativ.com/culture/lgbt/lgbt-rights-kansas/ http://www.nclrights.org/sexual-assault-in-the-lgbt-community/

of transgender survey respondents reported attempting suicide 41% of transgender survey respondents reported attempting suicide http://www.glaad.org/transgender/transfaq compared to 1.6% of the general population.

Trans identities Trans woman Trans man Non-binary Genderqueer Agender Many more Laverne Cox Thomas Beatie Jacob Tobia Sasha Fleischman

Pronouns Ask! Practice! Don’t make a big deal about it He/him/his She/her/her They/them/th eir Zhe/zhim/zhir Ey/em/eir Many more

Outdated terminology Gender identity disorder Transsexual (unless self-identified) Transgendered Male-to-female (MTF) or female-to-male (FTM) (unless self- identified) Sex change Pre-op/post-op

Definitions Cross dresser Drag queen Transition Assigned male at birth/assigned female at birth (AMAB, AFAB)

Slurs/dehumanizing language Tranny He-she She-male Ladyboy It Thing Trap

UUCA History and Next Steps Welcoming Congregation (Need more work to include trans people) UULM-MD supported the Fairness for All Marylanders Act of 2014 (SB212). We worked with the Maryland Coalition for Trans Equality in passing this historic measure. OWL curriculum and two summer RE lessons for younger kids What’s next?