Last Thursday, Mayor Vincent Gray and the D.C Office of Human Rights announced the launch of a citywide campaign aimed at promoting respect for the transgender community. Advocates of the campaign noted that it was the first nationwide, government-funded effort to explicitly and exclusively target gender nonconforming communities. The campaign involves displaying advertisements on bus stops around the District depicting five transgender individuals stating their favorite D.C. activities. The goal of the campaign is to highlight that everyone belongs to the D.C. community, regardless of gender identity.
While we endorse and applaud the efforts of Mayor Gray and the Office of Human Rights in launching an awareness campaign, it is paramount that this be accompanied by concrete policies and enforcement that live up to the promise to make the city inclusive and non-discriminatory.
Mayor Gray stated that the campaign was indicative of his commitment to “ensure all residents have equal access to employment, housing and public services, and accommodations regardless of gender identity or expression.” Given that in 2011, 46 percent of transgender individuals reported employment discrimination and 37 percent reported housing discrimination because of their gender identity, these issues should play prominently in any campaign for transgender rights.
The OHR’s new focus on transgender awareness should include increased enforcement of D.C.’s existing anti-discrimination laws, as well as initiatives to ensure that victims of discrimination are aware of the available channels for legal recourse.
The recently unveiled awareness campaign will do the most good by addressing the disconcertingly high incidence of violence against gender nonconforming individuals. The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs released a report in 2011 documenting that transgender individuals (particularly transgender women, people of color, and young adults) are at a disproportionately high risk of being victims of hate violence. Furthermore, they reported that while hate violence incidents have decreased overall, the number of hate crimes targeting the LGBT community has soared by 11 percent, while people who identify as transgender were found to be 28 percent more likely to experience physical violence than those who are gender conforming. This campaign will hopefully stymie discrimination by working to destigmatize gender nonconformity.
There is still a lot to be done to address violence and heterosexist discrimination, but this campaign is a laudable attempt to increase awareness. The city should continue its effort to reverse discrimination against transgender people—reversing the stigmatization on discrimination itself.
