Beyond Gay Marriage: The Equality Act and Other LGBT Issues

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Beyond Gay Marriage: The Equality Act and Other LGBT Issues

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Spacewolf posted:

Sure there is. It politicizes the ADA, something that (to the relief of most disabled folks) is actually not a partisan issue in the US. It's rough enough being blind, I don't need what few protections I get being turned into a wedge issue for either party!

Seriously: You want to protect transgenders, go ahead. But don't touch the ADA! Leave us out of your fight!

It doesn't politicize it though, any more that adding sexual orientation/gender identity to already existing civil rights laws politicized them. Do you or do you not believe gd causes difficulty for people who have it, through no control of their own, and those people require special considerations at times?

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sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Higsian posted:

Yeah but the discrimination doesn't come from the condition itself. It comes from how particular treatments clash with established gender norms.

Actually, I wrote that above and then figured out my problem with it, I was thinking purely of transformation and not the specific mental condition. It's okay to add gender dysphoria to the ADA as a mental disability because I imagine you could be discriminated against purely because of the condition even without physically or legally changing your gender. But I think trans also needs to be added to/there needs to be some sort of "don't discriminate against people who are different from you/social norms" kind of law because adding gender dysphoria to the ADA doesn't cover things like hermaphroditism, effeminate men, masculine women, etc which are all similar kinds of problems.

Being an effeminate man doesn't cause me to have legitimate dysphoria regarding my identity, though? Like, it's called gender dysphoria for a reason, people with it experience extreme discomfort with the gender they were born as so, say, telling a trans woman she can't wear a female uniform at the workplace can trigger that and cause them actual problems. Calling me a sissy pussbaby because I tear up at sad movies is a dick move and yea if I was somehow fired for crying like a little bitch at Hachi: A Dog�s Tale that probably shouldn't fly, but that's a super different situation. I'm not facing the possibility of being impeded in my daily life by that.

Spacewolf posted:

But is it so surprising?

Answer me this, all of you:

What's the rate of participation in the labor force for civilian Americans over 16? 30% of Americans without a disability between 16 and 64 are classified as "Not in the Labor Force"

What's the rate of participation in the labor force for people of the same age group with disabilities? 15% are unemployed as of February 2009 (Yes, I know it's old, the statistics are only recently being collected), 79% are "Not in the labor force" and not counted as unemployed because they aren't looking for work.

Bluntly put...It's not remotely a fair fight. Most people with gender dysphoria have jobs. Can get jobs. Maybe not the jobs they'd like. Maybe not the jobs they can qualify for. But jobs.

(My source for the employment data is here)

Meanwhile, they're risking the lives of folks who often enough can't get jobs, or can't work period. Which is what you would do by loading the ADA with this. You would risk the lives and livelihoods of people with no other option. Because every time you add something, you make the definition of disability (and from that, the entire ADA) that much easier to attack.

FYI when gays use(d) this logic to exclude gender identity from stuff like ENDA we were rightly called huge assholes for throwing people suffering just as bad, or worse, than us under the bus out of political cowardice. At least we had the excuse of 'well it's a similar fight of course we're gonna come back for you guys' when we did it, don't know how disabled people can spin it if this becomes A Thing!

# ¿ Aug 26, 2015 06:10

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Beyond Gay Marriage: The Equality Act and Other LGBT Issues