Inter-Q-Zone: Lobbying the Gender Revolution

Lobbying the Gender Revolution

Pauline Park, PhD. is Secertary and a member of the Board of Directors of Queens Pride House, a center for T/L/B/G communities. She was also featured in Leslie Feinberg's Transgender Warriors.

If you had told me even a year ago that on a warm day in May 1997, I would be lobbying Congress as an openly transgendered woman of Asian origin, I would have laughed with incredulity. Yet there I was, on Monday May 5th, on the steps of the Capitol, in a blue suit with a long skirt and stylish but sensible shoes, ready to take the Hill by storm.

On the occasion of the second National Gender Lobbying Day, organized by Riki Anne Wilchins and Dana Priesing of the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition (GPAC), over 50 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and intersexual individuals from across the U.S., marched up to Capitol Hill. We were there to persuade members of Congress to address the issue of violence against the differently gendered. Which includes anyone perceived as transgressing conventional gender boundaries.

In a recent survey of transgender groups, 60 percent of those polled reported being the victims of assault and battery. Intersexuals are subject to another form of violence: intersex genital mutilation (IGM), in which the intersexed bodies of infants (including hermaphrodites) are surgically forced to conform to conventional notions of male and female. Hence, Cheryl Chase, the founder of the Intersexual Society of North America (ISNA), and three ISNA members also joined the lobbying coalition.

After a group photo on the Capitol East front at 9AM members of the contigent broke up into teams to meet with legislative assistants. Our goal to persuade them to sign onto a letter urging the Department of Justice to use its full resources to address the problem of violence against the trans- and differently gendered. Current hate crimes statistics do not include the trans- or differently gendered.

The reactions of congressional staff varied considerably, ranging from indifferent to non-committal, to enthusiastically supportive. A group of intrepid North Carolinians actually got into see Jesse Helm's staff, and were met with cold incomprehension, but were not thrown out of the office. My team, from NY, met with the staff of Charles Schumer, Maurice Hichey, Carolyn Maloney, Nadia Velasquez and others. By the end of the day, the entire cadre of amateur lobbyist had managed to secure several firm commitments, and a number of supportive responses requiring follow-up. This outcome had exceeded even our most optimistic expectations.

By late afternoon, I and my lesbian comrade-in-arms left the facade of official Washington behind, stunningly white in the late spring sun. I felt a quiet thrill to think that I might have been the first openly transgendered Asian Pacific American to lobby Congress, and felt above all, an intensified commitment to the empowerment of the TLGB communities.