naomi clark
GRITtv: The Politics of Being Transgender
Barack Obama made the first transgender political appointments that we know of recently -- Amanda Simpson, appointed last week as senior technical adviser in the Bureau of Industry and Security in the Commerce Department and Dylan Orr, special assistant to Assistant Secretary of Labor Kathleen Martinez in the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the Department of Labor -- but even David Letterman couldn't resist making a crack at Simpson's expense. The "T" at the end of LGBT often seems like an afterthought, with transgender rights being excluded even when LGBT rights are approved. Today we talk to Julia Serano, author of "Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity," Naomi Clark of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and blogger at Feministe, and filmmaker Jules Rosskam of Against a Trans Narrative, about being transgender in the U.S. and how far we still have to go.
Email this pageGRITtv: Progressive Politics and the LGBT Movement
What can the progressive movement learn from the LGBT community? On the 40th anniversary of Stonewall there has been a good deal of reflection and soul searching on the role of the struggle for gay rights within the larger civil rights movement. Yesterday when Barack Obama met with gay couples in the White House he said, "It's not for me to tell you to be patient any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African-Americans who were petitioning for equal rights a half-century ago. We've been in office six months now. I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration." That could be applied to a number of issues, not only those affecting the LGBT community. Richard Burns, Chief Operating Officer of the Arcus Foundation, Naomi Clark of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Richard Kim, Associate Editor at The Nation, and independent journalist Nancy Goldstein on the role of LGBT politics within the progressive movement.
