In “Evanston widens its laws to ban transgender bias,” by Steven J. Stark and LeAnn Spencer (Metro, July 29), I was characterized as “a man who dresses as a woman.” Also, in a sentence in which I am quoted as hoping to put “a more human face on the transgender community,” I am described as speaking “in a deep male voice, a contradiction to his blond hair and skirt.”
What remarkable insensitivity! For the first time in Illinois, a city council stood up and spoke from the heart about the basic humanity of transgender people, and then your writers dismiss me as a stereotype! A law was passed that night that prevents discrimination on the basis of gender identity or self-image, but you described me with prejudice. Instead of putting a human face on the community, your paper dehumanized me.
Mr. Stark, who was at that city council meeting, did not see me as a person who has struggled her whole life to come to grips with her “true self;” who stood with dignity and grace and spoke about the fear transgender people face every day; who spoke about discrimination resulting in loss of livelihood, rejection by family and friends and alienation from society. He did not see the civil rights activist who has been working years to gain passage of laws such as this. No! He saw “a man who dresses as a woman.”
I am not “a man who dresses as a woman.” I am a transgendered woman. That is who I am.
