This is from Phyllis Frye, an attorney and trans woman in Texas who has been fighting for our rights for 35 years. (For example, she represented Christie Littleton in the case that invalidated Christie’s marriage to a natal male because she was trans, even though she had had SRS and had changed her birth certificate.) I am outraged that HRC would take such an antagonistic stance in response to a peaceful attempt to educate HRC members and others attending HRC's annual dinner in Houston about our issues. I don't know what we can do about this, but I'm PISSED!

Here's Phyllis' email:

Phyllabuster: National HRC called the Houston Police about Saturday Protest

I just finished a very pleasant meeting, in my law office with the Houston Police Department about the scheduled protest of the HRC event in Houston this Saturday from 4:30 to 7:30 pm, downtown at Polk and Avenue of the Americas (DETAILS PASTED BELOW).

It seems that in response to my national Phyllabuster about our protest, ...... GET THIS ...... the National HRC called the Houston Police.

HPD and I had a very nice meeting. I do not foresee any problems. HPD was so courteous that I was given a "Demonstration Guide" that they published in 2003 to assist citizens in expressing their 1st Amendment rights will not violating any laws. I told HPD that I would scan it and attach to my list. It is attached herein as good general information.

During the chat with HPD, I was also informed that HRC has also instructed the hotel security to ask us to leave if we attempt to pass out any written information or ask folks to wear our stickers.

I always thought that HRC was big on education and discussion.

Well, we will be there (read reposting below).

and we will be peaceful,

and we will be within the law,

and we will be protected by HPD,

and we will attempt to hand out our lapel stickers.

Phyllis Randolph Frye
the PHYLLABUSTER
prfrye@aol.com
www.tglegal.com

#################### repost of event details ############

Phyllabuster: Protest HRC Event, this Saturday, April 12, Houston

The HRC event is scheduled to begin at 6PM. That means some of the ultra-rich-donors will arrive early for pre-gala cocktails.

I suggest that we plan to begin at 4:30 PM to catch those coming early and stay until 7:30 PM. That should be enough as the event begins at 6:00 and most folks -- even the late comers -- will have passed our demonstrations by then.

The convention center hotel in downtown Houston is bounded by Dallas St, Avenue de las Americas (running in front of the George R. Brown Convention Center), Polk St and Crawford St.

The two primary entrances are on Dallas St and on Avenue de las Americas.

There is an elevated pedestrian bridge from the George R. Brown and another from the Parking Garage.

The Parking Garage's vehicle entrance is at Polk St and Avenue de las Americas.

I suggest that you park in the Parking Garage or on a nearby street and meet at that corner of Polk St and Avenue de las Americas.

Either myself or Josephine Tittsworth on her scooter or Vanessa Edwards-Foster -- one or all of us will be at that organizing spot -- will ask you what you want to do and direct you to where you will be the most effective.

I suggest three outside teams and one inside team.

The outside teams will be for signs. I suggest

(1) the corner of Polk and Avenue de las Americas, just off of that hotel entrance

(2) the corner of Dallas and Avenue de las Americas, and

(3) along Dallas near Crawford, just before the drive in for that hotel entrance.

Any and everyone driving in will see those three spots.

The inside team will be several of us to mix and mingle and convince attendees to be supportive of full GLBT inclusion and to wear our offered lapel stickers (artwork below).

I have pasted two artworks hereon. They are JPEG files that you can probably right click to lift and copy to your computer. Most Kinkos will take a jpeg file and turn it into a nice large and readable poster for a reasonable fee. Or you can make your own sign. All efforts are welcome.

BUT DO NOT PUT YOUR SIGN ON A STICK. A stick could be construed as a weapon.

I have the first artwork printed onto 1000 lapel stickers. The inside team can walk amongst the guests at the event and ask if they will wear the lapel sticker. I especially hope that Matthew Shepherd's mother (the keynote speaker) will wear a lapel sticker.

The outside teams will also have lapel stickers

So, mark your calendar THIS Saturday, April 12.

Make your sign or poster if you wish or go to Kinks and give them the artwork. I have other artworks. If you want other artwork files, let me know.

Come and park and walk to the corner of Polk and Avenue de las Americas at 4:30'ish and look for me or Josephine or Vanessa. Plan to stay until 7:30'ish. It should be fun!

ARTWORK ONE SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED FOR LAPEL STICKER 3.75" x 2.5" BUT WOULD ALSO MAKE A GREAT KINKO POSTER.

ARTWORK TWO SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED FOR BUMPER STICKER BUT EASILY USED BY KINKOS TO MAKE TWO LONG SIGNS CUT FROM ONE POSTER.

IF YOU WANT OTHER ARTWORKS, LET ME KNOW AND I WILL SEND.

Phyllis Randolph Frye
the PHYLLABUSTER
prfrye@aol.com
http://www.tglegal.com/

This is just a short post to let my trans sisters and brother who have children know about a fantastic resource to help our children understand and cope with our transitions. There are many resources for us as we prepare for transition. Well, maybe not so many, but there are many of us who have been through the process of “coming out” to our children who are willing to help those who are just beginning to figure out how to deal with the challenges of that process. However, until recently, I didn’t know of any resources designed to help our children. Fortunately, that void is quickly being filled by an organization called Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere. COLAGE has a specific program for our children called Kids of Trans. They are in the process of developing a resource guide for children of trans parents and already have a speakers program and an online forum where our children can share their experiences and learn from others like themselves, just like we do here on Yahoo! 360 and other places. They are also asking children of trans parents to complete a short survey via email to help them collect information about their experiences, so they can better serve that community. Of course, all the usual cautions about being aware of your children’s online contacts apply, since they do ask for personal identifying information about our children and ourselves.

Donna Rose recently interviewed Monica Canfield-Lenfest, who is in charge of the Kids of Trans program at COLAGE. I was impressed by her enthusiasm and drive. I also think her youth and her own experience as the daughter of a trans woman are great assets in helping our children relate to her and helping her understand what our children need to help them cope with the changes in their lives that our transitions bring on.

This post was prompted by a question on an Arizona-based TG Yahoo group asking whether it would be illegal for a MTF trans woman on HRT to expose her breasts in public, given that the law arguably only applies to women’s and/or female breasts. As you will quickly see, there is no clear answer. (Although the following is based only on my knowledge of Arizona law, I suspect that similar problems exist in other states.)

First of all, indecent exposure is only illegal in Arizona if “another person is present, and the defendant is reckless about whether the other person, as a reasonable person, would be offended or alarmed by the act.” A.R.S. § 13-1402.A. That’s why being nude with your partner or other consenting adult isn’t illegal. It’s also why it isn’t illegal to be nude in public where no one else is present or where it’s reasonable to expect that no one will be offended, such as in a naturist, i.e., nudist, resort. (Caveat: some cities and towns may have somewhat broader ordinances that don’t require the presence of another person. Those statutes are probably invalid, however, since they are broader than the state statute. Nonetheless, the local police might still arrest you for exposing your breasts in a public park, for example, even if you are in a secluded place where no one else can see you, resulting in a long and tiresome legal battle before you can prove that the local ordinance is invalid.)

As for whether it’s illegal for a MTF trans woman on HRT to expose her breasts in public, the answer likely depends on the words “she” and “her” in the statute, which says:

A person commits indecent exposure if he or she exposes his or her genitals or anus or she exposes the areola or nipple of her breast or breasts and another person is present, and the defendant is reckless about whether the other person, as a reasonable person, would be offended or alarmed by the act.

This language raises several questions:

• Does this language mean that only biological females are prohibited from exposing their breasts, so that a MTF trans woman on HRT can do whatever she wants? (We’ll ignore for the purposes of this post the extreme difficulty in many cases of deciding who is biologically female and who isn’t.) In other words, do “she” and “her” refer only to sex, not gender?
• Or do the words “she” and “her” refer to gender, not sex, such that even a male crossdresser who has never even been in the same room as an estrogen tablet but who happens to be dressed en femme is guilty of indecent procedure if he exposes his nipples in public?
• Does the answer to that question change if the trans woman has changed her birth certificate, passport, Social Security and all other records and identifications to indicate she is “female,” and no longer “male”?
• What if her driver’s license says “female” but her birth certificate says “male”? (Which happens to be my situation now and probably forever, since I have the misfortune of having been born in one of the three states – Ohio, Idaho and Tennessee – who never allow the sex/gender designation on birth certificates to be changed, whether I have SRS or not.)

The short answer to these questions is that nobody knows, as they’ve never been decided in a published opinion (which means it becomes the controlling law) by any Arizona court. (As far as I know, none of these questions has ever been answered in any other state either, but my research this morning didn’t extend outside Arizona.) The only clue as to how these questions might be answered that I was able to find arose in a case involving a city indecent exposure ordinance, not the state statute. While discussing the city ordinance, which specifically applied only to “females,” the court said the state statute also applies only to females. For a couple of reasons, however, that statement isn’t very helpful in deciding whether the statute refers to sex or gender. First, most people, let alone the law, have yet to acknowledge the distinction between sex and gender, so it’s unlikely that the court chose to say “female,” rather than use language that refers to gender, e.g., a “woman’s” breast, to indicate that distinction. Second, the court wasn’t trying to answer any of the questions above, so it’s not very persuasive.

I think the more difficult legal, as well as philosophical, question is whether changing our sex/gender designation on official records, especially our birth certificates, means that we will be treated as female/women for all legal purposes, including being subject to prosecution if we choose to take our shirts off the next time we go to the local park to catch a few rays. One argument, obviously, is “in for a penny, in for a pound.” In other words, if we want to be treated as women (or men, as the case may be), we don’t get to pick and choose when that applies for legal purposes. On the other hand, most of the courts who have addressed the question of whether a marriage between a MTF transsexual and a biological male, or vice versa in the case of a FTM transsexual, have held that the marriage is an illegal same-sex marriage, despite the “legal” change in the transsexuals sex/gender on her/his birth certificate. (All of the existing cases that I’m aware of involve marriages that occurred after the transsexual had transitioned and changed her/his birth certificate. As far as I know, the validity of a marriage involving a transsexual who transitions while already married has yet to be tested.) Personally, I prefer the “in for a penny, in for a pound” approach, but whether the law will follow suit seems questionable at the moment.

There is one potential bright spot in all of this confusion, however. There is a good chance that Arizona’s existing indecent exposure law would be held to be unenforceable when applied to a MTF trans woman on HRT on the grounds that it’s so f***ing confusing as to whether it applies to us that no one could be expected to know that exposing our breasts in public was illegal. (For you legal types, this means that the statute is “void for vagueness” when applied to us.) Nonetheless, keep in mind that there are likely to be years and years, not to mention thousands of dollars, of legal trouble between the time you decide to test this theory and get yourself arrested and finally convincing a court that you are right. (Another caveat: if you choose to test this theory, make sure that none of the people around you when you bare your breasts is under the age of fifteen. Exposing your breasts to a person who is fifteen or older is a class 1 misdemeanor, but if s/he is under fifteen, it’s a class 6 felony. The difference is that the former is punishable by at most six months in jail and a fine of $2,500, while the latter can result in up to 2 years in prison, not jail, and a fine of up to $150,000, as well as the loss of your rights to vote, own a gun and serve on a jury. I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy being a trans woman in a male prison, which is undoubtedly where I would end up.)

Lastly, what about the biological male with gynecomastia who is not trans but whose breasts are no different than a woman’s? Is it legal for him to expose his breasts in public but illegal for me to stand next to him and expose mine, even though they are physically indistinguishable? The cases that have addressed whether it’s illegal sex discrimination to make it illegal for women, but not men, to expose their breasts in public have almost all rejected that argument on the grounds that it’s not improper to make a distinction based on the “inherent” physical distinctions between the male and female breast. Does this mean that whether it’s illegal or not to expose one’s breasts depends on whether your breasts are physically “male” or “female,” regardless of which sex/gender you are? If so, at what point did my breasts morph from male to female? The first time I slipped a tablet of estradiol under my tongue? When I reached an A cup? When I had those double-D breast implants? (I wish. LOL) Who the f*** knows?!

All of this is just one more example of the blindness of the law to fact that male and female, men and women, are not mutually exclusive categories, that sex and gender, at least in the case of trans women and men, don’t always match, and that our bodies are not immutable.

<Ouch! Now, my head hurts. I'll think I'll go out and do a little topless sunbathing on my deck to relax. I wonder if my neighbors will mind?>